Most of us never consider that a customs official could confiscate our laptops as we travel across borders, copy information from it and return it to us hours (or days or weeks) later - but it happens. C|net has created a handy guide for frequent travelers who are concerned about this issue and wish to protect their personal or professional data from prying eyes.

OK, so we’ve all probably considered what it would be like to be one of those poor saps who falls victim to online con artists - but how many of us have thought about what it would be like to think like one of these con artists? This ‘guide’ takes you on a brief and somewhat disturbing tour of how to approach cons and respond as a con artist would on the internet. Strange but interesting.

In most cases people would like to think they would at least know if they had been hacked even if they were unable to prevent it in the first place. However, many people remain completely oblivious to the fact that things as private and important as their email have become compromised. MakeUseOf has created a guide to making digital ‘tripwires’ so you’ll know if you have been hacked.

Whether you are just starting out or a seasoned veteran these tools, tutorials, lists and other resources are great sites for any web designer. Organized into helpful categories (design inspiration, CSS resources, web design guides, color tools, free fonts and more) this collection not only has useful resources but also categorized links to other lists with 100s more. If you’re not a designer but still need to create sites you still might be best off spending a few bucks on a web page creation tool with a simple GUI than hiring a designer but can still use the first section below and these great wallpapers to get design inspiration!

General Web Design Inspiration and Useful Design Examples

CSS Beauty is not only an active database for well-designed CSS sites but it is also a way to connect designers with potential clients and a source for web design and general aesthetic inspiration.

Web Design Inspiration is a collection of screenshots showing excellent web designs. It is well worth browsing simply for graphic and web design inspiration.

Web Creme is a very simple site and easy to follow on RSS: screenshots are posted, often more than once per day, of truly impressive web designs.

Unmatched Style is a source for businesses and designers who seek inspiration from particularly attractive, interesting and progressive web designs.

Design Firms is one of many sites on which you can find designers directly but your best bet might be a simple Google search or simply contacting the author of a design found through one of the above-listed design inspiration sites.

25 Beautiful Minimalist Web Designs shows the awesome power of simplicity when it comes to web design - more isn’t necessarily better.

24 Great Niche Galleries has screenshots with descriptions and links to various galleries that you might want to see for more web design inspiration.

10 Great Web [Re]Designs of 2007 features mostly popular and mainstream sites you may already be familiar with but also provides some useful analysis.

Best of CSS 2007 is another great screenshot-packed eye-candy collection of cool web designs from last year - worth bookmarking for future inspiration.

CSS Web Design Examples, Tutorials and Other Resources

CSS Zen Garden allows you to see the full visual potential of CSS designs. You can pick a style sheet and load it onto the page to view the remarkable differences. The goal of the site is to engender new ideas about and discussions around the possibilities inherent in CSS-based design. While underlying code remains the same throughout the visual differences are readily apparent when you switch between views.

CSS2 Specifications is the place to start with CSS (or go back to when you are stuck). Yes, it isn’t trivial, but it is helpful and (despite the ironic lack of good design on the site itself) is something that everyone should have bookmarked if they are still learning CSS.

The CSS Panic Guide is a resource list which, as you might have guessed, is designed for those moments of utter despair and deparation where you are simply stuck. It is fairly well organized and contains links you’ll likely know as well as ones you won’t. This web design link list features everything from validation and text size to accessibility and media types.

The CSS Shark answers some frequently asked questions, explains some of the basics of CSS offers you a tutorial about Positioning with CSS (CSS-P, web design without tables). There is also a page with interesting links to other on- and off-site resources.

CSS Vault is a highly respected (PageRank resource for sharing beautiful CSS designs and layouts that involves (moderated) community communication regarding designs. If you want to get into active CSS discussions this is one place to do that. The content is frequently updated and the user feedback is generally positive. Overall, this is a great place to browse for interesting and well-done CSS web designs and even find designers.

101 more CSS Tips, Tutorials and Examples is what it sounds like: another great resource list if the aforementioned ones don’t fully handle your needs. Unfortunately, the resources aren’t fully described though some descriptive terms are used as part of the link text.

Web Design Guides and Readings on Contemporary Design and Style

Web Design from Scratch is a great resource for a web designer or aspiring designer of websites either just getting started or already experienced. It is designed to show explicit criteria for success and failure as well as step-by-step guides and instructions for improving your designs. Whether you are completely new to web design, working on new design project or simply revisiting and revising an old web design this is well worth checking out and bookmarking for future reference.

Current Style in Web Design Guide takes you through a series of successful and contemporary designs and then parses the various elements that go contribute to the success of these creative designs. From the particular designs, the author of this useful web design guide extracts general principles which can be applied to other designs. For those of us who have difficulty making the jump from principles and examples to actual design practices this is a must-read guide.

