A Weblog On Things I Learned Today

I am big time into editing photos. Always on the lookout to try out new stuff with my pictures. I wanted to do a photo collage but since I am no photoshop geek and since I was not satisfied with the Picasa collage making feature I decided to search for one and stumbled upon the Photo Collage Master. It's a software which you will have to download.

It's nice and different with over 200 templates to choose from (more if you pay for it). I was more than happy with using the templates that were available with my free version. The thing I wasn't too happy about was that I can use only a single photo. Maybe I can add different photos in the paid version or maybe that feature is present in the free trial but hidden and well out of sight. The photo given is edited using this software.

The templates are organised into different categories - Baby, Love, Simulation, Girl, Dreams etc. You can even adjust the brightness and contrast.

You can create multiple paged websites at DevHub plus you can monetize them too. Receiving payments is not as easy as in Squidoo because you'll have to fill out forms and fax them over to DevHub HQ first.

It uses a WYSIWYG editor for most of its modules and you can drag and drop the modules from the list to a required place on your page. You can even move them around. A plus point is that you can create multiple pages on your site, so for each category you can have a separate page.

You are limited to 10 websites at first. After that DevHub will check the quality of your sites depending on which it will allot further 10 websites to you.

Join DevHub.

Yes! I am really late in using the very popular Google Reader. I was just plain ignorant, but decided to use it today to see what the fuss is all about. I'm loving it!

I did have my initial confusions regarding how to use it, but I guess I have got the hang of it now. Sharing stuff with friends is great. I am enjoying it. Specially useful for seaching and subscribing to news that is related to your niche topics at Squidoo. Everything is accessible at one place, hence time for searching gets reduced a lot!

This applet is super cool. It allows you to paint and make your art look professional even if you are not good at it.

It creates beautiful patterns no matter where you choose to drag your mouse pointer to. Pure fun. The picture on the right shows the one I created.

Try it out.

If you're thinking of making warning labels, then you can go for the Warning Label Generator. It allows you to customize your labels but unfortunately doesn't seem to offer any change in font sizes.

I created a label (shown in this module) but I couldn't get to increase the font size, and hence the resulting label has less impact. But oh well, it's useful in a way I guess.

There's actually a search engine for this! You can search for the sound of animals, birds, autombiles, musical instruments, just about anything. You can even download them into your computer. The sounds are available in different formats including MP3 and WAV. I downloaded some bird sounds and they just sound heavenly.

You can search for sounds at Find Sounds.

I have heard people filling out surveys online to get some extra money. I never tried online surveys, so I just decided to try my hand at one of them after reading reasonable reviews regarding the same - CashCrate.

I joined and the first thing that I did was watch a really helpful video which tells you how to use the site and how to fill out forms. It tells you clearly to make sure that you fill out legitimate details about yourself or else you won't get paid. The good thing is you don't have to pay anything to do these surveys. Well, most of the surveys anyway. The ones that do are the ones that offer a bigger pay in return but most of the surveys are free.

There are supposedly hundreds and thousands of surveys which are available for you to do right away as soon as you finish registering. You get paid through check every month.

After reading enough reviews on the web (and dozens of people flaunting off their checks on their blogs and sites), I decided to register. But after that, I found out that the site isn't really suitable for people living in India because there are only three or four surveys out there (three out of which required me to pay some cash first) available for us. The remaining one was free of cost and offered 2 dollars for a completed survey but it asked for credit card info and I wasn't comfortable parting away with that. So I guess it's not really useful to people away from U.S or Canada, but it does look interesting, genuine and an easy way to earn extra pocket money.

Join CashCrate.

I came across this extremely useful site today - FileHippo. It's a site which enables download of a large collection of sharewares and freewares. I must say they have a pretty huge collection in there.

Some of the products available for download are Adobe Reader, a large number of messengers and different browsers. There are different categories present including those needed for cleaning and tweaking your computer, imaging, CD/DVD tools - to name just a few.

I joined HubPages today. I have seen people on Squidoo forums mentioning that they have hubs, so it was high time that I tried it out too. Hubs are pages that you create at the site. I created two pages already. If you are there at HubPages, add me up.

