web application
A.nnotate Shares Documents for Peer Review
6:30AM Kevin Purdy | Free markup sharing site A.nnotate offers a simple tool for letting co-workers or friends comment and review a document or web page without installing specialty software or hosting a web conference. Upload a Word document, PDF, or other file, or just pass A.nnotate a web page address, and you can start highlighting text or choosing areas to leave notes, either in the margins or as floating boxes. Once a page is started, the creator can email links to as many people as they want to comment. A free account at the site gives one person about 25 pages per month to offer for markup with unlimited annotators, but advanced offerings are available starting at $10 per month. A.nnotate [via Web Worker Daily] More »
Cubescape Makes Isometric Art Easy
8:35AM Kevin Purdy | Cubescape, a free design tool from code wizards The Man in Blue, is a refreshingly easy way to design a great-looking logo, send a memorable message, or just doodle with the simplicity of stacked blocks. The controls are super-simple, consisting of coloured and clear blocks you drop and arrange into patterns and a tool to destroy your errors. Hit “Save,” and your design is locked away, and you can link to a time-lapse animation of how you built it. Feel free to send the URL to that discouraging high school art teacher. Cubescape [via WebWare] More »
Design
FontStruct Creates Typefaces Brick-by-Brick
11:00AM Kevin Purdy | For certain projects, even the gargantuan list of pre-installed fonts on your system just won’t do. When you want to create your own font but don’t want to learn the archaic process for doing so, you want free font designer webapp FontStruct. FontStruct provides simple tools to colour in integrated blocks. You can fill out just one key letter or a whole font, distribute your creation freely or with rights reserved, and offer it up as an easy-to-install TrueType font. Using FontStruct’s tools requires a free sign-up—or you could just browse FontStruct’s library of original fonts for download. FontStruct [via Digital Inspiration] More »
MagToo Stitches Panoramas Together Online for Sharing
10:35PM Kevin Purdy | Looking for an easy way to stitch together a cluster of photos you took of that great vacation scene? MagToo, a free online panorma-sharing service, offers a free online tool to create 360-degree panoramas (or more simple wide-angle stitches) and share them from a flash applet on its site or embedded on another. As the Digital Inspiration blog points out, you have to use Internet Explorer 7 to create the panoramas in MagToo’s ActiveX app, but the Flash-based viewers can be seen in any browser. For a guide to creating high-quality stitches yourself, check out our guide to panorama-stitching with free software. MagToo [via Digital Inspiration] More »
Luminotes is a Wiki Without the Markup Learning Curve
10:00AM Kevin Purdy | Setting up a personal wiki is a great way to set up a digital notebook for your thoughts and tasks, but it also requires getting familiar with the Wikipedia editing system—asterisks, brackets, and all. Luminotes has you simply start typing, using familiar rich text buttons to add bullets and other styling, and a simple linking and tagging system for your notes. There’s options to share and collaborate with others, as well as easy exporting and printing. Luminotes is available both as a package for hosted web space and as a somewhat-limited free account at Luminotes’ servers. More »
Collaborate on a Whiteboard or any Web Page with Twiddla
12:40AM Kevin Purdy | Twiddla, a free whiteboarding service that doesn’t require sign-ups to start using, turns any web site, photo or graphic file into a canvas for marking and discussion. Winner of this year’s Technical Achievement award at the SXSW festival, Twiddla isn’t the only whiteboard service, for sure, but its ease of use and quick setup and extra features—including live conference-call-style audio chat—make it a stand-out. You can check out Twiddla’s features without even launching a “guest” account by trying out its live “sandbox” mode. For web workers, design types, and anyone needing to draw out or discuss an idea, it’s a worthy tool to keep bookmarked. Twiddla [via ReadWriteWeb] More »
Check Your Passwords’ Strength at Microsoft’s Password Checker
2:00AM Kevin Purdy | Microsoft offers a helpful little box to type your security phrases into that instantly grades them as “Weak,” “Medium,” and “Strong.” Before the inevitable eye rolls and comments on the concepts of “Microsoft” and “security,” see the Windows-maker’s helpful suggestion on building a tough password: A strong password should appear to be a random string of characters to an attacker. It should be 14 characters or longer, (eight characters or longer at a minimum). It should include a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. I was kind of surprised to see that one of my standard passwords was rated “Weak,” while my previously-thought super-strong password was just “Medium.” Worth checking out, and maybe taking to heart if you’ve got more than a few weaklings in your web login list. Password checker [Microsoft via Web Worker Daily] More »
Create Disposable Chat Rooms with ChatMaker
2:00AM Kevin Purdy | Instant messaging and email are great ways to quickly get ideas and notices across quickly to co-workers, but sometimes an actual, real-time chat session can save you time on replies and confusion. ChatMaker, a free web chat application, instantly creates online chat rooms after you type in the name for one. Inviting others into the chat is as simple as sending them a human-readable URL, and nobody has to sign up or answer an invitation email. The chat interface is simple and familiar, but you don’t get as much flexibility and control as with more old-school solutions like Internet Relay Chat. ChatMaker is a free web service, no sign-up required. For more group chat options, check out Google Talk and the (very) similar ChatCreator. ChatMaker [via MakeUseOf.com] More »
Get Feeds for Sites Without RSS with Dapper
1:30AM Kevin Purdy | It can seem like almost everything you look at on the web has an RSS feed to subscribe to—until you find the web site that’s both vitally important and entirely feed-less. Enter Dapper, a free, advanced web app that walks users through a process of creating a feed for sites, or even just portions of sites, that lack one. We’ve previously mentioned tools like FeedYes that promise a similar function, but Dapper offers a lot more customisation, letting you choose which sections of a site should be delivered to your reader, a custom iCalendar or iGoogle page, and many more options. Combine Dapper with a tool like Yahoo Pipes, and you’ve got a direct line to any update on the web. Dapper [via Download Squad] More »
