The move is evidently a reaction to the bust on rival service Megaupload, which was shut down after police arrested its founder on charges of flagrant copyright violation.

A statement on FileSonic’s home page reads, “All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.”

FileSonic shut down the services after an FBI investigation led to the shutdown of Megaupload — which is said to be the largest file-sharing site in the world — and the arrest of its founder, Kim Dotcom.

New Zealand police raided Dotcom’s estate on Friday and took him into custody, along with three other people. A ruling on bail is expected by Wednesday.

The news clearly made an impression. In addition to the shutting down of its file-sharing abilities, FileSonic only shows articles on its “In the News” page that have to do with its support of copyright, and the steps its taking with third parties to protect copyrighted digital content.

Another file-sharing service, RapidShare, told Mashable in an emailed statement that it was unconcerned about the Megaupload arrests. In the statement, RapidShare says it operates in a more transparent way than Megaupload, and says the the site is “absolutely legal.”

CEO Alexandra Zwingli says RapidShare, which is said to be the second-largest online digital locker after Megaupload, acts “rigidly” against copyright infringement and that the company has established a “constructive dialogue with politics and society in the United States” and elsewhere.

It’s not known whether FileSonic ever plans to restore file sharing once more safeguards are in place, or if the change is permanent. Queries to the service weren’t immediately returned.

Are you a FileSonic user? Are you angry about the change, or does it make no difference to you? Let us know in the comments.

 Thanks to the : Smashing Editorial Team

Today’s freebie may be the last one for this year, but that doesn’t mean it will be the last of our freebies on Smashing Magazine — no siree! Before this year does come to an end, we are happy to present to you a fresh new Web UI set includig 91 icons created by August Interactive for the holiday season. The set is a collection of widely used UI elements, including volume, zoom, player, view, and download controls.

Designed by Tomas Gajar, the set was developed using Adobe Fireworks and has been exported as a fully editable layered Photoshop file as well. The set is clean, pixel perfect, and meant to full your everyday needs for UI design.

DOWNLOAD THE SET FOR FREE!

This freebie offers vectors, all scalable, Adobe Photoshop PSDs as well as Fireworks PNGs. The icon set is completely free to use for commercial or personal applications without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word.

• large preview
• download the free icon set (.zip, 3,4 Mb)

BEHIND THE DESIGN

As always, here are some insights from the designers:

“For us, the end of the year usually brings some precious time to reflect on our work and how our love for design remains relevant to the user interface design community. Our revelation this year is that clean, pixel perfect vector icons have become immensely important to our work. This means we typically spend the extra time to develop the icons that fit the specific need of the job at hand. As you can imagine, this ‘extra’ time takes considerable effort — effort that is often not a part of a clients’ original scope of work.

These holidays, we decided that the best gift we could offer our friends and colleagues is free access to some of our favorite custom UI icons. They are available in Adobe Photoshop PSDs, and for our really special friends, Fireworks PNGs. All vector, all scalable, all free to use for commercial or personal applications. Stay tuned for more in 2012!”

Thank you, Tomas Gajar and August Interactive. We appreciate your work and your good intentions!

Equal Design are a Lancashire web & print design team based in the town of Leyland, near the city of Preston.  We focus on providing high quality web design solutions at affordable prices. Equal Design are official WordPress consultants and we use WordPress to create many of your websites. WordPress allows us to produce affordable quality sites that meet all web standards, which is why we think it is market leader. Key Facts for Equal Design

Key People at Equal Design

Rankings (awarded in last 3 months)

• #10 - Best WordPress Development Company, December 2011.
• #10 - Best WordPress Development Company, November 2011.
• #10 - Best WordPress Development Company, October 2011.

This post is proudly sponsored by http://www.uprinting.com/business-cards.html America.

Share via Facebook4

Google+ is one of the hottest social media topics around. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, it is focussed on targeted sharing – this is what Google calls ‘circles’. Circles are small groups of people such as colleagues and friends.

Another feature of Google+ is ‘hangouts’. Instead of asking someone to join a group chat, you choose to ‘start a hangout’ and a message goes out to your circles, letting them know they can join you.

One of the most important features of Google+ is Google +1. This is a way for Google users to say they like your website or a specific page on it clicking a “+1″ button. If someone “likes” your site then it appears in search engine results with a +1 icon.

