Cognoscis

Many times in a bookstore, you think, “Alas! If only I had money to buy all those goody- goody books”. But never fear my dear, for Abhijit is here with yet another “Top sites” post. Now I cover the top websites to get your favourite books online in form of e-books for free.

Read Print- An awesome site with over 8,000 books by 3,500 authors like Agatha Christie, Julius Ceaser (Yes the same famous Julius Ceaser. I didn’t know he was an author too), Edgar Rice Burroughs, Karl Marx, O Henry, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare and many more. The site is simply awesome. It has quotes and books both available free for reading online. I never knew a better legal ebook site.

Manybooks.net – Browse through books by Authors, Titles, Categories and Languages and download them in multiple formats.

Classic Reader- A site containing most (infact ALL I could think of) English Classics as E-books. Books available only to read online.

Scribd- A site where users upload their documents of all types. They could be e-books, Reviews, Recipes, etc. Most books are downloadable in PDF format. Some are available to buy too. Note that the uploader may have no rights to upload the book. You can read online conveniently in full screen too.

Esnips- A website where people upload Graphics, Music, Videos and documents too. You can find most popular titles here. Search for it and search will categorize into different types. Here also, uploader may not have the rights to distribute it. Esnips Mobile is also available.

So, have fun reading mates.

Here are ways you can get the best of your photos by tweaking them online:-

Be Funky- By far the best imaging site I have ever come across. Read this to get more info about it. Easy to use and splendid effects.

Photofunia- A great site for digital frames. Be the Superman, or be Johnny Depp in Pirates of Carribean, Be on a huge poster, etc. Read more here.

The Face Transformer- An application developed by St. Andrews University to transform your face into different type. For eg. Manga Cartoon, Old age, Botticelli Painting, etc. read more and in detail about it here. It’s a little tricky to use.

Yearbook Yourself- A site which enables you to create different photos of yourself according to styling of different years from 1950 to 2000. It requires a lot of adjusting to get a perfect image though.

PicArtia- Create a mosaic of your favourite photo with many small photos. Choose a smaller pixel size for good results. But not too small. And do use a BIG image.  No mobile snaps will give you good enough results.

MagMyPic- Get on different magazine covers by creating a fake picture with this application.

Dumpr- Multiple effects like rubik’s cube, celebrity paparazzi, sketch, etc.

Personalized Money- Get your face imprinted on a dollar bill. Fundoo!

Loonapix- Easy to use interface plus LOADS of effects. Get digital frames, swap faces, Trim your photo, or get a Loonapic effects which is just like photofunia and fun photo box.

Pictreat- One step treatment of your photo which includes color fixing, reduction of face-marks, etc. This doesn’t produce major changes but.. worth a shot. I tested them with one of their examples and it worked. I don’t have pimples you see .

FlauntR- Style your pictures, or use their online editing tool just like Adobe Photoshop. or even better, blend famous paintings in your picture. Awesome site.

Recently I have taken up learning online imaging. So you would be seeing some posts on that. I think everyone must be familiar with South Park cartoon. It’s a very hilarious cartoon in which 4 kids are shown stuck in between all the politics and trends of America. The Animation is all 2-D, but who cares. It’s AWESOME. If you live in India, try to catch it on Vh1 Channel (A part of MTV).  Even if you didn’t see it, use this to create funny characters. It’s fun.

So, intrigued by the different style of South Park characters, I thought to make one of my own. Thus, enter the SOUTH PARK STUDIO. It is a German site. It takes a few seconds to load on your PC. And then you can create create characters in a minute. It has a variety of options of all kinds. Hats, Hairstyles, eyes, skin colour, clothes, and even stuff like pets, musical instruments, shirt motifs, backgrounds, etc.

I started using it. And THAT WAS FUN!!! I made different characters for myself. I even made a group of 15 such characters to tag them as my friends on facebook. There is one small problem though. The “SAVE” option was not working in my case. So I used Printscreen button and pasted it in MS Paint (yeah! I still use it) and then chipped away useless portions.