On behalf of Mashable, I recently wrote an article published on American Express OPEN Forum, a web community for business owners. The article is a roundup of web design galleries focused on e-commerce website design.

Here’s a short except from the post:

Have you ever contemplated the expansion of your small business through the launch of an online store? The first phase of any new venture, big or small, is to generate initial ideas and scope out what’s already out there. Having a good vision of your soon-to-be e-store at hand will help you communicate better with your designer. Knowing what’s possible will also allow you to determine your desired outcomes.

Just in case you were wondering: I’m a contributing author on Mashable, helping them cover development- and … Read More »

As designers and illustrators there’s just something about skulls that we can’t resist. Maybe it’s the influence of our favourite metal bands or the creative inspiration we’re fed from tattoo culture. This post rounds up a collection of talented digital illustrators and artists and showcases their best skull based designs and artworks. Remember to follow the links through to each designer’s website, behind each artwork is a portfolio full of more amazing pieces.

Black & White Illustration by Hydro74

Black & White Illustration by Hydro74

Black & White Illustration by Hydro74

Black & White Illustration by Hydro74

Black & White Illustration by Hydro74

Scion Event Poster by Hydro74

Photoshop Illustration by Hydro74

Kill The Noise … Read More »

I’ve been using a review unit of this Google Android smartphone for several days and have plenty of impressions to share. I’ll have a full written review soon, but for now, here’s an early video look at AT&T’s version of Samsung’s best-selling smartphone to date.

My favorite feature so far is the Super AMOLED Plus display. Even though it’s only 800×480 resolution, a number of folks I showed it to thought the display resolution rivaled the iPhone 4, due to the vivid, bright colors. Yes, the 4.3-inch display is big, but the thin nature of the smartphone makes it “feel” smaller and I have no problems putting the handset in a front pocket.

A dual-core 1.2 GHz processor powers Android 2.3.4 quite nicely; as you can see in the video, switching between tasks is fast. Image quality for … Read More »

There has been speculation for a while now that Oracle might someday make its foray into the Hadoop and NoSQL spaces, and next week looks like that time.

With regard to Hadoop, CEO Larry Ellison made it clear during last week’s earnings call that the company is working on a connector that will let customers load unstructured data from Hadoop into their Oracle Exadata appliances. Now we have proof — and Oracle’s big data plans don’t stop with Hadoop.

Updated: I’ve seen some Oracle-produced content highlighting the company’s plans for a big data platform, apparently slated for launch in the second half of 2012, that not only includes the Hadoop connector — called Oracle Loader for Hadoop — but also a NoSQL database. The goal, it seems, is to let customers acquire data from whatever sources they please and then feed it … Read More »

Not long ago we had a post featuring some valuable Twitter tools, and we received requests to do the same kind of post for Facebook. In the interest of giving our readers what they want, and the community content that is useful, this post was born. Today we are presenting a list of tools to enhance your Facebook experience.

Even with Google+ on the virtual horizon, Facebook remains a major social media platform that many users never foresee leaving. So for designers and developers compiling tools for making the most of Facebook will never go out of style. Hopefully in our post today you will find some new tools that will optimize your own Facebook ventures, or those you are preparing for clients.

For the User End

Facebook Tools for WordPress is a WordPress plugin that allows you to auto insert … Read More »