Envato Launches ActiveDen – Oh Wait, That’s Not New After All!

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Envato’s Flash marketplace used to be known as FlashDen, but has now changed its name to ActiveDen. Why? Well, Adobe doesn’t want the good folks at Envato to use their trademark, being “Flash” obviously, in this fashion. Collis Ta’eed emailed the members and published a blog post on the matter, talking not so much of what he thought of Adobe’s demand but rather of the future, because obviously they complied and changed the name.

The new name amends the use of the word Flash, and it also opens up the marketplace for the future. In the last year we have added a budding Flex library and we now look forward to listing other interactive products like Adobe Air and maybe even Microsoft Silverlight!

Beware of using trademarks in your own brands and domains is the lesson here.

Surprise! Envato Launches Another Blog!

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Blog network Envato keep on rolling out blogs, and as always they look great and sound promising. The latest one is WorkAwesome, announced like this by Envato head honcho Collis Ta’eed:

The best way to make work feel like not work is to do something you enjoy, and do it damn well. That’s why we’ve created WorkAwesome, a blog for people who want to be awesome at work. After all, if you’re going to spend eight hours a day doing something, you may as well put some heart into it!

Check out WorkAwesome if you want to make your work awesome. Or maybe you’re just curious on Envato’s latest venture. Either way.

Envato Launches Web.AppStorm

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Envato continues to expand, this time it is the AppStorm brand that gets an addition. The new blog is called Web.AppStorm and is all about web apps, obviously, intending to dig deeper says the launch post. Envato head honcho Collis Ta’eed explains:

These days you can do everything from Photoshop-grade image editing to reasonably heavy duty spreadsheet manipulation all from your browser. With mobile devices finally starting to mature, the advent of netbooks and widespread broadband coverage the trend to web applications is only set to continue.

Check out Web.AppStorm if you’re into webapps.

Envato Rolls Out Eight Tuts Site: Phototuts

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There’s no stopping Envato it seems. The latest addition to the tutorial site network is Phototuts (yeah, I’m cutting out the +, looks bad in text after all), focusing on photography. Tuts manage Skellie announced it, and AppStorm editor David Appleyard will edit it. Makes sense to add photography to the network obviously, but one has to wonder where it will end.

ThemeForest GPLs All WordPress Themes

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Envato’s web template marketplace ThemeForest is changing its WordPress theme licenses. As of August 4th, all WordPress themes will be sold in two licenses: GPL and Standard License. The latter only applies to CSS, JavaScripts and images, not the actual WordPress themes files. Anyone not OK with this should remove their items prior to August 4th.

Why do they do this? In their own words:

1: Technically, we have to. :)
2: It’s important to respect the spirit of WordPress. This is the way it was intended.

Most resellers of premium (commercial) WordPress themes have gone this route, if nothing else but to be included on the wordpress.org featured page is my guess. You might want to refer to our guide to the GPL license for more. You can purchase ThemeForest themes here.

Envato Launches Cgtuts+

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cgtuts.gifThe always aggressive Envato blog network is expanding yet again. This time it is all about 3D graphics and CG art, spearheaded by none other than Kaleb Aylsworth. No, I hadn’t heard of him either, but he’s working at Digital Extremes and doing Bioshock 2 multiplayer stuff, which makes him something of a hero in my book.

Skellie, the Tuts manager, describes Cgtuts like this:

We’ll be publishing a combination of step-by-step written tutorials and screencasts, with preview images and videos so you can see the final result before you invest time in it. At Cgtuts+ we’ll be pioneering the concept of multi-day tutorials, allowing us to produce detailed and in-depth end results without over-complicating the process.

They’re starting off with the creation of a dumpster, that oh so popular graphic element in every FPS game on earth.

Envato Relaunches Creattica With FaveUp

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Envato still doesn’t seem to even consider slowing down, and the launch of the Creattica front page, which actually is an old thingy getting new love.

The new site is in fact a redesign and repurposing of our venerable FaveUp gallery that was in need of a bit of love and attention. So we’ve ported all the old content over to give the new site a flying start in its new super suit of Creattica awesomeness!

Check it out, and read the redesign post for more, such as hints on other redesigns due soon, among those FreelanceSwitch.

Envato Launches The Netsetter

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The Envato blog network continues to grow. The most recent addition is a blog called The Netsetter, focusing on launching startups, edited by co-founder Collis Ta’eed himself. This from the about page:

With the barriers to starting your own online business getting lower and lower, there’s a growing class of online entrepeneurs that I sometimes call the net set, kinda like that old term the jet set – which doesn’t make much sense any more now that I think about it. From that term came the name of this blog, because I hope that you dear reader are a fellow netsetter!

Nice name, and an interesting blog so far. It does make me wonder how big the Envato network can actually grow?