Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

Games sure are a fun way to cool our heels after a hectic day of work. But for some of us games happen to be more than a pastime and in some cases, passion. Broadband played a pivotal role in not only making games more interactive but also making way for a cheap distribution channel.

The raise in popularity of the virtual goods economy in the recent years jumpstarted the online gaming industry once again and now we have tons of awesome games available for free. Here at Web.AppStorm, we never miss a chance to review and round up cool online games. Keeping up with the tradition, we have compiled a list of fun online games that are free to play online. Dive in!

Fantasy

Rune Scape

For a long time I thought the game’s name was Run Escape, but I now I know better! RuneScape claims to be the World’s number 1 free MMORPG. The game is all about the journey into the fantasy world of Gielinor, where wizards, monsters and magic await your arrival.

Genre – Fantasy
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Shards of Dalaya

Shards of Dalaya is a legitimate emulated server based on a popular commercial MMORPG game. By emulated, the developers mean that the game is not served or maintained by anyone affiliated by the creators or publishers of the live (or pay for play) version of the popular commercial online game. The game play as usual involves wizards, tomes, towers, magic and quests!

Genre – Fantasy
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Adventure Quest Worlds

AQWorlds is a browser based MMO RPG combat game with original art and an entire world to explore. The gameplay involves battling monsters online with your friends and family to obtain wicked weapons, awesome armors, loyal pets and epic items.

Genre – Fantasy
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

EverQuest

Featuring breathtaking graphics and a vast, beautiful and dangerous game world to explore, EverQuest II is a sequel to the epic EverQuest game. The game is well known for graphical realism as players are immersed in the game’s exciting locales and mysterious lands.

Genre – Fantasy
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

MapleStory

MapleStory is a side-scrolling 2D online game, that offers distinctive characters, a huge variety of collectibles, a slew of quests and an ever expanding world for you to explore. The game features cool and interesting graphics that makes gameplay more engaging.

Genre – Fantasy
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Lunia

With a manga styled character and game design, Lunia an action packed arcade game that has a strong storyline. The story is broken down into episodes, each of which having 10 repeatable stages.

Genre – Fantasy
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Perfect World

Perfect World is set in a now cleansed (!) world inhabited by three races of beings capable of spiritual cultivation, living under the control of Lord Pan Gu. The game has a great community and a well evolved virtual currency system.

Genre – Fantasy
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

King of Kings 3

King of Kings 3 is a 3D MMORPG where players explore a medieval fantasy world that has been split into seven realms entrenched in a long and bitter war against each other. A great Player vs. Player (PvP) is a major USP of this game.

Genre – Fantasy
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

4Story

In 4Story, the more territories you own, more journeys for you to travel and more treasures to plunder. An advanced real time command and control center helps you manage all the 48 members in your squad at once.

Genre – Fantasy
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Requiem

Requiem is a horror adventure game with a dark and unique graphic style. There aren’t a lot many games that proclaim themselves to be in the horror genre and Requiem is not for the weak hearted.

Genre – Fantasy
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Adventure

Uncharted Waters

As the name suggests, Uncharted Waters is a game that is set on the open sea. Set on the Age of Exploration, this is one of those games that has a detailed backstory and documentation for all elements in the storyline.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Cabal

Cabal is a stylish, new age action adventure. A detail oriented design and a cinematic plot make this RPG a compelling one.

Genre – Action / Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Cosmic Break

Another Japanese manga styled RPG with a bunch of cool robots. There are over 50 unique playable robots with over 300 mix-matchable parts make for endless customization options.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Global Agenda

This one is a sci fi adventure where you don the role of an elite special agent from the future with futuristic gear and weaponry. The ability to create and customize the agent characters to boot is the star attraction of the game.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

GhostX

With really gorgeous animation that looks like taken right out of a Cartoon Network show, GhostX is a metro action RPG. Take the nanobots out for a spin and do try their awesome combo combat system.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

RF Online

This science fiction game is set in outer space where three races compete against each other. The 50 basic skills that can be upgraded through 7 levels of each character should keep you from getting bored, ever.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Ace Online

ACE Online is a high intensity combat game where players take futuristic flights to fight. You can conquer the skies by equipping and customizing your aircraft to the hilt.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Imagine

