Smashing Magazine ~ we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.
Smashing Magazine we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.

Freebies Round-Up: Icons, Buttons and Templates

May 24th, 2007 in Graphics | 311 Comments

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Visual design elements can considerably improve the readability of the page. Using them, you can make it easier for your users to scan the presented content and find the information they’re actually looking for. Icons can draw reader’s attention to the key aspects of the article and visualize the topic of the post. Buttons can be used to motivate users to some particular actions; and templates are supposed to help designers to create user-friendly interface elements right away. And whatever aim you’d like to achieve, free visual design elements are always useful - simply because they can give your text content a better visual appearance.

We’ve selected fresh high quality icons, buttons, vector graphics, templates and layouts. You might know some of them, but hopefully not all of them.

Not all listed freebies can be used for commercial projects, however you can use all of them in your private projects of for you personal purposes. Please read the disclaimers carefully before using icons - they’re changing from time to time.

You can also scan through the icons-related articles we’ve published before:

General Icon Sets

1. Notes Icons

Notes Icons

2. iMac Icons from FreeIconsWeb.com

Umicons

3. Pixel Press Icons (.dmg, Mac only)

Press Icons

4. Vista Icons (for private purposes only, 2000 icons, 256×256, .png).

Screenshot

5. Desktop Icons (for private purposes only, icon sets are available for PC and Mac).

Screenshot

Screenshot

6. Browsing Dock Icons

Icons Pack

7. Iconfactory Freeware Icon Sets

Floatsneak Icons

Quickpix Icons

8. WebSiteIcons.net

Adobe Acrobat Icons

Folders Icons

9. Toolbar Icons by Matt Ball

Screenshot

10. Crystal Clear

Crystal Clear

11. Office Icons

Office Icons

12. Shopping Cart Icon

Screenshot

13. Deziner Folio (32 Aqua-icons, transparent, 128×128, .png). Can be used for both commercial and private projects. You can also request .psd-files via e-mail.

Icon

Icon Sets for Design Artists

14. Vector Graphics templates, available for free download. Punk Collection, Urban Collection, Resources Collection I und Resources Collection II. Formats are .ai and .eps.

Icon

14. Bittbox offers vector graphics for professional design: e.g. 35 Free Abstract Illustrator Brushes.

Icon

15. 25 Free Vector Drips, Drops, and Splatters. Besides: Free Vector Grunge Set. Both are available in Adobe Illustrator format or as .eps-files.

Screenshot

Icon Sets for Bloggers

16. Icon-Set for Bloggers by Sonia Anepeta.

Screenshot

17. Web 2.0 Icons by Utombox.

Web 2.0 Icons

18. 77 Vectorbuttons by Go Squared. For Adobe Illustrator only. Besides: 165 Vector Icons and even more icons for private and commercial use.

Icon

Icon

Icon

19. Web 2.0 Date Icons For Your Blog. Layouts for Adobe Photoshop (.psd) ans as .png-files.

Icon

A mini-tutorial on how to use icons is also available. The result might look like this:

Icon

20. 9 Web 2.0 Badges. Available as .png or .psd.
Icon

If you are looking for even more elegant templates, you might be willing to take a look at Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) package. You’ll need Adobe Illustrator
or Inkscape (Open-Source) to edit the images. What you’ll get out of it, might look like this:
Screenshot

21. Bitbox offers free glossy design layouts, which can be used in Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape. Among them: Vector Badges, Glass Buttons and Bars, Web Page Elements, Header Designs and RSS-Icons.

Screenshot

Bittbox also gives away various Adobe Illustrator-templates for modern web design. Among them Buttons, Badges, RSS-Icons, Ecken and numerous Icons.

Screenshot

22. Microformats Icon

Microformats

23. Microformats Icons

Notes Icons

Not Enough? Even More Icons!

  • Giøn is an icon set designed by Silvestre Herrea (Argentina). The icon set (1.3 Mb) includes icons in 16*16px, 22*22px and 24*24px, in .png and as open source. The collection isn’t complete yet.
  • Mouserunner Icon Set (12 icons). Rounded icons in various sizes in .png and .ico-formats.
    Screenshot
  • Free Tiny Small Mini Icons Bullets: the icons are indeed as tiny as they can possibly be. For different purposes, and free for commercial use.
  • Tango Icon Gallery: hundreds of icons in different sizes.

