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The Hello Bar is a fun, unobtrusive yet highly visible bar that sits at the top of your website and is a great way to engage users and get them to take immediate action. User attention spans are shorter than ever, and with more content to sift through users are less and less likely to find what you really want them to see. Enter Hello Bar. Users like Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferris use Hello Bar to promote the most important message and call to action.

With this Pro release, we’ve focused on empowering our users to increase their clickthrough rates and improve their message with A/B testing and advanced statistics. We also want to encourage users to keep their Hello Bar messages fresh to avoid user fatigue. The idea is that a user will always check a websites Hello Bar to see what is latest and greatest on the site.

New Pro Features Include:

- A/B Testing (message, link, colors…etc)

- Advanced stats (all date ranges, A/B results)

- Dynamic Hello Bars (from RSS feeds)

- No Branding or link to Hello Bar

- Up to 10 Hello Bars (Free = 3)

- Always on top (Hello Bar stays on top when you scroll)

- Lots more features to come – this is just the beginning

The Details on Winning

We’ll be picking 25 people to get a free invite to the Pro Plan. Comment to win and we’ll handle the rest! Winners will be announced Thursday 6/19. Good luck!

Winners

If your name is on the list below please e-mail: chad@fuelyourcreativity.com and we’ll take care of the rest!

1. Clyde Smith
2. Mitch Garcia
3. Dieo
4. Kel
5. Glenn Sewell
6. Zak Morris
7. Peter Dedene
8. Marius
9. Frank
10. Arun
11. David Brier
12. Charlie Curve
13. Melanie
14. Alex Leeson-Brown
15. Conor
16. Juarez P. A. Filho
17. Tyrale
18. Keri
19. Laura Tetrault
20. Gian
21. Colleen C
22. Jason Calleiro
23. Kumi
24. Kathleen
25. Justin Dela Cruz

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Mojo Themes just recently re-designed their site (which we covered here) and they also turned one year old! (Happy Birthday to you!) Now, what’s that mean for you? They are giving away three (3) of their bundles to FYC readers for tweeting this statement:

I want to win a free Anniversary bundle from Mojo Themes http://t.co/RO4ONU1 #fuelcreativity

Details:

The MOJO Themes Anniversary Bundle is taking place for 7 days only between the dates of April 18^th (Monday) to April 24^th (Sunday).

The Bundle will include some of our most popular items within the marketplace.  You can get your hands on $442 worth of items for only $25.

WordPress: (10)

$32 Signal 8

One of the longest top sellers on MOJO Themes, the Signal 8 WordPress theme delivers a sleek & fun feel but is still packed with tons of features. It offers a premium magazine/news formatted homepage. Featured articles or posts display on the homepage slider.

$32 Lambert

Lambert is a high customizable theme for WordPress with a unique and creative design to make you stand out. With this theme you can play with the latest cms features likes the menus, thumbnails and the background manager.

$35 Pride & Joy

Pride & Joy is a beautiful, minimalist, clean looking WordPress theme, with easy to customize color scheme, typography, graphic header and background. This theme comes with 6 color schemes, more than 10 Cufon fonts, 9 widget area, 50+ theme options, WP3 new features ( Custom Menu, Header, Background), localisation support, Shortcodes, and many more.

$32  Cleaner

This theme is currently a MOJO best selling item from MOJO’s current top seller. The Cleaner premium WordPress theme has been designed for those looking to create a very clean and minimalistic website to show off their business or personal portfolio.

$37 FolioStudio

FolioStudio is the perfect blend of Wordpress goodness. Experience everything with FolioStudio, from a sophisticated portfolio, detailed magazine, or professional business layout all wrapped up with a fresh design.

$32 Stereotype

Stereotype WordPress theme is a clean and simple one page portfolio theme. The extensive and beautifully styled options page lets you control every aspect of the theme and is very well documented with how-to videos for each section.

$35 Granity

Granity is a clean and simple corporate wordpress theme, it include an extensive list of features and styles, you would expect in a premium theme. Pack with 20+ shortcodes, 4 sliders, 6 custom widgets and much more!

$37 Universalistic

Universalistic is a highly-customizable premium WordPress template that can be used for company presentation, personal blog or portfolio. It provides simple administration panel, making Universalistic configuration as easy as possible.

$35 WordShaft

Wordshaft is a great WordPress theme for community or personal blogger with clean design and neat code. The rich theme admin panel and widgets enable you to control your content, manage your advertisement, show your latest tweet, video, photos and much more.

