Nine Excellent Free Cloud Generators

Cloud generators can be a fun way to create graphics, they can also help you insure that your content is on target and will be seen as such by search engines.

Cloud generators will transform your text, be it blog post, web page, resume or PR release into a visual image of your content helping you visualize keywords and their weight. and letting you literally see if your content is on target

Wordle

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

ImageChef

With tool, you can create a different styled and shaped word cloud and send to your friends etc as a post card.

ABCya

A word cloud is a graphical representation of word frequency. You can type or paste text into the box showing on their home page and press the arrow button to view the word cloud generated. The appearance of a word cloud can be altered using the graphical buttons above the cloud. It is also easy to save and/or print the cloud by simply pressing a button. This is specially designed for school kids.

Tagul

Tagul is designed for web masters who want to place nice clouds on their web pages. Tagul clouds have numerous advantages against ordinary text clouds like custom fonts, cloud shapes, colors, etc. and thus Tagul clouds have much fancier look. Tagul clouds are more entertaining for your web site visitors provide better user experience.

Word Cloud

ToCloud is an online free word cloud generator that uses word frequency as the weight. Hence, the generated word cloud of a page gives a quick understanding of how the page is optimized for certain words. ToCloud is also smart enough to extract phrases and works much better than most other word cloud generators on the web.

WordItOut

WordItOut lets you transform your text into word clouds. You can then save and share them, so everybody can find and enjoy them.

Tagxedo

Tagxedo turns words like famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, even your love letters into a visually stunning word cloud, words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text.

TagCrowd

TagCrowd is a web application for visualizing word frequencies in any text by creating what is popularly known as a word cloud, text cloud or tag cloud. It specializes in making word clouds easy to read, analyze and compare, for a variety of useful purposes.

April 2, 2013April 2, 2013

2013 Facebook Cover Photo Guidelines Allow Calls-To-Action

2013 Facebook cover photo guidelines now allow calls-to-action in cover photos.

Previously, Facebook did not allow contact information, pricing, discounts, invitations to like and share and calls to action on the cover photo, many learned the lesson at their expense.

Not so anymore, Facebook simplified the rules and removed many of the restrictions as you can see in the 2013 Facebook cover photo guidelines bellow:

All covers are public. This means that anyone who visits your Page will be able to see your cover. Covers can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright. You may not encourage people to upload your cover to their personal timelines. Covers may not include images with more than 20% text.

The one restriction is the 20% text

What does that mean for marketers?

Generate More Leads
Promote More Content
Improve Conversion
Get more value for of your timeline

And if you have not yet customized your cover photo, here is a reminder of the dimensions:

March 28, 2013March 28, 2013

How Secure Are Your Passwords

I recently attended a WordPress workshop about website security. the presenter, from the firm Securi, gave us a demonstration on how fast hackers can find your username and password and crack a website open, I can tell you, that was a real eye opener.
The presenter showed us how a hacker can find a user name with software readily available online and how they could crack the site open by using software and password lists also available online.

A seemingly safe password containing uppercase, lower case, numbers, special characters took only minutes to crack. Never mind easy passwords like many still use like… password or 1234.

How strong is your password? Find out with this app and tell us how long it took..

Are passwords obsoletes, fortunately no, but we need to look at them in a different light. the key to secure passwords is uniqueness. I know, thatwas my reaction too, how can you find unique passwords.

The first step is to forget about common words, short terms, go for long strings and instead of thinking passwords, think long string, think passphrases, long strings take longer to hack and chances are, a hacker will give up.

The presenter recommended password management tools, companies that encrypt your log in information and safeguard your passwords

If you have a website, implement “fail log in limits”, applications that lock your site after a predetermined number of log in attempts, implement layered authentication, limit the number of users who have access to the site, keep software, plug ins, themes updated, remove any app you don’t use

The online world will never be completely safe, but it’s up to you to manage and reduce the risk

So, how long would it take to crack your password? Tell us in the comment section.

February 20, 2013February 20, 2013

Would You Pay to Promote Your Friends’ Posts?

Facebook thinks so, now you can pay to promote your friends’posts to more people, even without their permission

Until natural language processing improves, only humans can tell what’s important. So Facebook today starts rolling out the option to pay to promote a friend’s posts and get them seen by more people. This will help critical posts bubble to the top of the feed, and let Facebook earn some money, too. The feature respects privacy controls, but could still make you look like a self-important prick.