References to Icon Collections

Delicious button Stumbleupon

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  1. 1.

    Dharmendra Kumar Sinha (May 24th, 2007, 8:16 pm)

    Really simply great

  2. 2.

    Suzy (May 24th, 2007, 8:22 pm)

    Love it!

  3. 3.

    Vincent (May 24th, 2007, 8:29 pm)

    This is always what we need when times get boring :P

  4. 4.

    Zek (May 24th, 2007, 8:45 pm)

    Absolute list !!

    A great, great thank again for all the work you do for us !

  5. 5.

    anty (May 24th, 2007, 8:51 pm)

    Awesome list, as usual!

  6. 6.

    DB4zz (May 24th, 2007, 8:54 pm)

    very usefull colloection especially for desktop and blog’s thx. –

  7. 7.

    Pierro (May 24th, 2007, 9:03 pm)

    your feed is sexy musing in/ for my reader!!
    again and again; good things thereby . Thanks !

  8. 8.

    Ryan (May 24th, 2007, 9:06 pm)

    Nice! Thanks for the icons.

  9. 9.

    Agarrados (May 24th, 2007, 10:03 pm)

    Nice package. Keep up with the excelent work!

  10. 10.

    R K (May 24th, 2007, 10:04 pm)

    Great round-up! Great mag!

  11. 11.

    BillyG (May 24th, 2007, 10:07 pm)

    That BittBox picture spoiled the whole page.

    The many categories cracked me up, icons are icons IMO, but nice listing as usual.

  12. 12.

    Randa Clay (May 24th, 2007, 10:16 pm)

    Nice list! I offer Link [randaclay.com] at randaclay.com.

  13. 13.

    ds (May 24th, 2007, 10:24 pm)

    famfamfam.com is another great source

  14. 14.

    fearlex (May 24th, 2007, 10:25 pm)

    WHOAAAAAAAA !!!!!!!! As always, YOU GUYS ROCKSSSSS

  15. 15.

    Daniel Anderson Tiecher (May 24th, 2007, 10:31 pm)

    What an amazing collection, guys! This huge list will sure be handy in the future.

    Thanks, as usual!

  16. 16.

    Carlton Dickson (May 24th, 2007, 10:36 pm)

    Thanks for these!
    Can’t believe you left off one of the best ones… famfamfam!

    Probably the only one I’ve used, mainly cos they are that good :)

  17. 17.

    Randa Clay (May 24th, 2007, 10:49 pm)

    My link did not work correctly in the comment I left above. It should have said that I offer free round RSS icons at my site. Here is the link.

  18. 18.

    Milos (May 24th, 2007, 11:12 pm)

    Great, great, great! Thank you very much. This is what I needed right now! Cool.

  19. 19.

    webfruits (May 24th, 2007, 11:18 pm)

    Thanks for including my set.

  20. 20.

    Daniel (May 24th, 2007, 11:35 pm)

    Just one word: great!

  21. 21.

    Benedikt (May 24th, 2007, 11:46 pm)

    Just a little hint. You write: 13. Die 32 Aqua-Icons stammen aus dem Blog.. That’s german :)

    But this is a great list. Thank you for this!

  22. 22.

    Mike (May 25th, 2007, 12:00 am)

    Your link to Link [www.bartelme.at] results in a Forbidden message. You may want to update the link.

  23. 23.

    Randal Burgess (May 25th, 2007, 12:03 am)

    Excellent posting, as usual. You guys are great.

  24. 24.

    Casey (May 25th, 2007, 12:11 am)

    Love it. I implemented some of them on my site. Thanks!

  25. 25.

    flashmotus (May 25th, 2007, 12:20 am)

    incredibilmente tutto molto utile, grazie staff

  26. 26.

    Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz (May 25th, 2007, 12:25 am)

    sorry mike: link is Link [www.bartelme.at]

  27. 27.

    Jim Kukral (May 25th, 2007, 12:26 am)

    Awesome list, thank you for doing this.

  28. 28.

    Paul (May 25th, 2007, 12:31 am)

    Great post - very diggworthy!

  29. 29.

    Anders Moen (May 25th, 2007, 12:33 am)

    Is it like I can use these icons and maybe you can make some kinda tutorial on howto make these?

