Last time, I wrote an article about the benefits of having a well-made business card for yourself. I recently came across this great compilation of creative business cards. If you're looking for ideas or just comparing your card to someone else's, this will do the job just right.

Click here to see the rest of the cards over at CreativeBits.

I recently read an article over at The Artistic Outlaw that reminded me what designers go through when freelancing. For those of you that are graphic designers out there, or provide some kind of a service, these 5 ways would come in pretty handy if they were actually honored by your clients. James made a valid point when he said that plenty of people write about becoming better at your job, but nobody writes about how clients can become better clients.

Wouldn't it be nice if the people that hired you actually let you do your job most of the time, and paid on time? Yes, it would.

Head on over and check out the article.

You can probably find a million other sources that'll tell you to "own the stage" and pretend like the presentation hall is your living room. The fact is that, it's not, and never will be. Yes, my approach to good public speaking is similar to others, but I aim to cover things that they don't - the things that don't get too much attention that are just as important.

Chances are, if you're looking to become a full time public speaker, you would be taking a few courses over at the local University. For those of you that want to learn to speak publicly for self improvement and to boost confidence in your speech, these tips may be for you... Continue reading after the jump.

It's be a harsh few weeks but I finally got around the upgrading my WordPress installation. It's the first time I did it so I was a little worried that I'd do something wrong and kill my installation, but all went well. I must thank the WordPress developers for making the upgrade process so easy. I've been anticipating the redesign dashboard, and so far, I'm loving it! Everything is right where it needs to be, easily and quickly accessible.

As I am quite impressed with the new look, I plan to put together some kind of an analysis regarding interfaces. Look out for that! =)

Most people don't realize how important feedback is to develop worthy software. Whether the feedback is to report a bug, or to ask for software features and enhancements, they all serve a valuable purpose. I am promoting the idea of giving feedback because I have good experiences with it. Because of my 2 minutes that I took to ask for a certain feature or bug fix, they have been addressed accordingly, and I (amongst many others) are happy.

The main reason why I am writing this post is because iPhone Safari has been getting on my nerves all too much. Ever since the release day of the iPhone, Safari was never able to maintain browsing multiple websites at once without all the pages resetting and having to reload. This is very aggravating especially when I'm chatting. I can't ever click a link and browse around for a couple of minutes without my BeeJive website blanking out and having to reload. More after the jump...

It was recently reported over at Wired.com that Amazon is suing New York over a new law that requires online companies to collect taxes from customers. Being a New York resident, it sucks to find this out since I do shop at places like Amazon and Newegg.com. Amazon is arguing that it's unfair and against the commerce law of the constitution, while New York is saying that it closes a loophole. Personally, I think this was done to insure residents of New York (and other states) to pay taxes and not report purchases made online when it's that time of the year.

I guess having family or friends in a nearby state won't be doing you any good for much longer. I'd hope that the suing does result in New York pulling back the law that was passed, but I doubt it would go that way. Government officials want taxes saying that they fund city-wide projects and such, but I have to yet to see any improvements worth mentioning. With the possible $50 Million gain in taxes for New York, I expect it to be put into good use like cleaning up the city and improving the environment. What can I say? I have high hopes.

The worldly renowned Word Wide Developer's Conference by Apple is right around the corner. Beginning on June 9th and extending through the 13th, there will be a lot of things going down in the Apple world. The iPhone 2.0 software is due for release alongside the App Store, and judging from what we saw from the iPhone Software Roadmap, things are looking pretty bright!

I've been an iPhone owner since day one, and I don't think I would ever settle for anything less if I were to change phones. For my interests in the software and all things creative, I started working on an iPhone related web project. I can't say too much about it at the moment, but I'll be talking more about it as it develops. I am sure many people will find it a very helpful resource, and hopefully a nice place to hang around. Stay tuned for more info! =)

Illegal downloading of applications is probably just an inevitable as the sunrise every morning. No matter what companies do to protect against it, hackers always tend to find a way around it - at times, rather quickly. Is this something that should be taken lightly, or seriously by the companies and law makers?

After conversing with a number of people regarding this issue, it seems like the most common excuse was the following: "If I'm not a professional and won't be making any money from it, why should I pay for it for only playing around with it?" Technically speaking, this is a pretty valid response, but what about people who do make money off of it?

Without a doubt, Photoshop (or any other application package from Adobe) isn't exactly the most affordable. There are a lot of people out there in the world (pros and non-pros) running cracked versions of software of all different types. A lot of these people have it just for the sake of having it, while others actually make money from them by offering professional services to those in need. This is my primary issue. More after the jump...

The month of May has reached its point of presence on our calendars, and with it brings warm weather, summer vacation, and more. To me, May is the time of the year where things start to calm down and pick up speed all at the time same. The school semester at the University is coming to an end, and my schedule becomes free for me to do the things I have planned.

With this free time, I hope to pursue more freelance gigs and work on some of my web projects that I have planned. I will also be concentrating on my photography, along with getting into video related work a bit more - The fact that I now have Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, I can hopefully create some good material.

For the remainder of this year, I want to continue crossing things out from my New Year's Resolution list. I want to travel to at least 2 locations that I've never been to, read a couple of books, get some needed accessories for my camera, and put more effort into writing creative tutorials using Adobe software. My Reflective Metallic Text tutorial received a lot of attention all over the web, and I hope to do the same with my upcoming tutorials. I hope to not disappoint. =)

Every since the Master Collection was announced by Adobe, I told myself that I just HAD to have it, and now, I do! Every application that comes with this master suite, I will try to learn and use to their fullest extent. I've been meaning to get into video editing and production for the longest time, as I have a high end HDR camera at my disposal. I think After Effects would be pretty awesome alongside video and flash animations.

There are a lot of new features in the whole CS3 suite that have intrigued me to make the grand purchase. Just the fact alone that I can work so easily between all the applications seamlessly makes it worth it for me. On top of that, performance improvements from CS2 to CS3 running on Intel Macs is great, too!

I always hear from people that Fireworks is a good alternative to Photoshop for creating web templates and layouts, and now that it's even more powerful, I'm stoked to give it a shot! Dreamweaver's new features supporting advanced WYSIWYG, CSS, and Javascript functions look promising and I'd love to discover the all the possibilities. I have a feeling I'm going to be spending A LOT of times with my new toy this summer.