Hey there, Fizzlers!
This page is a place for me to share some of my favorite tools and learning resources that help me run College Info Geek. Currently, you’ll find resources on:
- Video production
- Podcasting
- Writing/Blogging
- Web development
- Design
…since those are the five areas where I expend most of my effort. If you happen to be a student and are looking for the regular college resources page, that’ll be here.
Want to connect and swap resources and learning tips? I’m on Twitter here:
Video Production
Tools and assets:
- Adobe Premiere Pro – the place where I do all my editing
- VideoHive – a fantastic marketplace with all sort of video resources, including motion graphics, lower thirds, transitions, After Effects files, etc.
- AudioJungle – related to VideoHive, here you can find music and sound effects for videos
- Free Music Archive – free music you can use in your productions
- RoyalTrax – even more free music for your videos
- Dig.CCMixter – you can never have too much free music
- Jojikiba – a YouTube channel filled with free sound effects
- Incompetech – but let’s not forget how awesome free music is…
Learning resources
- Fizzle video course
- DIY Video Guide – Caleb’s awesome video course
- Wistia Learning Center – a great collection of short tutorials on video scripting, production, and marketing
- Video Creators – a YouTube channel dedicated to people who make videos
- Video Co-Pilot – absolutely badass After Effects tutorials and other stuff
I think it’s important to study from people doing great things. Here’s a playlist of videos I’ve been analyzing.
Podcasting
Tools and assets:
- SimpleCast – where I host my podcasts. $12/month, regardless of bandwidth or storage. Stats are very simple though.
- Adobe Audition – the program I use to edit my shows. Here are the settings I use to improve audio quality
- Auphonic – a site the can automatically improve your audio
- PowerPress – the WordPress plugin that manages my podcasts
Learning resources:
Writing/Blogging
Tools and assets (resources for featured/hero images are here rather than in Design):
- Byword – my favorite Markdown-based writing app
- Unsplash – free, high quality stock photos
- Startup Stock Photos – more free stock photos
- New Old Stock – wow, even more stock photos
- Wikimedia Commons – did I mention photos?
- Super Famous – there’s seriously a lot of photos
- Little Visuals – photos are cool especially when they’re free
- Death to the Stock Photo – man, free stock photos are cool
Learning resources
- Fizzle, of course – specifically Corbett’s Start a Blog that Matters course
Web Development
Tools, plugins, and assets:
- Sublime Text – my favorite text editor
- Transmit – the best FTP client for OS X
- WinSCP – the best FTP client for Windows
- Volatyl – the WordPress framework my site is built on
- FitVids – a plugin that makes embedded videos responsive and displays them beautifully
- ResponsiveNav – the plugin that makes the top and bottom menus responsive.
- Magnific Popup – the script that drives my site’s modal popups. Better than Bootstrap’s popup feature.
- Raptorize – find the Easter Egg at the bottom of this page to find out why you need this 😛
Learning resources:
- WordPress Codex – the official WordPress documentation. There’s much to learn here.
- Codecademy – a wonderful web app that teaches you how to code
- Code Combat – in case Codecademy wasn’t enough like a video game for you
- WP-Tuts – a great blog filled with WordPress tutorials. I even wrote a couple.
- Smashing Magazine – one of the best web development blogs, period.
- Stack Overflow and WordPress Development – two question/answer sites for coders and web developers
One final tip: The Inspect Element feature is your friend.
Design
Tools and assets:
- Adobe Photoshop – I spend a lot of my time here
- Fotor – a cool web app that lets you quickly edit photos and add filters to them
- Canva – a great app for creating Pinterest-style graphics with text and stuff
- GraphicRiver – Envato’s excellent marketplace for graphic resources
- Creative Market – an alternative to GraphicRiver. Has better stock photos than PhotoDune as well.
- The Noun Project – free icons
- Endless Icons – and even more free icons
- Facebook image guidelines
- YouTube image guidelines
- TypeKit – a web font service. It’s what serves the fonts on this site.
- daFont – free fonts
- FontSquirrel – more free fonts
- LostType – sensibly-priced fonts
Learning resources:
- Abduzeedo – a blog with lots of graphic design tutorials
- Chase’s Web Design Course – the Nerd Fitness redesign case study is gold.