If you are into combating with demons, you will love Imagine. Set in Japan, you get to ride motorbikes and brew chemicals to kill demons in this post apocalyptic adventure.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Anarchy Online

The gameplay of Anarchy Online is set in a world 30,000 years into the future where human beings can be transformed into walking weapons with nanobots. From soldier to trader there are 14 different professions for you to choose from.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

City of Eternals

City of Eternals proclaims to be the world’s first vampire MMO. Set in the vampire city of Valencia, the game has some interesting social gaming features.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Shooter

Alliance of Valiant Arms

With a pretty lengthy yet catchy title, Alliance of Valiant Arms could very well be the game to satisfy the inner combatant in you. The storyline involves a conflict between former and current communist states and is quite engaging.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Battlefield

Battlefield Play4free is a game developed and hosted by the gaming giant EA. Realistic graphics, catchy tracks and a fabulous gameplay that allows you to be a soldier, pilot, tank runner and more are enough reasons to give this one a go.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

World of Tanks

World of Tanks is a unique game dedicated to the fans of armored warfare and is set in the mid 20th century. Throw yourself into epic tank battles shoulder to shoulder with other steel cowboys to dominate the world!

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Project Blackout

Think you have a fast trigger finger and an eye for precision shooting? You should play Project Blackout then. The game boasts of an immersive gameplay with realistically skinned models, surround sound and cinematic camera effects.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

MicroVolts

This is one game that looks funny enough with bright colors and cute characters with abstract design. Weapons come in all shapes and sizes. So don’t be surprised when you are asked to choose between a shovel and tommy gun.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Cross Fire

Cross Fire’s gameplay is based on an explosive storyline that involves two mercenary factions fighting for taking over the control of the world. You get to fight on behalf of either one of these armed factions.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Metal Assault

It is actually interesting to play an online shooter game that is full of characters that look so cartoonish. Don’t get fooled by the cute characters, the game has a gripping and intense storyline.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Battlefield Heroes

This is another game that attracts us with its refreshing and unconventional looking characters. From the house of EA, the game allows both soldiers and wizards in the battlefield to fight head to head.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Alien Swarm

As you might have inferred from the name, the game thrusts players into an epic bug hunt featuring a unique blend of co-op play and tactics. Alien Swarm is available as a free download from the popular digital game download service, Steam.

Genre – Adventure
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

War Rock

War Rock is a military first person shooter good for both solo and team game play. From rocket launchers to F-15 jets, you have got a whole lot of weapons at your disposal.

Genre – FPS
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Social Games

Cityville

This is one of those games that requires hardly any introduction. From the house of social gaming powerhouse Zynga, Cityville is among the top ten social games played online.

Genre – Social
Leaderboard – Not Comprehensive
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Gardens of Time

It’s tough to break into the social games toppers list if the game isn’t from a company with deep pockets like Zynga. Gardens of Time by Playdom is a puzzle game with a sci fi twist to it.

Genre – Fantasy
Leaderboard – Not Comprehensive
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Texas HoldEm Poker

Got a Poker face that doesn’t give away the cards you are holding? Try your hand in the world’s number one online poker game from Zynga. The game is so much fun to play with friends.

Genre – Social
Leaderboard – Not Comprehensive
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Diamond Dash

Fan of Bejeweled? Diamond Dash is the online fix for those who are looking to hit colorful gems around and collect goodies! The sixty second limitation is what prevents you from getting addicted to this game.

Genre – Arcade
Leaderboard – No
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Bubble Island

Bubble Island is based on a popular arcade game concept. In the gameplay, you will earn points by popping a bubble cannon and shooting at the bubbles.

Genre – Arcade
Leaderboard – Not Comprehensive
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Frontierville

Another crowd favorite Zynga game that topped the charts instantly after launch. If you liked playing Age of Empires, you will like this fantasy game that lets you build your own community.

Genre – Fantasy
Leaderboard – No
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Zombie Lane

Ah, what would happen to pop culture if there weren’t Zombies (and vampires)! Take control of your neighborhood by whacking the army of undead with a great choice of weapons – from shovel to shotguns.

Genre – Fanatsy
Leaderboard – No
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire

Looking to earn some spare change? How about a million dollars? Adapted from the famous TV show by the same name, this multiplayer game puts you head to head with fellow players, all of whom just ten questions away from earning a seven figure payday. Sadly, the game is limited only to players from North America.