Google have also indicated that they will use the “Likes” from the +1 button along with many other ranking factors to help rank your website in Google.

With more than 40 million users, Google+ looks set to grow. It’s already popular with early adopters and is growing rapidly with marketeers and businesses around the world.

Get the most out of Google + with these top 5 handy tips.

1. Display your +1′s. Let people see what you’ve been liking. Go to your profile tab, click ‘edit profile’, and then click on the +1′s tab. You will now get the option to ‘Show this tab on your profile’.

2. Spread the word. Send invitations to others to join without needing an email address. Perfect for enticing your friends over from Facebook and Twitter. Simply use the ‘send invitations’ option.

3. Don’t miss out. Regularly check the ‘people who’ve added you’. This will show you the people who have circled you, but you haven’t circle back.
4. Save time. The Google+ notifications toolbar can save you loads of time. Use the left and right arrows to scroll.

5. Ask for help! If you are interested in having the +1 button added to your website.

It’s probably the least interesting part of designing software, usually entailing hours of grinding. Saving images to multiple scales — as required by iOS and other platforms — adds complication to the process. But there are ways to streamline or automate the exporting process. Have you already got your copy of the Smashing Book #2? The book shares valuable practical insight into design, usability and coding. Have a look at the contents.]

Have you already got your copy of the Smashing Book #2? The book shares valuable practical insight into design, usability and coding. Have a look at the contents.]

Copy Merged

Cutting up a design with the “Copy Merged” feature is fairly easy: ensure that the layers are shown or hidden as needed; draw a Marquee selection around the element; choose Edit → Copy Merged, and then File → New  hit Return; and then “Paste.” The result is a new document with your item isolated, trimmed to the absolute smallest size possible.
From here, all you need to do is save the image using “Save As” or “Save for Web & Devices.”

Rinse and repeat for every image needed for the app or website. The technique is simple and quick, but repetitive; and if you ever need to export the images again, you’ll have to start from scratch.

This seems to be the most common method and, for some designers, the only method, which is a shame, because better techniques exist.

You could create an action that triggers the “Copy Merged,” “New,” “Paste” process — a small time-saver, but ultimately not much of an improvement to the workflow.

Export Layers to Files

If you’re lucky, and your goal is to export a lot of similar images (typically with identical dimensions), you might be able to use Photoshop’s “Export Layers to Files” script.

By choosing File → Scripts → Export Layers to Files, each layer of the document will be saved as a separate file, with a file name that matches the layer’s name. This means you’ll probably have to prepare the document by flattening all of the elements that you’d like to export down to bitmap layers — a time-consuming process, but often quicker than using “Copy Merged.” It could also trim the size of the resulting file, if you choose to remove completely transparent areas.

I can’t say that I’m a fan of the script’s Flash-based UI or of the way it works, but “Export Layers to Files” is handy if your desired result fits its limited range of use cases.

Slices

Photoshop’s Slice tool lets you define rectangular areas to export as individual images, with some limitations: only one set of slices can exist per document, and slices cannot overlap (if they do, then smaller rectangle slices will be formed). During the ’90s, the Slice tool was a good way to create table-based Web layouts, filled with images. These days, designers far more often need finer control over how images are sliced, especially when creating efficient, dynamic designs, typically with images that have transparency. But, with a twist on the original concept, the Slice tool can be put to great use.

Sprite Sheets With Slices

Sprite sheets are commonly used in CSS and OpenGL games, where texture atlasing can have significant performance benefits. A similar method can be employed to build UI elements in Photoshop, even if the result is a set of images, rather than one large image.

By spreading out the elements that you need to export as a flat sprite sheet, you eliminate the need for slices to overlap. If there are too many elements to comfortably fit in one document, you can create multiple documents, eliminating the need for more than one set of slices per document.

The other benefit to working like this is that you’ll no longer need to build your main design documents with the same level of precision. Occasionally using a bitmap or forgetting to name a layer is fine, because you’ll have a chance to fix things when preparing the sprite sheet for exporting. But it does mean that the original mock-up document could get out of sync with the export documents if you make changes (for example, to adjust colors or layer effects).

Because we’re interested only in user-created slices, it might also be a good idea to click “Hide Auto Slices” (in the options toolbar when the Slice Select tool is enabled) and to turn off “Show Slice Numbers,” under “Guides, Grid & Slices” in Preferences. This way, you’ll remove unnecessary clutter from Photoshop’s slice UI.

