Have you ever asked yourself, “How do I make a background on MySpace?” Well, today I’ll show you how to find, create, and use a custom background on your MySpace profile.

Your source image could be from your personal photo collection or some wallpaper made available for free download from a site like Customize.org, one of my favorite sites, Digital Blasphemy, or Google’s Image Search (we suggest using the Advanced Search to narrow it down to non-commercial-licensed content).

When selecting your image, keep your audience in mind. Does the image provide a pleasing pattern or illustrate a great moment? Will it distract from your profile’s content? Is it age-appropriate, considering your friends? These are all things to consider, as well as image size. If your image is larger than, say 1024 pixels in length, we suggest using a tool like Resizr or any image resizer to shrink the image down.

Rather than linking to the image as hosted elsewhere, it’s good etiquette to save a copy of the image and upload it to a free host such as PiccDrop, and also to give credit somewhere on your profile to the artist or photographer. For demonstration, I’ve chosen this photo by Tim Snell. Once you’ve uploaded your image to your host, make note of the image’s URL (copy it into Notepad) for future use.

Your next step varies based on what type of MySpace profile you’re using. There are two versions of your MySpace profile. If you’re a long-time user and haven’t switched, then you’re using Profile 1.0. Here’s how to determine what type of profile you’re using. When you login, click the “Edit Profile” link next to your MySpace URL. Then, select “Customize Profile.” On the next screen, your profile type will be displayed at the very top of the page.

If you’re using “Profile 1.0”, follow these directions: Hit your “back” button to go back to the original profile editor. Use this background generator with your image’s URL to create the HTML code, then copy that code into the profile editor’s “About Me” box. Save your changes and check your profile.

If you’ve upgraded your profile to “2.0”, the process is easier. First, select your basic theme. If you have a dark image like mine, for example, it’s important to pick a dark theme to start with. In your customize menu, click Advanced Edit, then Background, and then paste your image’s URL into the URL field. Publish your changes and check your profile.

If everything worked, you’ll have a custom background for your MySpace page to show off to your friends (my profile is here). Feel free to share in the comments about any profile-customization tips you may have. There’s more MySpacey goodness on MUO here.

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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I guess it’s because they want us to stay forever but sometimes you just really don’t like the site or maybe you are trying to clean up your accounts (because you have so many all over the net).

Whatever the reason may be, I’m sure you’ll find that this little cheat sheet will make deleting those unwanted accounts quick, easy and painless.

Yahoo

There are two ways to delete your Yahoo account. The first way is to totally abandon it for at least four months. Inactive Yahoo accounts are deactivated after four months so if you’re in no rush to get rid of it, you can simply stop using it.

The other way to delete your Yahoo account is to visit the Account Termination page.

• Log into your Yahoo account. If you’re already logged in you may have to re-enter your password just for verification purposes.
• Click here to get to the Account Termination page.

Facebook

Facebook offers two options. You can either deactivate your account or permanently delete it. Of course, the deactivation method is much easier to find than the permanent deletion option. One thing you should know is that if you deactivate your Facebook account, your profile information will still be saved such as your friends, photos, interests, etc. On the other hand, permanently deleting your account will remove all of your information from Facebook and nothing will be saved.

To deactivate your account:

• Hover your mouse over the Settings menu in the top right of any Facebook page and click on “Account Settings”.
• Click on the “Deactivate Account” link at the bottom of the page.

To permanently delete your account:

• Click on Help at the bottom of any Facebook page.
• Search for “delete account” in the search box underneath the Help Center heading.
• Click on the “I want to permanently delete my account” link and read the 2 paragraphs there.



• Click on the link at the end of the last paragraph, read what’s there and then click the “Submit” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

MySpace

MySpace makes things a little bit easier, no searching needed.

• Click on “My Account” in the top right corner of any MySpace page.
• Click on the “Account” link.
• Click on the “Cancel Account” link at the bottom of the page.
• Select the reason why you want to cancel your account, and then click the “Cancel My Account” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

Ning

One thing about Ning is that even when you delete your account, the content that you’ve added to any social networks you were a part of will remain on those networks. If you don’t want your content to remain, you’ll have to delete it yourself. An easy way to do that is to simply leave each network you belong to separately before deleting your actual Ning account.