Genre – Quiz
Leaderboard – No
Paid Upgrades – No

Pet Society

Pet Society is a game perfect for both people who love to raise pets and those who don’t. Besides caring for and raising pets, you can hunt for treasure and shop for cloths and accessories (all virtual of course) as well!

Genre – Social
Leaderboard – No
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Jersey Shore

You can never escape reality shows! Despite earning a reputation as a pretty useless show, Jersey Shore and its colorful residents are here in Facebook. Get ready to throw up and get your GTL on!

Genre – Reality
Leaderboard – No
Paid Upgrades – No

Casual

Minecraft

Minecraft is one of the most popular casual games spawned by the Internet and has a huge, loyal and very vocal fanbase. To put simply, the game is like a virtual Legoland where you can build literally anything, in any size.

Genre – Casual
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – No

Angry Birds for Chrome

Is there is a platform that doesn’t run this uber popular new age game? Available exclusivesly on Google Chrome App Store, you get to rescue the eggs from the pigs in 70 different levels.

Genre – Casual
Leaderboard – No
Paid Upgrades – No

FIFA Superstars

Football fans rejoice! After invading the console boxes with steeply priced releases, the football game is now available free of charge from the Chrome App Store. So go now to own and manage your own Football club.

Genre – Sports

Leaderboard – No

Paid Upgrades – No

Dark Orbit

Based in space, the game play involves exploring dangerous, distant galaxies and competing against real players in interstellar battles. Enlist today and become a space pilot in DarkOrbit.

Genre – Fantasy
Leaderboard – No
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Toast Snatcher

Toast Snatcher is a simple and a fun game where you will have to catch the toasts that are falling before they reach the roaster.

Genre – Casual
Leaderboard – No
Paid Upgrades – No

Bejeweled

This one hardly needs any introduction at all. Match sparkling gems three at a time to make them burst in showers of color and points. Very addictive!

Genre – Casual
Leaderboard – No
Paid Upgrades – Yes

Plants Vs Zombies

Despite a weird name, Plants Vs Zombies is a cult hit. You will have to defend your home from an army of zombies with just an arsenal of zombie zapping plants.

Genre – Casual
Leaderboard – No
Paid Upgrades – No

World’s Biggest Pac-Man

It’s a Pac Man game and that’s more than enough detail to get your game on. The game also lets you design your own maze too!

Genre – Casual
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – No

Zuma’s Revenge

In this game, you enter the world of Zuma where evil tiki bosses rule the land. The mythological storyline and characters should keep you glued to your seats!

Genre – Casual
Leaderboard – Yes
Paid Upgrades – No

WordSquared

WordSquared is a close looking clone to the popular board game Scrabble. Invite your friends and start a massively multiplayer word association game instantly.

Genre – Casual
Leaderboard – No
Paid Upgrades – No

Share Your Thoughts!

Which one is your favorite online game? Did we miss an awesome game? Sound off in the comments section!

It’s happened to all of us: you’re standing in the shower, and all the sudden get a great idea for a new site, book, app, or anything else. You hurry getting ready for the day, thinking of everything you’ll need for the project. Then it hits you: you should see if people are really going to be interested in your project or not. It’d be a great idea to make a quick site with a description of your project, perhaps updates about it or links to your other sites, and a way to let visitors sign up for updates.

So you’ve got several options. You could install WordPress on your server, grab one of the many landing page or “coming soon” themes available, then set it up like you want. Or you could whip out your text editor and hand code an HTML page and FTP it to your server. Only problem is, each of these options will take a fair bit of time, and you’ve still got to eat breakfast before you head out to work.

That’s why landing page creators can be such a help. In a few moments, you can crank out a quick site to validate your idea and start getting users excited before you’ve even started writing your book or coding your app. Or, you can create a new page quickly to market your existing products to a specific group, to take advantage of current events, online memes, and more. Formstack is a popular online form creator we use across the Envato network of sites, and they’ve recently made a nice landing page creator to help you do just that. It brings the best of their form tools into a simple landing page creator that lets you create a quick landing page with forms, dynamic content, and more in only a few minutes. After the break, we’ll see how you can put Formstack landing pages to use for your ideas.