Facebook began testing the ability to promote your own posts in May 2012 and rolled the feature out to the U.S. in October. See, your average Facebook post only gets seen by about 16 percent of your friends because they aren’t online soon after you post, or you never interact with them on Facebook. Promoted Posts artificially boost your posts so they appear in the news feed to people Facebook wouldn’t have shown them to.

The option has enraged some people, making them feel like they’re being extorted to communicate with their friends. When it first came out, I said Facebook was recklessly endangering the meritocracy of the news feed, which until then only rewarded posts that got the most Likes, comments, shares, and clicks.

But there are real uses for Promoted Posts. If you’re raising money for a good cause, looking for an apartment, or have a big announcement for your company, paying to force it into more people’s news feeds can actually be really valuable, and worth the $7 or so. The price varies by geographic area and how many people it could reach.

Now you can do the same for friends’ posts, or at least you’ll be able to soon. A gradual global roll-out for the feature is starting now, and it’s only available to people with fewer than 5,000 total friends and subscribers.

When you see one you think deserves more attention, you can click the drop-down arrow next to a post to sponsor it, and it will reach a larger percentage of the original audience of the post. That means promoting a friend’s post won’t violate their privacy settings. If the post was set to only show up for their friends, your payment will just make it show up to more of their friends. If their post is publicly visible, your promotion could appear to your friends, too.

Facebook explains “If your friend is running a marathon for charity and has posted that information publicly, you can help that friend by promoting their post to all of your friends. Or if your friend is renting their apartment out and she tells her friends on Facebook, you can share the post with the people you and your friend have in common so that it shows up higher in the news feed and more people notice it.”

One issue, though, is that you don’t need a friend’s permission to promote their posts. And depending on what they said, the extra eyeballs might not always be appreciated.

A friend could jokingly promote an embarrassing photo of me, or my status about something bad happening to me. If I post that I wrote an article or am selling something, a friend might innocently think they’re helping by promoting the update. But when people see the “promoted” tag on my self-serving post and realize money was traded for their attention, they might think I’m tooting my own horn a little too loudly.

Facebook will have to keep an eye on this one. If people use it for evil, or people unwittingly end up looking like a loudmouth used car salesmen in cheap plaid polyester suits that reek of even cheaper cologne, then it may want to give authors the option to prevent promotions.

Source

February 19, 2013February 19, 2013

20 Free Photoshop Alternatives

Social Media is a very intensive visual environment, meaning, you will probably have to edit or resize graphics. For the past decade, Photoshop has been the standard when it comes to photo editing software but not everybody is able or willing to spend $700 to buy it or need all the features and complexity of the software. Following are 20 free Photoshop alternatives

1. GIMP
Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, AmigaOS

The GNU Image Manipulation Program is a great application that was created for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. Written on Unix, GIMP is arguably the most popular alternative for Photoshop available today.

2. Gimphoto
Windows, Linux

Gimphoto is a modification of the GIMP graphics program that aims to present a more user friendly interface. The layouts are more similar to Photoshop, making Gimphoto a popular choice for those who are switching from it. It’s currently only available for Linux and Windows though a Mac version is available.

Another GIMP modification that aims to make things easier for former Photoshop users is GIMPshop. Unfortunately, someone hijacked the GIMPshop domain, resulting in a dispute between the original developer and the hacker who was profiting from hijacking the domain. This is one of the main reasons the application is no longer developed.

3. PhotoPos Pro
Windows

PhotoPos Pro is a rich photo editor that has support for most picture file types and support for digital scanners. It also features image enhancement, text tools, layers, masks and special effects.

The pro version of the script used to retail for $59.90 (with a lite version available for free) but it has since been released as Freeware (apparently due to thousands of requests).

4. Photoshop Express
Online Service

Can’t afford the high price of Photoshop? You may be pleased to know that Adobe offers a free basic version of the script online. The editor allows you to edit your photos online with ease. You can resize, crop and rotate, reduce red-eye and saturation, adjust white balance, fill light and much more. You can also apply effects to photos such as pixelate, tint and crystalize.

Photoshop Express is a great choice for basic photo editing and quick touch ups.