  30. 30.

    POcho (May 25th, 2007, 12:40 am)

    Danke, dis iz gud saff jah

  31. 31.

    Gonad (May 25th, 2007, 12:46 am)

    Unless I’m blind, anyone have an archive of all these?

  32. 32.

    Kate (May 25th, 2007, 12:47 am)

    Whoa…Wow..cool list

  33. 33.

    XHTML (May 25th, 2007, 12:55 am)

    Fantastic!

  34. 34.

    Ed (May 25th, 2007, 1:05 am)

    Awesome! Thanks for putting this together!!

  35. 35.

    David Bradley (May 25th, 2007, 1:08 am)

    Some stunning shiny little icons up there, great stuff. I adapted one of them for my Link [www.sciencebase.com] feel free to download and re-use it on your site, just don’t hotlink it please. Nasty things happen.

    db

  36. 36.

    Luke (May 25th, 2007, 1:12 am)

    I nearly wept with joy when i read this post! :)

    Excellent work once again guys. Posts like this are the reason why i keep coming back! :)

  37. 37.

    Navdeep (May 25th, 2007, 1:18 am)

    Link [www.dezinerfolio.com] by Dezinerfolio ( a part of the 13th Freebie ) is missed out on this list…

  38. 38.

    Echilon (May 25th, 2007, 1:26 am)

    Great list! Thanks a lot.

  39. 39.

    Alex (May 25th, 2007, 1:34 am)

    And finally i get linked on here =P

    Thanks, and awesome list.

  40. 40.

    Daniel Travolto (May 25th, 2007, 1:36 am)

    i would like to use them
    but i am not sure they are free

  41. 41.

    CHAN (May 25th, 2007, 1:40 am)

    I really like this kind of web2.0 icons. thz: smashing :)

  42. 42.

    Tarellel (May 25th, 2007, 2:11 am)

    Very nice post, worth every bit of the effort.
    But you one icon set you forgot to include was Link [www.famfamfam.com], I would say its probably one of the most widely used and well known icon sets available.

  43. 43.

    Itookia team (May 25th, 2007, 2:33 am)

    Beautiful! Both the list and the listed works!
    I have to take my chance and let you know that Link [www.itookia.com]
    also has a totally free XP icon set, both for commercial and personal use.
    Here’s the link to the zip file: Link [www.itookia.com]
    and to screenshot: Link [www.itookia.com]
    40 simple glossy icons. Enjoy!

  44. 44.

    Anders Moen (May 25th, 2007, 4:07 am)

    Same with me, Daniel Travolto

  45. 45.

    criticalerror (May 25th, 2007, 5:22 am)

    Excelent Work…

    5 stars…

    now we want a full article but only with brushes…!!!

    Keep GoinG..

  46. 46.

    Amaiko (May 25th, 2007, 6:09 am)

    Wow This Is So Cool
    This Post Should Titled Web Grfx & Icons Reference

  47. 47.

    Dirk van den Berg (May 25th, 2007, 6:39 am)

    This is a great share, thanks very much! Very rare to see so much style on one page.

  48. 48.

    sidnei dasilva (May 25th, 2007, 7:31 am)

    very sweet! Thank you!

    -Sidnei

  49. 49.

    Leon Perkin (May 25th, 2007, 7:43 am)

    incredible work, thanks so much.. saves me many hours of surfing.

  50. 50.

    faizan (May 25th, 2007, 9:45 am)

    Tq Bro for this nice article.btw this is a nice Compilation of lOgo :)

  51. 51.

    Shankar Ganesh (May 25th, 2007, 12:38 pm)

    You guys at Smashing Magazine ROCK! Kudos to you!

  52. 52.

    Nikunj (May 25th, 2007, 12:51 pm)

    It’s cool

  53. 53.

    G. Stoner (May 25th, 2007, 2:00 pm)

    It looks like Iconaholic has ripped off Toolbox’s Link [www.download.com]

  54. 54.

    Ines (May 25th, 2007, 3:40 pm)

    Amazing list … as usual! Thank you!

  55. 55.

    syahid ali (May 25th, 2007, 5:04 pm)

    cool + sweet icons. love it.

