New web sites are launched every day – more than one can keep track of, for sure. I am certain that if you take a little bit of time to dig,  you can find the statistics on how many web site launches there are in a day. My point, however, is that with all the new sites cropping up, the chances of finding is rather slim. Due to information overload, we do tend to zone out after a while. But yes, every once in a while, we get a whiff of something interesting.

Here’s a new site that made me stand up straight and pay attention: Recipe Finder. The site launched last month, and it seems to be building up speed. Recipe Finder is basically a search engine serving up only recipes. The foodie Google, is how I think about it.

At first glance, you can easily see that searching for recipes is a simple matter.

Recipe Finder Home Page

One can hardly miss that search bar in the middle of the page. Type in a recipe name or an ingredient, and you are good to go! One of the beautiful things about this recipe search engine, though, is that while it makes things simple for the average user, it also provides customization options. The Advanced Search link found underneath the search bar is brilliant. Using this option, you can narrow down your search results by indicating parameters such as cook time, number of servings, and number of calories. Furthermore, you can opt to exclude ingredients, which is always handy for cooks who have to bear in mind allergies and food preferences.

Advanced Search

Just how much use can you get out of Recipe Finder? Quite a lot, actually. At present, it boasts a collection of around 1.7 million recipes, plus around 700,000 images. I doubt that you can start a blog like Julie (using Julia Child’s book) and go through even half of the recipes within a year. Furthermore, Recipe Finder indexes the most reputable recipe web sites you can find on a continuous basis. As such, the collection will only continue to grow.

Another useful thing about Recipe Finder is that it offers two options for search results. Yes, it really is a full blown search engine. Understandably, the default view is text, where you can see the recipe name, ingredients, and other pertinent data.

Cupcake Text Search Results

I think info such as the calorie content, servings, nutrients, and vitamins are great, but this is definitely the yummier version.

Cupcake Image Results

Now it’s kind of hard to disagree with me after seeing those results, isn’t it?

Even after only a brief time playing around with the site, I think that you will understand why Recipe Finder caught my attention. If you have even the remotest interest in search and/or cooking (or food!), then you will not be able to resist but take a look at what this new site has to offer. Go ahead. Feel free to indulge yourself and discover a slice of foodie heaven.

Logo design is by far one of the most important things to ‘get right’ when setting up a professional image for your company. But, unfortunately, it’s also one of the most overlooked. Even companies who hire out their logo design often cut corners and hire the cheapest designer they can find, and it usually shows. But smart business owners (and yes, smart bloggers) know how important it is to have a logo that’s clean, conveys a powerful message to clients and readers, and makes a long standing positive impression in people’s minds the more they’re exposed to it.

Logobee.com is one such logo design company who knows what they’re doing when it comes to making that positive impact for their clients.

Logobee’s in-house designers have been plying their trade for online and offline clients since the year 2000 and have done some very nice work for their nearly 10,000 clients during that time. Consistently clean, minimalist logos that are stylish and professional, unique, and effectively communicate the client’s core business are rare, but after looking over a sampling of the company logos they’ve created, we’re impressed.

The company has been around for a long time and just recently, in order to satisfy the demands of a marketplace thats becoming more and more accustomed to the “we want this done yesterday” way of doing business, Logobee ramped up accordingly by guaranteeing a first draft of customer logos within 48 hours. That’s no small feat when you consider the outstanding quality of their work.

And Logobee isn’t just a logo design firm, they also have a ton of information and tutorials available on their site, plus, a newly launched self-serve logo design template system where you can go to get help with designing your own logo in different degrees. The system offers three options depending on your needs and budget. These are: “Buy Exclusive,” “Buy Customized,” and “Get it Free.” You just select the style of logo you want, enter your details, choose from their options and that’s about it. It couldn’t be easier.

As if that weren’t enough, if you sign up to their affiliate program, you earn a $20 referral fee for each new logo project you refer to them and the people you refer also get a $20 discount on their logo design purchase.

And did we mention that anyone who orders a stationery package (you know, actual paper products with your company logo and other info) gets 500 business cards at no extra charge as a bonus?

A lot of happy customers have said a lot of good things about Logobee in their logo design reviews. They’re definitely worth checking out.

I’ve been very busy and have seemingly disappeared from Devlounge lately. If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been all this time and our looking for some good opinionated things to read, stop by my new blog. Hope all is well. I hope to return to the Devlounge scene sometime soon.

AJ

Hey everyone, Friday Focus is back. I’m sure you’ve been hanging off the edge of your seat after dealing with a tough week without the focus last week. Well, no more worrying to do now. Hopefully everyone that was celebrating Thanksgiving last week enjoyed the holiday and any kind of vacation that may had have, but it is now time to get back to business. Let’s kick things off with three fresh sites.

Sites of the Week

First up is Beanstalk. This organic looking design features brown and light greens to create a simply fresh look for this hosted subversion tool.

Next up is Synergema. Another slick portfolio site, this one utilizing blues and greens, along with some snappy javascript to scroll between portfolio work. Plus, you have to give them points for that name.

