Blog Tools

As I was updating my photo albums, website and blog this morning, I realized how many useful tools there are out there for web maintenance and blogging. So this little blog is just to give the low-down on some of the most basic and easy to use (and mostly free) tools out there.

If you don't want to spend a lot of money - actually, if you don't want to spend any money - you can get your blog going in no time flat. Here's the free stuff I use:

• Blogger- go there and just set up a free blogging account.
• Picasa2 - go there and download the free photo managing/ editing software. This software helps organize your photos for you, makes them easy to find, and has all the basic editing tools, such as Crop, Auto Contrast, and - my favorite - I'm Feeling Lucky. And, most importantly for anyone using email or the web to send photos, it has resizing built in - just click the little "email" icon, or the "web" icon. Sweeeet.
• Hello - this is the software that lets you share your photos with family and friends. However, I just use it to send photos to my blog. It also automatically resizes your photos for sending.

However, for my webite, and my own pleasure, I use other tools, too.

• Microsoft Frontpage 2003. Excellent tool for amateur web designers; it comes with several built-in photo albums, and a lot of other nice goodies. Experienced designers will poo-poo this Web Page creator, but it suits my needs very well.
• Photoshop 7.0 - very expensive software, but well worth the money (and the time invested getting to learn how to use the damn thing). Lets you take an imperfect photo and fix/ erase anything you don't like about it. My favorite tools in Photoshop are the Clone Stamp and the Healing Brush.


I used the clone stamp and healing brush to remove an ugly red fire extinguisher from this picture. As you can see, I have to hone my Photoshop skills, but still...
No Fire




• With Office 2003, I got the Microsoft Photo Manager - also allows basic fixes, such as Autocorrect, and has "Resizing for Dummies" (actually, I just made that up - but very easy resizing options).

What I do not use now, but used to use, back when I enjoyed raw HTML, is a very affordable little program called Coffee Cup. Excellent for beginners and experienced designers alike. My friend Denis got me started designing webpages about a decade ago, and while I gave it up after moving to Japan, he built a career out of it.

So, those are the tools I use.