Thumbnail Me offers a solution for those of us who would like to have the ability to automate making thumbnails from videos. With this application, you can create thumbnails of different frames within a video file quickly and easily.

What Is Thumbnail Me?

Thumbnail me is a free and open source thumbnail generator. It’s cross-platform (Windows XP/Vista/7 and Linux, but not Mac…sorry!) and it creates images of videos and provides the option to upload them to ImageShack. Thumbnail Me is coded in C++ and uses the Qt 4.7 library which is why it is capable of running on both Windows and Linux based operating systems.

Thumbnail me also works with a wide range of video types, including AVI, MKV, TS, M2TS, MPEG, MPG, Mp4, VOB, WMV, OGG, 3GP, MOV, FLV, and SWF.

How Do I Use Thumbnail Me?

If you’re ready to get started with Thumbnail Me, the first thing you’re going to want to do is head over to the website and download the application.

Once you install and run the app, you can begin by selecting a source, output folder, etc. Then enter a title and any other information you would like to be included with your file(s).

You can also select an image format for your thumbnail generation. Available formats include JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF. Optionally, you can log in with your ImageShack account for uploading the generated thumbnail images to the service as well.

Thumbnail Me also gives you the option to preview the potential thumbnail image before generating it. When you’re ready to proceed, just click the Launch button. Your video screens will be created instantly.

Conclusion

When taking screenshots of videos the most common use that comes to mind (at least as far as I’m concerned) is torrents. When seeking out a torrent of a video or movie (one that’s being shared legally of course!), it helps to be able to view screen captures of the footage before committing to download it, as these types of files tend to be rather large and can take a long time to download. It’s also a good way to tell if you are downloading the right file, especially if you’re having difficulty remembering the title.

Thumbnail Me is a pretty versatile application that supports a number of different parameters. If you are ever in need of a video screenshot application, Thumbnail Me is a tool that is more than capable in suiting your needs.

Let us know in the comments what you think of it.  Or maybe you know of a better alternative?

For an obvious example, check out the MakeUseOf homepage, where the featured image is used to make an otherwise dull list really pop out. Not only does this obviously improve the aesthetics of your blog, it also makes it more likely that readers will pay attention to the content. Visual cues are always better.

Today I’d like to show you how to use featured images in your WordPress blog. I’ll show you how to add and assign the image to your post as well as the code you’ll need to integrate them into your theme.

Setting Featured Images

If your theme supports it, you should see a Featured Image option on your post edit screen.

Click that to open the usual file upload pop-up, but instead of clicking Insert into Post, select Use As Featured Image instead.

Close the pop-up and you should now see your featured image added to the sidebar to indicate you were successful.

Don’t worry about the size for now, we can adjust that later through the WordPress options.

No Featured Image Button?

If you don’t see the link in your sidebar, it’s quite likely your theme doesn’t support them. No worries, we can fix that. You’ll need to log into FTP – or use the built-in WordPress file manager if your folder permissions allows you to – and locate your theme folder. This will be in the wp-content/themes/yourtheme, where yourtheme is the name of the theme you are using. Open that up and take a look at the files in there.

Look for the file called functions.php and open it up in your favourite text editor. Scroll to the end of the file, and just before the closing ?>, add the following line:

  add_theme_support('post-thumbnails');

Remember, make sure you do this just before or on the line before the closing PHP tag. So the end of your file should now look something like:

  add_theme_support('post-thumbnails');?>

Refresh the post edit screen and you should be able to now set a featured image.

What About All My Previous Posts? Do I Have To Edit Them All Again?

No. There’s a handy plugin called Generate Thumbnails that can handle the tedium of setting featured thumbnails on old posts really easily. After you’ve installed, just find the new link on your Tools menu and click the button to set the images. Obviously, if you don’t have images on your posts in the first place, you can’t automatically set any.

Add The Thumbnail To Your Theme:

I’ll be using my newest blog Self Sufficiency Guide to demonstrate, so head on over there to see the results – using a theme called Nature_wdl which you can download here. By default it doesn’t support any kind of post thumbnails, so I’ve had to first edit the functions.php to include that line. The basic design of the homepage is fine, but I’d like it to show just a list of articles with a featured thumbnail next to them, instead of the entire post content.

If you followed my WordPress tutorial last week, I showed you how the basic theme structure works. Since there’s neither a home.php nor front-page.php for this theme, the front page will be handled by index.php, so let’s open it up and take a look:

 
<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
                <div class="post-top">
                    <div class="post-title">
                        <h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php if ( function_exists('the_title_attribute')) the_title_attribute(); else the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
						<h4><?php comments_number('0', '1', '%'); ?></h4>
                    </div>
					<h3>
						Posted by <span><?php the_author() ?></span>  |  Posted in <span><?php the_category(', ') ?></span>  |  Posted on <?php the_time('d-m-Y') ?>
					</h3>
					<h3>
						<span class="post_cats"><?php the_tags(); ?></span>
					</h3>
                </div>
 
				<div class="entry">
					<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;'); ?>
				</div>
 
                <div class="postmetadata">
 
                </div>
			</div>

Luckily, this theme is really well coded, so adjusting it should be no problem. Before adding the thumbnail, I want to make sure only a small excerpt of the post is being shown, instead of the entire post content. Find the line that says:

<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;'); ?>

On a different theme, it may just say the_content(). Simply replace it with:

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

Now if you reload, you’ll see that only a short paragraph snippet is shown, rather than the entire content.

