Tag: TOYS

Monkey Machine is definitely the coolest, most fun thing I've seen all day. It's also one of the best uses I've seen recently for the rapidly-aging Java programming language. What is it? It's a really, really nice, simple drum machine, with lots of cool features. It's very easy to use, and it's almost irresistible; once I launched it, I was compelled to play with it! You begin with a looping ...

IOGraph is a Java application that traces your mouse movements while you work. The screenshot above shows about 1:20hrs of my work, during which I took a break (it shows up as the large blob near the middle). The reason there's a large blank area on the right side is that I have a dual-monitor setup. I usually use the right-side (secondary) monitor for displaying information, while keeping ...

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 ...

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 ...

I love playing around with Google Suggest (the "search auto-complete" feature). It's a great time waster, but it also provides some interesting insights into what people often search for. It's kind of like a mirror of our culture, or at least a fascinating peek into what people consider interesting, or troubling, or worth getting more information about. I like how the URLs are ...

With all the news recently about the giant fiasco concerning toys being created using lead contents, there is no better time to ensure your child's safety. Many parties can have fingers pointed at them in this matter, but let's forget about who is to blame for a second and just make sure that the toys our children are playing with are safe. SaferToys is a digg like social news site that lists out ...

iSnoop's Fridge or (magnetic words) has been on the web for a long time, but I noticed it's gone all Web 2.0 on us and is using ajax now. No need to refresh your browser, as before. I'm glad the author didn't resort to flash. There are other versions of this on the web, some done in Java, some aren't using whole words, just letters, etc. But I like this one the best, because it looks like a ...

Like Flickr and have some time to kill? FD's Flickr Toys are a set of web-based creative tools you can use on your Flickr photos. Captioner lets you add comic book-style text bubbles to your photos. Motivator lets you create a motivational poster out of your photos. Badge Maker, well, makes badges out of your photos. There's also Framer, Movie Poster, Photo Fortune, Trading Card Maker, Magazine ...