GrindSmart Magazine has partnered up with some of the people who run ShareDen.com to announce our latest GIVEAWAY! We’re going to giveaway a 16GB Wi-Fi 3G iPad to One lucky winner on May 1st 2010.

Our only requirements is that you comment and subscribe to GrindSmart Magazine and that’s it! One lucky winner will be chosen on March May 1st 2010 in absolute random order!

YOU CAN ONLY POST ONE COMMENT PER SUBSCRIBER. IF YOU HAVE ENTERED MORE THAN ONE COMMENT TO THIS GIVEAWAY, THEY WERE ALL DELETED AND YOU WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO ENTER ANY OTHER CONTEST.

The iPad comes with a crystal clear 9.5 inch screen with a 1024-by-768-pixel resolution that was designed for browsing and reading eBooks. It also weighs 1.5 ounces, is .05 inch thick, and comes with a built-in 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive. This is where the price splits, since the basic 16GB iPad starts at $499. Even though it resembles that of the iPhone, we can assure you that the iPad is much more. Here’s why. The larger screen size will allow you to view applications with a lot more freedom, and you’re able to websites as you would on a laptop with minimal restrictions. The onscreen keyboard is extremely easy to type on, and resembles that of a laptop in terms of size. Whereas the iPhone’s keypad is sometimes difficult to work around.

A large part of the controversy surrounding the iPad has to do with the fact that it’s not running OS X or anything similar to that. It seems to be operating out of an iPhone-like OS except it’s more advanced. The applications are streamlined from the Apple App Store right to the iPad and it’s capable of running almost every applications that already works on the iPhone as well. However, the apps will be resized to fit the full screen resolution or scaled down to resemble the iPhone’s screen.

With the iPad you’re able to sync it with iTunes and when it comes to wireless connectivity, there are two different versions that are available. One relies upon WiFi-entirely, and the other can is free to roam the web with 3G connectivity. The difference is mostly in price, you don’t need a contract, and it will be shipped unlocked so that you’re able to use it with other carriers (besides AT&T). Unlimited data plans for AT&T start at $29.99/month.

Disclaimer

We are providing one GrindSmart Magazine feed subscriber who comments a completely free 16GB Wi-Fi 3G iPad plus shipping. The winner will be contacted with the email provided when they comment for shipping arrangements. GrindSmart is not an affiliate of AT&T and we will not set-up any sort of connectivity plan with any mobile carrier. It is the winner’s responsibility to provide their iPad Internet connectivity if desired.

For those of you that subscribed to the GrindSmart Magazine ultimate collection of books for web designers we thank you! Today we have the winning results! Every winner was chosen by random through Random.Org services. There were 34 comments in total. We inserted the min number (one) and the maximum number (thirty-four) and then hit the generate button and whatever number (of comment) came up, then that person is the winner.

All we have to say is CONGRATULATIONS to our five winners! You will be contacted by email (if you haven’t already) to arrange shipping (if applicable) of your product(s).

Please remember to subscribe to our feed for more great articles and amazing giveaways! We’ll strive to do one giveaway a month.

The Complete Manual of Typography

Winner: Ahmed B. Comment#16

Logo Design Workbook: A Hands-On Guide to Creating Logos

Winner: OneProjectMan Comment#33

Prioritizing Web Usability

Winner: Anthony Villanova Comment#6

The Unlimited Freelancer

Winner: Andrea Gambedotti Comment#14

The Smashing Book

Winner: Jean Carlos Comment#1

Today we’re announcing our latest GIVEAWAY! The Ultimate Collection of Books for Web Designers! Because reading up on new standards, practices, and professional insight on design is important and in some cases vital, we’ve decided to giveaway 5 MUST READ web design books for designers/developers that touch base on subjects such as Logo Design, Usability, Typography, Freelancing, and more! Five lucky winners will be announced on March 24 2010.

Our only requirements is that you comment and subscribe to GrindSmart Magazine and that’s it! 5 lucky winners will be chosen on March 24th in absolute random order!

Here’s what you’re getting:

The Complete Manual of Typography

This book is about how type should look and how to make it look that way; in other words, how to set type like a professional. It releases the craft knowledge that used to reside almost exclusively in the heads of people working in type shops. The shops are gone, the technologies have changed, but the goal remains the same. This book explains in very practical terms how to use today’s computerized tools to achieve that secret of good design: well-set type.

Logo Design Workbook: A Hands-On Guide to Creating Logos

Throughout the book is laced with various logos and there is a brief examination of each in terms of the context of the various chapters. The depth of the topic feels as if the authors have only been able to gloss over various areas in order to meet the constraints of the book, but the brevity is more than made up by the value of the questions they’ve posed that should enable a designer to conduct their own research into creating a strong logo. As well the case studies offer a variety of perspectives from different designers providing a well rounded and interesting look into the design process. This book will prove useful to designers who need to determine and define the criteria that goes into making a successful logo that will help their clients meet their goals.

Prioritizing Web Usability

After more than a decade of Web usability research, we literally have thousands of guidelines for making better websites. But what are the most important ones that all designers need to know? That’s what this new book is about.