Next, to add the thumbnail, let’s just see what happens if we just add in a single line directly above, like so:

<?php the_post_thumbnail();?>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

It’s a little ugly, but straight away with just one line of code we’ve added the associated image to the homepage! Fantastic! To make it a little more attractive, let’s try floating the image to the left, and cutting it down to the default thumbnail size like this:

<?php the_post_thumbnail('thumbnail',array('style'=>'float:left;'));?>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

The syntax is a little complicated in there, but you should be able to see where you can insert your own CSS if you wish. For instance, to add a right margin:

<?php the_post_thumbnail('thumbnail',array('style'=>'float:left;margin-right:10px;'));?>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

I’d say that’s pretty impressive for 30 minutes work!

Adjusting the Thumbnail Size:

You may find the default size of 150×150 is a little too big for your site. To adjust this, enter your WordPress admin and find Settings -> Media on the left hand side. Here you can change the size of your thumbnails. A word of warning though: this will only change future uploads, not your existing images, so don’t be surprised when nothing happens. There is however a helpful plugin called Regenerate Thumbnails which can automatically run through all your existing images and size them up right.

I hope this shows you just how incredibly flexible the WordPress system is and how you can easily adjust a theme code without any experience of PHP programming. In times past, adding this kind of functionality could have taken days. The best way to learn is to experiment though, so be sure to read up on the codex and stay tuned, as next time I’ll show you how to make your own widget for the sidebar that highlights a random post using its featured image. Stay tuned!

This post will hopefully make your web image searching and browsing even more fun: the three addons listed will let you easily zoom the image thumbnails in to quicker choose one from search results.

Let’s see how we can quickly preview thumbnails in search results, download any image in its original size and preview your contacts’ Facebook photos right from your dashboard:

Thumbnail Zoom

Thumbnail Zoom is a fun addon that lets preview thumbnail pictures on Facebook, Twitter, Google Picasa, DeviantART, PhotoBucket, Flickr, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, YouTube, Google Images and a few other popular services Any supported site can be enabled or disabled using the toolbar menu and the addon settings dialog.

The addon also adds an extra context right-click menu item that allows to download the enlarged image without ever opening it.

The options panel lets you disable any of the supported services as well as set the delay before displaying the image and its opacity:

Cool Previews

CoolPreviews is the multi-feature FireFox addon that lets you preview any linked content including images. The image preview panel enables you to:

• Zoom the image in or out;
• Open the linked image in the separate tab;
• Email the current link;
• Play all the images on the page in the slideshow (works especially well for popular image search services like Flickr, Google Images, etc)

You can also turn previews on/off on specific sites anytime by clicking the icon on the status bar (or for those who have no status bar in FireFox 4, the same settings can be accessed in Tools -> Addons). CoolPreviews will memorize your settings.

The “Settings” dialog lets you customize your image previewing experience in many ways:

• Set when you want the preview panel to appear: on mouse-over, on clicking the CoolPreviews icon, on mouse-over + CTRL key;
• Set the location of the preview panel (relative to the cursor or the link);
• Control the speed (how fast you want the preview panel to appear)
• Set the theme (dark or ice);

Additional fun features:

• Temporarily bookmark images to the right column with “stacks” feature;
• Scroll Google Image search results on an “infinite 3D Wall” (Cooliris addon required).
• Preview multiple thumbnails simultaneously without (mouse over subsequent images on a page while the preview window is open or pinned).

Obviously, there’s no point in using the above two addons simultaneously, so you should pick one.

Facebook PhotoZoom

Facebook PhotoZoom only works for Facebook, but I am sure most of the readers frequent the site, so they’ll find the addon very useful. The tool works as a magnifier for Facebook thumbnails (both profile pictures and album photos): when you hover over a thumbnail, a tooltip will appear with the bigger image in it.

They have a few reported issues (some people experience problems making it work on Windows), but I’ve had no such issues.

Do you have any more tips for better thumbnail preview in FireFox? Are you aware of any similar tools for other browsers?

Here are 3 different online screen capture services — 2 for still images and one for recording your screen.

1. Capture Full Page

The motto of the site is Take Screenshot on the Fly. There is no registration required.