Great Forms Meet Simple Landing Pages

If you’ve already been using Formstack to create forms, then you’re all ready to start making landing pages right in your Formstack account. All forms accounts come with one free landing page, but if you want to use more landing pages, you can purchase a Formstack Landing Pages subscription starting at $19/month. You can then create simple contact forms directly in your landing pages with your account, or if you have a Forms account, you can create rich forms with a variety of elements and integrate them into your landing pages.

Formstack made it easy to get started creating a landing page, but left enough choices to give your page personality and make it more versatile. You start by picking from one of 8 layouts, including multi-column designs with headers and footers, or a simple single column design like most landing page creators offer.

You’ll then be presented with a sectioned layout ready for you to add your content. Each column shows its width, and the overall page is designed to be 940px wide. You can change your layout from the bottom menu if you decide a different style would fit your content better. Otherwise, you can click the Add Content button to start designing your site, or click Edit Style on individual sections or in the bottom menu to edit the style of the part of the page or the whole overall page, respectively.

From the style box, you can quickly specify your page background, content background, link color, and main font styles. This way, you can quickly get your landing page to match your branding or fit the style of the new site you’d like to design. For more control, you can switch to the Advanced tab and edit the page CSS directly.

Adding content to your page is simple as well. You can insert rich text, including formatted text with headings, images and more. Or, you can embed code to add a video or other dynamic content, or add your RSS feed to show updates from your company or project. Best of all, you can insert a Formstack form, or create a new basic contact form directly in the landing page creator.

You can add as many content sections in each page section as you’d like. This way, you could include rich text and a form in your main content section, or add multiple RSS feeds in the same column. Then, you can drag and drop the sections to rearrange your page as you want. You’ll see the basic content right there, which gives you a rough idea of how your site will look. But don’t worry too much about the details; Formstack is designed to make creating landing pages simpler, so you’ll have more time to devote to your more important projects.

Once you’re finished, you can preview the page, or go ahead and publish it with a live URL. Even if you’ve published the page, you can always come back and change anything you want, so don’t worry rushing to publish your page. Your new landing page with have a unique address in the format formstack.com/landing/xxxxx, and you can share it with your audience or include it in your newsletters and more to get traffic to your new landing page. Alternately, you  can add your own domain to your Formstack account to keep your landing pages promoting your brand.

Learning From Your Landing Pages

As visitors reach your landing page and leave contact info or other form info, you can view it from your Admin dashboard. You’ll be able to get quick info about the traffic your landing pages are seeing. Then, the next time you need to create a landing page, it’ll be even easier than before. You can simply duplicate your old landing page, and make the tweaks you need for your new campaign. Or, if you want, you could try making changes to your page and A/B test them.

One of the nicest features Formstack includes that takes it beyond the standard landing page creator is the option to create an A/B test. You can add 2 or more form styles to your test, then you’ll get a unique tracking code to add to your conversion page that you direct readers to after they’ve visited your landing page. You can then compare how the different pages performed, and tweak your marketing campaign accordingly. There are many different ways to do this, but having it built in is a nice touch that will make it a great tool for businesses wanting to make landing pages to take advantage of current trends and more.

Conclusion

Whether you’re always coming up with new ideas you want to verify with your followers, or want to promote your products with customized pages that are simple to create, Formstack landing pages is a great option. It really does turn the process of creating a landing page into a 5 minute process, and the integration of forms makes it even simpler to use than many other similar products. I’d love to see them add high quality designed themes in the future that would make it easier to create nicer looking landing pages. For now, though, it’s flexible enough to use however you need, without wasting time trying to figure out how to get your layout to work.

Creating a seamless pattern isn’t as easy as it looks. It’s easy to spend hours in Photoshop trying to create texture that will repeat perfectly, only to find that it’s slightly off, but it isn’t easy to get those little imperfections fixed. Instead, you need a tool that will automate the process of making your pattern repeating, taking care of the hard part while freeing you to focus on your design.

The COLOURlovers team has created a ton of tools for anyone who loves colors, palettes, patterns, and more. Their web site lets you discover new designs and share them, and their development team has been creating new creative tools to help you get in on the creation process.

Starting with their simple Seamless Lite web app, a free tool to create basic patterns online, COLOURlovers created an advanced pattern creation tool for your desktop: Seamless Studio. This app lets your pattern designs come to life easier than ever. Let’s take a look and see if this is the tool that’s been missing from your design toolkit.

