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Talos Intelligence
May 19, 2018 by cryan.com
If you ever wanted to find a source of an IP address, talosintelligence.com is the place to go. (Formally senderbase.org) Simply put in the IP address and instantly you'll get critical information about where the IP address is located and if it's been tagged as being a security risk.
The site is a great place to read up on the latest Vulnerability Reports. Find out where vulnerabilities are happing from man vendors and analysis.
Website Description
Cisco Talos Intelligence Group is one of the largest commercial threat intelligence teams in the world, comprised of world-class researchers, analysts, and engineers. These teams are supported by unrivaled telemetry and sophisticated systems to create accurate, rapid and actionable threat intelligence for Cisco customers, products and services. Talos defends Cisco customers against known and emerging threats, discovers new vulnerabilities in common software, and interdicts threats in the wild before they can further harm the internet at large. Talos maintains the official rule sets of Snort.org, ClamAV, and SpamCop, in addition to releasing many open-source research and analysis tools.
https://talosintelligence.com/
Some Notes
Great site to use when your looking at your logs and trying to figure out why someone is currently hitting your site.
The Reputation lookup is great to use, you can learn a lot from an IP address.
Great Comprehensive Threat Intelligence. Get the inside track on what's going on before your site gets hit.
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Photopea
May 12, 2018 by cryan.com
There are a lot of online photo editors available, what makes Photopea stand out is the ability to open up different graphic formats - especially Sketch format.
I discovered Photopea when I found some Sketch templates from Facebook developer site. Since I already invested in Affinity Designer and Omnigraffle, I didn't want to have purchase another Graphic application.
Description from the Website
Photopea is an advanced image editor, which can work with both raster and vector graphics. You can use it for simple tasks, such as resizing images, as well as complex tasks, such as designing webpages, creating illustrations, processing photographs and more.
The Free online design editor supports PSD, XCF, and Sketch formats. (Adobe Photoshop, Gimp and Sketch App)
Create a new images or open existing files from your computer. Save your work as PSD or as JPG/PNG/SVG. Our Goal is to create the most advanced and affordable photo editor.
https://www.photopea.com/
Note about Sketch to PSD Conversion
You are limited on when you can convert Sketch files to PSD. Certain times during the day you may encounter this message:
To get money for our development, Sketch to PSD conversion can be used only during the first 30 minutes of each hour.
The conversion is pretty good, in my test I found that it creates a near copy of the original Sketch document. I was able to open the PSD file in Affinity Designer with no problems.
Another option is to just use Photopea as the editor instead of exporting the Sketch document.
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Word Cloud
May 5, 2018 by cryan.com
Sometimes when blogging it isn't easy to come up with a good graphic to go with an article. That's when using Word Cloud can help - highlight some of the most common words in a story in a nice attractive graphic. It catches everyone attention and makes the article stand out a bit more.
https://www.jasondavies.com/wordcloud/
There are several different services but I found that ... jasondavies.com/wordcloud/ to have a nice simple way to create a good looking Word Cloud. to have a nice simple way to create a good looking Word Cloud. There are all sorts of design options and a chance to customize the layout and colors to your needs.
Honorable Mentions
- TagCrowd.com
- https://www.wordclouds.com/
What's nice about jasondavies.com version of Word Cloud is that you can have different cloud shapes, so the graphic stands out even more. The other thing that's nice is that each word is a different color.
Couple of Examples
George Washington farewell Address
Standard Disclaimer of a 5K Race
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YouiDraw
April 28, 2018 by cryan.com
YouiDraw is a cool online vector tool. There's plenty of template designs to inspire you and get you started. The food thing is that its HTML5 base - not Flash. So you can use Chrome or Chromebook to create your designs.
Website Description
Online Vector Graphic Design by html5 and SVG effects! It's like Illustrator but works on the cloud with google drive.
Create stunning vector graphic design with YouiDraw. It's like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw but it works in the cloud with Google Drive. So there's no software to download and you can access your work anytime, anywhere. Suddenly, your creativity is unleashed!
Whether you're getting started or an experienced designer, Drawing tool is a powerful graphic design solution on the web. With vector graphic design in various environment, you have everything you need to express your style and creativity.
https://www.youidraw.com/
Free for Basic Use
The basic plan allows you to create your own graphics and save the graphic to your computer or in the cloud (Dropbox, Google Drive etc..)
There is a Monthly Plan which cost $9.99/mo and gives you SVG / PDF File Export, No Watermark, and allows you to use the graphics for Commercial use.
Good Place to Learn Vectors
I think this is a great tool for people learning about vector graphics- especially kids. This is better than having them play with Affinity Designer or Illustrator because they won't mess up any application settings.
Affinity Designer
I think, in the long run, your better off buying Affinity Designer. YouiDraw is good for those times when you need a graphic design but doesn't have any tools installed on the computer. (Internet Cafe or Sharing a computer. )
Certainly worth checking out YouiDraw, doesn't cost anything to see how it works.
Sample Designs done in YouiDraw
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Snappa
April 21, 2018 by cryan.com
YouTube is all the rage right now. If you own a YouTube Channel you know how important it is to have an updated graphic header. It's critical to have a cool looking header so that people will know that your serious about the videos that you have on your channel.
