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]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]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]
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]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]
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]
Windows/Mac/Linux (all platforms): GIMP, the free, open-source graphics editor, has come out with a 2.6 version, and it’s put some significant changes into the editor’s interface and back-end operations. New to this version are support for 32 bits per colour channel and a new GEGL-based backend (turned on and off in the preferences), polygonal and sectional selection with the Free Select Tool, better handling of windows, toolbars, docked tools, and menus, and a “brush dynamics” sub-menu that gives creators serious control over their pixel-pushing tools. Those are just a few of the many changes in this release. GIMP 2.6 is a free download for Windows, Mac, or Linux platforms, though it’s only (officially) available as source code at the moment. Read on for help installing GIMP 2.6 on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems.
Got data to graph but not much in the way of spreadsheet skills? Web app Track-n-Graph gives you all kinds of bar, line, and other graphs and chart templates to use or create, as well as a simple interface for putting in the data to create them. There’s a number of handy templates on the site already, including mileage and health-related trackers, and you can collaborate on your data projects with others or embed the results in a web site. A free sign-up limits you to five data projects, with unlimited use available for $25 or a single-graph upgrade for $5. For more personal project data trackers, try Morale-O-Meter or weight watcher The Google 15. Track-n-Graph [via MakeUseOf.com]
If you could look back on a week, a month or even a year’s worth of how you felt, how you slept, and your caffeine and alcohol intake, what would it say about you? Morale-O-Meter, a free embeddable web app, provides a space to log those morale indicators, graph them, and compare the results with friends, or even embed them in a blog or web site. The site can send daily email reminders to those who tend to fall off the daily entry wagon, and 43 Things users can use their existing login to start their own graphs. If looking back at your results makes you realize your job is wreaking havoc on your life, consider trying a few ways to deal with burnout without quitting.
Morale-O-Meter [via MakeUseOf.com]Windows only: Measure photos, graphics and other digital media directly on your monitor with freeware app JR Screen Ruler. JR Screen Ruler comes as a stand-alone executable that can be used to measure inches, centimeters, pixels or picas (a unit of measurement corresponding to 1/6 of an inch). You certainly won’t need to use the ruler everyday, but it’s nice to have in your pocket when the occasional screen measurement is called for. I would recommend dropping a shortcut to JR Screen Ruler in the same folder that houses GIMP and/or Photoshop so you don’t forget about it. JR Screen Ruler is a free download for Windows XP and Vista.
JR Screen Ruler [via mikeduncan.com]
