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You may have seen some cool text images around the web. This is known as ASCII, and beleive it or not, there's a such thing as being an ASCII artist. It's really cool, but very hard to make.

You're probably used to ASCII art like this.

█████████████████████

██████▌▄▌▄▐▐▌████████

██████▌▄▌▄▐▐▌▀███████

█████████████████████

Just simple things, with text. But actually, there's pictures. They can be simple, medium, or very complex. I don't want to clutter up this post, so I put an example of ASCII here.

Want to see very complex ASCII? Click here.

You may be wanting to make some ASCII yourself. I posted three sites, one generates ASCII from images, one does the same but in color (really cool), and on the other you can make text. Happy ASCII making!

generate ascii text

generate ascii pictures

generate ascii pictures [color]

Cheers,

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AlternativeTo is a website, which searches program and website alternatives.

All you do is enter a popular program or website, such as Photoshop, and it generates a list of popular programs/sites that are similar to what you entered. In this case, we searched for Photshop, so popular image editing programs will come up. Some of these are Paint.NET, Gimp, and Paint Shop Pro. You can even find alternatives to those programs.

When we search Twitter, we get results like FriendFeed, Identi.ca, Google Buzz and more. The search results are almost always exactly like what you search for, with a few exceptions. But they are always related to what you search.

AlternativeTo's easy to use website is divided into useful sections, depending on what you want to search for. You can find alternatives specifically for Windows, Mac, Linux, online sites, even Android, and more.

"Whether you're looking for an alternative to expensive commercial software or just trying to get a feel for what's out there, AlternativeTo is a handy service for finding software alternatives."

-Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker

Overall, I'd give AlternativeTo a 3/5. check it out

If you know me, you probably met me on Cloudica.

If you don't know what Cloudica is, then you'll know after reading this article.

Basically, Cloudica is a micro-blogging service, similar to the famous Twitter. But there's a bunch of differences that make Cloudica far better, in my opinion than Twitter.

First thing you'll notice when you sign up for Cloudica is that it is mainly a community of web developers.

Like Twitter, you create a free Cloudica account, in which your profile will be Cloudica.net/Username. You post status messages, but on Cloudica, there's no 140 character limit, so go ahead and post that novel you just wrote.

Instead of following people on Cloudica, you subscribe to them. When the people you subscribe to post updates, they show up on your homepage. One of my favorite features on Cloudica, is you can comment on other people's posts!

When you post updates, you can attach links, and photos. But that's not all. There will be A TON more features in the soon to be released, new version of Cloudica, Loca. This update may allow you to customize profiles, create groups, and more. Although, nothing is confirmed. You can read an old interview with the owner, Sam Jesso, about Loca on one of Cloudica's old fan sites, Cloudica Rumors.

Twitter lets you post updates, 140 characters \ Cloudica lets you post updates, no character limit

Twitter does not let you attach anything to posts \ Cloudica lets you attach links and photos

To reply to others' posts, you have to @ them \ Cloudica lets you comment on posts

Cloudica is a great site overall. 4.5/5 stars.

Which do YOU think is the better site? Comment!

Cheers,

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So I was pondering the web, trying to find a good site where you can enter a site address and take screenshots, just like that.

I came across a couple sites, but by far, thumbalizr was the best one I found. It's real simple to use; just enter a site address, and thumb it. You can choose if you want the screen, or the whole page. And unlike some other screenshot sites, the site entered doesn't have to be popular, like Google.

After it generates the image, you can choose between a few sizes. You can also enter a custom size.

Also, signing up for free on thumbalizr gives you more features, such as an API and higher quality images.

Cheers,

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Alrighty. It's been a LONG while since I've been on the web. Just about 2 months. I was on vacation for the summer, and had little internet access.

But don't worry; I did not die. I'm going to jump right in on what I used to do, 2 months ago. I may not come on as much, but I will come on. Alot. Nothing new's happened. Please note, I am Jeff from Cloudica. Backslash is my new nickname on the web.

On my old blogs, it's been a while since I posted a decent entry; more than a sentence. I had a couple blog sites, useless, and each of the blogs were about a paragraph each, with useless junk. Now, my posts will still be about useless junk, but they'll be longer from now.

So as I was creating this Carrot Template for this site as you see now, I thought it was a good template for a blog. Thus, this blog was born. I'm hoping to post daily, or at least bi-weekly. It'll just contain updates, you know, and template releases and so forth.

If you want to see what I'm doing, just subscribe to my Cloudica, I update it frequently.

[UPDATE: I  deleted the blogs about the carrot template, I made a template page. I may be posting blogs about the releases of templates, but get the actual templates from the template page. check it out]

Cheers,

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