Well, you could spend a lot of money for a program like Photoshop, take hours learning how to create custom banners, fonts and designs, or you could just go to magcover.com.  I’ll let you pick how you would like to spend your Christmas week.

How does it work? With this web site, you can easily create your own unique magazine cover.  All you do is pick your photo, edit your headlines and you are ready to go.  There are over 100 magazine templates to choose from – so the only thing limiting you is your imagination.

You can also get your custom magazine covers printed, framed or put on a shirt.  Might be too late to create one for Christmas this year – but might come in handy for your egotistical friend’s birthday.  To create your own magazine cover, go visit magcover.com.

RSS feeds are extremely handy when it comes to keeping up with the latest and greatest updates from a web site. However, even today, there are still some web sites that are feed-less.  To help you track those web sites out there, we have RSSA, Really Simply Syndicate Anything.

All you do is enter the web site URL into the text box, and hit submit.  You will then be given several options on which content you would like to grab. This web site also comes in handy if you don’t know how to create a feed – but you think you need one for your visitors. 

Check out the many more reasons on why you should create  a feed, and then get started with this online tool today.

You can make two different styles of icons.  One is based around the CS3 look and feel and the other is your basic Web 2.0 style star badge.

To save your simple creation, just use the “Create icon” button, and you are good to go.  This is perfect for any webmaster who has been looking for a quick and easy way to make some stylish graphics for the web site they are working on.

You can pickup the Clockmaker Icon Generator on the Adobe Marketplace web site.

PlayCrafter

This web site is pretty complicated when it comes to the number of things going on, on the screen – however it does have a lot of tools to use to create your own games (or play the games others have created).  You can either start from scratch or go with one of the templates they provide, such as action game, golf game, ninja game, jumping game and more.

Sploder

With Sploder, you are given the option of creating either a platformer game or a shooter game.  Also giving you the options of sharing your creation, I liked Sploder because it was a little more on the simple side.  So, if you want to show this off to a kid – it might be a lot easier for them to wrap their minds around. 

Mockingbird

Mockingbird is the last pick on my list.  They too give you a lot to work with, but instead of simply building one kind of game – they offer several kits (or the ability to build your own kit) with programmable sounds, actions and more.  If you wanted to get somebody into the mindset of programming a game – this would be the one I would have them play with.  Why?  Well, with having to set, for example, a bomb to be able to jump and assign the farting noise when he does so – gives a much better cause and effect result I think anybody from any age group could understand.

Although none of these games will have you programming your own games, each site delivers a unique way of getting a younger child, nephew, or sibling interested in the idea of game development.

• Feedity – Very simple to use, and no fuss web page to RSS conversions.
• Feed43 – For tweakers, this is the tool for you.  Check out the tutorial to see all the customizations you can do.
• Dapper – Easy to use tool for visually creating your own RSS feed from any site out there.
• FeedMarklet – A no-fuss interface.  It won’t scrape content but makes it easy to add your own.
• FeedYes – Automatically generated feeds for any page on the Web.
• Page2RSS – It is a service that helps you monitor web sites that do not publish feeds.
• Ponyfish – Simple web-based tool that allows you to create your own RSS feeds from almost any web page.
• FeedBeater – Just plug the web site URL in, and let the web site take care of the rest of the conversion.
• FeedFire – This site will take virtually any web page and convert it into a fully formed and fully coded RSS feed.

Out of them all, I think FeedMarklet and Feedity probably have the easiest interface to get started with, and Feed43 has the most options to customize and tweak till you get things just the way you want them.  I would suggest giving them all a shot though, and see which one does to the best job for you, depending on the page you are trying to pull RSS information from.

Here is one I just whipped up… 

What, you don’t fear the Scottish Terrier?!  Here are a few more “Make a Hero” online tools.

• UGO.com – Hero Machine
• Marvel – Make Your Own Super Hero
• MakeMeSuper.com

Hopefully, this will come in handy.  Never know when you might need a hero! *cue the music*

Oh Johnny 5, where are you when we need you the most?

You can check out the creator here:  http://www.fyrebug.com/create/

On this page you can select what type of game you wish to create, and then edit each feature as you see fit.  You have shoot ‘em ups, arcade clones, word search, action games, fighting games and more.    Once you are done creating you can play or share you game with others.  Take for example, this game where I am a bouncing Harrison Ford head.

Click here to make your own Fyrebug game

This is one of those web sites that is fun to spend some time with when there is nothing else to do.  Therefor, I put it in my time wasting hall of fame – right next to Friv.

A few tips of “How to make your signature look nice”

Darken + !!!

Smoothing Line & Circles (Wrinkle & Blemish Touch-up)

Cross-Processing

Photo Enchancements Made Simple

Easy, old/dirty paper.

Pencil-Sharp Edges

Convert frames with white bg to be used with CustomFrames

“True Ink Sketch” Tutorial

Whitening the Teeth

Paint.NET continues to be an inspiration for my creativity.  The more tutorials I find, the more things I want to try out myself – or tweak to fit my own needs.

I promise you, once you get started you will see this is just more fun to figure out if you play with it some… change your colors up, and try to get as creative as you can.  Want to see an example of the end result?  I used the first background I made on my Twitter profile.

Snazzy right?  Check it out and make your own at BgPatterns.com.

It is both Mac and Windows friendly too.  Just download, unzip and you’ll be off on your own music creating adventure.  Here is an example video I found via the ‘ol YouTube: