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A virtual tour of the Gaza strip

To provide a visual representation of the problems that the 1.7 million Gaza Strip residents encounter on a daily basis, an Israeli NGO, Gisha, created a Virtual Tour of Gaza. Through an interactive map of the Strip containing text, images and video, viewers can see how restricted access policies have affected local infrastructure and education, as well as the economy.

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Convert web pages to PDFs

There are many online services that can convert webpages to PDF files. These may be of use for printing or archiving internet pages. With Web2PDF, you enter the internet address of a particular page on the internet into an online form. When this is submitted, the document is converted and presented to you as a downloadable document.

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Obscure faces or objects

ObscuraCam is an Android application that allows you to obscure faces or objects in photos or videos to keep certain information private. It allows you to black out or pixelate certain areas of an image. You can also reverse pixelate, so that only the person is visible and the background becomes blurred. The application also allows you to remove telltale metadata such as GPS location, phone make and model, and author information.

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Page layout wtih Scribus

Scribus is a page layout programme. It can be compared to Microsoft Publisher or Adobe InDesign. With Scribus you can create layouts for newsletters, bulletins, manuals, reports and other printed materials that require text and image layout. It is a good tool to use when you are creating publications that need a more specialised approach. Scribus has a user-friendly interface but also supports advanced features like colour separation, CMYK, and flexible creation of PDF documents.

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Photo sharing with Flickr

Flickr is a popular photo sharing site and one of the largest online image repositories. Flickr is very popular with a large number of professional and amateur photographers. It has many features which make it easy for you to present lots of images through tagging and arranging them in different groups or sets. You can also control how images are shared. You can keep keep some out of the public view, and allow others to be used freely. You can create groups of friends and share your photos only with them.

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Pixlr: Image manipulation

Pixlr is one of many online browser-based photo and image manipulation services. It stands out as the fastest and most flexible. Pixlr has three modes: 'express', 'advanced' and 'playful'. The 'advanced' mode can perform the same kind of alterations to an image as Photoshop and GIMP, and the layout is almost identical. Express mode is very fast and intuitive, and is suitable for first-time users. The 'playful' mode, which is also available as a phone app, allows you to easily add flashy or vintage effects and backgrounds to your pictures.

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Synfig for 2d animation

Synfig Studio creates 2D animation. It uses new techniques to allow you to create animations quickly, with a limited budget. It can be compared to the Flash animation application. It is a very stable tool with a lot of professional features. Photographs and other backgrounds can be integrated with icons and cartoon figures to create scenarios which can communicate a particular message. The use of animation allows you to use the power of moving images cheaply to communicate your message.

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Graphics editor

Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editing application, with capabilities similar to Illustrator and CorelDraw. Vector graphics are often used for illustrations, graphic design or advanced work with graphical text. Inkscape is a perfect tool for creating beautiful complex or simple images, flyers or posters where the more block-orientated layout of print applications is not appropirate. Some of more advanced uses of Photoshop – like applying effects to fonts and altering the shape of images – are best done in Inkscape rather than GIMP.

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Mind mapping

XMind is software for mind mapping. Concept-mapping or mind-mapping software is used to create diagrams of relationships between concepts, ideas or other pieces of information. Many people find the mind mapping technique more effective for learning than conventional note-taking. While this process is often done on paper, it can be handy to have an electronic version for future editing and sharing. Xmind – apart from some advanced features – is free and open source. It creates very attractive-looking diagrams and it is very easy to learn how to use.

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Alternative to Photoshop

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) can do just about everything that Adobe Photoshop can do, and it's free for anyone to use. You can use GIMP to re-size and crop photographs or other images, as well as adjust the brightness and contrast of images, add text to graphics, apply various effects and filters, work with layers, create animated GIFs and get images ready for print or the internet. You can also edit or remove data called EXIF data, contained in photos. This data often contains information which you may prefer not to share with the world.

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