I started looking for open source and no royalty fee icon sets for a project I expect to do later in the semester. Here is my list in progress:

I've started doing some research on document and graphic design, and two of the texts that I really like are John McWade's Before & After Page Design and Before & After Graphics for Business, books derived from the tips and tutorials in Before & After: How to design cool stuff. These look to be great potential texts for a professional writing document design class. For those that want a sample, some of the articles from Before & After are available at Creative Pro. The style of McWade's articles are similar to the books, although the books do a better job of working through beginner to advanced concepts.

Nice coincidence. Last night, I was trying to show my mother how to use Olympus's Camedia photo software. As anyone who has used it knows, the interface is very clumsy. Well, try teaching it to someone who is technophobic about new software applications.

Enter Picasa, which has just been purchased by Google and can be freely downloaded. From the Picasa download page:

Picasa. Everything you need to enjoy your digital photos in a single software product:

• Auto-transfer photos from your digital camera.
• Organize and find pictures in seconds.
• Edit, print, and share photos with ease.
• Create slideshows, order prints and more!

So after downloading and trying it, I would firmly recommend Picasa over Camedia and some other digital camera/image handling software packages I have used. Granted, it offers fewer filtering/effects options for transforming images than Camedia, but I love the rest of the interface, and it will automatically populate the photo album view with all of the images on your hard drive in a easy to surf display. So even though I use Photoshop for my image editing, I'll keep this one on my hard drive. :)