$32 Advanced

Advanced Portfolio is the best WordPress to showcase for your work. This theme is widget ready, nivo slider, 3 skins and more!

WordPress Plugins: (2)

$37 WP Mobile

The WP Mobile Detector allows you to display a mobile theme on WordPress sites to mobile devices in minutes. Simply install the WordPress plugin and activate it. WP Mobile Detector is a WordPress plugin that detects mobile devices and displays a mobile optimized theme specifically for each mobile device.

$37 WP Auctions

WP Auctions is a plugin that lets anyone with a WordPress powered blog or site host their own auctions. You can use it to sell anyting you like to your readers in an auction format.

Tumblr: (2)

$12 Altered Perspective

Designed especially for photographers and the creative type, the Altered Perspective Tumblr theme features a custom javascript photography headerand a unique left to right scrolling/post feature. Nothing says creativity like being different. That’s what this theme is – different.

$14 Veen

The Veen Tumblr theme is perfect for creative writer’s, thinker’s and doer’s. This theme has a quiet boldness, which instantly gives uniqueness to your website, so you can standout.

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Copper is a project management software tool that helps you and your team manage projects, tasks, clients, contacts, and documents online. Thousands of businesses in over 50 countries and across numerous industries choose Copper as their preferred PM tool.

Copper is made for teams that need to plan and execute their projects quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively. It’s like having a full time project manager keeping you and your team on track.

If you run any kind of design or web-related business, an internal marketing team, ad agency, medical team, education department, or any other special project team, once you’ve used Copper you’ll wonder how you ever did without it

Features Include:

• Manage Clients, Projects & Tasks
• Drag & Drop Timeline (This tool allows you to create and manage your project timelines, in seconds)
• Allocating People and Booking Time & Resources
• Logging Hours and Comments
• Storing Files & Folders Pertaining to Specific Projects
• Tracking and Managing your budgets & Invoices
• Importing and Exporting Data (including your MS Project XML files, Syncronization of your Outlook or iCal calendars, Import and export of your Contacts via vCard, CSV & PDF exporting of Reports, Quotes and Invoices, or full backup & restore of your entire Copper database via the Admin console.)
• Project Timesheet Reports
• Plus Many More (take a full tour here)

“What do we think of Copper? Its super!!! Currently our whole creative team (online and offline), our data/crm dept, and our client service team use it. We’re now working with Ben and the crew at Element Software to tailor the product to suit our unique requirements, what other software company is so responsive?” – Yannis Piperakis-Papadakis, CIO OgilvyOne Worldwide

“We have a complex creative pipeline that includes everything from commercial shoots to software development and Copper is flexible enough to handle it all. The tools are intuitive, very well thought out, and best of all backed by developers who are committed to supporting their customers. It’s great!” – Neil McBean Rival Schools

The Goods

20 Free Copper Accounts

How To Win

Tell us the reason you think you deserve a free account. We love real answers. “I really need this account to further my design career by helping me keep track of my work”. Something like that is always a winner over “OMFG I NEED THIS STUFF NAOWZ”.

When Will I Know

Winners will be chosen next Monday (March 28th 2011)

The Winners

1. QubeSys Tech
2. Aura
3. Cisco
4. Troy Bowman
5. Greg
6. demogar
7. jeffrey
8. brian
9. Tony
10. Aleksey
11. Megan
12. Jean-Paul de Jong
13. Samantha Prinsloo
14. Vasco
15. Chanelle Henry
16. Helene Bowman
17. RJ
18. Marty White
19. Susan
20. George Edwards

If your name is on the winner list please contact me at chad(at)fuelyourcreativity.com to get your free account!!

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Kicking off its 15^th year celebrating the best of the Internet, The Webby Awards today announced it is expanding its mission to reflect the profound impact that apps and the mobile Web are having on digital culture and commerce.

As part of the launch for its call for entries for Canada’s best Websites, online film and video, and interactive advertising, The Webby Awards debuted a new suite of categories saluting apps for handheld and tablet devices. A diverse mix of mobile experts, including Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley, and Yelp.com CEO Jeremy Stoppelman will judge the new awards.

To enter work in the 15^th Annual Webby Awards, visit www.webbyawards.com. The early entry deadline is October 29, 2010.

