I’m sure many of you have your own memories of the days when ASCII text was really all there was to computer graphics. It has been nothing short of astonishing to watch each generation of computer graphics and animation advance upon the successes of the last.

I always believed that ASCII graphics were an artifact of the past, one of those ancient technologies that you’ll find in some museum display somewhere, detailing the history of computer technology. That is, until I stumbled upon the ASCII art community, and discovered ASCII Generator.

The Community of ASCII Artists

We’ve covered a fair amount of ASCII art generator tools here at MakeUseOf. Most of them were fairly simple tools that just converted straight images into ASCII art in one quick step, such as ASCII-O-Matic, ASCII Art and Text-Image. Simon also covered a couple of cool sites that convert photos to text.

ASCII art is an acquired taste. I started out thinking, why would anyone want to take a step back in time to a day when you could only create images from text? But when you look at some of these brilliantly created photos, you start to realize why. There is a certain beauty in it – a clear image from a distance, from what otherwise looks like white noise up close.

ASCII Generator 2 is a project by Jonathan of the UK (wardog_uk at SourceForge). It comes fairly well recommended there, and it provides for adjustments and features that most other simple ASCII converters just don’t have.

The layout of the tool is the actual image you’re converting in the lower right corner, the controls and tweaks in the lower left, and the actual ASCII image in the large center pane. All you have to do to get started is load up one of your favorite pictures.

The first picture I tried was from Halloween, and at first I thought that I had completely messed up the software. The text looked nothing at all like the image.

Then, after reducing the size of the display using the settings in the menu for “Size:”, the entire picture came into the frame. Much better. Although, in my opinion it still left a little to be desired. I think maybe with ASCII art, “busy” images like this one are not always the best to use.

Maybe larger portraits without so much background “noise” makes for better ASCII art. So, I tried using a stock news photo of President Obama instead – a full zoom face shot. Definitely better, although from just these tests, it seems clear that the clearest images come from a photo with a white background and the object in the forefront.

I really wanted to put the converter to the test, so I tested out a cool space image that I had on my hard drive – a series of planets with a sun tucked around the edge of the largest planet, all framed in a stunning star field. After importing the image, I was pretty impressed by the results.

Although I also found that you can make the image much clearer in the ASCII art format by tweaking the brightness and contrast in the settings box at the lower left. All of the adjustments are immediately reflected in real-time on the output ASCII image.

My favorite part of the application is when it’s time to print or save the ASCII image, there are output formats that make the output image even more impressive. For example, you can do a color printout, which colors the text in the color tones of the original image.

I also found that the black & white image output in GIF format also offers an image that appears more clear than the original output ASCII on the screen itself (or maybe it’s just my imagination). What I did find is that it is a blast to play with this software using different images that I’ve got stored on my hard drive.

Another cool feature is that you can swap the colors so that the text is white and the background is dark. This makes for a really unique effect that I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere else that I’ve seen ASCII art. In my opinion it also makes for a much clearer output image too.

In the menu, you can also switch around the font and the default characters that are used in the output image. Sometimes a different font, or using italics, makes for a really cool effect in the final image.

You can output these as image files – I saved this one as a GIF – and then use them on your website, blog or anywhere else.

Are you into ASCII art? Have you ever tried ASCII Generator 2? Give it a shot and let us know what you think about this Ascii art generator project in the comments section below.

Three relatively new applications you might consider adding to your arsenal are Mou and MarkdownMail, for working in Markdown language; and a seriously magical Mac application, FormatMatch, for automatically reformatting copied and pasted text.

Let’s check them all out here.

FormatMatch

Typically when you copy text from one source, say a webpage or email, and then paste it in another text document, the copied text does not match the font style and size of the document you paste the text into. On a Mac you have to use the “paste and match style” keyboard shortcut command (Command+Option+Shift-V) to get the style match.

But now FormatMatch alleviates this annoying problem. This little app, which works in the background, will reformat text copied from one source, and match the format of the document in which you paste the text. Here’s an example:

When I copy formatted text from the MUO article on the right, and then paste into the TextEdit document on the left, it matches the style of the first sentence in that document.