A second goal of the book is to update the early Web usability guidelines I published in the 1990s. All the guidelines found since 2000 continue to hold, but what about findings from the studies we conducted 1994 to 1999? The book compares these old studies with more recent ones and explains which of the old guidelines should still be followed.

The Unlimited Freelancer

Freelancing doesn’t have to be a daily struggle. You too can build the business of your dreams — the business that you wanted to have in the first place. Sure, it takes hard work, but you’re probably already used to that anyway. By using the proven strategies in this book you’ll be running a successful business in less time than you thought possible.

The ideas we’ll show you in The Unlimited Freelancer can even help you expand from a successful freelance business into a larger, multi-person company (if that’s your goal). These are tactics that have been used by companies around the globe to increase productivity, earnings, and growth. [From FreelanceFolder.com]

The Smashing Book

The Smashing Book is a printed book about best practices in modern Web design. The book shares technical tips and best practices on coding, usability and optimization and explores how to create successful user interfaces and apply marketing principles to increase conversion rates. It also shows how to get the most out of typography, color and branding so that you end up with intuitive and effective Web designs. And lastly, you will also get a peek behind the curtains of Smashing Magazine.

Please Note: Results will be given on March 24th and winners will be randomly chosen using Random.Org services. Good Luck!

For those of you that subscribed to the GrindSmart Magazine Macbook Pro, Coda and Expresso giveaway we thank you! Today we have the winning results! Every winner was chosen by random through Random.Org services. There were 41 comments in total (43 including two pingbacks), but we only counted the actual reader comments 41. We inserted the min number (one) and the maximum number (forty-one) and then hit the generate button and whatever number (of comment) came up, then that person is the winner.

All we have to say is CONGRATULATIONS to our three winners! You will be contacted by email (if you haven’t already) to arrange shipping of your product(s).

Please remember to subscribe to our feed for more great articles and amazing giveaways! We’ll strive to do one giveaway a month.

MacBook Pro Winner

Andrew -Comment #8

Coda Winner

Albis M. -Comment # 19

Expresso Winner

Nick Gonzalez -Comment #29

There are 100’s of beautiful icons that are circulating the web. We are definitely lucky that there are a lot of talented designers/artist out there that are sharing their works by providing us some useful free graphics. Some of them have put their hard sweat into making these icons. Below we didn’t round up just any icon sets, no, we came and hit you with the best high-quality icon sets for the beginning of 2010 that we could find for your enjoyment and personal use.

Hope you enjoy! Please remember to subscribe to our feed and leave us a comment with your thoughts!

Colorful Stickers

Download

Croqette Icons

Download

Social Sketches

Download

Computer Part Icons

Download

iPad Icons

Download

Letter Pressed Icons

Download

iPhone Icons

Download

Go Green!

Download

Wooden Badges

Download

3D Social Media Icons

Download

Onibari Light

Download

Web Social Icons

Download

Clean Sketchy Icons

Download

Greetings lovely readers! Today is the beginning of the ultimate FREE giveaway for designers! Three lucky winners will receive either a MacBook Pro (15-inch), a Coda or Expresso License. Our only requirements is that you comment and subscribe to GrindSmart Magazine and that’s it! 3 lucky winners will be chosen on February 20th in absolute random order! Here are the specs:

MacBook Pro

The 15″ MacBook Pro features new LED backlighting, the first for a laptop display this large. The MacBook Pro display can be had with an anti-glare coating or a glossy option. The latest MacBook Pro uses nVidia’s new GeForce 8600M GT graphics controller (GPU). Based on an entirely new architecture, this laptop version of the 8600 chipset should out-perform the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 used in the previous MacBook Pro, but our test results were inconsistent. The 8600 series also include an H.264 decoder, but we don’t know if Mac OS X takes advantage of this.

• excellent display color, brightness and clarity; won’t fade over time.
• 2 GB of memory standard
• excellent keyboard and trackpad
• good expandability (FireWire 800, Express/34, 30″ Display support)
• very good battery life

Coda

This one-window Web design app has all the tools you need for creating great Web sites. Collaboration tools let you seamlessly work together with others, and an integrated FTP sidebar– using the power of Panic’s Transmit–helps you get your site updated quickly. Hand coding experts will like the full-featured CSS and text editors, with tools that are always only a click away. Time savers like the Clips feature make frequently used code handy and convenient. We particularly like the powerful Find and Replace tools which let you drag-and-drop global changes to your code. If you’re searching for a reasonably priced Web design tool for Mac, Coda has plenty of handy tools to help you get your site up and running quickly.

Expresso

Now, Espresso delivers something better than a caffeine boost: a web editor with style. Espresso is not a bunch of apps thrown together. Instead, we looked at the needs of web developers and streamlined their workflow into one gorgeous, focused app. Fast and powerful editing, sleek projects, live preview, awesome publishing and extensive synchronization tools.

Please Note: Results will be given on February 20th and winners will be randomly chosen using Random.Org services. Good Luck!