Toys, toys, and more toys.

I enjoy image manipulation. If I can do it via code, even better. For example, the following image will get text added to it because I'm hotlinking (using it from the ToolBarn.com web server from a different site).




We're doing that mostly for the benefit of eBay users that decide to use our images. It's resulted in some visits and sales for us, and fewer sales for the eBay users.

Of course, nothing is as cool as dynamically created images. When I decide to put a thumbnail of my blog on this page, I created a tool that does that. www.toolbarn.com/web-tools/ has a webpage thumbnail generator now. I've been playing with it for a while, trying to make it display as many pages as possible correctly, and it seems to be working fairly well now. I got a pop-up blocker working, it renders flash properly, and does a few other "Goodies" like timestamping the image and giving a guess as to the PR of the page in the image. Again, simple stuff, but cool none the less.


I intend to create a website based upon this, where people can hot-link to a thumbnail image, have it generate as needed, include information on the image based upon referrer preferences, and update the images at regular intervals. I've got a few details to work out yet, but I think it could be a cool deal once it's completed. I'll be sure to post something here when I get it done.

Brian.

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