Early next year, a cool new service will go online targeted at web developers and designers. It will go by the name of dStyler.com but it's a little hard to explain what the service will do, but I'll start with a simple example:

What dStyler actually provides is real-time online image generation. It is a highly scalable REST-style webservice that generates images based on a custom-built URL. For example, the box on the right is generated by the following url:

http://dstyler.com/ufnqfr/204x254/bo-333/ib-fff-2/ro-5/gr-eef-b8e/gr-fff9-fff0-210x260/sh-0008-0-r3.jpg.

It is in a way similar to the Google Charts API and the Google static maps API.

Some of the things dStyler can generate:

• Solid backgrounds
• Gradients
• Single or double borders
• Drop shadows
• Image embedding (useful for watermarks)
• Special effects
• Rounded corners
• Slicing
• ...

The online administration interface allows you to:

• Build images in an interactive way (to generate the URL for you)
• Upload images to your account that can be used for generating images

Best of all, dStyler.com will be a free service

We are currently looking for people interested in beta testing this service. So if you're interested, contact me at beta -at- dstyler -dot- com (I know, I hate these obfuscated e-mail addresses more than anyone, but sadly enough, the world is a nasty world filled with f**king spammers)

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