You don’t have to use a keyboard shortcut or click any button. It’s all automatic, as if what the app does was built into the operating system. And if you frequently need to deactivate FormatMatch, you can do so in the menu bar or by using a keyboard shortcut.

FormatMatch is a free download from the App Store, but it’s an application that I would gladly would have paid as much as $10 for.

Mou

Unless you’re a web developer or a writer who works in HTML formatting, you might not be familiar with what is called Markdown, “a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML)” (Source: Daring Fireball.)

Based on my brief experience with Markdown, I think it’s whole lot easier to learn than HTML. And rather you’re learning Markdown for the first time or have been using it for a while, you will definitely want to check out Mou, a text editor that provides you a preview of your Markdown text as you write.

Mou is an excellent tool for learning the syntax, and it’s one that you might continue using as a text editor when you need to write in Markdown.

Mou even includes a built-in document that introduces you to the Markdown syntax. So you can start a new document in Mou and instantly start writing and Markdown let’s you actually see a preview of what you write. Markdown syntax seems almost intuitive.

In fact, sometimes writing in Markdown is easier than using keyboard shortcuts to format text, such as incorporating quotes and italics, documents headers, ordered lists, and hard line breaks.

MarkdownMail

If you get the hang of writing in Markdown and want to send out stylish HTML emails on your iPhone or iPad, you might want to purchase MarkdownMail ($2.99).

MarkdownMail enables you to write email that can include bold text, italics, bulleted lists and much more.

And with the built-in text expansion feature in iOS 5, you can set up some of your most frequently used Markdown properties to help you write using the syntax.

The app includes a preview button so you can see what your email will look like before it’s sent out. And from there you can send your Markdown formatted email in either HTML—in which the recipient of the email will view the formatted text—,or in Markdown, which will send the the actual syntax you used to write the email.

Let us know what you think of these applications. For other text editors for the Mac, check out the The Top 3 Free Coding Text Editors for Mac OS X.

Google Reader‘s interface is famously minimalist, but browsers hardly make ideal reading platforms. They give you convenient access to a plethora of distractions, from social networks to pictures of kittens. Avoid such distractions and focus on your reading by doing your reading in the command line. Besides, the command line is just plain cool, so you should be using it anyway.

eLinks is a text-only browser you can run from the command line. It is easily installed on Linux and Mac systems alike, so this idea works on both of those systems.

Installing eLinks

The first step, of course, is installing eLinks. Using Linux? Installing eLinks is simple, then. Just check your package manager of choice for it. Using Ubuntu? Simply click here to install.

Are you a Mac user? Congratulations, most of you aren’t awesome enough to be interested in the command line. You think different. Find a Mac download for eLinks here. You’ll find the Terminal in your Applications folder, under “Utilities“.

Once you’ve got the program working, you can open it in the terminal by typing “elinks” and hitting enter.

Launching Google Reader

Want to get to Google Reader quickly? Type this command into the terminal:

elinks google.com/reader/m

Just like that, you’ve opened a web browser straight to Google Reader’s mobile page. You will need to log in now. Use the arrow keys to get to the entry fields, then hit enter to add text. Log in and you will see your reading list:

Use your arrow keys to open up your article of choice. You will then see a text-only version of the article in question:

I highly recommend pressing the space bar to scroll down; it will “turn the page” completely.

Of course, this all assumes that the RSS feeds you subscribe to are full text. If some of them aren’t, Google will do what it can to convert links to a mobile version if you click a link. Alternatively, you can convert any RSS feed to full text with these tools. FullTextRSS in particular worked wonderfully for me.

Do you want a completely immersive reading experience? In most Linux distros, including Ubuntu, you can switch to terminal-only by hitting “ALT”, “CTL” and any of the “F” keys from 1 to 6. Pressing “ALT”, “CTL” and “F7″, for example, will bring you back to your graphical environment.

Alternatively, you could simply go full screen or maximize the terminal. That works too.