Web 2.0 How-To Design Style Guide: This design guide discusses the generally known but rarely articulated styles associated with designing for what is known as “Web 2.0″ by some and cursed as a passing fad by others. Whether or not you buy into the concept of Web 2.0 or consider it overused and outdated this will take you through the parts and pieces of such designs in a way worth at least browsing through if not bookmarking. On a related note, here are 99 Resources for Good Web 2.0 Design.

Color Tools, Ideas, History and Palette Creation Resources

COLOURlovers is probably the web’s top resource for all things color from color inspiration to palette examples, color history and inspiring uses of color. The tricks learned here can be applied to web design as well as other kinds of design work and are designed for both the color-savvy as well as the virtually color-blind designer.

ColorBlender lets you select a preferred color and then creates a palette based on that input. Blends can be saved for future use and tweaked as needed.

4096 Color Wheel is a pretty straightforward and user-friendly tool for creating color palettes and shifting color schemes.

ColorSchemer Studio suggests palette ideas based on initial and changeable inputs and is both fun to play with as well as useful for professionals.

Photo Color Matcher lets you create a color palette from an existing image of your choice. This can be helpful to people who don’t have a natural eye for color and for clients who may wish to have a designer create a color scheme from a photograph or other image.

Web 2.0 Color Palette is organized to help you develop color schemes based on certain criteria that will fit into a so-called Web 2.0-type scheme.

The Meaning of Colors explains the origins of associations we have with colors including cross-cultural analysis of the meanings of colors across ethnic and geographic groups.

Elegant, Obscure, Abstract and Other Free Fonts

Creamundo is a great place to start searching for free fonts organized in useful ways and easy to view custom samples of prior to downloading. These fonts range from simple and refined to complex and unusual with everything in between.

ShowFont has a likewise extensive collection of free fonts of different kinds

Urban Fonts aren’t all necessarily urban in any traditional sense but many of them are quite interesting and out-of-the-ordinary. Some are based on classic fonts while others are quite creative and original, much like those found at Abstract Fonts or at Better Fonts.

SimplyTheBest has a helpful series of categories that are easy to navigate and understand which, despite their somewhat limited selection, makes them worth seeing.

Mike’s Sketch Pad includes a lot of great fonts but some of them can only be used for non-commercial purposes so be sure to check out the creator details.

Modern Life is an elegantly-designed site run by a skilled designer who recognizes the power of good fonts and shows you some recently successful examples.

TypeTester won’t work for every font but is extremely useful for those it has and to give you a general idea of what different fonts will look like in different situations.

1001 Free Fonts is yet another source for free fonts if the above resources weren’t enough.

Other Great Web Design and General Design Resources

The Landing Page Composer is one great way to go if you aren’t much of a designer and don’t intend to be. It is a program that allows users to create a range of landing page designs from basic templates using a remarkably simply graphic user interface.

Open Source Web Design is a trading post of sorts for web designers to share free web design templates with one another for the common good of web design and designers.

Blue Vertigo is a hodge-podge collection of free resources for web designers including stock photography sites and free fronts, brushes and clip art.

Browser Shots is a great pre-final test site for web designers. The site allows you to see what your design will look like in various browsers.

Top 50 Logo Design Tutorials is a useful collection of logo design guides, accompanied by screenshot images, that range in content from simply elegant to striking and complex.

51 Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials Many designers fail to see the importance of text and text effects as a critical component of quality web designs. These text effects are an essential part of any web designer’s toolbox.

9 Essential Principles for Good Web Design is another good place to start and get your bearings if you’re a relatively new designer or want a refresher course.

from the another-market-mucked-up-by-digital-goods dept

We’ve pointed out more than a few times how digital goods muck up traditional markets that are based on the concept of scarcity, and it appears that eBay has come to the same conclusion. It’s now banned the direct sale of purely digital goods from either its auctions or its direct sales offerings. Instead, those who want to sell digital goods need to put up a classified ad on the site, rather than a transactional platform. The basic reason has to do with the (wouldn’t you know it?) infinitely reproduceable nature of digital goods. That allows eBay sellers to list the same product many, many, many times over, since they have an infinite supply. This practice is screwing up listings and (more importantly) is being used to manipulate feedback ratings, and so eBay has done away with it.

This project will offer 60 million users unlimited high speed Internet connection of 224Mbps (megabits per second) at a cost of only around RM5 (US$1.58) per user per month, which is the fastest and cheapest in the world,” he said. BPL modems use existing electrical power lines to deliver high speed Internet access and data transmission.

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