Tag: Links

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Free Stock Photos: Many Resources

2014-02-08_10-09-19Thanks to a thread over on Reddit, I have discovered a world of free, use-for-anything stock photography resources. They range from websites where you can sign up for free photos to be delivered via email to those where you can search and browse, and they all tend to not be very crappy!

While I’m not a fan of smiling faces on websites because of the impersonal feeling, and the fact that Google might soon penalize you for using stock photography, I do like the idea of having free resources available which can be used for compiling visuals that help narrate a story on your website. The following links are full of such images, and much more.

Disclaimer: Always read the fine print, just in case, to make sure you are allowed to use the image you are downloading without attribution or payment! Whenever possible, it’s still a good gesture to give credit where credit is due, even if you don’t have to legally.

Google Image Search for Commercial Reuse

Contrary to popular belief, you cannot search Google Images and simply use any photo you find in your project. This specially crafted search, however, produces images that are OK for commercial use and modification:
Google commercial reuse image search

Note: It is possible for images found here to have been reposted by someone who copied it from the original source. Just because you find it on Google Image search for commercial use doesn’t mean it’s absolutely OK to use without proper credit/compensation. 

Flickr

Similar to the above Google Images search, you can browse Flickr using a similar technique:
Flickr Creative Commons license photo search

IM Free

This site lets you search a collection of curated photos for commercial use:
http://imcreator.com/free

Gratis Photography

While not easily searchable, there are some great photos on this website.
http://www.gratisography.com/

Photo Pin

Here you can search for “free photos for bloggers and creatives”. Enough said.
http://photopin.com/

Creative Commons Search

“Find content that you can share, use and remix.” Just make sure you leave checked the checkboxes for ‘commercial purposes’ and ‘modify, adapt…’
http://search.creativecommons.org/

New Old Stock

Some amazing photos from times gone by, this site pulls from the public archives.
http://nos.twnsnd.co/

Pic Jumbo

Another site with free photos for you use.
http://picjumbo.com/

SplitShire

This fellow asks for attribution or a donation for coffee via his website if you want to use the photos he offers. He has some great images that would be well worth it.
http://splitshire.com/

Pixabay

A repository for free public domain images.
http://pixabay.com/

Little Visuals

You can sign up via email to get 7 free images delivered to your inbox so that you can start building your own library of stock photography.
http://littlevisuals.co/

Unsplash

Similar to Little Visuals, except that this site sends you 10 photos a day. They all tend to be on the awesome side of great.
http://unsplash.com/

Fin

Speaking of free coffee, if you enjoyed this blog post and would like to see more like it, send me a little donation!




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GeoGuessr – Hours of Fun

http://geoguessr.com/

A fun game based on Google Maps. It plops you somewhere in the world, restricts what you can do with the typical map controls, and encourages you to explore, find clues, and determine exactly where in the world you are.

The closer you guess, the more points you get. The better your Google-fu (in a separate browser tab, admittedly), the better your score too.

The first time I played, I scored 22,905 points. Can you beat it?

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Tips, Tricks, Enhancements

I love the things that make my job easier, make a task simpler, or help protect me in the event of a problem. I collect lists of these things so that I can share them with you, my dear blog readers. Enjoy!

Lazarus
A web browser add-on that auto-saves any web form you are filling out. Never again will you lose that perfect Facebook political argument reply you’d been working on for an hour until your browser crashed. It be free. It be cool.

Feedly
This is what has replaced my Google Reader account now that Google has announced it will be shutting down Reader this summer. It’s simple, though it takes a little getting used to, and it will import all your feeds from Google Reader automatically.

Mailplane
My favorite way to use GMail and Google Calendar on my Mac(s). It lets me keep multiple accounts open at once in a tabbed interface, seamlessly switching back and forth to get things done. It also works with Google tasks.

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One apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree

tYou may remember this from 2004. Now, the kid has his own blog and is doing his own blog posts.

Be sure to check out the one and only Gray Chatham. And then there is his Twitter feed. Oh, and his Youtube channel.

It has been really interesting to watch him ‘grow’ into the always-on, networked, online world. Much of it he learns through Minecraft, and thanks to Minecraft he recently bought his first piece of Internet meme clothing: the trollface t-shirt.

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Twenty not Two-Thousand

In case you were wondering, the correct way to say the year that starts tomorrow is “Twenty Ten”. At least, that’s what the people at twentynot2000.com believe. I guess I agree. They seem overly concerned that we will be stuck listening to people say the current year the wrong way for the next 89 years.

Hitch your wagon to a star, folks.

What do you think?

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Geeky Greats: Useful & Interesting Web Sites

The timeline of Internet Memes is an amazing journey through time, all the way back to the early days of the internet.  What makes it funny and interesting is that it chronicalizes a thorough history of internet memes:  those funny themes that run through the internet subculture.

ColorCombos.com is a useful site which helps you test and select color combinations for use on your web sites or digital creations.  I love this type of tool, not being a person who can match colors very well.

For the desktop, I recommend carrying a copy of the awesome, free tool known as Color Cop.  I’ve been using it for years, so I donated to them a while back, and if you find it useful, you should too!  Color Cop is an eyedropper tool that provides much of the same functionality as the eyedropper in Photoshop, but is lightweight, versatile, and easy to use.

FormatFactory does and amazing job of converting your Windows media files from one format to another, and it does it all for free.

Do you freelance from home?  Check out FreelanceSwitch, who offers a bunch of good resources for freelancers.  I have found their page on Legal Resources for Freelancers to be very helpful.

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Resurrection: Geekamongus.com

I decided to resurrect my old Geekamongus.com site. Instead of filling this personal site with loads of technical blog posts no one cares about, I thought I’d dedicate a site to computers, the Internet, security, and anything else geeky. It made sense to use Geekamongus.com to do this.

So, look forward to more posts about personal things and whatever I’m thinking about here, and head to Geekamongus.com for the geeky stuff.

I intend to keep the new site on a ‘lay person’ level, providing articles to help people with computers and the Internet. I figure there are a lot of people who could use free advice, and it makes it fulfilling to think I might be helping someone.

So go tell your friends!

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Al Gore Did Not Create The Internet

I can’t count how many times I’ve heard people laugh about how Al Gore said he created the Internet.  Not that I’m sticking up for him or anything, but he never really claimed to have invented the Internet, so it irks me when people perpetuate that myth.

As this cool Neatorama article entitled 10 Things You Should Know About the Internet explains, Gore actually had a hand in helping to legislate initiatives that allowed the Internet to proliferate, though he never claimed to have invented it.  The article is well worth the read, as it explains a bunch of neato things that you should know about the “information superhighway” (a term that Gore actually <em>did</em> invent).

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