Pattern Making on Any Computer

While Seamless Studio’s younger sibling, Seamless Lite, is a web app, Seamless Studio isn’t a traditional web app. Instead, it’s powered by Adobe Air so it can run as a native Windows, Mac, and Linux app using native web technology. Plus, it’s integrated with COLOURlovers’ web apps so you can easily share the patterns you create.

Installing Seamless Studio is easy. Just download the installer for your OS, or make sure you’ve got Adobe Air installed and download the .air file directly. Seamless Studio has a free 15 day trial, so you can try it out without entering a license key. If you decide you like it, you can buy a license for $49, or, if you’re a COLOURlovers member, you can currently get at $20 off coupon.

Getting started with Seamless Studio is simple. It’s laid out like many other graphics editing programs, with palettes for elements, colors, and layers. The rest of the program is your canvas, with the box in the center being your actual repeating tile you’ll save. Seamless Studio automatically makes sure whatever’s there will repeat throughout the app perfectly.

Creating Your Patterns

First off, you should pick out a nice palette of colors for your design. Seamless Studio has a nice color picker built in that makes it easy to get the exact shade you want. You can pick up to 5 colors for your palette, and could even add colors from their hex codes from existing palettes you love.

Next up, you’ll need to decide what elements you’d like to include in your design. Seamless includes a wide range of shapes, from standard geometric figures and lines to animal and vehicle silhouettes. If that’s not enough, you can import your own images to include in the design, making it uniquely your own. But for most patterns, combinations of shapes will cover everything you need.

Once you’ve decided what to add to your design, there’s two great ways to add elements. You can drag new elements which will come in at a preset size, and can be moved or resized later. Or, you can select the pen tool on the top, then select your shape, and click to put the element where you want. Once you’ve clicked, keep holding down while dragging to rotate or resize your section. This works especially nice on a touchpad.

Seamless Studio will automatically make sure everything repeats correctly, so your whole design will look just like it does in the small center box. If you want to position elements more precisely, you can open a grid from the View menu. Then, each element is saved in its own layer, so you can easily rearrange or tweak them from the bottom left layers menu.

Quick Tip: Seamless Studio uses Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y for undo and redo, respectively, even on Macs. That’s the standard on PCs, but might feel a bit odd to Mac users.

One thing I found frustrating was changing the active color that would be used when I added new elements. By default, Seamless will use the last selected color from your palette when you add a new element. But, if you want to switch colors, you’ll have to click the color box, and that opens the color chooser, taking 3 clicks instead of one. Instead, a better way is to simply change the color on your elements’ layer box. Click the color on the layer, and you can quickly pick from your palette colors directly. That’s also a great way to test and see how changing the colors would change your design.

Once you’re finished with your masterpiece, Seamless Studio is ready to help you put it to action. You can export it as a a png or jpg file to use directly in your web designs, as a tiled background, or any where else you want to put your design to work. Alternately, you can export your design as a SVG file to import into Adobe Illustrator or any other vector graphics editor. You can also upload your design directly to COLOURlovers’ site to share with others.

Conclusion

Seamless Studio shows how the right tool can really make your job easier. It focuses on one thing – making patterns, and it does a great job at it. If you’ve wanted a great way to make beautiful repeating patterns for your designs, this is a great choice. Even though it’s an Air app, and had a few oddities from being a cross-platform app, it’s overall a very polished app, as you would expect from the COLOURlovers team.

If you’ve given it a try, we’d love to know what you think of it. Feel free to share links of any textures you make in the comments below!

With over 120 million members (as of 8/4/2011) and a new-member sign-up rate of two per second, LinkedIn is the undisputed leader of the “professional” social-networking scene. Still, some people have a problem with LinkedIn’s conservative design scheme. They want something that represents the excitement and passion that comes from loving what you do.

A number of web apps have cropped up to satisfy these more design-oriented folks (see our roundup of six of them), and each creates a stylish personal-splash page that you can attach to your email signature, print on your business card, or whatever.

Zerply, a new web app that launched last month, is both the same as these “personal-splash page” apps and different from them. Let’s find out how.

Overview

Created by a diverse team of Europeans and Americans, Zerply is a professional network based on the value of “serious play.” Members can choose from several stylishly designed profile pages and connect with other members based not on whether they know each other, but on whether they share the same skills and passions.

