All you need is a library card. If you don’t have a library card you can sign up for an e-card which gives you immediate online access, but you must be a resident of Contra Costa County. If you live outside of Contra Costa County check your local library to see if they offer access to Safari books, if they don’t you can visit a library in Contra Costa County and sign up for a regular library card to access the tech books online.

So visit the Contra Costa Library Website now and sign up for an e-card if necessary. Once you have been granted access to Safari you can search for books by title, subject, or simply browse the massive library. This is a great way to supplement your learning library, review books before you purchase, or quickly look something up.

If you’re on a tight budget and looking for the best deals in the Bay Area you should really check out the Frugal Find.

Julia at the Frugal Find blogs about the best deals in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. She also shares Internet specials, freebies, and giveaways. Her site has an amazing searchable coupon database with over 2,000 coupons to date. She also gives tips on how to use sites like ebates, Cashbaq and Shop at Home for additional savings.

She shares tips galore on living within a “frugal” budget on her blog and even offers classes on “couponing” and “frugal living”.

So head on over to the Frugal Find for the best deals in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

Owners of 1515 Restaurant and Lounge and The Pizza Place in downtown Walnut Creek will handout 1,000 turkeys Wednesday to help those in need have a good Thanksgiving.

From 1 to 4 p.m. Wednesday, anyone in need of a turkey can come get a bird at the restaurant, 1515 N. Main St. Former Cincinnati Reds baseball player Joe Morgan, now a broadcaster on ESPN, will be at the restaurant from 3 to 4 p.m. to help hand out the turkeys.

The turkeys were purchased and delivered by the Safeway store in Alamo. The money to buy the turkeys was raised at a charity golf tournament put on by the Dudum family, which owns the eateries.

Assistance organizations such as the Monument Crisis Center and Hospice of Contra Costa County have been invited to come get multiple turkeys for their clients, said Jack Dudum.

Walnut Creek Mayor Gary Skrel is expected to attend, as well.

Source: Mercury News

This article includes some of the top resources for logo design that I have found over the last month on Twitter and while visiting some of my favorite design blogs. It’s a collection of collections. I have also included some general tutorials and resources that I think that you will find useful for learning and using Photoshop and Illustrator. I will update this post as I find new resources.

Desizn Tech has compiled a list of 40 Logo Design Tutorials. This list includes tutorials for Illustrator, Photoshop, Gimp, Pixelmator & CorelDraw. Some of the tutorials outline the detailed design process from sketch, to computer, to print.

Smashing Magazine has 60+ Beautiful Logo Design Tutorials And Resources. Not all of the tutorials are specific to logo creation, but the techniques used in the tutorials are quite useful for creating logos. These tutorials focus on Illustrator, Photoshop, and Corel. You will also find logo design articles and additional resources at Smashing Magazine. There are two related articles at Smashing – Drawing Inspiration From Creative Logos and Beautiful And Creative Logo Designs For Your Inspiration.

I would also recommend checking out the Adobe Fireworks Tutorials and Downloads – Best of post while you are at Smashing Magazine. Fireworks is a great program for creating Website mockups and logos. Some students have expressed to me that Fireworks easier to master than some of the other illustration programs.

Six Revisions has two articles that you should find very useful. 70 Excellent Logo Design Tutorials and Resources has a lot of resources about the design process, from conception to final product, in addition to logo design galleries, design articles, showcases, books, and blogs and Web sites on logos. The second article, 15 Excellent Logo Design Tutorials Using Illustrator has 15 amazing tutorials for creating logo in Adobe Illustrator.

80+ Logo Designers Huge Essential Toolbox. This massive resource from tripwire magazine includes tutorials, inspiration galleries, and trends.

What Makes a Great Logo Design? is a great article at Logo Critiques. Be sure to check out the other available articles.

Logo Design Love has a collection of 81 of the best logo design resources. This resource includes where to find excellent typefaces, the history of logo design, logo design trends (Just Creative Designs has Logo Design Trends 2009), logo design articles, books, portfolios, awards, blogs, Illustrator tutorials, showcases, and style guides and manuals.