5. Artweaver Free
Windows

Artweaver Free is a limited version of the artistic application Artweaver Plus (€29). The free version has common editing tools such as gradient and crop, support for PSD files, arrangeable palettes plus image and effect filters.

6. Splashup
Online Service

Formally known as Fauxto, Splashup is a free online photo editing tool and manager that has support for layers, filters, brushes, text editing, blend modes and much more. You can import photos from your desktop and from a range of services such as Facebook, Flickr and Picasa.

Multiple photos can be edited at the same time and there is a lite version for mobile PCs available too.

7. Aviary
Online Service

A cool online photo editor that lets you edit photos easily. You can crop and rotate images and apply lots of cool effects such as sharpen, blemish, red eye, contrast, blue and much more.

There are advanced tools available too (also free) for dedicated editing such as an image editor, vector editor, effects editor, image markup, music creator, audio editor and screen capture.

Aviary

8. Inkscape
Windows, Mac, Linux

A vector graphics editor which boasts that it has similar capabilities to Illustrator, CorelDraw and Xara X. It saves files in the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. It should be considered as a compliment rather than an alternative to raster graphic editors such as Photoshop or Gimp for most tasks, though it has adopted some common photo editing tools such as blurring etc.

9. Photoscape
Windows

A basic photo editor that lets you fix and enhance photos. It has a lot of interesting features such as support for animated gifs, a splitter which divides a photo up into several pieces and attaching multiple photos vertically or horizontally to create one final photo.

10. PhotoPlus Starter Edition
Windows

PhotoPlus Starter Edition is a limited version of PhotoPlus X5 ($89.99). It comes with a lot of great tools that help you adjust photos and give them a complete makeover. Through PhotoPlus you can repair old and damaged photos, remove objects from a photo, smooth skin, whiten teeth and much more.

11. Seashore
Mac

A beautiful image editor that supports gradients, textures and alpha channel editing. You can compare the current image to the last version of it saved, and can save in SVG, PSD and PDF file formats.

12. Paint.NET
Windows

A great program that evolved from Microsofts famous Paint application, Paint.NET supports layers, special effects, unlimited history and more. It uses an intuitive tabbed interface that shows live thumbnails of the opened image rather than text. It also has a very active support community.

13. Darktable
Mac, Ubunut, Fedora, Opensuse, Arch, Gentoo

One of the only applications that isn’t available for Windows, Darktable is a feature rich photo editing program that supports lots of special effects and correction tools. It has support for 15 languages and the export system works with Picasa, Flickr, email attachments and more.

14. Photofiltre
Windows

An image retouching program that allows basic or advanced image editing. It supports over 100 filters and lets you use useful preset selection tools such as ellipses, triangles, rounded rectangles and more.

15. VCW VicMan’s Photo Editor
Windows

A basic image editor that supports over 30 types of file formats and 100 transformations, filters and effects. Photoshop compatible filters are supported too.

16. PaintStar
Windows

An image processing application for editing and retouching photographs. Image morphing, multiple layers and screen capture are supported and it supports more than 30 file formats, 100 effects and filters.

17. Cinepaint
Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD

An offshoot of GIMP, CinePaint has been used on many Hollywood films such as Spiderman and The Last Samurai to touch up frames.

18. Pixlr
Online Service, Windows, Mac, Mobile Devices

A cool free online photo editing service that works on browsers and a variety of operating systems and devices. Available in 23 languages, Pixlr has the most usable Photoshop features such as color adjustment, special effects, layer support and much more.

19. Picasa
Windows, Mac, Linux

Originally created and sold by Idealab, Google aquired Picasa in 2004 and released it to the world for free. The current version supports easy geo tagging and heavy integration with Google+ that lets you easily tag Google+ friends and share photos through your circles.

It’s user-friendly interface makes it easy to apply basic edits to your photos and touch them up. 12 effects are available and there are additional affects via Picnik too.

20. Windows Photo Gallery (previously called Windows Live Gallery)
Windows

The new version of Windows Photo Gallery allows you to organize, view, share and edit. Still intuitive and easy to use is has become a lot more powerful and now includes RAW image processing

Have we missed any application, tell us in the comment section, have you used any of these apps, tell us about your experience in the comment section

Category: Tools