Time for another freebie!

We recently published a post about the emergence of a new trend called Long Shadow Design. As a follow up to that, this freebie contains a long shadow flat icon set as designed by one of our readers Simon Rahm.

Simon, a 16-year old student from Austria, emailed us that he was inspired by the post, and started working on his own flat icon set. Here’s what he presented us and has since agreed to publish as a freebie exclusively for hongkiat.com readers:

More flat design related posts:

• Showcase of Beautiful Flat UI Design
• Ultimate Guide to Flat Website Design
• 20 Beautiful Flat WordPress Themes

Download Icon Set

The icons in this icon set are available for download in PNG and AI. Get it in the sizes you need or go ahead and download the AI file.

Download Long Shadow Flat Icon Set (PNG)

• 12×12
• 16×16
• 24×24
• 32×32
• 48×48
• 64×64
• 128×128
• 256×256
• 512×512

or you can just get the AI file from this link below:

• Download Long Shadow Flat Icon Set (AI)

For more of Simon’s work, check out his mint-condition portfolio here.

In business, there is a right way and a wrong way to do just about everything. This certainly extends to asking for favors or any other kind of help from someone who is busy and less likely to answer every single piece of email they get. Whether this is a client, a potential client, or simply one of your personal heroes whose brain you’d like to pick, there is a way to make a request of them that will get them to happily reply.

Likewise, there’s a way to make requests that will get you ignored forever. We’re going to explore how to do things the right way, so that neither you nor your busy recipient will be wasting any valuable time.

Recommended Reading: How To Work Better With Your Clients

Don’t Ask Bad Questions

Many people say there’s no such thing as a bad question, but I say that’s a lie. If it’s something that is frivolous, impersonal, or that could be answered by a five-second search on Google, it’s a bad question to ask someone who has a limited amount of time.

(Image source: Oberazzi)

One thing I like to do, if I have a pressing, work-related question, is to find a popular book on the subject at the library, check it out, and read it. I take plenty of notes on all the possible answers given in the book, and usually I can find the answer to my question in short order. If not, I can either choose to read one or two more books on the subject until I’m satisfied, or I can send a quick note to someone I know will have the answer, making sure to explain that I’ve already attempted to find it on my own.

People, especially busy people, appreciate initiative (why wouldn’t they, being so busy all the time?), and the fact that you haven’t simply come to them with a dumb, generic question will usually delight them and make them more interested in helping you out.

Be Considerate Of Their Time

Let’s face it: we’re all busy. If you’re a working professional, you are inundated with a deluge of emails, voice mails, texts, social media messages, blog posts, and so on. Not to mention interactions with the real people in your life and all of the tasks, large and small, that have to get done. Often, people are busy simply attempting to multitask their lives, not to mention their work.

(Image source: zev)

Be aware of what’s going on in your intended recipient’s life before you pose your question. If possible, research them a little bit. Do they have a family? Are they currently observing any kind of holiday or taking a vacation? Are they in “work mode,” “family mode,” or “leave-me-alone mode?”

Finding out the current situation of your busy person will give you valuable information about how you should phrase your question, and when you can best expect a positive response.

Work On The Question

If you absolutely can’t avoid asking a question in the middle of a person’s busiest time of day, make sure you word it so that they can devote the least amount of brain power to their answer as possible. Simple, fill in the blank answers, or yes/no questions are the best.

Play with different formats, and if appropriate, consider a shorter delivery method, like a tweet or a Facebook post rather than an email.

Try To Guess Their Answer

By this, I don’t mean attempt to answer the question yourself. There’s no point in asking it in that case. I mean that you should try to guess the way in which they will answer you. Before you send that email, tweet, or Facebook message, think of the likely response you will get. How does the language sound? Is it in simple terms?

Try to answer a similarly worded question yourself first. If it’s too difficult for you to answer quickly, it’s too long or complicated and you need to change it.

Make It Super Easy

Again, make it easy for people to answer your questions. Make them short, easy, and, if you can, entertaining. Busy people are human too, and sometimes a splash of humor is just what they need to pick them up and help them get through their hectic day.