The application allows you to select the dimension, size, and format after it captured the website for you. Since a full size screenshot is taken before you can downsize, the process takes a little longer. Once it’s done you will see the screenshot on the left and a menu on the right. The options for dimensions are top screen or full screen, the size can be anything from full to extra small, and the available output formats are JPEG (smaller file size) and PNG (better quality). Clicking > View will give you a preview in your browser and by selecting > Download you receive the file.

2. Super Screenshot

Super Screenshot is much faster than Capture Full Page, although it essentially works the same, minus the fancy layout.

After the screen was captured, you can select dimensions, size, and format. Before you view the screenshot you can also refresh it.

3. ScreenToaster

ScreenToaster is a free online screen recorder that allows you to capture videos of what’s happening on your monitor, independent of your operating system. Quite obviously, this tool is perfect for pre-recorded screencasts or tutorials. To use it you have to register. You also need to enable Java for whichever browser you’re going to use.

Once you’re logged in, click the > Start Recording button and the application will launch. You can then select which portion of the screen you want to capture and whether sound and webcam should be recorded as well. When you decide to make a screencast of only a small section of your screen, yo ucan drag a black rectangular to the desired location. Hit > Record to start. The key combination > [ALT] + [S] will both start and pause recording. This is useful when the website is in the background as you need to bring it to the foreground to stop the recording.

Here is an excellent YouTube review of ScreenToaster by iComputerHacker:

We have previously reviewed online screenshot and screencast services:

• ShrinkTheWeb: How To Add Thumbnails To Your Website With ShrinkTheWeb by Mark
• kwout: Take Screenshots From Your Browser with Kwout by Kyle
• Screenpresso: A Light Jing Alternative with Advanced Options by Jessica
• How to Create a Screencast Like a Pro with These 6 Online Tools by Jessica

Looking for more, maybe a Windows software or browser extension alternative? Please have a look at these articles:

• All You Need For Making Awesome Screenshots by Ann
• 4 Tools For Creating Screenshots and Screencasts by Ben
• 4 Cool Firefox Extensions To Capture Screens by Abhijeet
• Share Your Media and Screen Sessions with Screencast by Bakari
• How to Take Easy Screenshots with Lightscreen Portable by Tim
• Bug Shooting ““ Simple Screen Capturing Software That Works! by Tim
• Take A Screenshot Of A Web Page With WebSiteScreenShots by Karl
• A Thorough Look At CamStudio As An Effective Screencasting Tool by Tim

What is your favorite strategy for taking screenshots?

Image credits: hugama

The same applies to the links on your website.

Here at MakeUseOf, we use an online service called ShrinkTheWeb. It’s a website screenshot thumbnail service that allows us to easily add a thumbnail to for any website. You can see it in action in our daily Cool Websites and Tools series.

So say you have written a website review or you have inserted a link to a site on your blog. Wouldn’t it look much better with a small thumbnail image of that site next to the link? Of course it would. It can be especially handy for list style articles, just like MakeUseOf’s Cool Websites and Tools.

Add ShrinkTheWeb Website Thumbnails To WordPress

To automate things and make our life easier, we use their WordPress plugin. The plugin is specifically helpful for those who plan to use the ShrinkTheWeb thumbnails on a regular basis.

As you can see from the above screenshot apart from generating thumbnails it can also add small mouse-over popup previews to external links on your website.

If you don’t want to bother with the plugin, you can easily and quickly generate multiple sizes of a website screenshot, simply by inserting the URL on the front page of ShrinkTheWeb.

To make an image of a website page, just look at the bottom of the STW website and you’ll see a box entitled “Generate a Screenshot“. Simply enter the URL and hit the green arrow button. As an example, we will use the MakeUseOf site.

Seconds later, you’ll have quite a few sizes (there are six default sizes).  There are no advertisements or watermarks on the thumbnails.

Then it’s just a case of right-clicking on the size you want and saving the image to your hard drive.

But if you have a WordPress blog, it gets even easier. Just install their plugin and everytime you want to insert a thumbnail of a website, just enter in the HTML tab of your post, 

[thumb]enter the domain name here[/thumb]

The thumbnail image will then be automatically generated when you save the post.

There are also plugins for Drupal, vBulletin and Django.

There are many reasons why you might want to use ShrinkTheWeb:

• Having thumbnail images means your readers can see where weblinks lead to and they can decide instantly whether they want to go there or not. This is good for NSFW (not safe for work) links.
• It makes your webpage much nicer to look at. Who wants to look at a bunch of boring plain text when you can have pictures instead?
• Remember the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words”? Well, if you’re struggling to convey the point of a website, show your readers a picture instead. Problem solved.
• Increase the chances of someone clicking on your links. I am more likely to click on a link if I see a picture next to it. Pictures pique my curiosity.

The service is free but they do offer an optional paid pro service as well. Check out this page to see what you get with the pro option. Personally I think most people will be perfectly happy with the free offerings.

Do you use ShrinkTheWeb? If so, what do you think about it? Or maybe you use a super-duper alternative service that you would like to tell us about? Lets us know in the comments.