Other Potential Sites

eLinks doesn’t just work with Google Reader, of course – it’s a full blown web browser. Just about any site should work, but mobile versions of famous sites tend to work best, like the BBC Mobile version.

Can you think of any other sites you’d like to read in this way? Share them in the comments below, as always! Also feel free to share any other simple command line tricks you use to keep yourself from being distracted.

In addition to DashExpander, there are several other text expansion programs, including TextExpander, TypeIt4Me, Typinator (which is what I use) Swift Keys and FastFox, for both Mac and PC users. All of these programs work pretty much the same way, so in this article I will share some of my favorite text expansion tips and strategies. I invite other text expander users to share their own tips in the comments section below.

Abbreviation Basics

When you assign an abbreviation to a word, phrase, or longer piece of text, you most likely want that abbreviation to represent as close as possible the word or snippet it will replace. So if your snippet is a template thank you letter, the abbreviation might be “tty”. For this article, I’m using the word “abbreviation” a lot, so the expansion I assigned is “abbt”.

You can create thousands of abbreviations like these without them interrupting your regular typing. Your text expansion utility should let you know if the abbreviation you’re using is already taken. Sometimes it’s a good idea to go through and delete abbreviations and snippets you no longer use.

So now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s look at some other ways to use text expansions.

Short Abbreviations

Contractions

If you use contractions in your writing, you can save a few keystrokes by setting up expansions for words like “can’t,” “don’t,” and “I’ll”. To save the trouble of typing the apostrophe, the abbreviation for “can’t” can be “cant” which would of course would be replaced by the correct spelling of the word. The same goes for words like “youre,” “theyre,” and “ive”.

In the case of “I’ll”, “Ill” would not be a good abbreviation because the first three letters will conflict with other words like “illustration.” But if your text expansion program has a whole word feature, you can set up the “Ill” abbreviation to expand after those three letters are typed and the space bar is pressed. I do the same thing for the pronoun, “I.” I type a lower case “i” and after I hit the space bar, it changes to uppercase. Call me lazy, but it’s a quick little time saver.

Commas

Putting a comma before an abbreviation helps make sure that it doesn’t conflict with regular words you type. For example, you could use “,add” as an abbreviation for your home address, and “,badd,” for your business address. “,date” could be used to expand the current date, if your program includes that feature.

Abbreviations

You can easily use expansions to change “pdf” to “PDF,” “osx” to “OS X,” or “dvd” to “DVD,” for example. This saves the trouble of pressing the shift key for these types of abbreviations. One of my favorites is “eg” which turns into “e.g.”.

Name Initials

You can use the initials of someone’s name for their email address, such as “clm” for “cynthialee@me.com.” When you need to remember that abbreviation, you simply think about the initials for that person’s name, followed by another letter that represents the server address.

Website URLs

I use “my” as part of the abbreviations for my blogs, social network pages, and other sites I write for. For example, “mymuo” will type the URL for my MUO author page. The same goes for “mytwitter.”

Misspelled Words

There are some words that I can never remember how to spell. Don’t ask me why, but I can never remember how to spell “convenient” correctly. So I created an expansion snippet that correctly types it for me.

Programming Codes

If you’re starting to learn and use a programming language like HTML code, you will definitely want to save lots of time by creating snippets for the codes you frequently use.

Punctuation Marks

Again, call me lazy but every time I use parentheses or double quotes, I know I will have to punch those keys twice. So to avoid the redundancy, I set up a snippet for them. When I type “(“, it automatically expands to “().” In this and other similar expansions, Typinator includes a feature for setting the position of the cursor when an snippet is expanded. So in this case, Typinator puts the cursor between the double parentheses, and I can go ahead and type the text between them.

If I want to type the “+” sign, I simply use “==” for the expansion, which saves me the trouble of using the shift key.

It may seem like a lot of trouble to set up these abbreviations and snippets, but the more you create, the more you will see a boost in your typing. Another utility program TextExpander includes is a feature that logs just how many keystrokes and time you have saved by using the utility.

So those are my tips. If you have any of your own, please add them in the comments below.

Image Credit Shutterstock

Text summarizers analyze a document and then sum it up around key points and concepts. We were taught how to summarize long pieces of text in school. Text summarization apps are just the online automatic tools that use algorithms to present a quick outline of a document.

The benefit for us is that it helps us fit in the important facts in the shortest available time. It’s also a great study aid because a student is better equipped to tackle a long lesson armed with a sketchy summary. So, here are four free online text summarizers which try to give you the abstract with some degree of success.

Topicmarks

Topicmarks is a beta application. But it is effective in the way it summarizes long pieces of text and gets the main facts to you concisely. You need to register and sign-in. After verifying your email ID, Topicmarks gives you few ways to upload your document for summarization. Topicmarks supports – PDF, HTML, OpenOffice, MS Word, and text files. You can bring in content into Topicmarks by uploading a file, linking via a URL, from Evernote, and syncing your Google Reader feeds.

Topicmarks creates a detailed index of the content, displays related concepts, and also presents a summary. In short, you long piece of text is summarized for you to glance through. Topicmarks only works for documents in English. (Read Directory mention)

GreatSummary

GreatSummary aims to end information overload by identifying the key concepts in a document and extracting the gist of a document, webpage, or any text selection of your choice. You can either paste in a document or provide GreatSummary the URL. Select the number of sentences you want to have in the summary and press the “Summarize” button.

GreatSummary ‘identifies the words that capture the key threads of the text’ and then ranks the sentences according to the key words. You can then “re-summarize” by changing the number of sentences. GreatSummary is still in beta, but its point based summary is worth a tryout.

WikiSummarizer

WikiSummarizer only works for Wikipedia articles. It can be niftily used as a Wikipedia search engine and a summarizer in one shot. Feed WikiSummarizer a keyword and it searches out the relevant Wikipedia article and presents the abstract in points. The web app identifies the most important keywords and ranks them by relevancy. For each keyword the most important sentences in the original text are presented to the reader. The WebSumamrizer tab can be used to shorten and study any webpage with a URL.

Also, the summary can be viewed in two views – mind map view and a tree view which makes it visualizing the information all the more easier.  You can export the summary or the visual summary to Word, and/or choice of mindmapping software.

GistWeb

GistWeb takes the bookmarklet approach. Gist works for Internet Explorer and Firefox. As the name itself suggests, if you want the gist of a webpage, just click the bookmark. As an added plus, GistWeb also works with html files you have saved on your local hard drive. You have to open the HTML file and click your GistWeb bookmark to get a summary of the content. Though it doesn’t have an option to tweak the scope of the summarization, it does display the percentage shortening achieved. A reduction of 50 – 55% in the few articles I tried out is significant to increase my productivity.

These four tools are very simple in the way the process English language texts. If you want a productivity hack without losing out on the information that bombards us every day, try out any of the four text summarizers. Let us know which one you plan to keep. Also, tell us if you think that text summarizers miss the point and you would rather use your eye to skim through a long article.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Web designers probably have a kitty of Lorem Ipsum tools saved close by that’s useful for their web development work. Lorem Ipsum generators come in various forms; some of them allow customizing the dummy text generation with variable font widths, font faces, and other design elements. But there’s just so much you can take of the mock content. After a while your own brain goes to sleep in a dummy mode.

So, if you feel like chucking away the pseudo-Latin mumbo-jumbo and replacing it with some other nonsense text, here are a few options for you to consider.

Fillerati

Fillerati is perhaps the coolest and most stylish of the alternative Lorem Ipsum filler texts. Coded with HTML5, it’s also educational to a degree because it pulls text from classical works of literature (Helman Melville, Jack London, Jules Verne’s and Lewis Carroll to name a few). Google Translation APIs are used to convert the English text into multiple languages. You can apply markup tags and use a smooth slider to change the number of paragraphs on display. You can click the center circle to copy the filler text to the clipboard.