And remember that not every question in your email has to be strictly work related. Engaging people casually, not just professionally, is what builds real relationships that last.

If they have a spouse or children, ask about them. If you know they’re working on an exciting project or are working on their graduate degree, ask how it’s going. No matter how busy they are, everyone will be more likely to remember the person who took the time to ask them a simple, human question about their lives.

Give People A Directive

Calls to action aren’t just for websites and marketing materials. Everyone appreciates knowing what is required of them, and busy people appreciate it more than most. Don’t ask vague, open-ended question without giving directions on what, specifically, you want in terms of a response.

(Image source: Fabrizio Sciami)

Tell them to do something, anything – click here, watch this, reply with your top 3 ideas, et cetera.

It’s not condescending or manipulative to have a call to action in your emails. On the contrary, you alleviate people’s stress and save them the mental energy of figuring out how to reply. As a result, your request is much more likely to get a response, instead of a short trip to the trash bin.

In Conclusion

Remember, if you do everything right and still fail to get a response, you shouldn’t take it personally. Most likely the person was simply too wrapped up in their lives and responsibilities that they couldn’t get to your request. It’s likely nothing personal, and most people will appreciate it if you simply try again, rather than vanish.

If you just disappear, it sends the message that you weren’t really looking to make a meaningful exchange with the person in the first place. Don’t come off like an opportunist – be persistent and respectful, and you may find that busy people will start carving out time to approach you with requests, rather than the other way around.

We do almost everything with our smartphones and tablets now including swap multimedia files with friends. However, as most of us would subsequently be annoyed to find out, different devices require different formats of the same file to be able to play it properly.

Whether it is a video, music or audio clip, or even just image files, to find compatibility you will need a one-size-fits-all super conversion tool.

Adapter is that converter tool to help you convert videos, audio clips and images to popular and less than popular formats. You will never look at a converter tool the same way again.

Recommended Reading: 10 Free Apps To Convert PDF On Smartphones & Tablets

Using Adapter

Get adapter here, it is supported on both Windows and Mac platforms, and it is free. For videos, audio and image conversion, you can do batch conversions instead of converting files one by one.

Check out what conversions Adapter can do for you:

• Video to Video
• Video to Audio
• Video to Image
• Audio to Audio
• Image to Image

Video To Video

When converting videos, Adapter lets you pick the platform you want to convert your videos into. By choosing which platform it will convert the video for, the settings will be optimized to suit the chosen platform.

With this feature, even if you don’t know which formats are the right ones, everything is done for you. You can choose to optimize videos for devices by:

• Apple
• Android
• Sony
• Microsoft
• Nintendo
• Blackberry
• Nokia

Time Cropping

Adapter also has a few handy tools like for example, Time Cropping.

Once you have a video that you want to convert, you can choose to crop the sections of the videos you want and ready them for conversion. This way, you need not waste time converting parts of the video that you don’t want included.

Set the starting point of the video and the ending time and the cropping will occur at the start of the video conversion.

Working Within iTunes

For Apple device owners, Adapter allows you to directly convert and save the video to iTunes, so you can sync the video straight into your devices after the conversion.

Formats

According to settings, the converted video will be converted to the format which is compatible with the platform that you set for. But if you want to convert the files individually to other formats, you can.

Adapter can convert videos from and to:

• MPG
• FLV
• SWF
• AVI
• MP4
• MKV
• GIF

Or you can create custom settings.

Video To Audio

If you need to convert a video to audio, Adapter does that too. The created audio files are saved in MP3, OGG, M4A and M4R format. If those don’t work, you can convert it further in the audio section.

Video To Image

Adapter also has this feature where you can export video frames and save it as an image file. If there is any scene from the video that you want screenshot, just click ‘Export Frame’. The image will be saved in JPEG format.

Audio To Audio

As for audio conversion, you can convert the audio to:

• MP3
• M4A
• AC3
• ACC
• WAV
• OGG
• MKA
• M4R

Similar to the feature for ‘video’, for audio you can cut the video and convert it at the same time. And, the converted audio file can be directly saved into iTunes.