Getting Started

Creating an account on Zerply is as simple as connecting your Twitter or Facebook accounts. Give Zerply permission, and it will pull out the data it needs to get you started (email, location, first and last name, etc.). From there, creating your personal profile page is a four-step process.

The first step in the process, “Who are you?,” asks you to create a one-line description of who you are, as well as a short biography to provide a little more detail. It also asks for a set of tags that describe you (i.e., “writer,” “teacher,” “designer,” “entrepreneur,” “ux,” etc.).

The second step, “Your background?,” is where you add the basic items you’d find on a resume, namely, “Experience” and “Education.”

The third step, “To top it off,” asks you to connect your profile page to the various web services where people can find out more about you: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Posterous, FourSquare, etc. You can also link to your website, your portfolio, or any other web address you want. After adding the services, you upload (or import from Twitter or Facebook) a profile picture that will reside at the top of your profile page.

The final step, “Activate your Profile,” is where you choose from one of a few highly-designed themes for your profile page and set your email privacy.

Zerply includes three templates for your profile page (as well as a fourth template that only gets unlocked once you’ve referred three new members to the service). The templates are different enough in style to satisfy most everyone’s taste. As long as you’re not looking for something that’s plain vanilla, you should find a template that works for you.

Now, for the networking…

Most of the personal-profile apps create stand-alone pages that you’re supposed to use as your online business card. Zerply’s profile page is no different: it covers the basics of who you are, what you do, and where someone can find out more about you.

But unlike those other apps, Zerply also includes a networking feature to help you discover people who might be of interest to you, whether because they’re in your neighborhood, they’re in the same field as you, or they share a special skill (i.e., “Photoshop”).

Once you’ve found people, you can save them as a contact, endorse their particular skills, and use the information on their profile pages to hook up with them on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

LinkedIn, but not really…

The number of web apps that allow you to share articles you like, find articles from people you trust, or simply update a status message are too numerous to mention, but the major players include your Facebook feed, your Twitter homepage, and LinkedIn (whether through the updates page, groups, or LinkedIn Today).

What I really appreciate about Zerply is that it doesn’t try to join this group. It doesn’t have a “feed” or a “Zerply Today” page or a group feature. It’s all about helping you connect with people, and then pushing you to where those people are. After all, why follow someone on Zerply when you can follow them on Twitter (where they’re probably 1,000x more active)?

Endorsing your connections

Zerply also gives you the ability to endorse the work and skills of other members of the network. With the web app’s widgets, you can then share these endorsements on your blog or portfolio. As Zerply writes on their website, “We see it as more than a Facebook like, but less than a LinkedIn recommendation – it speaks of the person behind the content.”

My one suggestion for the endorsements is that they should be included in the templates for the member’s profile page, especially since many people will market the profile page in their email signatures and in their Twitter or Facebook profiles.

Final Thoughts

The folks behind Zerply have obviously put a lot of time and effort into designing and developing a user-friendly and eye-friendly app. While the final profile page might not be as customizable as the ones you can build with apps such as About.Me, Zerply’s built-in templates are visually exciting while not being over the top.

I also like the networking aspect of Zerply, and as the membership grows, I can see myself using it to find freelancers to help on specific projects (or at least, adding it to my freelancer-finding toolbox).

The best part about Zerply is that it’s just getting started. The “Finding” feature only got added last week, and they just wrapped up their private beta at the beginning of July. So the best part is not what’s on Zerply now; it’s what the talented team behind Zerply might have cooking for tomorrow (can you say, a “messaging” feature?).

In short, Zerply is a web app to keep your eye on.

These days, the first interaction a company will have with a customer will most likely be via its website. I know any time I’m about to make an important purchase or consider a new service it’s straight to the Internet I go. It’s quick and easy; no wonder major companies spend thousands ensuring their websites are up to date and looking sharp. And for big companies, that’s all well and good. They can afford designers and developers to handle the customer experience. For small start-ups and businesses this isn’t the case.

The ‘Contact Us’ page is where you customers go if they have a problem with your products, have a question or want to head down to your premises. It’s a ‘call to action’ page; something which web copy writers stress has to be done right.

Formsly take the pain out of creating and managing your contact page and include some awesome features to boot. Every channel imaginable for your customers to reach you is accounted for, but is it right for everyone?

