Behold web and user interface designers, a new trend (or style) is taking the world of UI and website design by storm – flat design. It is a minimalistic approach and style to designing websites and UI where we take a step back, strip away all the 3D elements, gradients, shadows and effects to leave behind the bare necessities.

In a nutshell, flat design removes the noise, the bells and whistles, the site accessories that overwhelm visitors and drive away peers. It’s pure and simple, and fundamentally minimalistic. If you are bored with it all and would like to fall back on just the gist, it’s time to give this style a shot. It’s already making its wave through plenty of sites on the Web, and we are showcasing more than 20 beautiful examples of this upcoming design trend here.

Like what you see or have know of other amazing examples? Drop us a line in the comments section.

Snowbird

Weather App "Outside the window"

squidee.co

Spelltower

Layervault

Simone Marcarino

Mailchimp

Lorenzo Verzini

Interactive Advent Calendar

Inky

Foundation framework

Jakub Antalik

Tommy Roussel

Rob Schlegel

Nikosaurier

Steffen Norgaard Amdersen

Michal Langmajer

UIElements

George Leonardo

Cai Cardenas

Designed To Move

Belancio

After telling you how to access US web stores that restrict international access, you must be reeling with excitement to purchase some of their geeky products… only to find that those stores don’t ship internationally.

Well fret not, we’ve searched the Internet and scoured forums to find these 5 reliable forwarding services that will help you ship the item you bought from a US web store to your door step.

(Image Source: Fotolia)

Most of these services operate by giving you a unique ‘US address’ to key in when purchasing something from a US store. Once the forwarding company receives your item, it’ll then be forwarded to you. Of course there is an extra price to pay for this shipping service, but it still beats the price you pay for purchasing with a local retailer.

Recommended Reading: 30 Online Stores To Shop For Geeky Gifts

1. Borderlinx

With a free Borderlinx account, you’ll get a US and UK address you can use while online shopping. Their main courier is DHL which is very reliable. Their service also includes repackaging and consolidating multiple packages to save you money.

In the members area, you can calculate the estimated cost, track your shipping, and check your items in the waiting list. For more information you can always check out the website, or its FAQ.

2. ComGateway / HopShopGo

HopShopGo is powered by the forwarding service ComGateway, and features a BuyForMe service where they can purchase items for you. There is also a useful time & cost calculator that you can use to estimate when you will receive your package. Other services include repackaging your item so the shipping is cheaper and consolidating multiple packages to be shipped together.

3. vPOST

Upon registering for vPost, you’ll receive addresses for US, Japan and Europe which means you can shop from the websites there. vPost however only ships to 5 countries: Singapore, Australia, India, Malaysia and Thailand.

Because they only ship to these 5 countries, they sometimes have shipping discounts when you pay with a local credit card. Their services include a shipping calculator and the ability to consolidate multiple purchases before shipping it together to your address.

4. Shipito

Shipito doubles as a storage space for you and will ship out your wares using the shopping method you chose. By registering for an account with them, you will get email notification when your purchases arrive there.

They will keep it for 90 days max and will send it to you as individual packages or consolidate a few before shipping them based on which service plan you opt for. Consolidated packages can earn you savings so although it costs $50 a year or $10 a month, it is probably more worth it if you have a lot of purchases.

5. MyUS.com

MyUS has 3 types of accounts consisting of a standard (for the occasional buyer) and 2 premium (with monthly fee) accounts (one for consolidating packages, the other with mail and catalogs included).

With the standard account you can’t chose for when the packages are shipped – they are shipped automatically by the service. With the Premium accounts you can ask them to hold shipping. To buy, just put their address as the secondary ship to or billing account, or get a Personal Shopper to do the buying for you.

If you are someone who surf a lot with Safari on your iOS device, you probably have a lot of bookmarks stored up. If however you find that you need to transfer your bookmarks to a device that Safari is not available on, fret not. We’re going to show you how to transfer those bookmarks over to another web browser, Google Chrome. Not on Chrome yet? Here’s why you should be.

As the Safari browser on your iOS does not allow you to extract bookmarks, you’ll need iCloud and Internet Explorer to do this. Once you can get your bookmarks into your Chrome browser, you can run it on any mobile or desktop device (Apple or non-) and never need to do another transfer again.

Read Also: How To Rename Google Maps Bookmarks On IOS & Android

Export iOS Safari Bookmarks To Your PC

Firstly, you have to ensure that your iCloud is synced. You can do this with your iOS device connected to iTunes by selecting iCloud and then backing up your device.

Alternatively, you can go to your iOS Settings app and tap on iCloud; ensure that the Safari option is turned on.

Then scroll to the bottom and tap on Storage & Backup, on the next screen tap on Back Up Now.

Now, download and install iCloud on your desktop PC.

We’re showing you how it’ll look like on a Windows 8 system once you install, launch and login to iCloud. You can see that the Safari bookmarks on your iOS devices will sync with Internet Explorer on your desktop.

When you click on Apply, another window will open, click on Merge.

Once you’ve done that, Internet Explorer will automatically have all your bookmarks. You can see all of it by clicking the Star icon on IE.

Importing To Google Chrome

Now it’s time to import bookmarks from IE to Google Chrome. Launch Chrome and click on the Settings icon (far right, next to the star). Under ‘Bookmarks’, select Import bookmarks and settings.

Select ‘Microsoft Internet Explorer’ and only Favorites/Bookmarks on the pop up. Click on ‘Import’.

All the bookmarks from Internet Explorer (which came from your iOS device) will now be imported to Google Chrome. If you login on Chrome with a Google account, logging in with that same account on the Google Chrome mobile app will automatically sync your bookmarks for you.

Not happy or satisfied with your phone keyboard? If your phone is an Android operating system phone there are a few alternative keyboards such as SwiftKey and Swype if the stock keyboard is not good enough for you. But still with many keyboard alternative there are still people who are searching for a better one.

The Minuum Keyboard created by Whirlscape is another alternative keyboard which is making its way to the consumer market to make typing much easier, and who knows it might be the only keyboard you will ever need.

The Minuum Keyboard is an alternative keyboard and typing solution for Android operating system phones. Minuum threw away the standard three-row QWERTY keyboard and came up with a single-line keyboard, minimizing the need to re-learn how to use a keyboard.

Recommended Reading: 15 PC Keyboards With Cool Design

Plus, the Minuum keyboard takes very little screen space compared with the normal QWERTY keyboard which takes up about half of the screen space. Keys are stored in layers like what you see above, and the keyboard can be minimized and kept to one side (not just the bottom of the screen) for easy access.

The keyboard is built with a powerful auto-correction system so that even though you typed fast and sloppy you will still get good suggested results from it.

The creators are looking into expanding Minuum Keyboard not only for Android operating system phones and tablets, but to iOS, Google Glass, Microsoft Kinect and more. In the video above for example, they showed how it could be integrated with the Google Glass or MYO armband.

Even more powerful is the idea that it can work on any surface, even on your arm.

You can get an early beta access (2 months earlier) to try Minuum Keyboard before they release it to the public by contributing $5 to the project. For now there will only be an Android version of it, while the iOS version is still in prototype status. The creator will release an SDK around next year so that other developers can intergrate the Minuum Keyboard with other devices/softwares.