  56. 56.

    dreig (May 25th, 2007, 5:25 pm)

    A great site. I´ve added you to my links section Link [www.dreig.eu]
    Gracias por tu sitio, te he añadido a mi lista de enlaces. Muy bueno, realmente.
    Un abrazo desde España.

  57. 57.

    Ciro Cg-blog (May 25th, 2007, 7:00 pm)

    Oh my God.. it’s simply fantastic!!! Thank you very much I’ll save it everywhere! lol

  58. 58.

    gr8pixel (May 25th, 2007, 8:39 pm)

    Supah’ !!!

  59. 59.

    Kai Spriestersbach (May 25th, 2007, 8:45 pm)

    Boah Jungs ihr seid einfach die ALLER GEILSTEN!!!

    Ich lese eigentlich nur noch euren Blog - one Blog Server all!!! Einfach geil

  60. 60.

    alex (May 25th, 2007, 9:04 pm)

    Free icons are available from the Tango project too:
    Link [tango.freedesktop.org]

  61. 61.

    Chito (May 25th, 2007, 9:58 pm)

    well, thanks again for compiling wonderful (and free) things from the tubes. it really saves me time. :D

  62. 62.

    Mahdi (May 25th, 2007, 10:52 pm)

    really Smashing magazine.

  63. 63.

    Blue Buffalo (May 26th, 2007, 3:55 am)

    Awesome List! You guys must be constantly scanning for the best stuff out there. Thanks for all your hard work!

  64. 64.

    steve (May 26th, 2007, 5:12 am)

    This is my first viewing of this page,and i think it’s awesome! I’ve added it to my favorite’s;Thank’s guy’s!Keep up the hard work.

    sincrerly yours,
    steve klein

  65. 65.

    sachinkraj (May 26th, 2007, 4:53 pm)

    Awesome……..keep smashing…..

  66. 66.

    Mostafa Darvishzadeh (May 26th, 2007, 5:40 pm)

    Nice :((
    most of web designers search for this!
    THAAANKS!

  67. 67.

    Edu (May 26th, 2007, 6:42 pm)

    Thank you very much !!!!!!!!!!!

  68. 68.

    Alexandre PEreira (May 26th, 2007, 10:14 pm)

    Great icons!!! Thanks!!!

  69. 69.

    Carlos Diaz (May 27th, 2007, 7:49 pm)

    great site, great free stuff, for sure one site to come and see again and again..!

  70. 70.

    jyoseph (May 28th, 2007, 12:13 pm)

    EXCELLENT LIST! Definitely should throw famfamfam.com some sweet love, dude can chop up some serious icony goodness.

    Good looking out on this post though, very impressive round-up.

  71. 71.

    Gaurav Malhotra (May 28th, 2007, 12:28 pm)

    woooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

  72. 72.

    Agust Gudbjornsson (May 28th, 2007, 5:12 pm)

    Brilliant information collection!

  73. 73.

    Mac (May 28th, 2007, 9:25 pm)

    very cool list !!

  74. 74.

    Marcelo Macedo (May 29th, 2007, 8:56 pm)

    Amazing reference, I’m impress.

    thanks a lot

  75. 75.

    Ignacio (May 30th, 2007, 8:19 am)

    AWESOME! excelent article, thank you very much, I really like it

  76. 76.

    Christopher Chan (May 30th, 2007, 2:12 pm)

    This is a sensational collection ! Thanks !

  77. 77.

    Ashish Negi (June 2nd, 2007, 5:30 am)

    great work man

  78. 78.

    decybel (June 2nd, 2007, 2:33 pm)

    love it :)

  79. 79.

    Jörg (June 3rd, 2007, 10:52 pm)

    Thank you very much for this collection!

  80. 80.

    Nikolai (June 4th, 2007, 7:46 am)

    Super! Thanks.

  81. 81.

    eRay (June 5th, 2007, 1:14 am)

    Ohh..Awesome..Smashing is the best. ;)

  82. 82.

    Drew Stauffer (June 5th, 2007, 2:01 am)

    Thank you so much for this collection. This is great!!!

  83. 83.

    raj (June 6th, 2007, 1:05 pm)

    Thanks for the wonderful works here!..Smashing ROCKS!!

  84. 84.

    cssyeah (June 7th, 2007, 11:42 am)

    Wow!
    Cool, Thank you very much.