Fillerama

Star Wars can have a bit of fun on the side with this filler text generator. Filler text is freely borrowed from TV shows like Dexter, Futurama, The Simpsons, and Star Wars among others. You can set the number of paragraphs, put in a few lists, and format with headers. You can copy the HTML on the left pane and use it to design your web site or blog (see Directory mention).

Adhesion Text

Type in your characters, set a few rules, and the dummy text generator spouts out sentences taking your characters and the language you selected from a dropdown. You can insert characters in English, French, German, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, and Dutch. You can also use Latin, Cyrillic, Greek and even Arabic characters (see Directory mention).

Gangsta Lorem Ipsum

This filler text generator takes a bit of a wild route by generating text in rap style. You might like it if you are a fan of rapper Snoop Dog. You won’t be able to make any sense of it, which pretty much makes it as good as Latin for most of us (see Directory mention).

Fuck Lorem Ipsum

This alternative to Lorem Ipsum has been definitely created by its haters, if you go by the name and the tag line. This is another of those little apps which takes its filler text from TV comedy, dramas, kids show, and other scripts. You can markup the text with paragraph, break, and hypertext tags (see Directory mention).

Bacon Ipsum

Generate ‘meaty’ Lorem Ipsum text that has more than a handful of meat (bacon) related words. This filler text generator is definitely not for the vegetarians.

Blind Text Generator

Here you have a dummy text generator with a variety of filler options, from normal English to Kafka. Advanced options include customizable font styles, letter spacing, text decorations, and alignment options. You can wrap the code around all your HTML designing needs.

Malevole

Set the number of paragraphs and click on generate. This handy and simple dummy text generator helps you do away with traditional Lorem Ipsum text and instead use text from classical English literature.

Multilingual Lorem Ipsum Generator

I wanted to try out Esperanto as a filler text, and I found it here which gives you quite a few multilingual ways of trying out your placeholder text. You can of course go for the traditional Lorem Ipsum text or choose from other languages (including Japanese and Chinese).

Duck Island

An alternate Lorem Ipsum generator that gives you filler text inspired from The Matrix? You can try it out here. Then, you have a few more options ranging from classical Latin to Techno Babble. The screenshot shows the output after your select The Matrix option.

Searching for alternatives to Lorem Ipsum generators might seem like much ado about nothing. But as a web designer or anyone who uses filler text day-in and day-out, the sight of the same stuff could start to get on your nerves and eyes. That’s where these interesting and varied options come in.

Which of these stand a chance of being your favorite? Or do you use a text generator that’s not on this list? Let us know.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

If you are a Mac user and have never used a text expansion application before, a new program aptly called DashExpander can help you type much faster and work more efficiently. DashExpander does not have the advanced professional features of the programs listed above, but it is useful if you don’t already have such a program installed on your Mac or if you only have a limited need for one.

How It Works

All text expansion Mac programs work similarly in that they automatically replace an abbreviation that you type with an assigned snippet, such as a word, phrase or entire paragraph. So when I want to type my name, for example, I type the abbreviations “bkc”, and Typinator replaces that abbreviation with my full name. DashExpander works the same way with a few unique features of its own.

DashExpander has four main parts – a window for an abbreviation, another window for the corresponding text expansion, a quick search window, and a sliding panel for your assigned tags. DashExpander provides a fairly useful tutorial for getting started with the program, but let’s go through a few samples step-by-step.

If you haven’t already done so, download DashExpander from the Mac Store and install it on your Mac, which must be running OS X Lion. To quickly see the program in action, launch TextEdit, or a similar application and type the abbreviation, “hhello“. DashExpander will replace what you just typed with the words, “Hi there!”. While this is not the best example of what DashExpander can do, it does show how typing one abbreviation saves you the trouble of typing two separate words.

If you start each of your e-mails with the same greeting, such as “how are you?“, then you could create a text expansion–assigning your greeting with say a three letter abbreviation like “hwy.” This is a safe abbreviation because no words in English language begins with these three letters.

