I only list products here which I truly believe to be top quality or super convenient.
Disclaimer: the links to hosting services are the only affiliate links to compensate for my hosting costs.
Updated on 30 July 2022
Gigapixel AI image upscaler
This software created by Topaz Labs is perfect to upscale images up to 600%. It uses artificial intelligence to recognize the content to upscale the images without artifacts. I often use Gigapixels AI to upscale 3D rendered images to 4K. That way, I can render at a lower resolution so that it goes much faster. The software can upscale a huge amount of images in one go, although this largely depends on the power of your computer. Having a NVDIA GTX 3080 video card is no luxury with this software (see also bigjpg below).
https://www.topazlabs.com/gigapixel-ai
Bigjpg.com online image upscaler
bigjpg.com does the same as Gigapixels AI. The difference is that this is an online tool so the power of your computer doesn’t matter so much. It can scale up to 800% in one go. This software is free although for convenience you can take a 6 month subscription $10 (at this time of writing) to work faster.
The quality isn’t as good as Gigapixels but it comes close.
bigjpg.com
CloudBerry Explorer
I really love to use CloudBerry Explorer to manage my S3 Amazon files. For Windows, this is the best application I have come across so far. It’s versatile, efficient to use and it has all the whistles and bells you need. The interface is clear, it feels like you know it already when you open it the first time. I actually started out with S3 Browser and although it isn’t bad, CloudBerry does a better job.
Read all abou it here: https://www.msp360.com/explorer/
Videojs – Open source video/audio player
No license fees, freedom to do with the player what you want. Many plugins available. It is a little harder to set up than JW Player but once it works, it’s a great player with many free options, incuding support for AWS KMS encryption, VAST advertising (if that is your thing), all for free.
More info: videojs.com
DreamHost Hosting
My dear old friend DreamHost. I’m using this hosting provider to test my websites for over 13 years now. It has its own panel which has much improved over the years. There was a period when I wasn’t too happy with the speed of the server but is improved a lot as well (as far as shared hosting goes). They added support for CloudFlare and a host of other speed improving options.
Support is very good and it has a one-click install applications section including blockbusters like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc.
Miracle Tutorials gives you a onetime $50 discount on your first DreamHost account.
Read all about it here or click the image.
GreenGeeks Hosting
GreenGeek Hosting is the Green energy hosting service in my toolbox. It is very much like DreamHost in features and performance, except that GreenGeeks has a CPanel, which is widely used all over the world, so when you learn how to work with this easy to manage panel, it may be useful when you ever decide to switch to a dedicated server. GreenGeeks boast a “300% powered by renewable energy“,which sounds a bit strange since 100% is in principle all you have, but there you go. Renewable energy is important, so you may want to take this in consideration when you choose your hosting provider.
Read all about it here or click the image to order.
Royalty free music libraries
List of music libraries (no affiliate links here):
www.istockphoto.com/audio.php
www.soundrangers.com
www.stockmusic.net
www.stock20.com/commerce
www.musicalley.com
www.musicloops.com
www.podsafeaudio.com
blog.blogtalkradio.com/blogtalkradio/17-places-to-find-podsafe-music
www.partnersinrhyme.com
wiki.creativecommons.org/Content_Directories
www.royaltyfreemusic.com
https://pro.jamendo.com/en/
