I’ve been doing a lot of reading and not a lot of blog-idea-generating lately. So here are some of the best stories I’ve stumbled across during the last couple of days.

ESPN to De-Clutter With New Redesign – “Instead of inundating visitors with its intense coverage of every major sport from the get-go — something that the company now believes can drive away certain fans — ESPN.com is moving in a less-is-more direction, at least on the home page.”

Consumer Reports identifies the Top 5 Smartphones – The Black Jack II came out on top, followed by the T-Mobile Wing, Motorola Q9C, T-Mobile Shadow, and BlackBerry Pearl Flip. The iPhone 3G and T-Mobile G1 tied. Verizon was ranked the best carrier followed by T-Mobile. Sprint was last in most markets. T-Mobile still doesn’t have any 3G phones worth getting excited about.

Last week was Web Design Week at PSDTuts.com – Two of my favorite articles were Five Looks, One Layout and How a Simple Layout Can Be Mixed ‘n’ Matched with Patterns, Photos and Backgrounds. Both cover how to transform the message of a single layout using different colors and styles. This is a great step by step resource for the design impaired like myself.

Speaking of the design impaired…
Smashing Magazine has put together the Ultimate Collection of Custom Photoshop Shapes – If you can’t draw, custom Photoshop shapes become invaluable.