Sign on the Dotted line- Signature Required - -Your Guide to a Perfect Virtual Signature-

Anyone born prior to 1990 may recall that many moons ago, everything was written by hand. The written word took so long that someone even invented a shortcut, hence short- hand. Times have changed though, and these days holding a pen or pencil has become just as obsolete as eight- track tapes, Dolphin shorts, and station wagons.

As a young girl, I wrote and wrote, so that writers cramp was a common occurence in my daily regiment. Now, I can only vaguely remember the discomfort of writers cramp. as it has been replaced by carpel tunnel syndrome. But, with the all of the technological advancements, while the computer became the number one business tool, one thing always seems to be lacking on every document.....my handwritten signature.

A signature is something so personal. It can add a note of sincerity to any message. The desire for a signature can be overwhelming; seeing a signature, smelling the ink smell, that tangy, sharp, metallic smell. I can recall feeling the ink bubbling out of my favorite fountain pen as it left an artistic illustration of my personality and offered a personalized conclusion to my written documents.

A personalized signature is an essential element that has been absent for some time now, in most of my written work. A solution to a virtual signature is something that I have struggled with since the early 90's, when it became obsolete during the evolution of the computer age. I found myself composing long legal documents that never needed to print. My cyber-documents traveled from my computer to a destination at the other end of an email. I found it incredibly inconvenient and wasteful to create these long documents and then be forced to print them for the sole purpose of generating a signature, just to rescan the pages back to their original, virtual form & save them in my documents folder. 

So, about a year ago, I set out to find a solution to my ink-less signature dilemma. What I wanted to find was website or a program that would look and act like my authentic, handwritten signature. I tried a variety of methods. At first I tried using the silly little pencil tool that my computers drawing software offered.. Not only was it messier than a two year old with crayons, but trying to write a signature with a mouse instead of a pen, was an impossible task. My mouse-signatures were strangely similar to Etcha-Sketch drawings.

When frustration peaked, I moved forward with my quest for a perfect virtual signature. My next signature was derived from Adobe's 'sign and certify ' tool. It must have taken me a half a day to maneuver through the instructions before I managed my ‘trusted identities’, in order to encrypt my ink-less signature. This process left me dissatisfied again. The final product was a simple stamp with my name typed into a generic textbox. Although it cured my Etcha-Sketch issues, I continued my search.

Recently I set out to find a reasonable solution for a virtual signature. I gathered all of my search engines together on my quest for the perfect computer generated signature. I Googled, and Binged, and Yahood. I Asked, I Answered, I Wikipediad, I even Dotted and I Commed.

And then one day after my seemingly endless hunt .....there it was. My perfect virtual signature!

I discovered a website that offers everything necessary to create both static and animated signatures. I could add them to email messages, to blogs, to posts on forums and on websites. I could create more than 500 different varieties of my name with over 150 different fonts; neat ones, messy ones, authentic looking ones, professional ones, blue ones, red, green or even rainbow colors, blinking ones and animated ones. I was in Signature Heaven. I immediately began the process of authenticating every single document that I wrote, making sure that my signature was the last thing that anyone read, just like in the olden days.

I now put my signature in my blogs, my hubs, emails, threads at school, everywhere I possibly can. I even screen saved one, a big ’MISSCUE’ flashes across my screen as a reminder of my victory and endless search. And the best part of using My Live Signature is that it’s FREE. They do also offer some specialized services for a nominal fee, but for the most part, the entire website is offered at no charge to it’s visitors.

Create a signature imitation using the Wizard – FREE
Order a realistic signature from scanned image – $9.95
Order signature animation – $19.95

You can use your signatures however and wherever you want to. To add the signature to your email messages, to your posts on forums, to blogs, on websites, you need to generate a code that is inserted. The website even offers a code generation wizard that will help you with it.

Adding HTML signatures:

Blogger
To add your signature to a post:
- Click "Edit HTML" in the editor window
- Insert the HTML code of the signature
- Click "Edit HTML" and continue editing

Live Journal
To add your signature to a post:
- Select "HTML Editor" on the "Update Journal" page
- Insert the HTML code of the signature
- Select "Rich Text Editor" and continue editing

WordPress
To add your signature to a post:
- Select "Code" in the editor window
- Insert the HTML code of the signature
- Select "Visual" and continue editing

Websites
Use your HTML editor to insert the
HTML code wherever you want to place
your signature. If you want to store the
signature on your web server, upload the
image from the "My Signatures" menu to
your server and replace the path in "<img src="
with the path to the image on your server.

Thanks for reading! ..................