“In our fifteen years honoring the best of the Internet, we’ve seen few developments have as profound an effect as apps and the mobile Web,” said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. “Apps have transformed the online experience, changing the way we access content, and enhancing every aspect of our daily lives. We’re looking forward to honoring not only these pioneering innovators but also the Websites, videos, and advertising that continue to shape the Internet’s future.”

According to the Canada’s Webby Ambassador Eli Singer, founder of Entrinsic, the 14^th Annual Webby Awards received nearly 10,000 entries from more than 60 countries. The awards season was capped by a star-studded June gala showcasing an influential group of Internet leaders, including Roger Ebert, Internet co-inventor Vinton Cerf, and Chatroulette.com’s creator Andrey Ternovskiy.

The Webby Awards is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 650-person judging academy whose Canadian members include Wikitravel founder Evan Prodromou, Maclean’s Magazine editor-in-chief Ken Whyte, Idee founder Leila Boujnane, as well as luminaries such as Martha Stewart, David Bowie, Vinton Cerf, and Arianna Huffington.

In keeping with tradition, all winners have the opportunity to deliver one of The Webby Awards’ famous five-word speeches. In conjunction with the call for entries kick-off, The Webby Awards debuted a new video featuring at battle of the awards show speeches between a long-winded Barry Bostwick (Spin City) at the 1989 Golden Globes and Amy Poehler, Zach Galifianakis, and Buzz Aldrin at the 2010 Webby Awards.

Nominees for the 15^th Annual Webby Awards will be announced in April, and winners will be honored at the gala ceremony in June 2011.

About The Webby Awards:

Hailed as the “Internet’s highest honor” by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including Websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile web sites. Established in 1996, the 14th Annual Webby Awards received nearly 10,000 entries from all 50 states and over 60 countries worldwide. The Webby Awards is presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Sponsors and Partners of The Webby Awards include: Microsoft Expression, Aol, YouTube, Pepsi, Aquent,  Yahoo!, HP, Sony Electronics .CO, Corbis Images, Rackspace Hosting, Motorola, Southwest Airlines, East Media, IDG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2advanced.Net, KobeMail, Museum of the Moving Image, Behance, Business Insider, Time Out New York, paidContent and The Guardian.

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APPLIED ARTS INTERACTIVE AWARDS 2010
CALL FOR ENTRY. DEADLINE: OCTOBER 17th, 2010

In today’s highly competitive market, the challenge is how to get noticed. One of the best ways to promote your talent to Canada’s creative community and potential clients is by entering your work in one of the country’s most popular awards competitions.

NEW FOR 2010… YOUNG BLOOD INTERACTIVE!

To celebrate and encourage emerging creative talent, we’ve introduced a series of categories titled Young Blood across all of our awards programs. Intended for creatives who have been out of school for three years or less, Young Blood entries will be judged on the same criteria and receive the same great exposure as all of our awards winners, with the added bonus of editorial coverage in a future issue of Applied Arts for the highest scoring entry.
MAXIMUM EXPOSURE!
More potential clients will see your work than in any other awards program or promotional effort. Winners will receive maximum exposure in these high-profile media platforms:

• Showcased in the Interactive Awards section, published in the February/March 2011 issue of Applied Arts, with a readership of more than 46,000, including many potential clients.
• Featured in the very popular Interactive Awards Winners gallery on www.appliedartsmag.com, which attracts more than 300,000 visitors annually.
• Winners also receive an Awards Certificate for each winning piece.

ENTERING IS EASY! Simply to view the Online Entry & Payment Form.

CONTACT:

Carrie Martin awards[at]appliedartsmag.com
or by phone, 416-510-0909, ext. 32 (outside Toronto: 1-800-646-0347.)

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Screenfluent is a clean, well designed web gallery serving for a place to gain inspiration and knowledge for many web designers around the world. Screenfluent has been one of the most popular web galleries from 2006-til now. Recently, Screenfluent launched an all new version of their site that is multi-lingual, categorized and has premiere listings.

The site is curated by Simon Raczka. The site receives suggestions for various designs which are they approved and sorted. There is an option to have an express review which will put your site to the front of the review stack for a mere $2.99. Screenfluent is a great way to showcase your recent web-designs or learn/gain inspiration from other designers around the world.

Giveaway -

Screenfluent is giving away 50 express reviews to people who tweet + follow @screenfluent! To win all you have to do is follow @screenfluent and tweet to them and let them know why you think they’re awesome!