And wrapping this week up is Come Home to a Tennessee Winter. Seeing how tomorrow is December 1st, I figured this was pretty appropriate. Falling snowflakes included.

Digg Weekly

Design – Pure CSS Dropdown Menu
I know there are a few of these out there, but what’s another one to add to your collection of bookmarked resources? This quick tutorial will guide you through the creation of a css-only drop down menu, without the need for JS.

Programming – 10 Absolute No-No’s For Any Freelance Web Designer
From Digg description: If you’re a freelance web designer, make sure you don’t make any of these common mistakes.

Hope everyone enjoys the week ahead.
Get your holiday shopping done! (or started)

P.S., If interested in what I’d like, please use the contact form.

I wrote a little commentary piece today on what I think is really hurting the freelance the design community right now. Feel free to give it a read if you’d like. In other news, I hope everyone that had a four day weekend enjoyed it. Back to reality tomorrow. Hopefully you didn’t go spending all your money on Black Friday deals.

Catch you on this Friday for a new focus.

How’s it going everyone? The focus is a little late this week because I didn’t get a chance to pre-write it like I usually do. Anyways, better late then never right? Before we get into things I’d also like to let you know that the focus will be taking an off week next week with us here in the U.S. resting after stuffing our faces on Thursday. Here’s to hoping this focus will fill you up until then!

Sites of the Week

Kicking things off this week is MochiAds. I am absolutely loving this design. The color scheme and “fun” theme that it features really goes well with the whole idea behind the site (ad network for flash games). If you are a flash developer who makes the occasional game, that might just be another reason to check this one out.

Next up is the portfolio of Tim Lahan. Once again, this portfolio site makes the weeks favorites because of the unique and creative portfolio setup, along with an excellent collection of work.

Wrapping up this week is Arktyp. What originally caught my eye with this one while I browsing thumbnails over at CSS Mania was the blueish-green background color. When I dug a bit deeper, I discovered a clean portfolio by a studio that has even done work for Adobe.

Digg Weekly

Design – 99 Resources for Web 2.0 Designers
A list of 99 items for web 2.0 designers, from badge generators to icons, navigation, and much more.

Programming – 10 Projects ever php developer should use
From Digg description: As a php web developer, you should know that php is probably the language that has the biggest code repository. So no matter what module you want to include in your project there should be an open source solution.

It is with great pleasure that I start the second year of Friday Focus, the weekly run down of cool things worth checking out before you kick back and relax for the weekend. There is no better way to start your weekend then to be reading the focus every Friday. Enjoy the weekend everyone.

Sites of the Week

Another extremely simple yet functional and super-clean portfolio site kicks off this weeks focus. Poccuo is a design collaborative that has done some pretty nice work ranging from websites to logo designs.

Infinise Design finds itself at number two this week, with its clean and compact portfolio design. A ton of truly excellent icons and other designs can be found in the showcase, plus a sweet collection of downloads too.

Wrapping up this week is Kareo. I discovered this site on CSSGalleries, which I usually do not use when I’m pulling my weekly three sites. This site just happened to catch my eye, and I thought it deserved to make the list. I guess you could classify this one under the “smooth” category.

Digg Weekly

Design -50 Ways to Become a Better Designer
Devlounge is on this list, so what the hell, I figured I should mention it.

Programming – Graceful E-Mail Obfuscation
From Digg description: Posting a naked e-mail link anywhere on the web, in a newsgroup, chatroom, or weblog comments page is generally the kiss of death for your once-healthy address. Now you can protect your addresses in a fully automated way while at the same time being gracious to all users, so you can focus on what’s really important: getting your content out.

Underdog – Webunload: A web marketplace
Yes, I have done a whole lot promoting on Devlounge already about my new project, but there were some issues that needed to be tended to the first few days, and now that everything is settled, I figured why not one more time. The official Digg post really did horrible (1 damn digg), so even if you do not care about the site, please help support my new project by digging it so I can hopefully get the traffic up there quickly. Thanks in advance!

Prash asked me to drop a quick note about the sale of Mintpages. Most of you long time readers have all but certainly heard me mention Mintpages before as a private forum community for designers and developers. Well, much like myself, Prash is very busy with other things and no longer has the time to manage MP. It is still a very active community. He’s hoping that maybe a faithful Devlounge reader might be the one to want to acquire this baby, since it is design and development orientated.

On another marketplace type note, the Captcha bug that probably prevented some of you from registering on Webunload is now fixed. Hopefully everything is bug free.

One final (and I mean it this time) thing I thought I’d point out is that Splashpress Media just launched a fresh new site design a short time ago. Their old site really looked like something out of the ’99 internet, and now it is much more up to date with the look of things on the net here in ’07.