TutWow has posted 12 Incredibly Useful Logo Inspiration Sites.

You can find 25 Best Logo Design Tutorials using Photoshop at TechTreak.

While mentioned in several of the above posts, Just Creative Design has a wonderful article on The Logo Design Process of TOP Logo Designers. There are a lot of articles on Just Creative about the logo design process.

I love the post 25 Awesome Illustrator Cartoon Tutorials at Minervity. No, these are not logo tutorials, but so many logos are created in Illustrator and use a very similar process, I thought that these would be a fun way for you to sharpen your Illustrator skills.

Blog Spoon Graphics has a great collection of 40 Tutorials for Creating Highly Detailed Icon Designs. You will find both Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials in this post.

Photoshop brushes can help immensely with creating graphical elements. izzataziz a design blog has compiled 3000++ Photoshop Brush Designer Should Have.

Can’t forget Illustrator Brushes! You’ll find 45 Excellent Sets of Adobe Illustrator Brushes at Designm.ag

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Check out 80 Best-Of Adobe Illustrator Tutorials, Brushes, .EPSs and Resources at Noupe. These Illustrator resources should be very helpful.

New addition 5/12/09 – 45 logos that utilize negative space effectively at Velvet Ant.

New addition 5/12/09 – 60+ Hand Based Logo Designs at Logo Designer Blog.

New addition 5/12/09 – 5 vital logo design tips

New addition 5/12/09 – 11 Steps of a Successful Logo Design Process

New addition 5/26/09 – 40 Logo Design Tutorials – Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials at Psdtuts+

New addition 5/27/09 – Current Logo Trends (2009)

New addition 5/27/09 – Ten logo design tips from the field

New addition 6/3/09 – Insider Logo Design Tips

New addition 6/6/09 – Top 10 Sources of Logo Design Inspiration

New addition 6/7/09 – 10 Great Tips To Help You Kick Start Your Logo Design

New addition 6/7/09 – 50 Captivating & well-formed Logo Design

New addition 6/8/09 – 50 Captivating & well-formed Logo Design

New addition 6/9/09 – How to Make an Eye-Catching Logo

New addition 6/10/09 – Lust for Logos — 15 Sites to Visit for Logo Inspiration

New addition 6/21/09 – Color Psychology in Logo Design

New addition 6/25/09 – 10 Common Mistakes In Logo Design

New addition 6/29/09 – 12 Essential Rules to Follow When Designing a Logo

New addition 7/01/09 – 25 Distinctive and Famous Logo Photoshop Tutorials

New addition 7/02/09 – 20 Questions To Ask Clients Prior To Designing A Logo

New addition 7/02/09 – The Rebranding of a Company – A Case Study

New addition 7/06/09 – 80 Creative and Well-designed Logos

New addition 7/08/09 – 45+ Beautiful Logo Design Tutorials and Resources for Designers

New addition 7/08/09 – Good Logos Are Flexible: Tips to make sure yours is

New addition 7/13/09 – The Logos of Logo Designers

New addition 7/15/09 – Henri Ehrhart logo design process

New addition 7/27/09 – LOGOS, Logos, logos!

New addition 7/28/09 – What makes a good logo?

New addition 7/28/09 – A Special Need logo design process

New addition 8/16/09 – 30 Creative Illustrator Logo Design Tecniques and Tutorials

New addition 8/17/09 – 27 Useful Logo Design Tutorials and Tips

New addition 8/18/09 – Illustrator type technique using shapes

New addition 8/26/09 – Vital Tips For Effective Logo Design

New addition 9/1/09 – Logo Design RoundUp Part 11 – How Designers Promote & Brand Themselves

New addition 9/1/09 – 90+ Exceptionally useful Logo Tutorials, Tips and Resources