And like other converters, you can adjust the settings for sample rate, bit rate, audio channels and encoder.

Image To Image

Other than converting videos and audio, Adapter converts images too. It can convert images to:

• BMP
• PNG
• GIF
• TIFF
• JPG

There are only minimal and basic settings for images: you can resize the image and adjust the image quality. Most of the time, that’s enough.

Extra: Download Video

Other than converting, Adapter can download videos from sites like YouTube straight from the application. After loading the video, if you press the ‘video’ tab, the downloaded video will be there. With that, you can get it converted straight instead locating the file and putting it into Adapter.

Limitations

As you can see Adapter is a great converter tool that has almost every conversion required figured out, in one application. But as with all tools, there are some minor limitations.

At the time of this writing, conversions aren’t supported for iPhone 5 yet, only up to iPhone 4S. We believe this is easily rectifiable. Another problem has to do with the video download feature – it isn’t actually working. We got the ad downloaded instead of the video plus the built-in browser doesn’t load very smoothly. But we still love Adapter because it is a conversion machine! Would you try it?

Ever need to visualize an idea and go beyond a wireframe for a website or application? Knowing if your interface is easy to understand can be tough. Traditional methods of user testing can be disorganized and frustrating. To speed up the process and make interface ideas come alive, try Solidify.

Solidify brings prototyping to the next level, and goes beyond simple wireframing by bringing to you features like link building, a built-in screen editor, feedback pages and forms for feedback from clients or team members, pick-your-audience options, easily collect demographics, app and website settings and more.

Recommended Reading: Useful Wireframing and Prototyping Tools – Roundup

Getting Started with Solidify

Once you have created your account and signed in, you will be prompted by a "Create new Prototype" screen. Click to create a new prototype, then go into the setup of your new prototype.

You will start by uploading the screens of your website or app into Solidify. Choose whether the prototype and/or screen is for consumption from a desktop or mobile device like an iPad or a Nexus 10.

After choosing the prototype "type" it will fit the prototype screens into a device-like format.

Prototype Links

One of the most important key features to Solidify is the feature to add links to elements of your screens of your prototypes. Any user can easily add a link by clicking and dragging over the element and setting your link options to dictate where you want that link to lead to, and more.

You can easily set who you want to allow to see the links and elements of your screens and pages by choosing your audience type between users and membertypes.

Feedback

When you are done with setting up your prototype screens the next thing you will most likely want to do is get feedback on your prototypes. Feedback is almost as easy to set up.

When setting up feedback for your prototype you will have three options:

• No feedback: Doesn’t allow the reviewer to leave any kind of feedback but still allows functionality
• Page and Overall: This feedback option allows for open feedback for each individual page and overall feedback at the end
• Directive Feedback: Create a series of directives or instructions, then record metrics and get feedback on each directive.

Complete Analytics

Another great and useful feature of Solidify is that it comes with built-in Analytics for your prototype. You can easily view who checked out your prototype, the feedback they left (if any), the average time they spent on each individual page, average time on the entire prototype and my favorite of them all, a click-flow video showing how they used it and what they did.

When viewing your prototype and tester analytics it even shows each individual person that visited and tested your prototype even if they are not registered as your team member or as a member of Solidify itself.

Pricing and Accounts

The account pricing for Solidify is simple and reasonably priced. For the Basic Plan, it is $19/month, for the Plus Plan, it is $49/month. There is also a very limited free account. You can view all their pricing plans here.

Advantages

• Great design and organized step by step instructions to setup the perfect prototype.
• Full with complete analytics including video support.
• Add team members and clients to your account.
• Reasonable account pricing. One account, one bill, multiple services!
• Prototype building made easy.
• Screen builder with multiple features.

Disadvantages

• No account connection to outside storage services like Google Drive, Box and Dropbox.
• Mobile support, small scale.
• No notification bar.

Conclusion

Solidify brings to me and hopefully you, a great and new experience that no other service like provides. It has great features, step by step setup, feedback, tester and visitor analytics full with video, great link builder, privacy settings and a bunch more useful features.