Screenfluent can also be found on:

Twitter

Facebook

Subscribe to their RSS

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This comprehensive guide to graphic design is packed with useful, creative methods for creating a profitable graphic design business. Veteran designer Theo Stephen Williams covers all of the details, from setting rates and dealing with competitors’ pricing to establishing and managing budgets and positioning the brand of the firm. This third edition has also been updated to include additional material on time management, expanded coverage of Web and multimedia pricing, and numerous new interviews with leading designers.

Readers will discover how to:

• Prepare estimates
• Negotiate with clients
• draft proposals
• determine an hourly rate
• use different pricing methods
• choose financial management software
• establish a productive work environment

The Graphic Designer’s Guide to Pricing, Estimating, and Budgeting features clearly written advice and first-hand experiences that will be indispensable to both professional and aspiring designers.

Comprehensive and comprehensible! Recent graudates, freelance designers, those about to go “on their own,” and veteran designers who have never truly understood how to put a value on their work will benefit from this excellent book. Personal business anecdotes give life to information that often causes the eyes of “creatives” to glaze over. This could be the most valuable book in your design library.

-Fred Niles, Chair of the department of Visual Arts, University of Dayton

Straightforward, sprinkled with just the right amount of humour, and packed full of clear, useable information, Theo Williams’ pearls of wisdom belong in every graphic designer’s bookcase, right next to Graphic Art Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines. This is a gold mine of information from the frontlines and behind the scenes of the graphic design industry.

-Linda Souders, Souders Engst Design

How to win:

Tell us the reason you think you deserve a copy. We love real answers. “I really need this book to further my design career by helping me price my work”. Something like that is always a winner over “OMFG I NEED THIS BOOK NAOWZ”.

When do I know?

Winners will be chosen next Monday (September 14th 2010)

Published by Allworth Press

Winners

Let me preface this by saying I read every comment and I was overwhelmed by the response, sincerity of the replies and the passion everyone has to succeed. I tried to determine how to pick a winner after reading through all the comments. I let a completely random number generator pick between 1-180. I came out with 4 winners for the 4 books. If the winners would email me their address at chad(at)fuelyourcreativity.com I can have them shipped to you! Thank you all for leaving heartfelt, compassionate comments. I was truly humbled.

1. Amanda Farough – VioletMinded.com

2. Corey – BullmanDesign.com

3. Marquis M.

4. Jason Gross – JasonGross.com

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HTML & CSS Web Standards Solutions – A Web Standardistas’ Approach is quite possibly one of the most authoritative books that you can learn XHTML & CSS through. This book makes learning easy opposed to monotonous reading and technical jargon. Even if you are an absolute beginner in web design, this book will teach you how to build future-proof web pages the right way using easy-to-master tools which are, in most cases, free. This book is easy to pick-up at any point, read a few chapters and learn, then practice (through their easy tutorials) and then go back to your day! However, this book is addicting and once you start catching on, you’ll want to finish and learn more! Here are what a few people say about HTML & CSS Web Standards Solutions – A Web Standardistas’ Approach:

Every Design School on the Planet Should Make ‘HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions’ a Required Textbook.
— Jon Tan

Reading this book felt like I was at the web design school I never had the chance to attend. It’s truly a course in a book: it explains the basics that every web designer should know.
— Yaili

More than just another book: it’s a textbook. Each chapter builds appropriately on the previous and each chapter ends with an exercise for the reader. The exercise enforces what has been learned up to that point and sets the stage for the chapter to come.
— Jonathan Snook

About the Authors

In addition to their role as lecturers in interactive design at the University of Ulster at Belfast, where they have been active in promoting a web standards-based curriculum, Christopher Murphy and Nicklas Persson are practicing designers and digital artists. Their work has featured in a variety of design books and magazines alongside numerous internationally respected designers and they are regular speakers at design conferences and workshops worldwide.

The What

3 copies will be divvied up among the participants and winners will be notified on August 23rd 2010.

The How

Fairly simple: follow @fuelcreativity as well as @standardistas and tell us something you love about design on the web. It could be your favorite site, the coolest thing you’ve ever seen, the best site you’ve ever designed or a just a reason why you think web design is awesome. There is no wrong answer as long as it pertains to web design.

Need more Standardistas?