It's pretty easy to use actually and the page doesn't get reloaded everytime you decide to add a module - hence it's kind of fast too. Only when you try to rearrange the modules, will the page get refreshed.

I posted my intro in the forums and within a matter of minutes I got 10 replies! Talk about a warm welcome!

I just started out and I have no idea whatsoever how much you can make over there, but the traffic I seem to be getting is good. I mean, I just created two small hubs - My Doberman Pinscher and Funny Facebook Groups, and they already have some visitors. I usually get only about 4 or 5 visitors on the day I publish my lens but here I have got nearly a 10. Not that great, but still it's more.

Join here.

W3Schools offer a large number of web building tutorials which you are sure to find useful. They are all free! HTML, XML tutorials plus tutorials on multimedia and server scripting - this site has got it all.

I am a big shopping freak. I always check out new shop stops online and I happened to come across this beautiful site Busted Tees which offers a large (and I do mean, large) collection of really funky and different tees. I just love the collection in there.

They also offer a wide range of other products which includes hoodies and posters. The tees seem to be of good quality plus the print on them is super cool and of high clarity. Take a look!

The one on the right is my favorite print of the lot! Yes, there are number of funny and cheeky t-shirts out there!

Since I already got into the topic of searching for best tees online, why not search for something related to jewelry? That too inspired by molecules?

So yes, I came across this shop online which offers just that - Science based jewelry - Made with Molecules. They have DNA/RNA molecule shaped jewelry plus those inpired by amino acid molecules and endorphins.

The photo on the right shows a dopamine molecule inspired necklace. It also includes an informational tag of dopamine along with it.

Happiness Index will tell you where your state is ranking in terms of happiness. Florida is unfortunately dead last in this department! The happiest? Nebraska!

Death by Caffeine is a really interesting test. It has got various options for caffeine filled drinks depending on the place you're in - US, UK/Europe or NZ/Australia. Once you select the place, you have to type in the drink you consume the most, plus your weight.

My result?

After 217.78 cans of Pepsi-Cola, you'd be pushing up daisies.

*Sigh*

If you want to see how your picture would look in ASCII code then ASCII-O-Matic is for you!

You can tweek the settings further and even generate an HTML code for it. As default Obama's picture is given, but you have some other celebrities to choose from, plus you get to upload your own picture. Try it out!

Now, I for one, always have trouble getting names for characters whenever I write a story. I don't like using names which are heard of especially if it's a story which involves a lot of fantasy and un-real elements.

For people who have such problems, the Character Name Generator could be of some use! It does give you some wacky names!

I have been trying to find that perfect tool to help me out with search result comparisons among the popular engines available today - Google, Yahoo and MSN.

The Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool is very useful. It allows you to see if your keyword is being searched for on a daily basis or not. It's absolutely essential to build a website around a keyword or phrase that people are actually searching for but how can you know if they're searching for it on a daily basis? This tool helps you with just that.

Apart from that, it also gives you upcoming related keywords which you can think of using instead of your original keyword, and even see its popularity over the years using the trends chart. The best part is that it's all FREE though you can sign up for a paid version to get more features and tools.

ToonDoo is the way to go if you're looking to create some comic strips easily. You can create your own characters, change their emotions and posture using the tools available and even publish it to the world! Other members can cheer you if they like your comic strips.

I would recommend opening up a separate blog for these toons and uploading the toons you create. Fun!

We all know how to appear invisible on messengers like MSN and Yahoo. One can even adorn the invisibility cloak using google mail! But how does one appear invisible on Facebook chat? Very simple -- by using the 'Online Now' application on Facebook!

All you have to do is install this application and you will be able to check who all are online in invisible mode. Highly useful if you're trying to avoid someone!

I saw a lot of reviews on RedGage and decided to try it out. It has been great so far. After uploading a couple of photos, within the first hour or so I got a bonus because one of my photos got featured!

You can get cash too if you win raffle points. You can withdraw your money using a RedGage Visa Card (which will be mailed to you) once you reach a threshold of $25.

Picture shows a snapshot of my dashboard a couple of hours after I joined. Join RedGage here.