Adding Expansions

Open DashExpander from your menu bar, or by typing the keyword shortcut Option+Space bar. If DashExpander’s expansion editor opens with an existing snippet, simply ignore it and click on the “Add New Snippet” at the bottom of the editor.

To make the process easier, I suggest you first type the word(s) that you want to be expanded  in the larger box of DashExpander. Your expansion can be as short or as long as you would like.

Now assign your snippet an abbreviation, which should be a group of letters or words that you can remember for that expansion. Try to make the abbreviation represent the expansion as closely as possible. So if the expansion is a template thank you letter, then the abbreviation might be “tthankyou” or “tty“.

After your expansion and abbreviation are set up, you can use the tagging feature to organize and categorize your snippets.

Advanced Expansions

DashExpander includes a unique feature for adding text to an expansion before it is pasted into a document. For this type of snippet, you set up an expansion as described above, but in places where you want to add unique text, you type a placeholder, surrounding it with four underscores, as shown in the sample below.

When you type your assigned abbreviation, DashExpander will present a text editing window in which you can add the custom words or names to your snippet before it’s pasted.

You can navigate from one placeholder to the next by pressing the Return or Tab key.

DashExpander’s snippet management features are limited when compared to more advanced programs, so you will definitely want to tag each of your snippets. To open and close the Tags panel, click on the tiny cloud icon on the left side of DashExpander. Try to use tags that will group together similar snippets.

Dropbox Sync

Another great feature of DashExpander is Dropbox synchronization. This means that if you want to use DashExpander on two or more different Macs, you can synchronize your snippets between them using your Dropbox account.

To use your Dropbox account, click on the gear button on the right side of DashExpander. In the pop-up window you can change the location of the DashExpander file to a Dropbox folder. You will of course use the same Dropbox folder for each Mac.

There are several features missing from DashExpander, such as the ability to only activate an expansion only after the spacebar is pressed, or to make some expansions only work in specified applications.

Despite its limitations, DashExpander is a great text expansion mac program for learning how to use text expansion in your workflow. If you like the program, please consider rating the app in the Mac App Store where it can be downloaded for free. And let us know what you think of it.

In a follow-up article, I will share some other different ways you might use DashExpander or a similar program. If you’re a Linux user, check out this MUO article about the text expansion program, Autokey.

One of the best candidates for the editor is PlainText. It’s a free iOS text editor with the ability to synchronize to your Dropbox account. It means that you can edit your documents on the road using your iOS device and then continue the process on any computer using any text editor.

Playing With Folders

There are lots of text editors available for iOS. Other than the ability to use Dropbox to sync the documents, another thing that sets PlainText apart from its competitors is the ability to organize the text files into folders and sub-folders. If you deal with only one or two text documents, this feature might mean nothing. But, for those who interact with lots of texts, being able to separate them into folders means everything.

There are many small things about PlainText that will make you like the app. One of them is that it remembers the last location you were at when you left the app. The start point is the “Documents” view, and the first thing that you should know is that you can rename any document or folder by tapping on the small arrow next to the document’s/folder’s name.

There are several things you can do at the root – you can view documents, dive into a folder, search for text or a document, and delete any document or folder by sliding your finger on the name and tapping the “Delete” button.

You can tell which ones are folders and which ones are documents by looking at the small arrow at the right side of the screen. Every folder has an arrow next to it.

At the bottom of the screen are the tools. They are Settings, Search, Add New Folder, and Add New Text File.

When you are inside a document, you can easily go back to the folder by tapping the bold arrow on the left. Editing the document is as easy as tapping on the text and typing using the keyboard, which will automatically appear from below. To hide the keyboard, tap the small transparent keyboard icon above the keyboard.

Dealing With Dropbox

To link PlainText to your Dropbox account, go to Settings and choose Dropbox. There are other things you can customize from inside the Settings window, such as linking TextExpander with PlainText so that you can use short abbreviations to write longer words.

If your PlainText is already linked to your Dropbox account, you can use the “Unlink from Dropbox Account” button to change the location where you want to save your documents. Tap on the “Unlink” button to confirm the action.