After you’ve created a sprite sheet with the slices all set up correctly, you’ll be able to export all of the images at once, using “Save for Web & Devices.” Assuming you’ve done things correctly, you’ll be able to scale up by 200%, save all of your Retina images, and then batch rename them (adding @2x to the file names) — or scale them down, if you built everything at Retina size to begin with.

Layer-Based Slices

If your UI element is one layer and you’d like the exported image to be the smallest possible size, you might want to consider using a “Layer-Based Slice.” To create one for the currently selected layer, choose “New Layer-Based Slice” from the Layers menu. A Layer-Based Slices moves, grows and shrinks with the layer it’s associated with. It also takes into account layer effects: strokes and shadows increase the size of a Layer-Based Slice, so the effects are included. Less control, but more automated.

My Exporting Workflow

For years, I’ve used Copy Merged as my primary exporting method, and used Export Layers to Files when it made sense. That was a poor choice. Sprite sheets have so many advantages, especially in medium- to large-scale projects, that the set-up time is made up for very quickly. This is even truer when exporting Retina and non-Retina images: each set can be exported in a few clicks and is far less likely to have issues with file names or sizes due to its automated nature.

It also creates an environment in which modifying production assets is easy, allowing for faster iteration and more experimentation. It lowers the barrier to improving artwork during development and when revising the app or website.

And that’s a very good thing.

Use a blog to grow your business presence on the web

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling WordPress plugins or watermelons – if your business has any kind of online presence at all, you can raise your profile – and ultimately your profits – by running a blog.

Provided, of course, that it’s done correctly. These are six pieces of advice on how to blog for business and make your online efforts worthwhile.

1. Pretend you’re a charity

At the most basic level, the purpose of any business blog is to make money. But you have to pretend that this isn’t the case.

When creating blog content, put all thoughts of profit out of your mind. Imagine that the only reason in the world you’re running the blog is to help people.

Don’t ask yourself questions like “Will this blog post earn me money?”.

Instead, ask yourself “Will people find this blog post useful? Does is solve a problem? Are readers like to share it around the web?”.

Once you get into the “all give, no take” mindset, the value of your content will increase tremendously.

Don’t use your blog to sell – use it to build trust and credibility. Then use trust and credibility to sell.

2. People luuurve freebies

There’s something hardwired into the human psychology that makes us go weak at the knees for free stuff. A gift, no matter how large or small, is one of the quickest ways to capture people’s attention.

A mini eBook, a $20 discount voucher, a ‘two for one’ – your freebie doesn’t have to be anything extravagant. It just has to be free. Getting something for nothing is a very powerful incentive, and one which you can use to your advantage.

Give your blog readers a little something for free, and they’re far more likely to visit again (and tell their friends).

3. Build an email list

Capturing a list of email addresses is important to keep your customers – both current and future – in the loop, and speak to them directly when you’ve got something important to say (or sell).

Take a look around the web, and you’ll see that a vast majority of successful blogs operate an email list.

So how do you persuade people to give you their contact details? A standard blogging/marketing technique is to give people a freebie in exchange for signing up to the email list.

So if you’re offering something for free on your blog, consider making it a trade: the freebie for the email address.

We’ve covered email lists in depth over the last few weeks here at WPMU – check out these articles for a tonne of great advice and ideas.

4. Know what your readers want

Canvassing your audience for content ideas is a great way to keep your blog focused, and it also means that your readers are doing part of your work for you.

Don’t be afraid to speak directly to your readership and ask them what they would like to see more of. Create a survey, or run a poll on your blog.

Again, use a freebie. Offering readers something in exchange for their input will net you a whole lot more responses.

5. Get some talent

If you’re not a natural born writer, you’re better off outsourcing your business blog to someone who is. You can use websites like Elance andoDesk to find freelance blog writers.

The time and effort that outsourcing will save you is well worth the money spent, and you’ll have better quality blog content to show for it.

6. Diversify, man

A key mistake that many business bloggers make is sticking too closely to their own field of expertise. Creating authoritative articles in your own niche is very important – but you need to spread your wings a little further than that or you’ll probably run out of ideas pretty quickly.

Don’t let your blog get repetitive – duplicate content is a big no no. Try to strike a balance between articles that are highly relevant to your own business, and more general stuff that will appeal to a broader (but still targeted) audience.