Latest Posts from Download Squad

I recently went on a search to find a good color picker for Windows that was both portable and fast so that I could stop making the trip to Photoshop whenever I needed to find a color value.

After trying a number of different applications, I was delighted to find ColorPix (an app from ColorSchemer, who is the developer behind the previously mentioned ColorSchemer Studio 2).

ColorPix has an interesting lock and unlock mechanic for selecting the color that you want to find. While the application is active, hitting any key will unlock the picker, which you can then move anywhere on your screen. Once you've found the color, hitting any key again will lock it in so that you don't accidentally nudge the mouse while clicking to make your selection. It also includes a magnifier window to help with pixel precession at several different levels of zoom.

Once you've locked in a color, you can click anywhere on the RGB, HEX, HSB, or CMYK values and copy the individual color for the mode that you're working in directly to the clipboard. If you want the HEX value, you can use the Ctrl+C shortcut to get it even faster.

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It's easy to get fixated on Steam when it comes to digital distribution of games, but they aren't the only option for Windows users.

Starting today (and running through September 10), Stardock is running Play for the Cause and is donating a portion of the proceeds from their Impulse platform to Child's Play. Child's Play is an awesome charity that donates video games, toys, and movies to hospitals with the intention to help young patients get their minds off of whatever has them in the hospital and improve their lives during a potentially bleak time.

While I have great faith in the altruism of Download Squad readers, Stardock isn't going to give up the chance to sweeten the deal with some great sales, which may help you find your way to the purchase button. At the moment, they have 132 games on sale, including a bunch of really good titles and bundles at 50% off.

A few of my personal "can't miss" items include the Dragon Age Origins Bundle and the THQ Ultimate Bundle. If those aren't your style, take a look at The Sims 3, the Unreal Pack, Hearts of Iron III - Semper Fi, or Gothic II Gold. Stardock's fantasy strategy title Elemental: War of Magic was also recently released (though not at a discounted price).

If you want to donate more, there is also a convenient link to do so right on their home page.

If you run a website and you care about getting your site listed in relevant search results, then you may want to check out the brand new Bing Webmaster Tools.

When Microsoft first launched Bing, they started inviting feedback from web site administrators and SEO specialists about what they thought of Bing's initial Webmaster Tools. Microsoft reports that users consistently asked for more transparency regarding how Bing is indexing sites, more control over a site's content in the Bing index itself, and to have access to more information and analytics that they could use to optimize their sites.

With this feedback in mind, Microsoft started working on a new version of the Webmaster Tools (written completely from scratch) that would accommodate the features the Web administrators had asked for. The new version of the Webmaster Tools breaks down into three areas: crawl, index, and traffic.

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LinkedIn is the definitive social network for professionals looking to stay connected with colleagues, peers and other business relationships and keeping them up-to-date with where you're at and what you're doing.

While LinkedIn's dynamic resume approach to a personal profile is a great way to share professional history and accomplishments, it's only half of the story for artist, designers, photographers and filmmakers who need a way to display their personal style and the quality of their work. Despite the importance of a portfolio or demo-reel for creative professionals there has never been a good way to share media on LinkedIn.

Thanks to the Behance Network there's finally a good solution. The Creative Portfolio Display is a free LinkedIn application allowing you to display projects you've added to the Behance Network right in your profile. The Behance Network is a socially driven portfolio site for getting exposure and sharing work over a variety of different social networks, groups or art and design sites quickly and easily. One of the highlights of the service is that you can upload unlimited text, images, audio and video of projects for free. You can also embed media from Vimeo, Flickr, YouTube and other sites where you may already have uploaded your work.

They've made it easy to share your work on social networks like Twitter or Facebook and to sync your portfolio with additional sites like the AIGA, ADC (Art Directors Club) Young Guns and Swatch MTV Playground. With the new addition of their LinkedIn application Behance has made LinkedIn a much more useful and interesting site for artists; I'm know I'll be using it more.

[Hat tip to swissmiss]