  85. 85.

    Malcolm (June 11th, 2007, 9:22 pm)

    Terrific Collection :D

  86. 86.

    hyeonjoo (June 12th, 2007, 3:07 pm)

    great.

  87. 87.

    Adrian (June 14th, 2007, 11:00 pm)

    Hey,

    thank you very much, im a designer and always looking to save time and give my clients (or my own sites) the best look, thoose links are really helping me out.

    thanks again,
    Adrian

  88. 88.

    Kate (June 19th, 2007, 2:03 am)

    Wow! Your freebie icons are absolutely beautiful. So awesome that I can’t believe they’re really free and I can really use them. Thank you!

  89. 89.

    David Bradley (June 22nd, 2007, 2:40 pm)

    It’s all very well using those great reflective RSS icons, but a lot of web users still don’t know what that orange box represents. I adapted one of them by adding the letters RSS to the front and made that part of the reflection on my Link [www.sciencebase.com]. Now, you might say, a lot of web users won’t know what RSS stands for, but at least there’s chance that the curious will look it up and discover the wonders of newsfeeds. Especially if you add a “what’s RSS?” link below the graphic.

    db

  90. 90.

    Micox (July 20th, 2007, 3:50 am)

    The best icon colection of the world.

  91. 91.

    Code (July 25th, 2007, 4:38 pm)

    Bravo !!!
    The rest of the icon site specially the paid ones should shut themselves off now !

  92. 92.

    Klaus Kjeldsen (July 28th, 2007, 2:27 am)

    Recently I began making my own list of Link [klauskjeldsen.dk], but afterward I found this list. Great Icons!

  93. 93.

    Ganesh Ram (August 10th, 2007, 9:02 pm)

    Wow I really Like it! Very Great Work..
    Thanks for the Team

  94. 94.

    Joy (August 17th, 2007, 4:41 pm)

    everything is made simple. No more hardwork

  95. 95.

    bala murali krishna (September 3rd, 2007, 5:07 pm)

    This is Really amazing site tks smashy

  96. 96.

    Tay (September 9th, 2007, 9:35 am)

    Wow, what a great collection! Thanks for sharing. :)

  97. 97.

    Anna (September 9th, 2007, 10:16 am)

    Very great icons indeed.. Very helpful.. Good stuff you got here… Thanks

  98. 98.

    Pasquale (October 3rd, 2007, 4:44 am)

    Wow.
    No word to say! Simply wonderful……

  99. 99.

    FF (October 15th, 2007, 6:58 pm)

    You rock! You rock! You rock! Thanks.

  100. 100.

    Mr.Kowalsky (November 10th, 2007, 7:21 pm)

    Hey guys, I wish I’ve seen this list much earlier, I’ve spend a great deal of time searching for free icons for one of my projects, and now after all my work is done I see this list…:( But never mind, you never know when you’re going to need some icons, so thanks for the list guys!!!
    Oh, and I must say you guys left out a website that helped me the most when working on my project, here’s the link: Link [www.dryicons.com] This is a completely free icons website. Their icons are licensed with CC and they are completely free. As a matter of fact, I think all icon set there are free…
    Thanks again for the list, and cheers!

  101. 101.

    Albert (November 29th, 2007, 7:11 pm)

    You’ve done a GREAT job !!! It’s simply amazing ! Thank’s a lot !

  102. 102.

    chris (November 30th, 2007, 5:08 am)

    really brilliant stuff. I think the one thing missing here is clear distincion- division the icons for two groups: free for commercial and personal use. Researching and downloading would be faster and easier. Fantastic research youve done indeed. Thank you.

  103. 103.

    kalyan (December 19th, 2007, 1:26 pm)

    awesome

  104. 104.

    deviantz (January 9th, 2008, 1:44 am)

    very nice!!! keep it up!

  105. 105.

    Keith (January 9th, 2008, 6:17 am)

    Thank you for this great list…awesome…

  106. 106.

    Eric (January 12th, 2008, 11:18 pm)

    I’m a little late to the party, but this is an incredible list of amazing resources–as always. You guys have quickly become one of my favorite blogs.

  107. 107.

    charly11 (January 17th, 2008, 12:01 pm)

    THAK YOU i love you :-* :-*

  108. 108.