Follow them on twitter

Dig through their site

Buy the book on Amazon

Winners

Elizabeth Bartoccini @ebartoccini

Rowell Cruz @rowjie

Robin Doty @dakotadesigner

Contact me at chad(at)fuelyourcreativity.com to get things set up for shipping & receiving prizes!

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AMD and PowerColor are giving away three Eyefinity-capable video cards for a wallpaper design contest. They will be giving away two Eyefinity-capable 5670s and an Eyefinity-capable 5770 to the winners.

To enter, submit a design for a desktop background that is big enough to cover the wide field of view that Eyefinity provides: spanning from, at a minimum, 5760×1080 up to 7680×3200 pixels. Three winners will be chosen—one by popular vote, one by AMD, and one by Icrontic editorial staff.

Entries can be renders, photography, or original artwork—anything that takes advantage of the enormous resolution made possible by Eyefinity—but must include the Eyefinity logo somewhere in the design.

Rules are as follows:

* Artwork must be your own design—no using any copyrighted artwork!

* Artwork must include the Eyefinity logo (provided here)

* By submitting your artwork you give express consent to PowerColor, AMD and Icrontic to use your artwork.

* The deadline for entries will be 11:59 P.M EST. June 20th, 2010

* The winners will be announced on June 23rd, 2010

* The contest is open to all countries, and AMD will pay shipping, but taxes and tariffs for import (if your country levies them) is the winner’s responsibility.

Prizes are:

Popular vote winner: PowerColor Eyefinity edition 5770

AMD-chosen winner: PowerColor Eyefinity edition 5670

Icrontic staff-chosen winner: PowerColor Eyefinity edition 5670

To enter, one must have an Icrontic forum account, and your profile must be filled in with an accurate email address, since we will notify winners via email. Submit your entries to the comments, and best of luck!

Checkout the full rules and where to submit over at Irontic.

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The kind folks at New Rider have offered FUEL readers a chance at a free pass to their upcoming Voices that Matter: Web Design 2010 conference!

What’s this conference all about? In their own words:

New Riders’ Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference, now in its fourth consecutive year, will take place June 28-29 in San Francisco and the timing couldn’t be better! Web design is undergoing an historic transformation: while the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript haven’t changed, the new and evolving functionality in the HTML5 and CSS3 specs, the number of new ways in which people access the Web, and the rise of social media mean that Web designers need to know more than ever.

Don’t miss this opportunity to meet face-to-face with industry greats and discuss Web design’s most critical topics! We’ll open with a keynote address from Jesse James Garrett, author of The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and close with a keynote address delivered by Steve Krug, author of the well known book Don’t Make Me Think and the brand new book Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems. From start to finish this conference will blow you away.

How to Enter

Enter to win a free pass (a $595 value) to the conference:

• Visit this post on Fuel Your Coding and just leave a comment (just say anything you like!) and we’ll pick one lucky commenter at random this Friday, May 14th!

Bonus: Special Savings

All FUEL readers can save $150 off the conference fee by providing priority code WBNBLGA when registering. Register before May 14th and save $250 as this $100 discount is combined with the early bird pricing!

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There are two business and creative development conferences coming up in the South East U.S., LessConf and the Front-End Design Conference. This is the second run for both events and they represent a new breed of creative conferences sprouting up around the community.

The best part is that we are giving away entries to both events! By commenting on this post, you will have the chance at winning your choice of 1 LessConf ticket or 1 of 3 Front-End Design Conference tickets! There is a catch, though: We want to know why you attend events like these.

So, check out the information on each conference and leave a comment using the guidelines at the bottom of the post. We will draw the winners on Friday, May 7th.

LessConf 3010

May 21st-May 22nd, Atlanta, GA - www.lessconf.com

LessConf is a conference with talks ranging from startups to design tomarketing to business. It’s a casual two-day event in Atlanta Georgia with awesome speakers to inspire you. It’s for people creating “things”, communities, followings, businesses offline & online.

Do you LOVE design, user experience, marketing, entrepreneurship or social media? Then you should attend this conference! The awesomeness includes amazing speakers like Jason Fried, Cameron Moll, Saul Colt, David Heinemeier Hansson and bacon filled pancakes for breakfast, don’t forget the bacon filled pancakes!
- @lessallan

You can follow the event at @lessconf or Register Now while there are still seats available.

Front-End Design Conference

July 23rd, St. Petersburg, FL - www.frontendconf.com

Front-End is a single-day web design conference focused on content, presentation and behavior.