In order to leave a social network on Ning:

• Sign into the network.
• Click on the “My Settings” link in the top of the right hand column.
• Click on the “Leave (Social Network Name Here)” link at the bottom of that page.

To leave the Ning network altogether you will have to contact Ning by clicking here. There is no option in the “I have a question about” menu for deleting an account so you will have to pick which one you think fits best.

MSN

Just like Yahoo there are two ways to delete your MSN account. You can either stop using your account for 30 days or delete it manually. After 30 days of non-use your MSN account will become inactive and after 90 days your passport will become inactive.

To manually delete your MSN account:

• Click on the little arrow next to your name in the top right corner of any Hotmail page.
• Click on the “View Your Account” menu option.
• Click on the “Close Account” link at the bottom of the page.
• Read the info, enter your password to verify your identity and then click on the “Yes” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

Twitter

Note: If there are issues with Twitter, the option to delete you account will be disabled and you’ll get an alert message like the one picture below. So, hopefully Twitter is in good shape if and when you try to delete your account.

• Click on the “Settings” link in the top right corner of any Twitter page.
• Click on the “Delete My Account” link at the bottom left side of the page.
• Confirm that you want to delete your account.
• Click here for the easy route.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed is another site that makes you do a little searching before being able to delete your account.

• Click on the “help” link at the bottom of any FriendFeed page.
• Click on the “Using FriendFeed” header to expand it.
• Click on the “How do I delete my account?” link which will be the last link under that section.
• Enter your password in the first box, type the word “delete” in the next box, enter the reason why you’re deleting your account in the last box.
• Click on the “Permanently delete my account” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

Jaiku

Jaiku has the account deletion option right where you’d expect it to be.

• Click on the “Settings” link in the top right of any Jaiku page.
• Click on the “Your Profile” link under the Account heading.
• Click on the “Want to delete your account?” link at the bottom of the page.
• Click on the “Goodbye Cruel World, Goodbye” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

If there are any other websites that we haven’t mentioned here, why don’t you tell us how to cancel an account on that site?

Image Credit : Gaudium De Lingua

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Update all your Social Status Messages with Ping.fm (14)
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With it being so easy to create and upload digital photos to the web, there are a lot of creative and innovative individuals out there who just know how to make you enjoy a lot of your worthless and not so worthless pictures. Something I just recently discovered, and surely will begin making the rounds via yours and my e-mail account, is WriteOnIt.

WriteOnIt is a fun way to have fun with your photos and create hilarious captions to pass around your e-mail and blog. Amongst the three sections on the site, you have caption creation, fake pictures and famous magazine covers for you to plaster your friends faces all over.

Create Funny Photo Captions

Caption creation lets you select amongst several WriteOnIt images with a blank slate for you to enter any words that you like. There are currently three dozen of funny photo captions to choose from. They include Einstein, Santa Claus and even a gravestone, all with the ability to create your creative caption for whomever or whatever you like.

Create Fake Photos

With creating your own fake photos, you can take any image you’ve taken yourself and upload it to a billboard, a mirror or a pencil drawing. After the image is uploaded, they’ll be instantly transformed into whatever you like, the aforementioned options, along with a couple of dozen more.

Make Fake Magazine Covers

Ability to make fake magazine covers may be the most fun part of WriteOnIt. Take images of just about anything applicable, and add them to Playboy, Playgirl, Time, Rolling Stone or Wired. Along with an image, you can even come up with your creative caption to add. You could definitely have some fun with this one. I’ve done my best to represent MakeUseOf on their future Wired cover.

Although WriteOnIt doesn’t have a lot of hidden treasures, its simplicity and ease of use make it a great place when you’d like to create something for a quick laugh. Whether you’re trying to poke some fun at a friend or make someone famous (or infamous) for a short period of time, this website should be one at the top of your list.

Go check out some of the latest entries, or maybe some of the more popular items. You’ll get a better idea of what fun there’s to be had.

What do you think? What other photo and art websites can you create a great laugh at?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Create A Photo Mosaic On Your Local Computer (1)
• 6 Quick Ways to JAZZ-UP your Photos (23)
• 5 Sites That Will Change The Way You Work With Digital Photos (23)
• 5 Cool Google Picasa Tips to Make Use Of your Photos (10)
• Word Bubbles for Dummies. Make your images speak with Kyolo! (10)

As internet users gain more and more ways to communicate, they are looking for ways to centralize and bring things together. Fuser is one service that can help you keep your communications organized.

