I often come across some awesome websites but don’t have enough time to do an in depth review of them all. Usually, they get bookmarked into Del.icio.us which is OK and I refer to it often. But some of them are worth highlighting. So this is the first in this series.
This week, my friends over at MomsMorningShow.com were chatting about blogs, making money and blogging in general. One of the things mentioned was using more images in your blog posts. This is a method that’s highly recommended by many as successful blogger. But the question is always, where do I find images we can use – legally and fairly?
SXC.hu is my personal favorite. I’ve been using them for over a year and they seem to get better and better. Used to be there were only photos but I see more illustrations now which is fantastic!
Open Clip Art Library I stumbled upon this site while checking out some Creative Commons links from Wikipedia. What I like about it is the fact it’s clipart. Sure there are times for photos but sometimes you really want some polished and cool looking cliparts. The only gripe is, the sites seem hard to navigate. I can’t easily see a list of cliparts without searching and I have to click multiple times to see an image. Plus, some
of the images are broken 🙁
Design Reaction. Very interesting indeed! They have ‘open’ posters free for you to use. These are very well designed posters and really get the point across. There doesn’t seem to be very many posters in their library. Definitely a place to stop by for those who blog about social and political issues or have the occasional post about social and political issues.
Flickr Yes, absolutely, why not? This huge photo sharing site has tons and tons of images photographers have willingly shared under the Creative Commons license.
Wikimedia Commons Fantastic collection. You can get images, sound and video too.
Open Font Library. Oh I like this – love fonts. They are helpful when you’re trying to spruce up a PDF document so they don’t look like the oh so blah reports everyone is giving out. Also great for the occasional graphic I like to make.
Remember when using any media you didn’t create. Make sure you read and understand the license and/or restrictions. When in doubt, always ask the creator.