Front-End Conf was created for anyone interested in front-end design to spend a day learning and hanging out with a bunch of like-minded peeps. The topics are intended to cover as much of the spectrum of front-end design that we can squeeze into a single day.

FUEL has supported this event from its beginning and attendees will actually get to see FUEL’s co-founder, Adelle Charles, speak this year!

You can follow the event at @frontendconf or Register Now!

How to Win

Comment below with:

• Which conference you would like to attend
• Why you attend conferences
• Your Twitter Name (Optional, of course)

We will draw the winners on Friday, May 7th. Good luck!

We used random.org and put the names and requests into a list. Thank you to @kragit for tweeting back the random number of 6, which we used to randomize the list 6 times.

So, here are the winners:

LessConf: Brian McDaniel
Front-End Design Conference: Jeff Bridgforth, Estelle and Natalia

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LG Mobile Phones, the fastest growing mobile phone brand in North America,  is partnering with crowdSPRING, an online marketplace for creative services, and Autodesk, a leader in 2D and 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software, to hold an innovative competition to define the future of mobile communication.  Starting on March 15^th, LG Mobile Phones will give consumers the chance to design their vision of the next revolutionary LG mobile phone and compete for more than $80,000 in prizes.

The competition will award over 40 winners.  The first place winner will be awarded $20,000, one Wacom Intuos4 medium tablet, and Autodesk industrial design software.  The second place winner will be awarded $10,000 and Autodesk SketchBook Pro software, and the third place winner will be awarded $5,000 and Autodesk SketchBook Pro software.  To reward as many people as possible in the name of creativity, LG will also be giving out a whopping 37 honorable mentions at $1,000 each.

This year’s competition marks the inaugural participation of Russell Bobbitt, a world renowned movie prop master.  Bobbitt has worked on a variety of visually stunning films such as Star Trek, Iron Man and Iron Man 2™.  He recently received the prestigious “Behind the Camera” prop master award for his work on the first Iron Man film.  Bobbitt will serve as a guest judge to reward one contestant’s cutting-edge design with the Prop Master’s Choice award.  The contestant’s design will then be created into a non-working mock-up that could wind up in Bobbitt’s next blockbuster film.  The Prop Master’s Choice winner will also receive $3,000 plus Autodesk SketchBook Pro software.

“We’re very excited about this competition because it gives consumers and design enthusiasts all a chance to exercise their creative imaginations and have their ideas be heard,” said Ehtisham Rabbani, vice president of marketing and innovation for LG Mobile Phones.  “You don’t have to work for LG to make an impact on the future of mobile phones.”

Autodesk will supply participants with a free 15-day trial of HYPERLINK SketchBook Pro, a paint and drawing application for use on the Mac or PC.  It offers an intuitive, streamlined user interface so even new users can be productive within minutes. The 15-day trial will give all competitors access to industry-leading professional design software and levels the playing field for professional and amateur designers alike to create the phone of their dreams.

“We’re thrilled to partner with LG and Autodesk on this innovative design challenge. The challenge represents the real power of crowdsourcing – by allowing anyone to have the opportunity to design the next generation mobile phone for a global leader,” said Ross Kimbarovsky, co-founder of crowdSPRING.  With a pool of over 55,000 designers and writers in more than 170 countries, crowdSPRING is one of the world’s largest creative communities and is an open platform where anyone can post projects or submit entries. Both seasoned and aspiring designers can submit their entries until April 26^th at http://www.crowdspring.com/LG

Competition Details:

Eligibility: Any U.S. resident (citizen or green card holder) that is 18 years (or age of majority in state of residence) and older

Start and End Dates: The competition begins on March 15, 2010, at 12 a.m. PST and ends on April 26, 2010, at 9:00 a.m. PST

Winners will be announced on May 14, 2010 at http://www.crowdspring.com/LG/winners

Prizes:

First Place:

$20,000 Cash Award + 1 Wacom Intuos4 medium tablet (ARV of $349) + Autodesk industrial design software (ARV of $500)

Second Place:

$10,000 Cash Award + Autodesk SketchBook Pro software (ARV of $100)

Third Place:

$5,000 Cash Award + Autodesk SketchBook Pro software (ARV of $100)

Prop Master’s Choice:

$3,000 Cash Award + Autodesk SketchBook Pro software (ARV of $100) + 1 non-working concept mock-up creation (ARV of $4,000)

37 Honorable Mentions:

$1,000 Cash Award

Official rules can be found at http://www.crowdspring.com/LG NO PURCHASE NECESSARY.  A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.

