Wiiflow is a great USB loader modeled after the iTunes cover flow. In my opinion, it looks even better than the iTunes cover flow, thanks to the 3D game boxes. Here, take a look:

The best news is: if you’re running USB Loader GX already you won’t have to install any extra cIOSs or anything like that! All you need to do is put the files onto your sd card like you would with any other homebrew app.

Download the full version from here. At the time of writing, the archive from the official page is broken, so go to the Mediafire mirror.

Here’s how to install it:

1. Open the archive, and enter the apps folder. Extract the ‘WiiFlow_249′ folder into the ‘apps’ folder on your SD card.
2. Go back to the root of the archive. Extract the ‘WiifFlow and ‘WAD’ folders to the root of your SD card.
3. Plug the SD card into your Wii and you’re ready to go!

It won’t look real good until you download the covers for your games, you can do that from the options if your Wii is connected to the internet.  It takes a while, be patient with it. You can mess around with just about every aspect of the coverflow in the settings too, but I would recommend just leaving it how it is unless you’re really confident.

So far you can only run WiiFlow from within the Homebrew Channel. Here, I’ll show you how to install a forwarder channel so you can access it straight from thr Wii Menu!

Optional: Install a forwarder channel:

1. Go to your Homebrew Channel and open WAD Manager. If you don’t already have Wad Manager you can get it from here.
2. Scroll down to the forwarder WAD of your choice. A good one to start with is “Wiiflow Starnight Channel”. Use the IOS 249 version.
3. Press ‘install’. When it’s done, turn your Wii off and back on. The WiiFlow channel should be on the Wii Menu!

And there you have it! A great alternative to USB Loader GX.

BTW, I’m not liable for any damage this may do to your Wii Console. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!!!

The Complete Softmod Guide is a great site with everything you need to know about your Wii and hacking it. Be sure to take a look!

Take a look at the Custom Shapes menu. While many of them look quite cheap

in black and white, it’s a simple matter to turn them into awesomely modern, professional buttons.

First off, create a new document with the measurements below. You can click any of the pictures to see a close-up.

Next, you obviously open the custom shape tool. For those of you who are new to the Photoshop scene, you will have to click and hold your mouse on the rectangle tool, and a pop-up menu will appear. You can then open the shape selector. I chose a rather simple forward/play button, which, as you will see, can be spiced up immensely. After that, while holding shift to constrain proportions, draw the shape.

Now it’s time to split our image into multiple layers, so we can handle each aspect differently. You can separate the arrow from the circle, but make sure you do nothing else. Pressing Ctrl+Shift+J (Cmd+Shift+J for mac users) extracts a selected area to a new layer, so go ahead and use the Magic wand tool to select, and then the key combination to extract. But make sure you rasterize the layer first by right clicking on the layer and selecting Rasterize, or else Photoshop won’t let you do anything to it.

Now we’ll start with the circle layer. Choose two nice red colours, and select them as your foreground and background colours. I used # 850404 and # cb0000.  Choose the inside of your circle area with the magic wand tool. Select the gradient tool, and fill the centre with a smooth gradient.

After that, we can move on to the arrow. Repeat the same steps as before, select the area, and apply a smooth gradient, only this time use a black-to-grey one. I chose #00000 and # 272626. Make sure you apply it diagonally.

Time to move on to the black circle. Yet again, we will do exactly the same thing as the last step, with the same gradient as well, except for the direction of the gradient, which should still be diagonal, only going the other way.

Now we have an insanely awesome, yet simple button that gives  a quality, professional look. Great for flash.

You can download the source files, JPG and PSD, from the downloads widget in the sidebar.

Running out of ideas? Here’s a
good one; a business card with a
cautioning pattern. It’s
relatively easy; give
it a try. Here’s the final result:

Things you’ll need:

Infinity Brush Set; get it from here

Grunge texture/Coffee Stains; get it from here

Optionally, you can merge the texture with any other grunge texture; I used this one.

Step 1

First of all, you obviously open up Photoshop and start a new document.

Paste in one, or both, of your grunge textures and create a new layer with a black background.

Step 2

Move the black layer to the top, and reduce it’s opacity to around 87%.

Step 3

Select a nice golden-yellow, like #ffaf04, use the brush from the Infinity Brush set across the screen. It doesn’t have to be in place, as long as it’s big. Make sure you do this on a new layer above the rest.

Then, as it’s on a new layer, rotate it so it’s horizontal, by pressing Ctrl + T to turn on Free Transform. After that, move it down to the bottom of the screen.

Some of the pattern may be missing in the corner, so we can fix it by duplicating the layer, (right-click -> duplicate layer) and moving it to the left or right. Remember to merge the pattern after fixing the missing spots.

Step 4

Add your text.

Step 5

Now we add the grunge effect to the cautious pattern. Duplicate the grunge layer (right click -> duplicate layer) and move it to the top. Then change the layer mode to Overlay.

And there you have it!

Get the JPEG here.

Get the PSD here.

Alternatively, you can download the files from the downloads widget in the sidebar.

As you crawl the web, you’ll often find many useful websites,
as well as many cheap scams. In this post we’ve put together
some of the best sites for you to browse for your design needs.

Tutorial9 is a great place to start. Packed with tutorials(obviously) from beginner to advanced,

along with many great FREE resources for designers. Their “Creative Bookmarks of the Month”

feature is quite great, and links to the best tutorials around the web every month.

Go ahead and check it out at : www.tutorial9.net

Another great site to check out is Psdtuts.com. In this site you’ll mostly find

advanced tutorials, among other things. You can subscribe to this website for a

small fee,  which enables you to download the tutorials and source file. This is just one site among many of the

Tuts+ plus network, on which you’ll find tutorials for anything adobe and more.

Check it out: www.psdtuts.com

Have fun looking around these sites, there’ll soon be more up for you to explore!!!