New addition 9/17/09 – Zee Logo in Illustrator

New addition 9/21/09 – An Interview with Graphic Designer, Brian Hoff

New addition 9/21/09 – 30 Professional Logo Design Processes Revealed

New addition 10/2/09 – Crucial Rules to Follow When Designing a Logo

New addition 10/6/09 – Identity design process for a personal rebranding

New addition 10/13/09 – 6 Characteristics of Great Logo Design

New addition 10/19/09 – 57 Creatively Designed Examples Of Typography In Logo Design

New addition 11/24/09 – Tutorial: How To Create An Iconic Logo Design

New addition 11/25/09 – Logo Design Tips: Letterspacing Techniques for Different Typefaces

If you like these resources be sure to check out Converting a Photoshop PSD File to an XHTML & CSS Web Site – Creating Mockups.

We have not selected the books that we will be using in class for the new Office 2007 series, we anticipate that we will select books during April and May. Since so many of you are anxious to start learning the new suite I can recommend some books that I have ordered from Amazon.

I’ve been a fan of the Missing Manual series for a long time. This easy to understand, reference series is packed full of useful information. In addition to the regular Missing Manual series, the Starter series gives step-by-step instructions and visual cues that and get you up and running with an application rather quickly. Here are the Starter books for Office 2007.

Word 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual

Excel 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual

PowerPoint 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual

Access 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual

For students who are interested in a more comprehensive look at the Office 2007 applications, take a look at the regular Missing Manual reference series.

Word 2007 The Missing Manual

Excel 2007 The Missing Manual

PowerPoint 2007 The Missing Manual

Access 2007 The Missing Manual

If you’re looking for a book that will cover multiple Office 2007 applications try Office 2007 All in One by Sams. This book gives an overview of the new Office 2007 features and an introduction to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote.

You can download a free 60 day trial of Office 2007 at Microsoft.com.

For those of you who would like to learn more about the evolution of Microsoft Office read Beyond Menus and Toolbars in Microsoft Office.

I have to say that this is an outstanding book on CSS. It is an excellent introduction to CSS and also a great read for those who are experienced with CSS. The techniques discussed are very current and it even discusses issues with Internet Explorer 7. One of the things that I really like about the book is that as it demonstrates techniques it also discusses the pitfalls and solutions in different browsers, especially Internet Explorer 6 and earlier versions. The book is also filled with hands-on tutorials for practical experience.

I have started to develop the assignment sheet for this book; it’s available at http://www.jobskillsnow.com/webdes/cssmissing.htm

We will be selling the book in class, meanwhile you can order CSS: The Missing Manual via Amazon for $23.09.

Also, many students have asked about Flash/USB drives for storing class work. Flash/USB drives are available at any store that sells electronics and you can also find them at Amazon. These are very portable devices that allow you to store and transfer small and large files from one workstation to another. They’re quite handy and very easy to use; much easier than having to burn CDs of your classroom work. Some students even use these drives to store and run software programs that they like to use in class.

Got a new computer for Christmas? Are you worried about all the spyware horror stories you’ve read? You should be. I’ve heard varying numbers, but it’s said that putting an unprotected computer on a high-speed connection results in getting infected within a few minutes. I just read that the time is getting longer, but that’s not much comfort. By all means you should have a router if you’re on a high speed connection. A router provides some protection, but is only the beginning. Ok, now the new machine is booted up the first time and ready to go. It’s on the net. In this order, here’s what to do.

read the rest of the article @ http://blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware/index.php?p=733

http://www.joejoe.biz/joejoe/walls/index.php?spgmFilters=

A Christmas Story in 30 seconds as told by bunnies

Both of these links use Flash and both have sound.

If you enjoy the bunnies visit http://www.angryalien.com/

Once you digest Views of a Web Page, take some time to explore the rest of Lorelle and Brent’s site, Taking Your Camera on the Road (you may want to grab a cup of coffee, you may be there for hours as the information is so diverse). Lorelle and Brent have spent 10 years on the road photographing and documenting their journey; the photographs are exquisite and the stories are inspirational, educational, and gut wrenching. For those of you who love photography, don’t miss the learning section!