I first used Fuser about a year ago, and I must say I wasn’t impressed. I liked the concept, but the interface was frankly ugly and clunky, and I kept getting messages about my Java being out of date. In short, it was more trouble than it was worth. Recently, I decided to check back and see if anything had changed. It had, and it was definitely for the better. Fuser has a brand new interface that is far better than the old one, as well as some new features.

First, it should be understood that Fuser isn’t an email service, and it doesn’t provide you with a Fuser email address. For those of us overloaded with email accounts already, this is good news. Fuser is instead a communications dashboard that combines all your existing email addresses and social networking accounts together in one place. Signing up is extremely easy, as is adding all your accounts.

On your first login, you are greeted with a wizard that helps you add all your email and social networking accounts. It’s really easy, and you don’t have to worry about adding POP or IMAP settings for the most common email providers—Fuser does it for you. And for those of you who use email providers that don’t provide free POP or IMAP access, such as Yahoo or Hotmail, don’t worry about having to get a premium account; Fuser magically syncs them both ways with no problems.

Another interesting feature of Fuser is that it can synchronize folders across your email accounts. For example, if you create a folder in Fuser called “Family,” and you drag an email from Gmail and Yahoo into it, Fuser will automatically create a label called “Family” in Gmail and a “Family” folder in Yahoo and keep them in sync with each other. This feature might not appeal to everyone, but it is really useful for those who are serious about keeping everything centralized and in sync.

Also, Fuser has a built in conversation view, so if you’re a Gmail user, you won’t have to give up that feature if you start using Fuser.

In addition to your email accounts, you can also add your Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter accounts. The Twitter integration is one of my favorite Fuser features, and it has all the functions of the Twitter website. From Myspace and Facebook, Fuser syncs private messages and notifications. Unfortunately, you can’t see your news feed or post status updates—at least not yet.

In short, Fuser is a great way to bring all your email and social networking accounts together. It does just what it says it does, and does it well. While there are a few features I’d like to see and some small bugs here and there, Fuser shows a lot of promise. The Fuser team is very helpful and responsive, and they assure me many more great features are coming soon.

What about you? What features would you like to see? What services would you like to centralize?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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In fact, I would not describe actionext as a music discovery site. It’s different and maybe even better than that. I would say it’s a music lyrics search engine. You don’t have to listen to random tracks based on a pattern you seem to enjoy. Rather you can search for what you like yourself and create a custom music playlist. Additionally, actionext offers lyrics that anyone can edit in a wiki-like manner. Dive in to see more…

I know, there are other music search engines. However, this is the best I have seen in a long time!

Without signing up you can go ahead and search for artists or songs, browse lists of artists from 0-9 and A-Z, pick a featured album from the frontpage or browse the Top 100 list.

The best thing is that while you’re looking for music and adding tunes, the music player will stay with you and you can listen to what you have collected so far continuously, with only minor interruptions to to page loads.

A search will usually return a long list of results. The quality of songs greatly varies, the volume is not equalized, some songs are live recordings, others are album versions. You can’t necessarily tell the quality by the title the creator gave the song, so of course you can test play tunes before adding them to your playlist. Just click the play instead of the plus button.

Results always come back with two rows. On the left are the audio tunes and on the right you’ll see available lyrics. This is where the wiki-like system comes into play as you can edit the lyrics and submit your changes for review.

As you see you can download tracks and get them as ringtones. But don’t get too excited, both links will take you to services that will charge you for the favor.

To save and keep your playlist, you have to sign up. From there you can copy the code and share it through your website, blog or even myspace profile. That’s right, you can easily add actiontext music player with your playlist in it to your Myspace or other social networking profile. The code will be available when you save the playlist and at the bottom of the page when you’re playing it.

Interestingly, playlists can only be deleted when they’re open. You’ll see a “Delete this playlist” link in the top left above the player. A delete button next to each playlist in the “My Playlists” section would certainly be more comfortable. Also I’m not sure whether the amount of playlists you can create is limited. For this test I made 20. That’s plenty and the site probably allows a lot more.

Here for example is a playlist of artists I have seen live during the past two years. Not all of them, just the best of course.

