Photofunia
Add some cool effects to your photos
Photofunia is a really cool site to add some effects to any picture. If you want to add a bit of creativity to your otherwise boring photos.
Sketch, Pencil Drawing, and Watercolor are great effects to add to ordinary photos. They are great for social media profile photos. With photofun.com you can make it look awesome.
Description from their Website
Performing image editing and applying picture effects to any image is a time-consuming exercise that is fit only for an avid photoshop user. If you're looking for a quick and professional picture effects online service, then PhotoFunia is the solution you've been looking for.
With PhotoFunia you can edit photos online for free in a matter of seconds resulting in high-quality photo collages. Not only you can edit pics online for free you can also have much fun doing so, by sharing them with your family and friends. So what are you waiting for? Start editing pictures online with PhotoFunia for free today.
There are 568 effects that you can apply! Wow! That lots of cools ways to spice up a photo or message. You don't always need a photo too, there are plenty of designs where text is the key graphic element.
New designs are added every week! Check out the blog for updates. Download the iOS app to use pictures you take with your camera.
Sample Designs
Here is just a small sample of some of the cool things you can do with PhotoFun. Since the website is 100% free, I would highly encourage you to head over to photofunia.com and check out some cool designs.
hotsheet.com
Great site to find the best places on the internet.
HotSheet.com is what Yahoo.com use to be - a resource to the best sites on the internet. It's a great place to go to find sites in just about any category.
Websites are nicely grouped into various categories such as News and Sports, Entertainment, finance, home life and more. It's a good way to expand your Internet Horizon. The nice thing is that the list is small and practical so you won't be inundated with lots of links.
Description from their site:
Welcome to HotSheet(R), the premier web portal/ homepage/start page for both desktop and mobile web browsers. With breaking news headlines from multiple sources, major US national and local news sites, and top world news and sports websites. Also includes top air travel and hotel websites, technology news sites, stock market links, and finance tools, and much more in the Hot Sheet web directory. The single page directory of top sites also includes entertainment news and celebrity gossip pages, social media links, movies, TV, music and arcade games.
Use HotSheet.com as your browser homepage, start page, or favorite web portal. While it works great as your desktop browser home page, HotSheet automatically adjusts to an efficient layout for Apple iPhone and Android smartphone devices. The adaptive web app allows for a mobile experience with the same links and features as the already familiar desktop browser version. Hot Sheet is designed to be an uncluttered and easy to use web portal/home page for desktop or notebook PCs, tablets and mobile devices. See our Change Home Page Instructions on how to update your web browser settings to set www.hotsheet.com as your web browser startup homepage. Info on how to add a HotSheet icon to a smartphone home screen is also included.
Certificate Magic
Fast way to create Certificates
Certificate Magic is a quick way to create an Online Certificate. Simply select from several popular design choices and then add your text.
You can use it to create Certificate of Appreciation or Accomplishments for taking your training.
It's also a fun way to lighten the mood - Give a Certificate to someone who just microwaved some popcorn to smell up the entire office. Not working from home today - congratulate them on showing up in the office!
Certificate Magic is a fun way to create Certificates - and it's free!
Check out these Examples
Internet Speed Test
How fast is your Internet Connection? Google can let you know.
Google has a cool built in Internet Speed Test. Simple go to Google.com and search for Internet Speed Test.
The complete test is actually run by the Measurement Lab (M-Lab). They are a partnership between New America's Open Technology Institute, Google Open Source Research, Princeton University's PlanetLab and other partners.
Speed Limit 700 Mbps
The speed test max out at 700 Mbps, so if you have a really fast bandwidth, your test results will not be accurate. Google Fiber has speeds of 700 Mbps. 1 GB Ethernet, OC-48 Carrier, and 10 GB Ethernet are all faster than 700 Mbps.
Wireless Bandwidth 802.11ac and 802.11ad are faster than 700 Mbps but if you don't have the external bandwidth to handle it, you won't see the difference. These are great if you have home cloud storage.
PermalinkIFTTT Weather Information
Create your own IFTTT to track your town weather
Have you checked out IFTTT yet? It's a cool service that allows communication between Internet services.
From the IFTTT Website:
IFTTT is a free platform that helps you do more with all your apps and devices
IFTTT Sample Results
I setup the following rule on August 25, 2016:
This was configured check the temp in Framingham, Massachusetts at 3 pm every day and put the data on Google Sheets.
From that Data, I was able to get the following information:
| Coldest Days | Warmest Days | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| December 28, 2017 | 11 | June 12, 2017 | 95 |
| January 7, 2017 | 19 | May 18, 2017 | 94 |
| March 4, 2017 | 19 | June 13, 2017 | 93 |
| March 11, 2017 | 19 | May 17, 2017 | 91 |
| January 9, 2017 | 20 | July 19, 2017 | 90 |
Average Temperature in Framingham was 58.76 degrees.
Weather Chart
I was also able to create this Weather graph to see how the temp changed throughout the year in Framingham.
