Webscape

By Kate Russell Click Webscape-r

Kate Russell gives us her latest selection of the best sites on the World Wide Web.

Best of the web from Kate Russell

Gimp

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Computers are great for playing with images and not just photographs.

Lots of websites ask creative surfers to contribute their own creations, or you might even have a website of your own you want to jazz up with a few sparkly images, and you cannot go far wrong if you ask Gimp to lend a hand.

Gimp is a free image manipulation programme distributed under the GNU General Public License. It will allow you to make complex or simple changes to the images you are working with in a matter of minutes.

The website itself is nicely designed. It is worth taking a look at the tutorials under Documentation if you are new to image manipulation, as the interface can look quite daunting to the uninitiated eye.

The guides will take you through the features of the programme, from basic touching up and resizing of photographs to creating your own icons and 3D floating logos.

A powerful package that is easy to use and completely free. You cannot say fairer than that now can you?

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Print Station Disney

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

The web is a wonderful, colourful and fun place, but it is not a good idea to spend too much time glued to your computer, especially for the younger ones.

But you can bring a little of the quirky spark of the internet out into the real world at Print Station Disney.

This is a site where you can print all sorts of stuff for your small ones to enjoy off-line and it is all provided free by Disney.

As you would expect, the printables feature popular Disney characters and range from activity sheets full of puzzles and colouring-in templates, to masks and photo frames and even mobiles and door hangers.

Clicking a thumbnail gives you the option to preview the printout. Remember you will need to be using a good quality colour printer if you want to make best use of the bookmarks and photo frames.

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Splandoo

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Sometimes you see a video online and you want to save it to watch later. It is such a shame that you cannot download movies from sites like MSN Video, YouTube and Google videos. Well actually you can if you visit Splandoo.

The site is simplicity itself. Just find the video you want to download - use the drop down menu next to the URL box to see which sites Splandoo will work with - and then paste the link into the box provided.

After clicking download you will be offered your usual Save dialogue. You need to change the name of the file to whatever you want to call it with .flv at the end. This will save the file as a Flash movie.

You will need a Flash movie player installed on your machine to watch it from your own hard-drive instead of via the web, but do not panic, Splandoo even provides a handy link to download a free player.

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Icanhascheezburger

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

And as we are in a visual mood let us finish with a little bit of fun. Crazy cats and daft dogs are the order of the day at icanhascheezgurger.

This site is utterly, utterly silly. It asks you to add captions to pictures of cats to make what the site calls Lolz.

You will notice from the captions on display that the language being used is far from proper English. It is known as Lolspeak.

It is cutesy, badly spelled and with terrible grammar. Click the link to Lolspeak wiki at the top to learn more.

It is supposed to make the captions funnier, but I guess it is an acquired taste and you do not have to use it if you do not want to.

I love this site. It is totally pointless and utterly frivolous but had me giggling away for hours.

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