What is your impression? Is it worthwhile? Are you gonna share some songs with us?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• WriteOnIt – Funny Photo Captions, Magazine Covers & Other (8)
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So prepare to be surprised by Scrapboy, a desktop client for some of the popular social networks like Facebook, Orkut, and MySpace.

Common sense says that ’social networking’ is synonymous with the web. But a little jiggling of the senses and a desktop app does have a certain appeal.

The first benefit that comes to mind is that Scrapboy helps to provide a common interface to handle multiple sites. No more logging in individually.

I downloaded and configured Scrapboy for my Facebook and Orkut accounts (I don’t have a presence in MySpace).  I then dug in and took a closer look at whether Scrapboy is worth a shout.

Logging into Facebook

I must say I really liked the interface – clean cut and cute. The log-in is straight through with the respective social accounts. For instance, as soon as I logged into my Facebook account, the social network asked for my permission to let Scrapboy access my data. With a yes, a small floating slideshow featured the profile pics of my circle of friends.

From the Scrapboy chat box, you can see your wall posts, check your inbox, view your pokes, events and check out your groups. Checking the inbox and your groups though involves logging into Facebook through the browser.

Now I could use this single window to access my circle of friends simultaneously. Chatting with Jane, spying on John’s wall posts and looking at Jim’s tagged photos – all at the same time!

Scrapboy not only transforms social networking into a chat box-like environment, but also takes it a bit further…

• Instant notifications when friends sign-in or when they send a message or receive news.

• Go offline into a stealth state.

• Use Facebook emoticons to add ‘emotion’ to your messages.

• See what you were gabbing about with saved history.

• Be peer to peer and exchange files with friends who have their own Scrapboy installed.

• Setting personal preferences for the notifications (pokes, group invites, new photos etc) thus allowing for selective control.

• Instant check of their profile and current status.

• A tiny checkmark in the chat window also reminds friends that the user is typing and hasn’t fallen asleep on the keyboard.

• View photos in a slideshow.

• Also view wall posts, including the deleted ones on your friends’ walls.

• Scrapboy serves you reminders about a particular event. Get reminded when you want with the option of a time function. Facebook events are automatically stored in an event viewer.

• Behind a proxy server? Configure it to work seamlessly with the settings in the options tab.

Logging into Google Orkut…

Scrapboy’s other face is its sync with Google Orkut. The interface shows your own and your friends’ scraps. The interface allows you to format and post your scraps, although it does not allow you to delete any offending scraps you might receive or send. Through the interface you can subscribe to the friend updates you want thus filtering the alerts you receive. You can also view your pals – by who is online, who visited you recently or who has an upcoming birthday, etc. Scrapboy allows you to open multiple windows for your friends and view their scraps and photos at the same time.

Scrapboy has its own take on privacy (or lack of it for your friends). You get notified whenever someone deletes a scrap or a photo…and more, you can see it too.

An end critique

Here is where I noticed a flaw in the program. If I logged in directly into Facebook and/or Orkut, instead of using Scrapboy and deleted my scraps or checked my events, Scrapboy did not reflect those updates and deletions.  An inability to update my status message also was a bit irksome.

But…the final note

Scrapboy did a good job of bringing all my fairly large collection of friends from two social networks into a single window. It also saved me the bother of manually logging into their ‘online’ lives through its frequent alerts. If I have to pick one standout feature over all the others, it would have to be the chat-styled interface.

Call Scrapboy a marriage of instant messaging to scrapping and of course, poking.

Scrapboy is a 7.6 MB download compatible with versions of Windows.

Have you tried Scrapboy for yourself? Let us know what you think with a scrap in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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When you surf around the web long enough, it will happen. It’s just a matter of time. Sooner or later you’ll arrive on this God awful website that’ll make you scream out in terror and hide beneath your desk. For some reason or another, some people just can’t grasp the concept of design.

User, meet Stylish. Stylish is a Firefox add-on. It’ll enhance your browser experience. Stylish uses simple, user-submitted CSS scripts (similar to Greasemonkey) to tweak the looks of certain websites.

Today we’re going to take a look at the four best Stylish scripts around.

1. Gmail Redesigned v2.0

If a webpage looks bad, we can make it look good. If it looks good, we can make it look better. Globex Designs released Gmail Redesigned, which will give your Gmail a slick dark look. It also visually tweaks all popular Google services. The Google Redesigned add-on was released a few weeks ago. Upon writing this article, Gmail and Google calendar got the treatment.

