Tag: ART

So, a while ago I wrote a post about ffffound.com, and commenter joshuasbones replied with a couple of other image bookmarking services that are not invite-only. I looked into them, and one was, indeed, quite chic. That service is Imagespark. Its interface is far slicker than Ffffound's; they have something called "mood boards," which are collections of images created (or rather curated) by ...

The weekend is upon us once more, and the spring is here, too. If you're planning to go outdoors with your camera, you might be interested to know that BBC Wildlife Magazine offers over a score of photography Master Classes for free, in PDF format. Each "class" is a richly-illustrated four-page tutorial, which seems to be taken directly off the pages of the magazine; the one I looked at still had ...

What the heck is that? If that's the first thing that crossed your mind upon seeing the screenshot for this post, I really can't blame you. I produced this random-looking soup of pixels using Pixuffle, which claims that it lets you "shuffle pixels to create unique compositions." What can I say? It's certainly "unique," and they didn't say "beautiful" anywhere in the tagline. Admittedly, the image ...

You're walking (or driving) along, and your iPhone (or iPod touch) has dimmed the screen. Suddenly a song comes on, and you can't quite place it. You tap the home button to see what it is and who it's by. Unfortunately, the tiny type is hard to read at a glance. If only there was a way to fix that... Developer Vitaly Belman has a solution: automatically create album cover artwork with big, bold ...

I can't believe we've never covered ffffound.com before. This website is one of my favorite resources for inspiration, ever. On paper, it's an invite-only image bookmarking service. Only, unlike most other "invite only" services, it's not using that label as a PR shtick; it really is exclusive, and that works very well. The images bookmarked are actually interesting, and there is no spam at ...

Okay, so maybe Hot Spot Studio is not the best name for an application creating colorful backgrounds using virtual "spotlights". It's kind of a bad name, really -- almost a misnomer, because "hot spots" used to refer to the areas in an image which could be clicked on to generate different actions. This is ancient web technology, but that was the name, and that's the first thing that came to mind ...

Cover Browser features an enormous collection of book and magazine covers, especially retro stuff. It's kind of cluttered, but that's understandable for the sheer amount of covers it archives. Magazine and book covers are meant to catch your eye instantly; after all, when you go to a dead-tree bookstore, how many books are competing for your attention at the same time? And what's the first ...

vDraw (or voicedraw) is a Flash-based toy that uses your microphone to let you draw images. Supposedly, when you make a low-volume sound, the line turns counterclockwise. A medium-volume voice (or absolute silence, in my case) will draw a straight line, and a high-volume sound will turn the line clockwise. Seeing as how my singing voice is not exactly my best feature, I was unable to ...

Here's a Flash "game" which I'm not going to tag as a time-waster. Not because it's work-related, but because if this is what you do "for fun", your life is not a fun place. Just saying. ImmorTall casts you as a vaguely anime-eqsue blobby-looking massive alien. There's a haunting (and deeply irritating) soundtrack, consisting mainly of discordant guitar chords plucked really slowly. Your job ...

While we're on the subject of other web technologies that do things we're used to seeing from Flash, I thought I'd show you Harmony. It's a very neat little toy (or proof of concept, I guess) that is written in Javascript, and it uses a technique called "procedural drawing". It's a similar concept to that used on the Flame app (which I covered the other day), but here you get just a single ...

Flame is a cute little Flash toy I found over at MakeUseOf. It basically lets you run your mouse in semi-random patterns and claim it's art. Don't blame me for the image above; I plead color-blindness (and I have a trackball!) The controls are surprisingly complex, letting you modify quite a few brush parameters. There is a complete help text at the bottom of the page, which you should ...

Should anyone ever starts giving out an award for the being the worst company for keeping secrets, Microsoft will win in a landslide. If it's not an early build of new software like Windows 7 or Office 2010, it's the retail box art. The latter is the case this morning, with CentrumXP.pl sharing the latest round of sneak-peeks at Office 2010. Posted are designs for four of the 78 six versions ...

You are looking at the new logo for Firefox Mobile: The Pocketfox! It looks more like some Harry Potter fan-art in my opinion -- someone with a Fawkes the Phoenix fetish -- but no matter! It's cute and very vibrant. It will certainly stand out, and ultimately that's what matters. I can't help but wonder if the 'What's that in your pocket?' double entendre was intentional or not. I'd like to ...

Google Street View makes it easy for people looking for directions to find identifiable landmarks using Google Maps. It also lets you take a virtual walk or drive across any part of the globe that Google has photographed. And plenty of web sites have already popped up that are dedicated to showing interesting, unusual, or funny photographs captured by Google. One artist in Kentucky has found ...

Personas is a fascinating piece of web-based art that visually represents just how much the internet knows about you. Type in your name, and Personas will analyze the text of the Google results, breaking your web presence down into various categories. These groupings include everything from "online" to "sports" to "illegal," and each one has a color, so each person's name results in a unique ...