Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

My latest foray into the world of web 2.0 is with image generators. I googled "image generators" and stumbled upon many sites claiming to offer free image generators. I clicked on a link that advertised warning sign motifs, and selected the "aliens-warning-info" option.

At first, the alien warning image refused to load. I clicked the back button to make sure I had selected the right motif. Even a page refresh didn't render the image. I went ahead and edited the text, still with no alien image. I followed the instructions to push the "Change Label" button, and my text appeared in the "image," but still no alien motif. Then an Upload Image button appeared. I was confused. Wasn't the web site supposed to supply the image? Wasn't that the whole point of this exercise?

Below the "Upload Image" button was a fifth step that stated, "Download your image (will see above form once made, free image hosting HERE)." "HERE" linked to several "free" image hosting sites, including Flickr. However, this was simply a page of links; there was no connection between the "image" I had just generated and any of these sites. I still had no way to actually download the image.

For the time being I gave up and looked at some other image generator links. Then I went back to my original page and suddenly, there was my text in the warning-sign-styled font along with the alien-warning-info background. I continued to search for a means by which to download my "free" image. Scrolling down the page, I found several ads, some html code that you can copy and paste to your web site to provide free advertising to these folks, and finally a web form where one could "Buy/Purchase Your Personalized Product Now!" Among my options were buying magnets of my image for about $4 apiece, buy the image without the customsigngenerator.com text for a buck, or send an ecard to (and invite customsigngenerator.com to spam) a friend. So much for free.

At the bottom of the form was this note: "It's FREE to download your created image (no charge, it's a freebie with our tags), but you cannot just link to the image on our server. You must download the image and put it on your web space or find free picture hosting sites HERE." "HERE" led to the same page of image hosting site links as the previous "HERE" link. Again, no instructions for actually downloading the image were provided.

Luckily, being the web-savvy person that I am, I simply pressed the "Print Screen" button on my keyboard, cut out and edited the image in Photoshop, and voila, there is the image that you see at the top of this blog post (I used the same method on a similar web site for the image at the bottom). Hopefully, other users who have gotten so far as to use a "free" image generator will be as knowledgeable, as the warning signs don't point toward the hidden costs.