2. Grey/Olive v2 Last.fm

Going to Last.fm, I feel like I’m walking into McDonalds; only without the burgers. I don’t like the bright red. It gives a ‘do what you’ve got to do and get out of here’ message.

Grey/OIive v2 Last.fm gives Last.fm a nice and calm grey-green look.

3. Google Web Search – dark blue redesign (vC)

This one gives your Google Web Search a slick blue look. Everyone will ask why Google looks so cool; perhaps you can try the NASA story.

This style is also available in Dark Grey for both Google Web Search and Google Image Search.

4. MySpace – Updated Home Rearranged

I’m not a fan of MySpace. But because we can’t keep some of you away from it anyway, we can at least try to contain the damage. This style fixes a lot of things. It rids the complete site of ads and rearranges the items on your MySpace homepage, making it a lot more compact and usable.

Installing scripts

Installing these scripts is very simple. You just install Stylish, find a script online (or make one yourself) and install it by right-clicking on the Stylish icon at the bottom of your browser.

Are you good with CSS? Why don’t you try making a style for Make Use Of? Be the first! Let us know your favorite Stylish scripts in the comments.

(By) Simon is a student from Belgium who wastes his time relaxing, watching anime and surfing the net. He would tell you to check out his blog, only he doesn’t have one yet!

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Subsume currently only supports updates from Facebook and MySpace friends. It integrates nicely with Address Book, showing the picture attached for the contact but is optional and you can have Subsume work independently from Address Book. Besides that, every time a computer joins or leaves your network, Subsume will let you know; and can even automatically send out status updates for you on Adium and iChat when you watch something in VLC, Joost, Miro or DVD Player (so your friends know to leave you alone!)

More specifically, Subsume will provide you with alerts regarding:

• New Notifications from Facebook
• New Wall Posts
• Status Updates from Facebook and MySpace
• Connected/disconnected computer son your local network (Bonjour)

Subsume is more or less for the people who enjoy checking out what their friends are up to. This is the kind of program which you turn on and leave it on in the background, if you know what I mean. Since it works with Growl, Subsume pretty much feels like it is part of the system, not a separate application and doesn’t really bother me or decrease my productivity. My only gripe is that I can’t get the Subsume Dock icon to hide when I run the application. It also sets itself to start on login, so that saves a bit of trouble.

Subsume hasn’t been updated since November last year but still it is quite functional and does the job. Maybe if there were more Subsume users, that would encourage its creator to focus more attention and time into the project.

Subsume is compatible with Tiger and Leopard and again, it’s free.

(By) Jackson Chung is a full-time medical student attempting to perform a juggling act with relationship, studies and his future.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Update all your Social Status Messages with Ping.fm (14)
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The service currently supports Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce and Tumblr (with MySpace and Bebo coming soon). By entering your current status into Ping.fm, the site will then send your status to your account on these social networks within 60 seconds (for me, it was done no later than 30 seconds). No longer do you have to visit each site individually and enter your status again and again. Now it can all be done remotely from one central location. A big time saver.

Upon creating your Ping.fm account, you are asked to log into your accounts on these social networks and authorize Ping.fm to update your status on your behalf. The fact that you have to provide your password may worry some people but Ping.fm has provided a privacy policy and you should read that and make your own mind up before proceeding. I was inclined to trust Ping.fm with my details. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? Make me lose even more at Scrabulous?

Once you have authorized Ping.fm to act on your behalf, there are three ways they can update your status:

1. By web interface: you can enter your status message on the Ping.fm website and hit the enter button. Easy.



2. By email: Ping.fm provides you with an unique email address which you can use to email your status messages into the site:



3. By instant message: I really like this one. You can put Ping.fm bots on your IM contact list and then send your status to Ping.fm as instant messages. Supported networks at the moment is only AIM but a Google Talk bot is apparently imminent and support for more networks are apparently in the works:

But the feature I really like are the “triggers” – these are if you only want to post to certain networks and not to others :

@fb message – Post directly to Facebook
@jk message – Post directly to Jaiku
@pn message – Post directly to Pownce
@tr message – Post directly to Tumblr
@tt message – Post directly to Twitter

So if you wanted to only post to Facebook that you were watching a movie (for example) then your status message to Ping.FM would be @fb watching a movie. That way, it would only go to Facebook and not to say Twitter or Pownce.

