At a time when one can get seriously depressed thinking of freedom of speech and blog censorship, it is really uplifting to find sites that offer a beacon of hope to bloggers. Here I will write about two sites that believe blogs and bloggers can make a difference. Continue reading
The Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, edited by Philip P. Wiener, was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, in 1973-74. The Dictionary of the History of Ideas also appeared in Chinese- and Japanese-language editions.However, the DHI has been out of print for many years. Aware of the new potential offered by electronic access to texts, the Directors and Board of Editors of the Journal of the History of Ideas authorized a grant to support digitization of the DHI.
(excerpt from the site.)
http://etext.virginia.edu/DicHist/dict.html
So what is it all about? And why do we need it? Continue reading
The MCS (pronounced ‘mix’) site is an award-winning portal or ‘meta-index’ to internet-based resources useful in the academic study of media and communication. It was originally established by Daniel Chandler in Spring 1995 and is hosted by the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. It is British-based and is intended to give priority to issues of interest to both British scholars in the field and to others who are interested in media in the UK.
(excerpt from the site)
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/
Although it focuses on media in the UK, it is a great resource for articles dealing on a number of subjects in general. The directory includes dicussions on:
| Active Interpretation | Advertising | |
| Gender, Ethnicity | General Issues | |
| IT & Telecoms | Media Education | |
| News Media | Pop Music/Youth | |
| TV & Radio | Visual Image |
(The table is copied from the site)
Each of the main headings branch out into multiple sub-headings, leading into a collection of thought-provoking discourses.
The sheer number of material available can be quite overwhelming. And to avoid overloading yourself, try to search for a keyword either the directory or the documents. It also helps to sort the articles by authors, dates, hits or titles.
A pointer for absolute beginners
If you are attempting this line of study for the first time, and on your own, prime yourself first with Semiotics for beginners by Daniel Chandler. This article explains what semiotics is – a study of signs, the history of semiotics and how semiotics can be used to analyse any media.
This line of study requires quite a bit of patience and determination, but nevertheless, it is an indispensable intellectual pursuit for those who want to understand media better. And this website is truly a wonderful platform for the thinking mind.
The internet is simply teeming with free stuff that you can put in your blog. But it’s not everyday that you find an adoption center that allows you to adopt a virtual pet in your blog!
So far, I know of only one site that will satisfy the pet-lover in you. You can not only adopt a pet, but also click to play with it! Continue reading
When you are going to die? How worldly are you? What kind of women’s shoe are you? Do you know that there are several sites that offer quizzes – ranging from pretty useful to sheer crap (but fun nonetheless, I suppose!). And here is a list of sites that not only tell you what you need to know, but also give you a code (most work on WordPress, by the way) which you can paste in your blog to show the test result to your readers! Continue reading
Images can jazz up your blogpost. And for some bloggers, images and not words, are primary concerns.
However, images can take a long time to load. Hence the need to optimize them, or reduce the file size, so that they don’t take ages to load.
Here are some sites where you can acheive your goal. Continue reading
This post is religiously regularly updated. So bookmark this post to access it later or miss out on new cool goodies!
If you want to add animated gifs in your blog, do NOT resize the gif using height and width attribute of image tags. Because doing so will “break” the image. Resize before uploading, not after.
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This is a pretty simple animation tool. You can upload images either from your computer or from the web and then set the speed for individual frames. You can also resize the animated image or set how many times it will loop.
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You don’t have to register. All you have to do is have some images and they will do it for you!
Also you can turn a video clip into an animated gif or split an animated gif!
This looks a bit clumsy – it took me a while to figure out where the ‘Next’ button is, after I uploaded the images. But let’s take a chance. Remember ugly duckling?
You can turn your Flickr pictures into animated gifs. Man, that’s why the name rang a bell!
Of course you can upload stuff from your computer.
You are allowed to upload as many as ten images for turning it into an animated gif. You can set the pace to normal, fast or slow. You can save your animation, tag it and email to friends!