Just thought I’d brighten up everyone’s Sunday night with a little bit of news on my newest project. For my senior project in school, I had to do something related to a small business (because it is what I am doing mine on). I figured creating some kind of paid web service would be my best bet, because it is something I have experience with. When I was attempting to sell Devlounge (before these lovely new owners approached me), I found that there really weren’t very many resources out there besides Sitepoint and a few various forum marketplaces for you to get the word out about whatever it was that you were selling. Therefore, for my project I have created a small and simple marketplace, specifically for the selling of established and unestablished websites and forums, templates, and domains. The site is now live at Webunload.com. I still have a few things to tighten up and I need to make sure the payment system is working correctly, but for now the first 20 people to register will receive one free token (good for one marketplace post) courtesy of myself. (How nice of me huh? ). If you have any thoughts / suggestions (this is great! this sucks! whatever), feel free to let me know in the comments below. If you run into any problems, please also give me the heads up so I can get things fixed tomorrow.

Thanks!

52 Weeks ago, the first edition of Friday Focus was born. On October 6th, 2006, the first ever edition of Friday focus was born. The very first edition featured three sites: brdcast, hydrastudio, and authenticjobs. Since then, Friday Focus has come along way. Featuring just about 156 “Sites of the Week”, 100 featured Digg posts, and a lot of other random fun, it has been an exciting process to see Friday Focus evolve.

While we did not always get the kind of reader response we would have really liked to get each and every Friday, I’m sure they are plenty of you who quietly and possibly secretly made Friday Focus one of your favorite things over the past 52 weeks. I am happy to say that we lived up to the very first comment on the first edition of Friday Focus, which stated “Hope you keep posting something like this every week. I just can’t keep track of digg. There’s just too much news and I miss loads of good articles. Looking forward to next week to see what I’ve missed ” I’m proud that each and every week I was able to provide at least a few people with a decent overview of some fresh sites and even fresher content for them to check out before the weekend got started. So, without any more further delays, here is edition 52.

The Year in Review: Some favorite weeks you may have missed

Here is a highlight of some of the Focuses’ from the past year. I’m pulling one for every 10 weeks, so six all together. Go back and enjoy!

Week 2 – Friday Focus #2
I highlighted Apples to Oranges, C-Ville, and 5thirtyone, which at the time, happened to be pink for October.

Week 13 – Friday Focus #13
I highlighted Svenigson, Trig, and OPUS Underground. (This seems like I just did this recently)

Week 25 – Friday Focus #25
A Tennessee tourist site, Scrapblog, and a personal portfolio all wound up on the sites of the week during the 25th week of the focus.

Week 37 – Friday Focus #37
A bunch more cool sites in the 37th week of the focus, which went live on July 20th.

Week 46 – Friday Focus #46
Now these are fresh in the head. Just a few weeks back, t-shirts, a church, and even another project named Mint.

Week 50 – Friday Focus #50
The Big 5-0, making the list for obvious milestone reasons.

Sites of the Week

Feel the honor to be named a site of the week on the one year Friday Focus Anniversary. Unfortunately, only two this week because there wasn’t a whole lot of fresh site designs that I spotted in css gallery sites around the web. But, I guess that makes these two sites even more special.

Kicking things off is Team Green. Pretty cool site, very outdoorish (even though that is not a word).

Wood never dies, and neither does good work. Happilycreate is an example of that. A wooded background portfolio mixed with a nice collection of work.

Just a quick side note for everyone on this wonderful weekend. You may remember Iconsushi, a site I briefly talked about in Friday Focus two weeks ago. It’s my friend Prash’s (who helped create Devlounge with me) newest creation. It is now officially open for business, with two icon sets available for purchase. He’s hooking up Devlounge readers with a 40% discount by using the code DEVL07X when you order. Check them out!

We are now just one week out from the first anniversary of Friday Focus. It’s kind of weird to be sitting here thinking how quickly a year has really gone by…but I’ll get into all this reflection stuff next week. Enjoy the upcoming weekend everyone. Next weekend is November.

Sites of the Week

DreamsDrive is the personal portfolio of Roy Ng. Small and compact is the best way to describe this baby. It could definitely qualify as one of the smallest portfolios as ever seen. What do you think?

Second this week is FutureFabric. Cool name, even cooler work. FutureFabric is the portfolio of Guy Moorhouse, who also works at Airside.

Wrapping up this week is the portfolio of Marius Roosendaal. This site makes the list because of its two themed designs. Based on what time of day it is, it will either show a day (light colored) or night (dark colored) version of the site. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Hot Spot: Jobberbase

Check out this cool piece of script I came across this week. Jobberbase is an open source Job board application that will give you the ability to run your own job board. I know there are already plenty of paid job boards out there, so why would I be encouraging you to start your own? Well, Jobberbase seems like a great solution for anyone who may be looking to add a job board to their own site specifically for their visitors and a specific category. If anyone has used or starts using this, let me know how it is.

Digg Weekly

Design – 99 Useful Resources for Graphic Designers
From the Digg description: I have used every one of these resources as a graphic designer and website developer and have hand picked all of these resources based on their usefulness and overall quality.

Programming – Protecting Your PHP/MySQL Applications from SQL Injection
From the Digg description: SQL injection is a serious concern for webmasters, as an experienced attacker can use this hacking technique to gain access to sensitive data and/or potentially cripple your database. Are you safe?