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SlideDeck is a new way to display content on websites, mobile phones and kiosks. It delivers a better user experience by removing the information overload and providing a fun, quick and beautiful way to interact with digital devices.

Use SlideDeck For:

• Product Tours
• Service Descriptions
• Explaining Complex Processes
• How-To Tutorials
• Feature Rich Slide Shows
• Landing Pages

SlideDeck is currently available as a customizable JavaScript Library. It takes only minutes to add to your website and is available as a plugin for jQuery 1.3+. See the usage documentation for more information.

Demo

SlideDeck has setup a sleek demo site for Basecamp. It shows you exactly how you could utilize their product. This could be super effective for employee training, new app training etc. The possibilities are indeed endless.

It’s very easy to identify and navigate through a SlideDeck presentation because of the tabs on the left and the windows that switch on the right. It’s an effortless tutorial, that puts the user in control of the speed they view it and whether they can come back to it or not.

More About SlideDeck

SlideDeck was created by a user experience design company, digital-telepathy. Digital-Telepathy stumbled into the concept when trying to simplify their own message and process. D-T uses SlideDeck to share ideas, processes and products in a clear and simple way.

Social

Twitter: Follow them

Facebook: Become a fan

The Giveaway:

How to Enter

• Follow @slidedeck on twitter
• Comment with what you would use it for.

The Details

• There will be 4 competition winners
• Contest will end this Friday at 11:59p EST.
• Winners will be announced on or before Monday

Winners

1. Zack C.
2. Juarez Filho
3. Jesse Anderson
4. Rob Simpson

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What drove DIBI conference to become a reality instead of just a dream in someones head?

Gavin Elliott is the creative mind behind DIBI conference. What exactly is this magical DIBI conference? We will get to that in a minute along with a promo code for the conference and a wicked competition to win a free ticket. But, first we are going behind the scenes with Gavin Elliott- you can also follow him on twitter.

The Skinny on Gavin

Gavin has some notable facts to bring him into the role that he is in today. He worked as a civil servant, a soldier in the Royal Corps of Engineers & ran his own business.

He now works at Codeworks as the Marketing & Creative Executive where he primarily works on looking after the Thinking Digital Conference and other projects within Codeworks.

What is your typical daily routine?

Typical doesn’t happen for me that often. Every day is usually different. I’ll generally get up at approximately 6.30am get things sorted and make myself a coffee (Starbucks ground coffee FTW) for the trip into the office. I’ll arrive around 7:40am and look over Twitter, I still don’t use an RSS feed and Twitter seems to work well for me. I like to get my emails sorted as soon as I sit down, so the music goes on and before 9am and I can usually have all of my replies done. I’ll check my diary to see if I have any meetings but my work pretty much is around the creative and ‘social’ side of Thinking Digital, DIBI then working with the other teams within Codeworks. I get up to alsorts whether it’s designing or writing. I’m pretty much busy all day. Head back home approximately 5pm before getting in to other projects or more writing. I love what I do so I probably seem like a workaholic.

What are the three things you could not live without?

1. My macbook and macbook pro (we’ll count those as one)

2. Basecamp (For managing my daily life and all the project I’m involved with).

3. My notebook where I draw or make notes. (I carry this pretty much everywhere these days.)

Do you find time to devote to all of your creative endeavors?

I do, I often think of ideas on the fly and quickly have to tell someone. I’ve set up various blogs over the years but am starting to tailor these back. I write quite often about design on my personal blog and have just had an article published in .net (Practical Web Design in the US). I enjoy writing and joining the Project 52 I’ll be publishing a specific post every week. Working out the time between design and writing can be somewhat cumbersome. I’ll be working on a small personal project over the next few months which the design community can use which I’m definitely looking forward to getting started on.

What do you think we will see in the design community in 2010?

I’m hoping there will be a lot more collaboration between designers. I think we’re now finally starting to see the community coming together and learning from each other. In past years there have been a select few who’ve been fortunate to build strong bonds with others but now with all of the social apps we’re seeing more communication with the community as a whole. I would say that the financial climate doesn’t seem to have hit the design/development community so bad over the past year or so however a lot of companies and freelancers have upped their game to hone their skills and decide what is exactly for them and then price themselves accordingly for being a professional in that particular field. 2010 could bring some very specialised designers in to the public spotlight. On top of that we’ll definitely see a surge in mobile design.