Fortunately you don't need to be an expert in graphic design, Snappa helps make YouTube headers in a snap!
Website Description
Create YouTube channel art on the fly with Snappa
- Save time by starting with the ideal image dimensions for YouTube channels
- Start with one of many professionally designed templates to throw together eye catching YouTube channel art in seconds
- Customize templates, graphics, and text to create on-brand channel art
- Access 500,000+ of high-res, totally not cheesy, 100% royalty-free stock photos from our library
- Add the polish typically reserved for professional graphic designers with customizable graphics, shapes, and text
- Download your channel art as a web optimized JPG, high-res PNG, Retina JPG, or Retina PNG
- Repurpose YouTube channel art for your other social media profiles and vice versa in a couple of clicks
https://snappa.com/create/youtube-channel-art
Snappa isn't just for YouTube, you can use it to create designs for all your favorite social media networks. The good thing about using Snappa is that you don't have to worry about the current design standards. They are up to date on the latest sizes - no more second guessing if it's the right size..
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MockPhone
April 14, 2018 by cryan.com
There are lots of choices when it comes to using mockups to showcase your design. The nice this about MockUPhone is there's a lot of device options including TV screens.
Website Description
MockUPhone is a free tool that helps developers, designers, project managers and consultants wrap app screenshots on different mobile devices. Developers and designer can use the provided PNG files to make mobile screenshots and mockups for mobile application websites or advertisements. While project managers and consultants can embed the screenshots in keynote for their client projects. MockUPhone right now supports iPhone mockup, iPad mockup, Android mockup and TV mockup.
If you want to create screenshots for App Store submission, you can also check out one of our developer suite - ShotBot (http://shotbot.io/). ShotBot is screenshots makers for iOS platform. It helps you wrap screenshots and implements screenshot device art effortlessly.
https://mockuphone.com/#ios
Five Things I learned Using MockUPhone
- You have to use an image, there's no pointing to an existing URL for the image to rendered by the device.
- In order to get the final image you have to put in a valid email and then download the file from the email link
- The mockup images are in PNG format with transparent backgrounds.
- MockUPhone have a lot of designs and will tell you the best format to use.
- You get a preview of one of the layouts, to see if you want a final version.
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Glitter Text
April 7, 2018 by cryan.com
GigaGlitters.com is a cool way to add some glitter to text. Simply put in some text and select the style that you want and then share the GIF file. You can use various GIF tools to combine the text.
Description from their site
GigaGlitters.com is super easy and fun tool to create glitter texts. It is FREE! With GigaGlitters you can instantly create glitter texts! Start right now, just enter the text you want to glitter. Place your glitter text anywhere you like: MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, Facebook, HI5 and many others.
http://www.gigaglitters.com/
Some tips/tricks
- Text can only be 15 characters long.
- There are 176 different glitter colors/styles to select from. You get a preview of all the styles.
- There are 101 different fonts to pick from. The only problem is that you don't get a nice popup to show the different font styles, you pick it based on the name.
- If your unsure, or in a rush, select the 'random' button and a style/font will be selected with your text. Keep clicking randomly until you find the perfect match!
- Once you find the perfect match, you can drag and drop the style to your desktop, or use the various code text provided.
Example Images
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Background Image Generator
March 31, 2018 by cryan.com
Background Image Generator by SiteOrigin is a good resource if your looking for a basic seamless image. Make your images POP by using a simple pattern image generator.
This is not only good on websites, you can also use this as background in graphic designs.
There are 296 pattern and 42 Blend Modes. Giving lots of different ways to create different style and color patterns.
Website Description
This is a simple background image generator. You can choose the base color, pattern, intensity and a few other settings. It generates the image for you. Great for creating tiled website backgrounds.
http://bg.siteorigin.com/
Samples Using OmniGraffle
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engfto.com Text Effects
March 24, 2018 by cryan.com
engfto.com is a great website to animate your text images. There are all sorts of creative effect to make your text POP. For starters, on the homepage, there are 43 general styles to pick from. Within each style, you have the flexibility to change all sorts of options.
If you want to brighten up a chatroom or a social media comment, this is the place to get it done.
Tip: You have a lot of flexibility to change the way the graphic design. I would suggest spending time using the site. While the default options are pretty cool, you can certainly spice things up to your needs with just a simple change here and there.
Website Description
Create cool text. Designer generator beautiful text logo online , with a choice of effects and fonts. Create a beautiful inscription online, inscription with animation.
http://engfto.com/
There is no cost to use this site and many images are available as animated GIF or HTML5 effects.
Sample Effects
Here are just some of the cool effects that I was able to generate:
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Embossed Label
March 17, 2018 by cryan.com
Embrossed Labels is a quick way to generate labels online. You can use the graphic for any purpose.
This is a unique way to communicate a message on a Blog or Social Media.
Description from the Website
Welcome to the Embossed Label Generator website, where you can make and download free custom text embossed label images for your design projects or websites.
The generator uses actual images and not a font - they are made from the high resolution scanned label strips that are on my main website here. The original scans were only in blue, red and green and I also made a black version in Photoshop - I may add more colors in the future.
Embossedlabels
Sample Design Ideas
These labels are perfect for displaying short text in the graphic form. You can combine labels with interesting graphics layouts.
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