To find out more, I had a short interview with the creator of Ping.FM, Sean :

Mark : What gave you the idea to start this service? What made you confident you could compete with an already existing service such as HelloTXT? What makes Ping.FM stand out from the crowd?

Sean : Ryan, (a colleague-of-mine-now-partner-in-crime) and I tossed the idea around the office for a day or so. We decided it would be pretty useful what with all of the micro-blogging sites starting to become so popular, so we put the gears in motion. Ryan moved to San Francisco shortly after and I started the concepts for the development.

At the time we started all of this, we had no idea that HelloTXT existed! It wasn’t until we were mentioned in a Mashable blog post that one of the guys came out and said hello.

I’m confident that our points of engagement; i.e. chat bots, widgets, apps and all of the other various platforms we’ve deployed on, not to mention the ones slated for launch will keep our services very useful.

Mark : How reliable would you say Ping.FM is? Has there been any down-time? Be honest now!

Sean : The only down-time we’ve come across was an issue with the AIM bot. It decided to go off line for several hours last weekend, but has yet to become a repeat offender. The site is very lightweight which makes it incredibly stable with high traffic. All message handling is done off the site, even if the site is down for any reason, all of the other
platforms will remain live as if nothing is wrong. It’s an intense system.

Mark : What definate new services are you planning to roll out in the near future? Do you have any other vague Ping.FM plans in your head that you’d like to share with the Make Use Of readers?

Sean : Current plans include an iPhone web app as well as a WAP based app for the phones that don’t support rich web content, an AIR platform, Windows platform, Mac dashboard widget and a few other platforms I’d like to keep a secret for the time being. We’re trying to push weekly roll-outs that include new features, but we’re developing them so fast we have to pace ourselves.

But, you can expect the GTalk bot and some other super secret platforms to go live within the next week for sure.

Mark : Are you planning to offer a cellphone text messaging capability like Twitter?

Sean : Yes, we are currently looking into premium SMS capabilities that will allow users to send messages to custom SMS short-codes.

Ping FM is in closed beta at the moment but Sean was nice enough to offer Make Use Of readers beta invites to try out the service. We have 100 invites to give away. Just go to Ping.FM and enter the beta code makeuseof. Then come back and let us know in the comments what you think of the service. If you’re a Mac user you might also want to check out Moodblast.

(By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger and professional freelance writer. Check out his blog at BetterThanTherapy.net

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1. ImageShack

Features:

• Upload options: from file, from URL, by email or directly from mobile
• Supported formats: .JPG, .JPEG, .PNG, .GIF, BMP, TIF, TIFF and SWF
• Max. file size: 1.5 MB
• no bandwidth or storage restrictions [update: ImageShack has 100 MB/hour bandwidth limit]
• Resize upon uploading
• Extras: Browser toolbar(IE, Firefox), Mac widget, Mac Uploader(for multiple uploads), Image tracking and more

2. AllYouCanUpload

Features:

• Upload options: from file
• Supported formats: .GIF and .JPEG
• multiple image uploads(up to 3 images simultaneously)
• different resizing option for each uploaded image
• registration is not required
• no restrictions on file size, bandwidth or storage period and amount

3. Photobucket

Features:

• Upload options: from file, from URL, by email or mobile
• Max. file size: free accounts users limited to 1MB file size and max. resoltion of 1024 x 768
• unrestricted multiple image upload
• mass image resizing upon upload
• individual image editing from account menu
• 10 GB monthly bandwidth limit and 1GB storage limit
• group images into albums, share albums and create slideshows
• also lets you host videos

4. ImageVenue

Features:

• Upload options: from file
• Max. file size: 1.5 MB
• Supported image formats: .JPEG and .JPG
• mass image upload(up to 10)
• unlimited storage, hosting period and bandwidth
• registration is not required

5. TinyPic

Features:

• Upload options: from file
• registration is not required
• unlimited storage, hosting period and bandwidth
• no restrictions on file size or image formats
• also lets you host videos

6. FreeImageHosting

Features:

• Upload Options: from file
• Supported image formats: .JPG, .JPEG, .PNG and .GIF
• Max. file size: 3,000 KB
• no storage, bandwidth or hosting period limit
• registration is not required