    Natasha (January 22nd, 2008, 9:32 am)

    Awesome collection. Thank you!

  109. 109.

    Mdonovin (January 28th, 2008, 7:31 pm)

    it always amazes me how generous people can be…thanks for the great work

    md

  110. 110.

    Nakış işleme (February 13th, 2008, 9:01 am)

    Thanks

  111. 111.

    Ken Saunders (February 18th, 2008, 1:25 am)

    Thanks for listing the icons from MouseRunner.com. I’m flattered to be amongst such an awesome collection. That particular set is called ColorCons and there are actually 49 different icons in ColorCons and in 4 different colors.

  112. 112.

    Linga Reddy (February 27th, 2008, 11:43 pm)

    Absolutly awsome very good collection

  113. 113.

    Linga Reddy (February 27th, 2008, 11:43 pm)

    Absolutly awesome very good collection

  114. 114.

    hb (March 7th, 2008, 1:48 am)

    Amazing sets… a really great collection!

  115. 115.

    John (March 7th, 2008, 5:52 am)

    Thanks very much for this awesome compilation. :-)

  116. 116.

    Prabhakaran.G (March 21st, 2008, 3:49 am)

    Download Pixel Icons in 5 Variant Colors for free Link [www.thelfs.com]
    If you face any problem in downloading shoot an message in the contact page.
    Thanks,
    Have a nice day!
    Prabhakaran.G

  117. 117.

    Dhara M Ali (April 8th, 2008, 4:25 am)

    amazing, this site is reduce our work…..!!!!!!!

    great work buddy,

  118. 118.

    rebelian (April 8th, 2008, 7:16 pm)

    nice to see

  119. 119.

    Scott (April 12th, 2008, 3:37 pm)

    Good stuff!

  120. 120.

    Mike (April 15th, 2008, 5:33 am)

    I usually get all my icons from iconzworld.com but this thread has quite a bit of good ones too!

  121. 121.

    Marcello (April 16th, 2008, 11:32 pm)

    Great work!

  122. 122.

    Roda Golf and Beach Club (May 8th, 2008, 1:51 am)

    From all of us here at Link [] thanks very much for this valuable resource :)

  123. 123.

    s4motny (May 8th, 2008, 12:10 pm)

    very good links thanks a lot for them

  124. 124.

    shiv (June 26th, 2008, 1:59 am)

    great resourcess. my search ends here. thanks

  125. 125.

    Rizwan (August 21st, 2008, 12:36 am)

    Download web 2.0 style Media Player Vector Based Icons Free!. Link [www.rizwanashraf.com]

  126. 126.

    YouLee (August 27th, 2008, 6:46 am)

    Nice collection :) Thanks for sharing! Thought it would be useful to continue this collection with non-standard Link [www.templates.com] in the form of bottles.

  127. 127.

    lighting (September 26th, 2008, 2:02 am)

    There is also an excellection icon search engine at VeryIcon.com, it has the most powerful search function and the largest icon database that contents 20000+ icons.

  128. 128.

    apnaysms.com (October 11th, 2008, 9:03 am)

    awesome

  129. 129.

    Abe On Tech (October 14th, 2008, 3:52 am)

    Great post. Thanks for sharing!

    I have been using a few of the buttons on my tech blog ;)

  130. 130.

    revathi (October 14th, 2008, 12:12 pm)

    Thanks a lot

  131. 131.

    ThomasP (October 21st, 2008, 5:30 am)

    Great list, thx. I have a few icons already in use. I’ll link this post on my blog, totally worth it!

  132. 132.

    tweakwindows (November 5th, 2008, 8:28 am)

    I will use these icons to revamp my blog

  133. 133.

    robert (November 14th, 2008, 9:20 pm)

    i think this article is quite keen.

  134. 134.

    carlos mora (November 18th, 2008, 10:10 am)

    i love very much i thank you very very much

  135. 135.

    Sukanta Roy (November 21st, 2008, 10:38 pm)

    very Nice icons i love it

  136. 136.

    Keturah (December 20th, 2008, 1:55 pm)

    Oh boy dis is lovely

  137. 137.

    Rahul (December 30th, 2008, 5:23 am)

    Amazing list … as usual! Thank you!