graphics
Design
When To Use Bar Charts Instead Of Pie Charts
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | Pie charts look cooler than other kinds of charts. They’re based on pie, after all, and seem less accountant-like than bars, bubbles and lines. They are, however, often a very wrong way to represent subtle but important differences. More »
Design
1:30PM Angus Kidman | Regularly using Twitter and proud of it? TwitterLogos rounds up graphics from across the web that you can use to link your Twitter profile. More »
TwitterLogos Offers Graphics To Promote Your Twitter Life
1:30PM Angus Kidman | Regularly using Twitter and proud of it? TwitterLogos rounds up graphics from across the web that you can use to link your Twitter profile. More »
Design
3:00PM Angus Kidman | Looking for an editable copy of a major logo? Brandsoftheworld.com has a large collection of logos for pretty much any company or product you can think of, ready to download in EPS format. More »
Brandsoftheworld.com Has Bucketloads Of Logos
3:00PM Angus Kidman | Looking for an editable copy of a major logo? Brandsoftheworld.com has a large collection of logos for pretty much any company or product you can think of, ready to download in EPS format. More »
Design
Favicon Generator Imports And Edits Icons For Your Site
7:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you’re looking for a quick way to create a favicon—the tiny little logo that appears in bookmarks and address bars—for your web site, Favicon Generator offers dead simple image importing, editing, and conversion. Favicon Generator is a web-based service that converts GIFs, JPEGs, and PNG files into 16×16 pixel ICO files suitable for use as web site favicons. Why the special ICO format? Although most modern web browsers are perfectly capable of loading favicons in PNG and other formats, Internet Explorer is a bit behind the times and still requires ICO format. In addition to converting existing files into ICO format, you can also create a favicon from scratch with the editing tool. Unfortunately you can’t load converted images, as with previously reviewed Favicon.cc, but Favicon Generator still has a lot of convenience to recommend it. If you have another site or tool you use for editing icons, favicons or otherwise, share the wealth in the comments below. Favicon Generator [via Download Squad] More »
Fix
JPEG & PNG Stripper Removes The Metadata From Your Images
11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows only: JPEG & PNG Stripper an extremely small portable application that strips the metadata out of JPEG and PNG image files. Why would you want to strip down an image file? Ask former TechTV host Cat Schwartz, who in 2003 received a rather embarrassing lesson in the power of metadata. In short, a cropped headshot posted on her blog contained an embedded, full-pic thumbnail with, well, a lot more than just a head and shoulders. Even if you’re not cropping your mug out of a nude composition, there are others reasons you’d want to remove the metadata from an image. All sorts of information—like exposure time, aperture settings, camera used, and GPS coordinates—can potentially be embedded into an image. JPEG & PNG Stripper removes every bit of metadata, leaving just the unaltered image behind. Whatever your motivation for sanitising your image, you’ll know that only the image itself remains. The screenshot at right shows a read of some of the metadata for an image I scrubbed in testing and, as promised, the application ripped all the metadata out without altering the appearance of the image itself. JPEG & PNG Stripper is freeware, Windows only. JPEG & PNH Stripper [via gHacks] More »
Design
Get Free Logos At LogoInstant
11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you need a logo but you’re lacking the design chops to whip one up, score a free one at LogoInstant. LogoInstant is a design service that cranks out a new logo every day. The logos are completely free for both personal and commercial use and come in a layered Adobe Photoshop source file so you can edit the name or make more advanced changes. Logo Instant [via gHacks] More »
Work
GPU-Z Retrieves Your Video Card’s Stats
11:30PM Lifehacker US Edition | Windows only: GPU-Z is a lightweight (410k!) portable application that gives you a large amount of information about your video card. After loading up GPU-Z you’ll have access to everything from the basic GPU information to the memory type on your card to the bios and driver versions. GPU-Z supports multiple cards and detected both the add on card and embedded motherboard video in my system. In addition to fixed statistics GPU-Z accesses the available sensors in your graphics card to give you feedback on processor and memory utilization, GPU temperature and fan speed. For a more hands on approach to working with your graphics card, check out how to use RivaTuner to scale your graphics card for efficiency. GPU-Z is freeware, Windows only. GPU-Z [TechPowerUp] More »
Work
Windows 7 Won’t Require Graphics Hardware For Effects
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | UK magazine Custom PC reports that Windows 7 will feature WARP, which lets any computer with an 800MHz processor run Aero-style desktop transparency and, with a certain performance hit, the Direct3D requirements for video games. Microsoft seems to have learned something from the “Vista Capable/Ready” labelling fiasco, so expect less confusion on what can “run” the OS due out in mid-2009. [via Gizmodo] More »
Fix
RivaTuner Scales Your Graphics Card For 2D/3D Efficiency
12:00AM Kevin Purdy | Windows only: Free 3D graphics card tuner RivaTuner gives you all kinds of nuts-and-bolts access to your NVIDIA or ATI graphics card, including the ability to manually set fan speeds and overclock your processor for better performance. What makes it useful to the non-hardcore-gaming set, however, is the ability to set up hardware profiles and have them activate whenever certain applications are launched. So if you understand that your 256MB GeForce chip doesn’t need to be running full-steam for Word 2007, but you’d like it to really kick in for Fallout 3, RivaTuner is right up your alley. It’s not exactly friendly to newcomers, and you’ll definitely want to save a working profile for safety, but hit the via link below for gHacks’ step-by-step walkthrough on setting up two example profiles. RivaTuner is a free download for Windows systems only. RivaTuner [Guru3D via gHacks] More »
Design