Not bad!
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Make A Gif is a simple animation tool. You can upload up to 12 images, choose looping, set the animation speed (slow, medium, fast) decide the frame length (in milliseconds) and resize the animation (custom sizes possible).
You can use their photo booth to take your photos using your webcam and make an animated gif!
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Create gif animation online
Flitpics is yet another free online service where you can upload images from your computer or from Flickr and make animated gifs. You can use maximum 10 images for an animation and also choose the speed.
Superscribe your pictures instantly – to enhance
your emails,web sites and communications.
Upload images with you and your friends,cartoons, pets, cars, etc. – from your computer or import it from Flickr and create really personalized animated avatar
or add smart and funny inscription to your favorite flashy image. Post it anywhere you want: MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Reddit,Del.icio.us, Friendster, LiveJournal, Bebo, blogs and forums.
It is fast and easy-to-use tool.No need for Flash and registration.
Share it with the whole world in our Galleries.
From Flitpics
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GIF animations generator gifup.com
GIFUP.com is your personal GIF animation and avatar generator. Simply capture photo with your webcam or upload images from your computer or get them from Flickr or any web site and let GIFUP do all the magic. You get your animated avatar, banner or GIF slideshow in a sec! You may then save it to your computer, share it with your friends or post it on Myspace, Hi5, Friendster, Blogs, Forums, etc.
Try it now, it’s FREE!
From Gifup
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Gifsoup
You can turn Youtube videos into animated gifs in this site!
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http://www.your3dsource.com/animate-my-gifs.html
You can upload upto five images and get them turned into animated gifs! In additions, you can choose transition effects like clock, page peel, diamond, star wipe, iris and bar slide! 
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This site is actually quite complex. But not to worry, they have a Help section. Among other things, you can create Animated Gif’s here. You can upload an image from your computer or insert an image url. You can even add special effects to your animated gif!
I assume that you will manage to get by. However, if you need my help, don’t hesitate to use the comment box. if there are enough requestes, I will do a how-to post about creating Animated Gif’s using thus site, just for you all of my wonderful readers!
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http://www.gifworks.com/image_editor.html
If you already have a ready animated gif, then use this site to add a special effect to your animation. They have an impressive list of special effects I tell you! Moreover, if you press “edit”, you can conduct a number of operations; such as write text on the animation, resize/crop/rotate the animation and even add/eliminate tansparency! Furthermore by clicking “optimize” you can reduce the colors, choose websafe colours and also split the animation into frames!
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This site has more than the ability to create Animated Gifs. But in this post we’ll focus on its animation powers. You can upload nine images. Each image is called a frame. You can click individual images to set the speed and style of transition into the next frame!
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This site is fairly simple in its operation. You upload multiple images from your computer or import them from Picassa or Flickr and then you have the ability to choose the size of your animated gif. You can also set the speed of the animation. However, there is no effect for use.
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Lunapic is an awesome site for creating animated gifs!
You can upload images from your computer or you can choose an online image.
Check out the top tab Animation and choose an effect – if your jaw hasn’t dropped already, that is!
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Water effect
A simple site where you can upload an image from your pc and add animated water effect to it.
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Picture2life
Yet another site where you can create animated gifs!
They even have a firefox extension, which lets you create animated gifs from an online image!
We allow you to create the perfect animation using your favorite pictures. Using our simple and easy-to-use animation tool, you can set the delay for each picture, specify how many times the animation should loop, add effects to each picture in the animation, and so much more!
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You might like to check graphics-tools out – it lists miscelleneous image-related links.
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Flipbook is awesome!
You can actually draw multiple frames and animate the frames! As a guest you can make an animation out of 100 frames (max). Oh, wow!
Here is a sample animated gif. It kind of reminds me of DX Ball and Paranoid!
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Screedbot
This page makes moving text as an animated gif.