7. imgPlace

Features:

• Upload Options: from file
• Max. file size: 1.5MB
• Supported image formats: .JPG, .JPEG, .PNG, .GIF, BMP, TIF and TIFF
• mass image uploads(up to 10)
• image resizing for single uploads
• no bandwidth, storage or storage duration limits
• registration is not required

Technorati Tags: images, photos, free, hosting, myspace

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Do you guyz know that myspace is most popular site on the web, outnumbering Big Brother Google in pageviews. On september 8, 2006 it had 106 million registered accounts with 230.000 new ones added daily. So considering that I decided to create something myspace users can make use of, a list of tools/websites for creating original and unique profiles.

Design – Layouts, Backgrounds and more

BlinkYou
ProfileTweaks.com
123mycodes
Gazzump
MyspacePimper
Doobix
MyspaceToolbox
Createblog
Myspacesupport
MyGirlySpace – mostly girly stuff (no mucho stuff here)

Games

FlashGamesInc – games for your profile
MySpaceGames – and some more

Myspace Avatars

Meez – create virtual 3D animated image of yourself and put it on your profile (Recommended)
MySpaceAvatars – plain image avatars (browse down by category)
Zwinky – full animated image avatars. Didn’t try this one as it requires installation of browse toolbar(don’t use this one unless you sure you can remove it later)

Editors

Mygen – very detailed and powerful profile creator/editor
Thomas’ Myspace Editor – user friendly but rather limited
Myspaceeditor – can’t do much with this one, but if you need something on the spot give it a try
Myspacetoolbox

Tools for Music

Tracksfeed – design your own mp3 player
MyFlashFetish – original and stylish MP3 players (Recommended)
iLike – cool music social networking website(review here), for myspace there is a nice profile batch displaying recently/most played songs from your iTunes player (iLike registr. required)
YourSpins – remix music from favorite artists and put mixes on your profile

Tools for Images

1- Slide show tools
Dundoo
Slide – highly customizable
Slideroll – lets you use photos from flickr (free upto 10 slideshows and 100 photos)
MyFlashFetish – I recommend this one
RockYou – slide show + text = story
Bubbleshare – photo sharing website with an option to share image slide shows

2 – other image tools:
Flashface – add something unique by adding photorobot image of self instead of standard photo (review here)
Mypictr - photo editing tool for making profile picture
Resizr – easy to use web based image resizing tool

Storage Services

Photobucket – Free Image/Video Storage
Imageshack – Free Image Storage

Tools for Video

Flixn – fastly record video using your webcam and post it on your profile…view tour
OneTrueMedia – create, edit and share your videos online same goes for 2 services below
Eyespot
Jumpcut

Widgets

Springwidgets – RSS reader widget for your profile
Widgetbox – more widgets
Widgetoko – more
LabPixies – and more
MyFlashFetish- there are only 5 widgets here but I really liked the way they look

Various

Hotlistmaker – create and display all sorts of hotlists (songs, people etc)
HowManyOfMe – small batch that displays the number of Americans with the same name as yours
MyHeritage – upload your photo and find celebrities who look similar to you and display it on your profile
Librarything – display your favorite books on your profile (automatically gets thumbnail images for each book). Read review for librarything here
Nooz – community edited news site for myspace members
PlanetSmilies – Lots of free smilies,sorted by category
Geovisitors- find out where visitors to your profile come from
Memegen – lots of fun quizzes/ surveys for your profile
MyWhatSpace – program that lets you easily manage and edit profile right from the desktop
Wink – Search for people on all major social networks at once

Related Blogs

Mashable – popular blog covering myspace, youtube, bebo, facebook and xanga social networks
Myspacehacks – must read blog for any active myspace user
WhatEverLife – easy to follow guides for profile design and editing, lots of ‘how to do’s’
MySpaceIsMyPlace – news, hacks and customization

Links picked up on the way

How to create custom layout
two custom premade layouts for free (Minimal Lime and Dark Minimal)
Geek Invades Mysace – this guy took myspace servers down for several hours
Myspace custom style remover – explains how to remove some of the default crap that comes with your profile
This article shows how to access myspace and other social networks from school, work and other places that block them.
profile contest organized by Honda

Enjoy,

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Technorati Tags: myspace, tools, code, background, layout, graphics, avatars, widgets, online storage, editors, blogs

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