Have you ever needed to resize an image and/or add effects to it, but didn’t have access to an image editor? Or perhaps just too lazy to go into one! Then checkout PicResize.com. This website will allow you to upload an image, choose a size to resize it to, if any, and choose an effect (optional).

At PicResize.com, you are given multiple options. You have the option of selecting to resize an image by 75%, 50%, 25%, or a custom percentage. (Note: if you leave custom percentage blank, it will do 100% automatically).

You also have the option to choose an effect. The available effects are: Equalize, Gaussian Blur, Grayscale, Oil Paint, Raise, Sharpen, Spread, Rotate 90 (Clockwise), Rotate 90 (Counter-Clockwise), Rotate 180 (Flip), or Raised Frame (you can choose the color of the framing too).

Lastly, when you are done selecting all the options your are given, you can tell it to resize your picture as a JPG, GIF, or PNG image format. Great tool that is fast, free, and very easy to do.

View PicResize.com - Fast & FREE Online Image Resizing

Designers Toolbox is a excellent resource that offers a large selection of tools for online and print. I came across one page that brought me back to the days of English class in High School. Designers Toolbox: Proofing Marks.

Designers Toolbox: Proofing Marks section is very helpfull for when it comes to writing. Everyone has seen it. You hand in your essay to your teacher. The teacher grades it and puts all these funky marks on it that makes you wonder what the teacher was doing. Well, now you know!

There are markings on here that I have never seen before! I’m going to definitely start using them.

View Designers Toolbox: Proofing Marks.

When I first purchased my LCD (Samsung SyncMaster 172x, which is excellent by the way), I was feeling a little sketchy about it because I have never had an LCD and heard about all the Dead Pixels that can occur. I luckily have not spotted any yet, but thanks to this website, it made me confirm that there weren’t any dead pixels, Dead Pixel Test.

So you just bought a superb ultra-flat 25″ LCD monitor, but it looks like there are a few ’spots’ on it. Depending on how many and it’ll mean return to the vendor or live with it. Or you could be about to buy one in a store and want to make sure there aren’t any dead pixels. Just come to this page!

Go see how your monitor is by viewing this test, the Dead Pixel Test.

CDBurnerXP Pro is an excellent solution to buring CD’s or DVD’s with CD-R, CD-RW DVD+R/RW DVD-R/RW discs. I have yet to put CD burning software on my computer as I do not have a need to burn anything yet (I do however have a rather fast DVD/CD burner in my PC though). Whenever I needed to burn a fast CD, I would use the Windows Burner shamefully. But now, I am going to give CDBurnerXP Pro a try. Best of all, it is jammed with features and is Free!

• Writes all kind of mediums apart from double-layer DVD (follows in next version). Burning video-DVDs is limited.
• Burn audio-CDs with and without gaps between tracks
• Burn on the fly / Burn-proof
• Supports most IDE, USB, Firewire and SCSI drives
• Rip Audio-CDs to harddrive, obtain track-information (ID3-tags) from Internet
• Burn and create ISO-files
• Customizeable with many settings
• Data verification after burn, create bootable discs
• (will be) available in multiple languages
• 100% freeware - no adware or restrictions
• bin/nrg->ISO converter, simple cover printing and
  much more!
• Operating systems: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/2003 Server.

View CDBurnerXP Pro’s Website.

I was looking for a very simple tool that wont take up much space, has an easy interface, and just all around simple and fast. I thought I was going to have a hard time, but I came across this nice application called, 7-Zip, and I was very impressed.

The main features of 7-Zip:

• High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
• 7-Zip is free software distributed under the GNU LGPL
• Supported formats: 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB
• For ZIP and GZIP formats 7-Zip provides compression ratio that
  is 2-10 % better than ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
• Self-extracting capability for 7z format
• Integration with Windows Shell
• Powerful File Manager
• Powerful command line version
• Plugin for FAR Manager
• Localizations for 57 languages

I am the type of person that likes to download a Zip file, open it without extracting it, and looking at the files, whether it be a PHP, CSS, HTML, Text Document, you name it. So I was really glad to see the very fast and easy solution to this in 7-zip is to press the F4 key and it will open up the file in the editor of your choice.

Go to 7-Zip’s website to get your copy.