Click on image for a larger version.
Setup your IFTTT Chart
On this New Years Eve Weekend, set up your own chart and have it run every day. You don't have to worry about it running. Then next winter you can open up the data and Google and look at the data.
PermalinkText-Magic
Text-Magic is a great Text Graphic tool generator
Text-Magic is a cool website resource to generate cool looking graphics from your text. The website has a lot of different ways customize your design which helps make your design unique. Best yet - It's a free tool!
There are 56 different fonts available - including a large selection of winter styles.
Description from their Website
Text Magic is a free cool font generator that transforms ordinary text into fancy text, using a wide variety of cool fonts: handwriting fonts, calligraphy fonts, magic-related fonts, decorative fonts, fancy fonts, holiday fonts and more.
Text Magic is not only a cool font generator, it is also a fancy text generator, logo maker, word art generator... You can use it to create stylish text, cool logos, blog titles, text avatars, cool letters, photo captions, forum signatures and other fancy text things. To see some examples, take a look at this page.
The most interesting feature of our fancy text generator is Magic Effect. Currently it supports two options: Metallic Text and Neon Glow effect.
Sample Generated Graphics
More Example Graphic
Check out the examples on their site to see the full capabilities of their tool.
PermalinkEverytimeZone.com
Great site to track time around the world
Dealing with multiple time zones can be complicated. When is it morning in London? When is a good time to call Hawaii?
Fortunately there is a good resource to make it easy - EveryTimeZone.com. There slogan is simple: "Never warp your brain with time zone math again."
When you load up the site you are shown a chart of current time around the world. It's a great timezone layout that's pretty easy to understand. You can drag the time to see different times on the chart.
Check out the site and definitely bookmark it if you do frequent international communications.
PermalinkPattern8
Great collection of Seamless Patterns!
If your looking for good selection of patterns, check out the Pattern8.com site. There are lots of free seamless patterns to select from. These would make great computer backgrounds.
From John Rawsterne, the founder of Pattern8.com:
Pattern8 was created to make it easier to find high quality free seamless patterns. Our sister site, PatternHead.com, offers free vector and pixel patterns but it can be hard to find the pattern you need. Pattern8 keeps things simple and allows searching by color. You'll find lots of free pixel patterns here. When you preview a pattern you'll find a link to the vector version of the pattern from PatternHead.com (if available).
What's nice is that you can select a color that you want and then pick a pattern in that color. So if your background looks best in green, you can find all the green patterns that may work for your design. Since these are seamless, there's no limit to the size you need.
John's Been Busy...
John Rawsterne hasn't been active for a while, no new blog post since July 19, 2013, and the last twitter post was May 23, 2016. Who know's how long these sites will stay around. I understand that it's a side project so you update only when you have time to.
I think it's certainly worth checking out to get some design ideas for seamless background. The Santa Hats patterns are great!
PermalinkFake Donald Trump Tweet
Create Fake Trump Tweet quickly
Hate him or Love him, but Donald Trump is the President of the United States. His use of Twitter, as a method of communications, has typically generated some attention.
Thanks to faketrumptweet.com, now you can pretend that he's tweeting your message. It's a great way to add humor to any situation.
Sample Entries
Some sample tweets to get you thinking about how you could use this idea on Slack or Facebook.
- Happy Birthday [Some Names]! It's going to be a Tremendous Day
- Ok, Now What?
- Great Party. Had a Lot of Fun.
- [ Company Name ] party? It'll be Yuge!
- What the Covfefe are you talking about?
Quozio
Fastest way to turn a phrase into a graphic
Quozio is a fast way to turn words into graphics. It's really easy to transform a simple quote into an image. Very useful when you spend time in a chat room and you want to highlight a quote that fits the moment.
There are 37 designs to make your message stand out. The whole purpose of Quozio is to quickly convert text to graphics as quickly as possible. Once it looks good, simply drag the image to the desktop and then apply it to Slack, Email, Facebook, or Twitter.
From their website
Quozio turns meaningful words into beautiful images in seconds. Then share 'em on Facebook, Pinterest, email and more!
The nice thing about Quozio is they offer a Bookmarklet to make it super easy to create quotes. Bookmarklets are an easy way to create interactive bookmarks (See my post from earlier this year for how bookmarklet works. )
Quite simply Quozio is the fastest way to transform a simple quote to an eye-catching graphic.
Sample Content
About
I will highlight a fun Internet site every Saturday. The basic premise is to highlight sites that I regularly visit for a variety of reasons. All site recommendations are mine and are unsponsored. By highlighting these websites, I hope to provide value to those who may not know of the sites or who might be interested in visiting the sites. I also want to share the sites that I find valuable in the hopes that others will find them just as beneficial.
Check out all the blog posts.
Schedule
| Saturday | Internet Tools |
| Sunday | Open Topic |
| Monday | Media Monday |
| Tuesday | QA |
| Wednesday | New England |
| Thursday | Gluten Free |
| Friday | Macintosh |