After last week’s contentious topic and strong response , Digital Web cannot resist bringing up another article that plays on our geek loyalties. We are happy to welcome a whole bunch of great web professionals— Travis Isaacs , Pete Lambert , Patrick Haney , Jenna Marino , Jared Christensen , Hugh Griffith , Chuck Mallott , Anton Peck and Digital Web columnist/interviewer Nathan Smith . Why this many experts? Because they’re here to debate Photoshop vs Fireworks . Nathan guides both camps through the advantages and disadvantages of each program, and hopefully opens your eyes to rounding out your skills with both.

Secondly, there is just one week left in our surfboard design contest to win a free pass to Web Directions South , coming up this September 23-24, 2008. Instructions can be found at our contest post, and make sure you enter because we only have few so far!

Battle of the Graphics Programs

Oil Continues to Move the Market as Banks Flounder (TradingMarkets.com via Yahoo! Finance)What will the Fed ask the banks in return for their cash infusions? When did it become uncool to love this country? When is the leadership buying in? Gary Kaltbaum weighs in on the market sectors, and the overall state of the economy.

Realty Times - Real Estate News and AdviceReal Estate News And Advice . A comprehensive analysis of the market, with over 10,000 reports from Realtors across North America.

Stock Market News, Stock Quotes, and World Markets - Forbes.comStock Market News - Get the latest Market News and headlines from Forbes.com. . More Equities News From The Wires > 06:06PM. Treasury bond market at a . Market Analysis. Don’t Blame The Buck For Crude’s Climb. Joseph Trevisani, . News by E-mail Get stories by E-Mail on this topic FREE. . More Interest Rate News From The Wires > 03:16PM. UPDATE 1-Iran says OPEC . More Bonds News From The Wires > 08:59PM. Dollar barely changed vs. Canadian .

Market News Main PageCurrent price and sales information of farm commodities. Reports include information on prices, volume, quality, condition, and other market data in specific markets.

If you work on the web, the SXSW Interactive festival last week was pretty hard to avoid (particularly if you’re a Twitter user), and this week there will be the inevitable avalanche of blog posts from attendees — who they met, where they partied, and whether it was better or worse than last year.

But is it, as they say, “all that”? If you didn’t attend, did the fuss and excitement have you turning green with envy — or is SXSW simply a week-long party for A-listers and wannabe blogerati, desperately flickring each other to somehow validate their pitiful obsession with what is essentially simply yet another tech conference?

Comments are open, so let us know — does South By South West actually matter?

Talking Point: Is South By South West overrated?

Although there were a couple of introductory panels yesterday afternoon, Saturday is the start of SXSW proper. And the schedule this year is quite simply insane – there are anything up to fifteen(!) simultaneous presentations, panels, and readings at any one time, so choosing what to see can be a near-impossible decision.

For anyone who is here in Austin wondering what to see, my strategy for getting the most out of the week is that whenever faced with a clash between two or more sessions, I’ll try to go for the presentations by individuals over multi-person panels every time — because if you’re here to learn, you want to have someone talk to you , not to their friends. Panels can be great, but too often the complaint I hear from attendees is that: “…they weren’t saying anything that me and my buddies couldn’t have talked about with just as much authority and passion.”

Which is why I’m currently listening to Naz Hamid give his talk, Design is in the Details , and feeling like I may just be a better designer at the end of the session than when I walked in.

SXSW Interactive, Day Two (am)

Creating The Perfect Portfolio … can it be done? And who is your audience—peers or potential employers? Digital Web’s newest contributor, Collis Ta’eed, freelancer extraordinaire, provides his expert take on portfolio development and self-marketing. Follow Collis’ clear explanations of the basics of portfolio construction, from hooking your audience to helping them through the decision-making process. Anyone with a public online profile should give this one a read, and web professionals ever more so.

(Also, if you’re at Web Directions North this week, come find me and say hi!)

New Issue: The Perfect Portfolio

Aside from the over exaggerated storms brewing in the pacific northwest, the biggest news today is the fact that good colleague and talented designer Cindy Li has joined up with the talented guys at nclud . I have long since been a fan of nclud and the work they do there so I was very happy to see someone as talented as Cindy Li jumping into the mix as Art Director and Senior Consultant. Martin Ringlein, who I had the opportunity to hang out with in my recent trip to DC, has a great blog post that goes into more detail about Cindy joining nclud .

Cindy Li has been nclud’ed

76ers Get Giricek From Jazz for Korver (Washington Post)The Jazz trade disgruntled guard Gordan Giricek to the 76ers for three-point ace Kyle Korver on Saturday, creating salary cap space Philadelphia craves.

Snow in the high country, rain in the Valley on Monday (12 News Phoenix)The last and final wave of energy will push through Arizona early Monday morning bringing significant snowfall to the high country and light rainfall to the Valley. Drier, sunny, and warmer weather will follow by midweek.