Welcome to screedbot, the animated scrolling typewriter text generator. Write some text and click Create Screed to make your own animated text.
From the site
You can choose image size, font size, font colour and background colour.
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Minifesto
Much like Screedbot, but text appears in multiple lines, instead of a single line – good if you have a lot to say!
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Marquee text
If you want marquee text codes or marquee text for myspace you’ve come to the right place. No need to use Dreamweaver or Flash to get text to marquee. It’s super easy and compatible to use our marquee text images on your forums or myspace profiles. Get your marquee text in any color: black, blue, red, pink, yellow, etc. Get your marquee tag text and change the color and you’ll have the coolest and awesome looking marquee text in no time. Set the scrolling text or speed or font and paste it on your website or profile without any problems. Very easy!
From the site
You can of course use the generated image anywhere you can upload images, not just Myspace!
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The Ninja Text Generator
Got something to say? Why not let an animated Ninja write it for you?
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The Wizard Text Generator
The same as the previous one, but instead of a Ninja a wizard writes the text!
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wobshite
Just write something and the letters will dance!
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Gifmashup
If you want to combine animated gifs online then gifmashup is definitely for you!
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Psst, I am sure there are more similar sites with even more goodies! If you find one, don’t forget to tip me!
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Further readings
If you enjoyed this post, then you might like the following posts as well!
1. Sites that allow you to write text on images and create fun images
It’s a splendid collection of sites where you can write on ready-made images and sometimes on images you upload!
2. Warp/transform yourself or anyone at Magixl
Great fun! Distort anyone in anyway you desire!
3. Optimize images online and offline
If you want to upload images in a blog/site/email etc, you need to optimize it, which helps the image to be uploaded quickly. Here are links to sites and softwares that help you get it done for free!
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Print what you like 
Save as pdf 
Cut and reblog
delicious 
Share on Facebook 
Twit this 
email this 
Add this anywhere
This is one of the posts where I will post tips and tricks for bloggers on an as-I-find-it basis. This will include misc. tips and hopefully when I have a healthy collection I will make ‘proper’ posts dealing with an appropriate section. Continue reading
If you need to resize your images just before uploading in your email/blog/website, try this simple web solution!
Resizing images couldn’t be more convenient, user-friendly and intuitive than at Mypictr! Upload an image from your computer and you are all set to go! Choose a preformatted size needed for social websites/blogs etc – basically anywhere that you need an avatar or profile picture. Your site is not listed? No problem! Just specify the image dimensions! Ok, that won’t automatically resize the image according to the dimensions you specify, but rather create a frame of that specific width and height. Now, this is rather nifty. You can zoom in and out to make the picture “fit into the frame”! Or you can even move the frame around to select a portion of the image, if you’d rather crop the picture!
Just because they say they make your profile picture, doesn’t mean that you cannot resize a picture for some other use, right?
I firmly believe that if you only need to resize (and crop) images online, then you need not go anywhere else. However the other sites listed below offer some added extras besides resizing images, such as image optimization, basic filters, brightness/contrast adjustment, adding image border etc. Wanna try some out?
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http://resizepic.com/
When it comes to resizing an image, no tool can get any simpler this. After uploading an image, you have to specify the image height and width and your image will be resized accordingly.
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resizepictures
You can only upload an offline image. Be sure to specify if you want to share the image with the world before you upload it. You will be given the option to resize the image according to 5 fixed sizes. If you specify the image as public, then you will be provided instantly with the image code to put in your blog post! You can also get the direct url of the image.
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http://quickthumbnail.com/
Upload images from your browser or paste an image url. You can resize an image according to percentage. You can resize by 6 fixed sizes or 13 standard sizes. And last but not the least, you can even apply basic filters like Greyscale, Sepia, Negative, Emboss, Blur, Sketch and Edge.
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pixer
Upload an image from your computer. Then resize, crop, rotate, flip, apply effects, adjust brightness and contrast, change the saturation or apply some colour effects (greyscale, sepia, incert, red, green, blue).
