geeky tutorials, tips, guides and reviews
I have collected my fair share of web site designer icons over the years. Since they are free to use, they are good to keep handy, cause you never know when they might be needed to add a little extra something to your own online designs. Here is my own collection of free icons (over 1,000 of them) they I have found over the years.
Free Vaga Icons – this set of 60 semi-transparent .png icons are all 16×16 in size are are ready to be download and used for free!
Free image web hosts are a dime a dozen, and with that said here is another time for your piggy bank of free web hosting options. ImgLot delivers free image hosting with the idea of simplicity in mind. Trying it out, I uploaded a test image here.
Site features include:
The only thing that the web site’s creator is asking in return, is that you tell others about the ImgLot hosting service. After you upload your image, you are given the option of a direct link, a page, forum code for linking and HTML code too. You can also share your image on a number of different social news and networking sites.
Give them a shot at ImgLot.com and follow them on Twitter (@ImgLot) for more news and updates.
Want to share your art, your photos or your digital creations via Twitter? There are a lot of ways to get the task down, however here are the seven best image sharing sites that aim themselves at the tweeter on the street.
Know of another you love to use, but didn’t make it on the list? Leave it in the comments.
You can file this one under cool things I didn’t know I needed. File2.ws is a unique service that promises to convert anything into a web page. Fuffy kitten aside (because they won’t fit in your CD-ROM drive no matter how hard you try) it does a good job at delivering on that promise.
All you need to do is browse for the file you want to convert, and then hit the “start conversion” button. Some of the files it currently supports include:
Once uploaded, every converted file has a unique web address created for it, so you can point others to it and share the document in question. So if you are searching for a free way to convert any file into a web page, give them a shot at File2.ws.
Time to see what the latest tool looks like in the free image hosting world. This time around, I was asked to check out Pict.com. This web site is a free image hosting service that lets you “share your images in a single click”.
How do you use it?
After a short while, your image(s) will be uploaded. To share uploaded image move the mouse over the image and click "Share it" link. To view uploaded image just click on image thumbnail. The JPG, GIF and PNG image file formats are supported. Also at this time there no limit to the number of files you can upload and share.
To help out with ease of use, they even thrown in Firefox add-on. Overall, I would say this web site is well worth checking out if you are in search of a quick and light image hosting tool.
Always in search of the next best thing in free hosting, I happened to run across rapidpik. Now I have only played with it for a little ‘bit, but it could very well be the simplest uploading tool with the most features.
You should know the basic song and dance by now. You choose your picture, you upload it and you can share it. This service is much of the same. Once you upload the image you are given the option to “edit” it. Only editing you can do for now is changing the name.
Once you have done that, you are given the final result as a URL. You can check out my test one one to see an example of the final product in action: http://rapidpik.com/show/4406/jd9gf
Some of the nice features here are that you can share the image using a number of social services, you can view the image in all kinds of different sizes and you also get a flash player (which comes in handy if you upload multiple images at one time). So if your looking for another free image host to add to your favorites – give rapidpik a shot.
It is official, I spend too much time checking Plurk. This is why you should too!
The Rewards of Being a Good Plurker
The "rewards" feature of Plurk is very interesting too. You can get a little star by your name if you achieve a certain goal. Also, certain customizations (such as page styles) are not available to you until your Karma number has reached a certain point.
Go Out and Do Something Creative!
A great inspiration as well is the status messages you can pick from. You have:
freestyle, loves, likes, shares, gives, hates, wants, wishes, has, will, asks, was, feels, thinks, says, and is
Speaking of inspiration, seeking that great conversation starter?
Share Your Photos and Videos with Everybody!
You can share photos too, just make sure that link your posting ends with a .gif, .jpg or .png. Plurk will automatically generate thumbnailed images for you and open them up inside of Plurk when somebody clicks on them. The same is done for YouTube videos too.
What Makes Plurk So Different?
The timeline is what sets Plurk apart from the competitors. This gives you a unique view of all the messages from your friend that may seem a little odd at first, but you quickly catch on. You also have the option to view all the new message, or mark all messages as read.
Maybe it is just me, but Plurkers seem to be a lot more friendly too. They are all looking for replies of their own, so they might be more willing to stop by your personal Plurk page and say, "Hello!". Looking for a friend? Feel free to click here and add me!
When push comes to shove, Plurk really is becoming a favorite stop for me (or several stops depending on the speed of the day) and I wish them the best of luck in the future.
There is another neat web application that has caught my eye this week. Kwout allows you to "quote" a part of a web page by cutting out a piece of it to post to your own web site. You can post to Flickr, Tumblr or your web site with the easy to use embed code when your done.
To check out a demo of the service, try out this link:
http://kwout.com/grab?address=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mitchkeeler.com
Left-click and drag over the area you wish to cut out, or shrink and enlarge the image all together. The end result looks like this:
Give Kwout a shot next time you need to do a quick snapshot from the Web.
As a quick and easy way to grab a screenshot of any web site out there, SnapCasa does a pretty good job.
There are several tools out there that get the job done so the secret to being successful at this it to be quick. SnapCasa passes thus far in that regard.
Here is a little more about the service from those who developed it:
Take web page snapshots and website thumbnails of any site with SnapCasa. Place a simple img tag in your HTML page and our website thumbnail generator will provide a snapshot for you. Increase site traffic and click-through rate by including snapshots on your website.
Where most of these sites fall apart is that they are slower than me hitting the “print screen” button and then cropping the image and resizing myself. I am happy to say that SnapCasa does not fall victim to that issue.
They do an awesome job thus far and hopefully (unlike some others out there) will continue to get better over time. SnapCasa is my new home for getting a faster web site screenshot.
UpPush.com is yet another of many free file hosting services out there that touts itself as being for “everybody”. They support .jpg, .gif, .png, .tiff, and .bmp uploads too so that almost covers all of your basic image formats.
The only regulations mentioned is “no adult content” which is reasonable and they are also the sister site to FileBig.com – a web site reviewed here a few days ago. UpPush is definitely worth checking out if you need a free image hosting resource that is both quick and easy to use.
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Mitch Keeler is nothing more than your average Joe trying to leave his mark on the world though both his professional work and his online projects, articles, podcasts and more.
