imgplaceholder.com

Create cool looking placeholder images

Placeholder images are essential for QA and Designers. There useful for QA to make sure website uploads are handling certain image sizes. Graphic designers find them useful to show image size targets in certain designs.

imgplaceholder.com is a great site to generate all sorts of images. You can have any color type, message, and icons in the generated graphic.

Website Description

https://imgplaceholder.com/

I need A prompt

Quickly create a random phrase whenever you need it.

I Need A Prompt is a cool site where you can get a random phrase generated. It's unique from other sites because you can select if the phrase should contain adverb, Adjectives, noun or location.

https://ineedaprompt.com/

blocklayer.com

Useful site with all sorts of design calculation ideas.

BlockLayer.com is great place to go to get all your printable diagram templates. Then have templates for everything imaginable, there's Gable Roof Framing Plans, Deck & Floor Board Spacing & Gap Calculator, Angle Calculator, Posts and Rails - Spacing and Material and so much more.

Yes, they also have Graphic Paper and printable rulers.

https://www.blocklayer.com/

There are 140 different designs to pick from. Lots of good choices, and certainly a good site to bookmark for when you need designs with calculated settings.

Thanksgiving Menu Maker

Helpful to make your Thanksgiving a bit different this year.

Thanksgiving is coming up, and it's time to start the early planning the biggest meal of the year.

You may have a traditional meal planned out or you may want to experiment this year with something new.

Checkout the Food 52's Automagic Thanksgiving Menu Maker. It's a great place that breaks down all the main parts of the meal - Such as the Meat, Stuffing, Potatoes, drinks and so much more.

It's a good place to look for ideas on what to bring to a Thanksgiving invite. (The Perfect Cheese Ball looks good!)

Website Description

https://food52.com/thanksgiving/menu-maker

Sprout Social Image Layout

Cool tool to upload the proper size images where you need it.

Nowadays you need to change your images so they look good on computers and mobile. Mobile users like to see images as a reverse landscape.

One source to help to create the proper image for different layouts is Spout Social. You can create sizes for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, Pinterest, YouTube or any custom layout.

Website Description

https://sproutsocial.com/landscape

DriveMeInsane.com

Control the lights and send a message on this webcam

One of the first Internet Webcams was at the University of Cambridge looking at the coffee pot to see if it was empty. That was 1991.

We have come a long way.

Today you can view just about anything on webcam. One of the funny ones is the "Drive Me Insane" by Paul Mathis. You can turn on/off lights, and display messages on the computer screen.

Website Description

This site allows you to use home automation to have fun at someone else's expense. Turn on the lights, play with the sign, and get visual feedback on all of it. And yes, it's all real. Time:07:08 Current Insanity Level: 9840.30%

http://www.drivemeinsane.com/

Space Type Generator

Create Cool graphics with your text

The Space Type Generator is a cool website where your phrase can look like animated art.

There are 8 main categories to select from: Cylinder, Field, Stripes, Coil, Flag, Morisawa, Cascade, and Ribbon. Within each style, you have the option to change the presets and style.

The person behind this is Kiel Mutschelknaus, who also runs kiel.com. He's a very talented artist, and I highly recommend checking out his page and Space Type Generators.

https://spacetypegenerator.com

Sample Design

haveibeenpwned.com

See if your personal email is in the open

Just about every week you hear about a major database breach where hackers are stealing personal data.

A couple of years ago, Troy Hunt put together a website to see if your email address has been compromised in a data breach. Making it easy to see if your "personal" email is accessible to hackers.

Website Description

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Why Check Your Email?

If you use your personal email for logins, then it might be useful to check the database. Especially if you use the same password through most accounts.

I checked some old work emails, and I was surprised they were in the database. I know that it doesn't belong to anyone else because the company isn't in business anymore.

PhotoVisi

A great online collage tool with lots of templates

Creating Collage can be tricky. If you don't have the right template - it can look boring and lose the appeal of the pictures. Thankfully there are sites online that can make it easy to combine photos.

One site to consider is Photovisi. as they have a lot of design options to pick from. In fact, there are more than 250 designs to choose from. Thankfully there are broken into 19 categories, so you can search for the design that works best for you.

Photovisi has templates for YouTube Channels as well as Facebook covers.

Photovisi is free to check out - even the editor is free. However, if you want to remove the watermark it cost $4.99 a month. Which isn't a bad price if you do a lot of collages.

Website Description

https://www.photovisi.com/

Sample Designs

Clothesline Layout Example

Inkblots Layout Example

ezgif.com

Convert MOVs to Gif super easy

Animated Gifs are all the rage, and there's no better place to create and touch up GIfs than ezgif.com. It's the one stop shop for all your basic GIF editing.

I like to use their optimize feature to better compress GIF files that have been created using different applications.

Website Description

https://ezgif.com/

Sample GIF Images

Here's a couple of images that I converted from H.264 to GIF:

Boston's MBTA Commuter Rail. Using ezgif.com I was able to convert the original 2.9 MB MOV file to the 732 K GIF

This Movie was 1.8 MB, but using ezgif.com I was able to get it down to 652k.