You’ve won this time internets… this time…

Please don’t flame me or send me hate mail. This is NOT a racist message, it’s an observational render.

If you’re a supporter of the arts, like Obama, hate Obama, are half African-American or just feel like scoring some sweet swag… then check out My HALFricanUSA Cafe Press store. All the proceeds will go to keeping my refrigerator fully stocked with Mauntain Dew and Dr. Pepper. Thanks!

HOW TIE™
instructions included

Job Interview? Briss? Court Appearance? Yes, a necktie is definitely called for, and not a clip-on! No problem…relax, take a deep breath, remember your days in the boy scouts, and study the oh-so-easy knot-tying instructions printed right on Fred’s handy How Tie.

Thanks Design You Trust for the link. (How Fresh and Creative Ideas Rules the World)
Follow through to see other ideas too, this one was just my favorite.

Please follow the jump to see the entry from Smashing Magazine.

As you may know, we are looking for motivated, talented and professional guest authors. And we are paying each author $100-300 per post — depending on the quality of the delivered article. If you think that you are one of them contact us — we want you, we need you, we can’t live without you and we would really be happy to have you in our Smashing team.

And to spark your interest for writing we’ve decided to announce a guest author contest — write a small guest article for Smashing Magazine and win one of dozens of attractive prizes waiting for you.

Awards

Best guest articles will be published on Smashing Magazine with the link to the author’s site. The best guest post will be determined by the editorial team and will be awarded with Apple MacBook Air, a compact, ultrathin 13.3? laptop (1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive) released by Apple few months ago.

Apart from that the places 2-5 will be awarded with attractive designer laptop sleeves and bags. And the places 6-10 will be awarded with design and web-development related books. We also have a pretty nice special price for the most unusual guest post. However, we are not revealing it yet.

What are we looking for?

The main idea behind the contest is not to get as many guest articles as possible, but to find talented guest authors who will want to work with us after the contest and get properly paid for their work. If you would like to write for us beyond the contest — drop us a line, we’ll figure something out.

So what are we looking for and what are we expecting? As a guest author you have two options to choose from.

Authors who have something to say…
We are looking for a short discussion article which would manage to spark a conversation in the comments and involve many readers of our magazine in a discussion. Your article should meet the following guidelines:

it should have between 450 and 1200 characters,
it may be controversial and too subjective, but it should not be boring,
it may present some idea, approach or remark about recent developments, but you need to argue well and explain your position properlym,
it should have a valid HTML-markup.
In this case we are interested in guest authors who have original ideas and a good writing style (please read it again: original ideas are important). We will select best discussion articles and publish them in the magazine.

Here are some examples (please don’t use them for your discussion articles):

designers should work with at least 3 displays at the same time,
reasons why I hate becoming a designer,
arguments why Fireworks is much better than Photoshop.
one can actually live without Google (how?).
…and authors who have something to show.

Alternatively, you can submit a top-10-list instead of a discussion article. We are looking for the masters of lists (if your name is Yoda, consider you already got some bonus-points). We expect useful and beautiful top-10-lists. Your top-10-list should meet the following guidelines:

an exciting and eye-catching headline,
a quick yet attractive introduction (usually 2-4 sentences),
10 list items with a brief description (usually 1-2 sentences) and with links if necessary,
at least 2 images or screenshots (if it is impossible to make screenshots or find images for your topic ignore this condition),
it should have a valid HTML-markup.
In this case we are interested in authors who are original, possess knowledge and experience and have some good sources to find images, links etc. We will select best discussion articles and publish them in the magazine.

Here are some examples (please don’t use them for your top-10-lists):

top 10 most beautiful wallpapers with ladybugs,
top 10 best WordPress-themes with yellow background,
top 10 best tricks to search on Del.icio.us,
top 10 best GIMP-tutorials.
Restrictions and Rules

Please follow the following guidelines when sending your articles:

all files should be packed in a .zip and include all images which occur in the article,
an archive with an article written by John Doe should be titled john-doe.zip,
you can submit at most 3 articles (at all, e.g. 2 top-10-lists and 1 discussion article or vice versa),
you should be the writer of the article you submit,
send the article to Sven Lennartz using the following e-mail:
sven@[Smashing Magazine domain].
Deadline

5th of August 2008.

Winners

Best discussion articles and top-10-lists will be published on Smashing Magazine. We will carefully observe the reaction of our reader in our comments. Depending on the number and quality of the comments we will assign some score to every article. Once the scores are assigned we will announce the articles with the highest score and award their authors with prizes and awards.

Get creative, folks. And good luck!

Visit Smashing Magazine to Guest post and enter to win the Apple MacBook Air!

It was either this or stealing my mom’s cookie tins and pitting the black and red ant tribes against each other in a battle of epic proportions. ohh, how they did hate one antoher. And i’m convinced the black ants were either the gatherers or just plain wussies, because the red ants won every time. Even when we stacked the odds with a 1:4 ratio the red team was triumphant. Now, don’t flame me for ant cruelty, this was years ago, i was a little kid. Thanks again boredom!

Incredibly affordable, these diorama kits will most likely give enjoyment long after assembly.

‘Tatebanko is the forgotten Japanese art of creating amazing dioramas and scenic perspectives from paper. Tatebanko was popular and widely admired from the 17th century (Edo period) to the early 20th century. Then it all but disappeared. “It’s a Beautiful Day” has now revived and reinterpreted this simple and elegant Japanese art with two new paper craft kits. The kits feature the works from two famed Edo artists – Hiroshige’s Kambara, Evening Snow and Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Beautifully designed and printed in Japan with elegant metallic accents, the kits are nicely packaged A4 size and make a diorama that is 7 1/2” W x 3 1/2” D x 4 7/8” H. Each kit has a playful secret and interesting details that make assembly fun. With these kits, Tatebanko will undoubtedly enjoy a well-deserved renaissance.’

Hokusai (left): $9.95, Buy it here.
Hiroshige: $9.95, Buy it here.

Thanks Why Me? via Better Living Through Design.

To read more about these advertisements check out Big Head Design and Toxel. Thanks again for another great post Jusin at BHD.

3 more images after the jump.

Available for Photoshop, Aperture, Final Cut Pro/Express, Pro Tools, After Effects & Logic Pro and on the hardware for MacBook Pro, Macbook (Black and White), Macbook Air, Apple Thin Keyboard, Apple Thin Wireless Keyboard & Apple Classic Keyboard.

Luke’s to do list: 1. Convince boss to splurge the $40 dollars…. 3. Take over the world.

Thanks SwissMiss for the link! Thanks PhotoJoJo for the product!!