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http://www.webresizer.com/resizer/
You can resize the image by specifying either the image width or image height pixel – but not according to percentage.
This site has some added extras like ability to crop an image, rotate it, adjust contrast/brightness/colour saturation and also add border/pad/edge around the image. Most importantly, you can reduce image quality to reduce file size.
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http://onlinephotoresizer.com/
This is fairly basic. After uploading an image you can resize according to percentage or pixel, set the quality of jpeg by percentage, rotate the image and create a thumbnail of a size you specify. You can batch upload and download resized images in a Zip file.
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http://www.picresize.com/
You can resize your image according to percent or pixel, you can crop it and also apply some basic special effects. not bad at all!
So what’s the catch? they say it is STILL free. hmm, for how long, I wonder!
Also note that they don’t save or host your images. But you can always open an account at photobucket or flickr (in case you don’t have one already) for that purpose!
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http://www.resizr.com/
You can upload an image either from your computer or paste the image url.
Then you are taken to another page where you can see the image width and image height of the uploaded image. You can resize the image simply by dragging a slider and see the information of image width and height change.
You can save the image as Jpeg/Gif/PNG, sat the quality as low/medium/high (which results in reduced file size), rotate, crop the image, turn the image into black and white and also change the brightness.
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jpeg-optimizer.com
They allow you to optimize your image according to percentage! Now that’s really an advantage. However, you can resize an image only according to pixel, not percentage.
Also you will have to save it somewhere else.
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http://online-image-resize.kategorie.cz/
You have only one option initially – to resize your image according to width, that too in pixels only.
But you get a lot of candies afterwards. You can see how the image looks split in quarters and halves, and get to see how it looks on other sizes, e. g.: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 of the original size and also in half the pixel amount of the original image.
Not bad!
But do remember to save it somewhere else!
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http://www.resize2mail.com/
You canNOT upload an image from a url here. You can resize your image into three fixed sizes only. You can rotate the image and also crop it.
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http://www.resizeimage.4u2ges.com/
This site looks rather ugly and clumsy. but wait! Looks don’t matter always you know!
Once you survive the ugliness you can access a whole lot more that you can’t on the other sites mentioned above.
First click “launch resizer” and then upload an image. Now the real fun begins!
You can resize image according to percentage (you can also enforce “constrain”) and pixels, you can rotate your image and turn it into grayscale!
Also you can put text over your image! You can choose the font, size, colour of text and where it will end up on the image.
How freaking cool is that!
I am telling you, if you want to create a badge for your blog, all these extras can be really handy.
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Shrink Pictures
They give you usual resize by percent or pixel option.
so what else is new? Here you can add a sepia effect in your image! Not bad!
And they also tell you how many bytes your images are after resizing.
Not bad at all!
And if you are really interested, you can also visit a link to host that image immediately:
www.4freeimagehost.com
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I have just found out about PICNIK!
http://www.picnik.com
If you have images in Flickr, Picasa or Facebook, then this is for you. Of course you can add pictures from the web or from your computer. Since I use Facebook, and I can launch it right in Faceebook, this is quite useful for me.
They have many options, you can change the colour of images, resize them, add many effects, sharpen them etc etc.
that’s it for now.
if you come across any handy sites for resizing images, don’t forget to tip me!
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To resize images offline
- Irfanview
- Picasa
- GIMP
- Photofiltre
- FastStone
- Pixia
These are free softwares you can download to resize and optimize your images offline. It is good to know that to reduce loading time of images, it is necessary to resize AND optimize images before uploading them.
This list is taken from the wordpress.com FAQ
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This is a list of sites that spammed my blog via comments. I am collecting all such url’s to warn bloggers about them. If you have come across any sites that are involved in comment spam, you are requested to kindly expose the url via a comment.
Please, don’t paste the url the usual way. Rather break it up, like: Continue reading
Tell a friend!