What drove DIBI conference to become a reality instead of just a dream in someones head?

We have a lot of web conferences in the UK including the likes of dConstruct, FOWA, FOWD, UX London and Build. Generally though, the conferences never reach further than Leeds/Manchester. Build took place in Northern Ireland last year so when you look at it, conferences have never been taken further North to the likes of Newcastle upon Tyne/Gateshead where DIBI will be taking place. We have a vibrant web community in the North East of England and it is an ideal place for people to travel to. With an international airport, train and ferry links it is an ideal location.

DIBI has a unique cast of characters speaking. Most of which are very prevalent in the web design community, how is it important to make sure you get people to present who are on top of their game?

We thought long and hard about what we wanted to achieve with the conference. It’s highly prevalent that you must reach out to speakers which are either doing something new or leading various areas of the industry to new places. It’s all well and good saying that you want to set a conference up but when looking at the finer details you want to create longevity and a good sense of hype and communication with the people who will be attending. Codeworks have a long standing commitment with the digital agencies in the North East of England and regularly hold ‘Think and a Drink’ evening events on a monthly basis.

What are you trying to make your audience aware of? Is it more of a conference where you talk about current trends and happenings or something that will educate them as a whole?

Definitely education. Whilst we’re expecting lots of attendees who are on top of their game, there is always the opportunity for people to learn more. Making sure that the topics are correct for the audience is paramount, attendees expect something different which is what we’re hoping to achieve with DIBI.

Will the success of DIBI determine the if the conference will be around next year or do you already have ideas of doing another?

Codeworks have had major success with other conferences such as Thinking Digital and GameHorizon and we’ll be looking to achieve the same with DIBI. Definitely look out for DIBI being around again next year.

How does DIBI set itself apart from other conferences? It seems the age of the speakers at DIBI is less than others. What else?

DIBI is one of the first two-track web conferences that we know of. The tickets are limited to 350 and we’re hoping for an equal amount of designers and developers attending. They will then form the DIBI 350, a unique set of professionals taking part in the first North East of England Web Conference. It’s unusual to bring both designers and developers together at the same time, we hope that whilst they’re in the same place as each other, relationships can be made and collaborations can happen. With regards to the speakers, we looked around to see who was available so that we could provide a good amount of variation from other conferences. The DIBI Conference itself will be running from 9am till approx 5pm then we’ll be moving on to a Think and a Drink/After Party in Newcastle upon Tyne.

THE GIVEAWAY

Here’s where you get a chance to win a free ticket to DIBI! Now, all you need to do is put the most creative reason why you want to go to DIBI (and a valid email in the comment box) and we will handle the rest. Do you want to go to learn? Network? See long lost friends? Tell us and you have a chance to get a free ticket!

Need More DIBI?

Site: dibiconference.com

Twitter: twitter.com/dibiconf

Discount for being a reader: Promo Code: “DIBI_hohoho”

*Winner Update**

This is quite possibly the hardest choice I have ever had to make on who wins based on a comment. There were so many good ones to pick from that I couldn’t make up my mind. So, I went to a proven system to help me pick. “The hat method”. I printed everyones name out, put it in a hat and stirred them all around. The winner came out to be Paddy Donnelly.

Thank you all for entering and I hope you all get to go to the DIBI Conference!

Thank you all for participating

Advertise here via BSA

I just wanted to take a few minutes out of my day today to personally wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks to all the readers for supporting Fuel Your Creativity throughout the year, we’d like to give back by giving away 20 Google Wave invites.

Lot’s of things are in store for ‘FUEL’ and ‘Creativity’ in the coming new year and we look forward to celebrating by giving back even more in the future!

Have a happy and safe one! -Adelle

(To enter for your chance to win, simply leave a comment below. We will pick 20 winners at random and announce here next Tuesday. Please leave a valid email address.)

And the Wave Winners Are:

Kate
DeAnne
wh1teasn0w
Mixolidia
Dani
Seantpl
Andrew
Aaron Busse
Emily
Barbara Holland
Freddy Gonzalez
Adam Powers
Nick
Kelsey
Liga
Anders P
Michael Persson
fede
Rob Mitchell
Simple

You should all be receiving invites through the e-mail addys you provided. Thanks for participating everyone!