Resources

Today is an exciting day. I’ve just finished up the first beta version of a brand new search engine called Fiazo. As a designer, I often spend countless hours on Google trying to find tutorials, blogs, articles, fonts, and more to inject into my daily design life only to become distracted and lose track of what I was looking for to begin with. After thinking about this problem for a little while, Fiazo: The Design Search Engine was born. The site essentially acts as a narrow proxy to Google that filters out unrelated websites and focuses only on top-notch resources from within the world of design.
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MIT’s OpenCourseWare project represents a progressive take on the future of education in regards to an increasingly global world. The program, which seeks to put the best of an MIT education within reach of anyone with a computer, has been around for quite some time now but has just recently become accessible from all corners of the planet thanks to the growing availability of broadband access.
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Freelance Switch

This site is a must have for any freelancing web designer, graphic designer, or illustrator. With job postings from potential clients including everyone from PUMA to obscure European design firms, you’re sure to find something that fills your fancy. In addition to their job postings, which I should mention require a monthly subscription to access contact information on potential clients, the site offers a wealth of incredibly useful resources for the aspiring freelancer.

Browsershots

Coding for a single browser is tough enough without worrying about whether or not your site will function properly on the endless swarm of browsers available to users these days. Luckily, Browsershots can display a screenshot of what your site will actually look like in everything from Internet Explorer 4.0 to some of the most obscure Linux browsers on the planet. As of this writing, they can display your site in 64 different browsers on Linux, Windows, Mac, and BSD. To make your job even easier, they’ll show you the resolutions that each browser was using to help you weed out those pesky cross-browser differences.

SEOmoz

First turned on to the site by a fellow web creator, SEOmoz has quickly risen to the top of my favorites list. Aside from consistently valuable articles, they offer a number of tools to improve your site in the eyes of the almighty search engines. While registration is required to utilize all that they have to offer, it’s well worth the ten seconds out of your day.

NETTUTS

Even the most seasoned web designer can stand to learn a new trick or two. NETTUTS provides an interesting array of unique tutorials on everything from custom AJAX scripts to design itself. The site’s owner runs a number of other sites which may also be of use, most notably PSDTUTS.

Faveup

The cure for the all-too-well known ‘design block’ has arrived. This design inspiration gallery is sure to give you a few ideas for your next project, whatever it may be.

These are by no means the only five sites you may find useful, but merely the start of a Foozoo series on the best design resources that the web has to offer.