Nope ! You don’t need any expensive graphics editing tools. Nor do you require to perform painstaking and complicated procedures to generate those ultra-cool reflective Web 2.0 style badges. You can do all of that online under less than a minute and for free with Web 2.0 Badges.
The site offers a whole bunch of pre-created badge templates in the most common formats (rounded/serrated/flowery edges). All you need to do is take your pick, set the colour palette, specify the text and font and hit Apply. Your shiny new badge is ready for download. You can tweak around with several other factors like X, Y coordinates of the text (which is normally centered on the badge), size and colour of the font as well as the angular inclination of the text.
And in case you’re not satisfied with the results, there’s even a box.net drive linked to the site, from where you can freely download PSD (Photoshop) templates of every conceivable kind of badges.
Here’s a quick preview of their interface…
Once you’re at the site, you’ll notice a couple of links right at the top pointing to AjaxDaddy and SocialScan. Any web-developer will find AjaxDaddy a royal storehouse of rich, Ajax based effects that you can implement in your sites. As for SocialScan, it’s a link popularity checker for social media networks. These two sites are worth visiting.
Incidentally, Web 2.0 Badges distinctly reminds me of AjaxLoad, which is a similar free online service that generates those fancy loading icons usually associated with Ajax-based sites.