By default, PlainText will store all the documents created with the app in a Dropbox folder with the same name: “/PlainText“. To change the location, type the folder’s name in the “Link Folder” field. If you write a name which doesn’t exist, PlainText will automatically create the folder for you.

You can change the file types that will be synchronized to PlainText, but I advise you to leave this setting alone.

After that, tap the “Link to Dropbox Account” button to connect PlainText to your Dropbox account. Fill in your Dropbox account email address and password before tapping on the “Link” button at the top right corner of the screen.

If you are using the iPad version of PlainText, then you are in for a treat. The size of the iPad screen makes PlainText very comfortable to use. You can expand the text area to full screen by tapping on the small arrows icon above the keyboard on the right.

So far, PlainText is my favorite text editor on iOS devices. Some will argue that Evernote is better, but I like the minimalistic approach of PlainText better than Evernote’s interface.

Have you tried PlainText? Or do you have your own favorite iOS text editor? Share your opinion using the comments below.

While we won’t be talking about software security, we are going to cover some overall communication security. In this case we’ll be sending text through an encryption/decryption program to make communications secure, whether over instant messenger, or via email.

About Scrambled-Egg

Scrambled-Egg is a lightweight open source program that does nothing more than text encryption. It does offer plenty of ways to do this, using up to 2 different techniques at once (from a much larger list of, compressing techniques), and a few other useful settings that will be explained later. It is easy to learn and use, so why not go ahead and install it?

Installation

To install the Scrambled-Egg text encryption software, you’ll need to visit this page and download the Win32 installer of the latest version (0.4 at the time of this article). Do note that there is in fact only a Windows binary available, though the site advertises that it should work under Mac OS X, Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Fedora as well. Once the installer is downloaded, you can launch it and run through the steps. Once complete, you’ll find Scrambled-Egg in your Start Menu.

Layout

Once the main window opens, you’ll see that it’s fairly easy to navigate. You have the left side of the window to encrypt any text that you wish, while the right side is dedicated to decrypting text. The two work hand in hand, so anything you wish to encrypt using the left side will appear in encrypted form on the right side. As soon as you make any changes to the left side, the right side gets updated in real time.

Encryption Methods

As you’ll soon notice, there are plenty of different ways to encrypt your text. You can encode your text using AES, ARC2, Blowfish, CAST, DES3 or RSA, then encode the result in a printable form, using Base64, Base32, HEX, Quopri, string escape, UU, XML or Json. The result can also be compressed using ROT13, ZLIB, or BZ2. By using these compression techniques during the encryption process, you can cut down on the space that an amount of text needs. The resulting file containing the compressed and encrypted text can then be placed into a ZIP folder which will drastically compress the file even further, allowing you to store the most amount of text on the smallest amount of storage space. In this sense you get two benefits from one process.

Increase Security with a Password

Preferably, you should add a password so that your text cannot be decrypted without the password. If you ever get encrypted text from an outside source, you must select the methods that were used for encryption along with the correct password in order to receive the decrypted text. This massively improves overall security over the basic “guess the combination of encryption techniques” way to get decrypted text.

Extra Options

At the bottom you’ll find a few more options that you can choose from. You can select whether formatting is important, if your text should be presented in HTML, and whether tags should exist in the encrypted text. I recommend you choose the “No tags” option as the tags will give away the encryption methods that were used. You’ll also find Import and Export buttons, which will open or save any encrypted text files. Finally, if you need another explanation of how things work, you can click on the Help button for a nice, concise explanation.

Conclusion

Scrambled-Egg is a great way to secure your communications without having to get involved into more complex ways of securing transmissions, such as GPG keys for emails. Additionally, you won’t have to become dependent on an online site to do the encryption and decryption for you, as you cannot view the code that makes the site work. Overall, this is a great tool for a number of different uses, and should be on everyone’s list of programs to consider. There’s even a portable version of the text encryption software available for your USB drive!

Is encryption important to you? Why or why not? What do you think is the best way to communicate securely? Let us know in the comments!

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