Functionality

If I said I wasn’t impressed by Formsly as a whole I’d be lying. Before I actually checked it out I was slightly underwhelmed. I knew it was a contact form creator; a common variety of web app which aren’t exactly known for getting your heart rate up. However, the guys at Formsly have gone above and beyond, doing a tremendous job at making them a lot more useful for the customer and the business. Everything is easily set up in a matter of minutes. To get a fully featured contact form live on your website ten minutes would be more than enough.

The email form itself doesn’t take center stage in all this, and while impressive, is just a piece of the pie. The user can select which department and staff member to send their email to. All emails can be tracked in the admin control panel, a nice feature for managing customer service personnel requirements and so forth. User’s can also subscribe to your newsletter. If they do, their email address goes into a spreadsheet which can be downloaded at any time and import into a mass email.

More traditional contact information is given prominence as the first tab users will see. This lists your phone number and company addresses (can have multiple for different offices and branches). Google Maps has also been utilised to visually display your locations as well as give the user directions.

It’s also fantastic at pushing social networks. Which ones? Pretty much all of them; LinkedIn, Blogger, Technorati, Flicker and so on. Each one will be features on your contact form. You can also have your company’s Twitter stream embedded in the app. As of yet, Google+ support is non existent, however given the vast amount of other networks Formsly supports it’s safe to assume it’ll be along soon enough.

A few smaller features include displaying your opening hours along with the current time at your premises (presumably so international customers won’t have to figure the time difference), the ability to download all your information as a Word document and a handy QR code which can be scanned by smartphone users to add your company to their address book.

Design

We’ll start with the customer’s side of things; me gusta! The standard contact form and everything else along with is tastefully designed and hovers cleanly over the main website. Everything is laid out neatly but isn’t boring like your average run-of-the-mill contact page. The fact that it has a navigation bar, as opposed to being a once page affair, lends a certain powerful feel.

The actual look of Formsly can be easily changed from the standard ‘one size fits all’ design to a colour scheme that blends in better with your website. Other than colours, you can’t radically change the look; just basic alterations such as adding borders and the font. The contact button which will hover over your website can be positioned wherever you like – I prefer down the side next to the scroll bar. You can change how this looks too, or upload your own personalised button.

Room for Improvement

Formsly has impressed me, of that there’s no doubt. But it’s not all sunshine and lollipops, a few things annoyed me about Formsly and in one area in particular I really felt it fell short.

They insist on an address being provided for the company. Seeing as a large part of the Formsly user interface is based around where you are and how customers can get to you, this makes sense. However, they fail to take into account the lowly freelancer. I wouldn’t count myself as being particularly paranoid, but common sense tells me that having my home address mere pixels away from my Twitter stream which I regularly post to while out of the house is downright stupid. One day I could be having lunch with friends, decide to tweet about the starter and unintentionally prompt tech-savvy thieves to break into my home. And while it is possible to take away the ‘Head Office’ page, that would mean removing your phone number, fax number, Twitter and a host of other features too.

On the same issue, their contact buttons which float above your site lack a ‘Contact Me’ version. They’re all either ‘Contact Us’ or simply ‘Contact’. This stark omission gives me the impression that Formsly have decided to ignore self employed people. For these reasons I’ve decided not to renew my subscription. Yet with a few very minor changes Formsly would have had me (and I’m sure others), hook, line and sinker. Oh well.

Overall I do really like Formsly. And the $9.99 per year (or .99c per month) they ask for, along with the free thirty day trial, is beyond fair. It adds a great new feature to your site in minutes that screams professionalism. So, if your a small to medium sized business I’d definitely recommend Formsly.

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting yaM. The developer describes yaM (yet another meeting) as an app that lets you prepare and run collaborative online meetings where every participant can edit the agenda, make notes, upload files and more. Best of all, it plays nice with Google Apps and Evernote.

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

About the App

Here are the top five features you can expect to see in yaM:

1. Everything is updated in real time – everyone is constantly on the same page
2. Quickly accessable tools for brainstorms, document review, diagram drawing, priority analysis and many more
3. Tracking of all action items created during meetings – nothing falls through the cracks
4. Login easily with your Google and Evernote accounts
5. Works with any kind of meeting – face-to-face, conference call, web conference – client or internal

Requirements: A modern web browser
Price: Free
Developer: yaM Labs Inc.