Physics For Google Sketchup

SketchyPhysics is a Windows-only plug-in for Google Sketchup that adds laws of physics to the world you create and toy with.

[Via|Link]

Layer By Layer: The Graffiti Archaeology Project

John Nack writes:

The Graffiti Archaelogy project uses a Flash interface to let visitors navigate to different heavily tagged spots (links at left), then see the work at various stages (links at bottom). Using the M & N keys to cruise back and forth in time, I'm reminded of watching time lapses of plant life exploding on a surface, dying, and being reborn. [Via|Link]

Photosynth: Visually Tagging The World

Amazing Demonstration of Photosynth by Blaise Aguera y Arcas.



Photosynth Website.

Aviary gearing up for multimedia production splendor

Worth1000's totally unexpected and tantalizing raft of webapps (yes, I'm waiting for an invite), Aviary, has so many plans you will shake your head in disbelief. If you haven't heard yet, the applications will include:

• Phoenix: Image editor.
• Toucan: A swatch generator tool and community in one.
• Peacock: A pattern generator tool and community in one.
• Raven: Vector editor.
• Hummingbird: 3D modeller.
• Myna: Audio editor.
• Roc: Music generator.
• Hawk: Video editor.
• Owl: Desktop publishing tool.
• Penguin: Word processor (geared towards poets and writers).
• Pigeon: Painting simulator.
• Rookery: A free, unlimited distributed file system network that anyone can connect to and store data in. It also powers our search engine.
• Eagle: A smart online application that can identify complex data about an image based on the pixel patterns (for example it can identify which specific camera an image originaly came from and whether it has been edited or not).
• Crane: Custom image product creator, that can integrate with other websites.

Sounds too good, and too robust, to be true, yes? But all signs so far point to a polished set of apps, not least of which is a sample 3D rendering they posted to their blog today.

I am crossing my fingers and hoping that Aviary is one of those rare examples of a fresh idea totally changing the software landscape - in this case, developing web applications with extremely narrow functionality to eliminate bloat, streamline uptake, and provide a service in a way people didn't know they needed until they found it, and later will not be able to imagine doing without. Time will tell. [Via Plime]

Google Reader Is Even Cooler Than I Thought

I don't poke around much in Google Reader, but I have been interested in pruning my RSS reading list a bit and just discovered this feature.

Here's what my trends look like:

I heart Google Reader. If you use Google Reader and are as unobservant as I am, just click here.

ComicJuice: Or, Steven Witten Is A Genius

Steven Witten, who created this truly amazing LineRider video, completed work on the program demo'd below, ComicJuice, four days after the idea occurred to him.

Check it out here.

Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

A seriously packed resource for visualizations - a huge variety of charts, diagrams and other visualization tools, organized in a periodic table format with rollover examples. Nicely done and very useful. [Via|Link]

Fun With Text Generators

[Via|Link]

Eyespot Now Officially An Eyesore

Low-quality digital video can now look as bad as Photoshop-filtered, low-quality photos thanks to Eyespot's bevy of new effects. Unlike in pop music, where early adopters of new technologies can gain long-term cachet by exploiting new sounds and techniques to maximum effect, Photoshop's saving grace has been in the myriad ways its many tacky filters could be adjusted or layered to produce unique and subtle looks, and the best designers distinguished themselves with work that did not speak loudly of Chrome or Craquelure.

I'm sure educational technology buffs will more or less unanimously agree that young technophiles will be all over this stuff, but it begs the question: Why create tools to attract promising young talents to digital video just so they can spend valuable semesters in college learning why these tools sucked? And why give them effects that will only get in the way of storytelling at the moment we're trying to convince them that digital video is a way to express things that will matter not only to themselves but to people around them?

Sparkline Generator SparkMaker Releases Strong Basic and Free Editions

I don't usually mention product releases in this blog, but someone reading my previoius Sparkline post comparing features for SparkMaker and MicroCharts has emailed to tell me that Sparkmaker has just introduced both Free and Basic editions. The Free edition will produce line graphs only, and has a host of other limitations, but does include the image-export functionality for produced graphs that led me to a soft recommendation of SparkMaker over its new competitor, MicroCharts. These new versions represent an additional (and very smart) move by SparkMaker in the direction of easy access, prodded no doubt by the slightly more robust and much higher-priced MicroCharts, BonaVistaSystems' new entry into this niche market. The Basic edition of Sparkmaker costs $60 and lacks only a few major features (elements of the dialog box and full Office integration).

You can read a full feature comparison and download a Pro-level functional 60-day trial (which will back down to a Free or Basic version at the trial's end if you choose not to pay for the Pro functionality) at Bissantz's website.

Sparkline Generators For Excel: Features Comparison

Juice Analytics have highlighted two great resources for embedding Sparklines - "tiny, word-like graphs" - into Excel spreadsheets. Each involves the use of a custom font which interprets Excel data and renders it in "graphlike" fonts.

The two offerings are Sparkmaker and, more recently, MicroCharts. MicroCharts appears to be more robust, but the need for readers of spreadsheets to have custom fonts installed on their own computers to view the embedded charts seems like a significant usability issue - Sparkmaker has the ability to output its charted products in .gif, jpeg and .png formats, which renders them uneditable but allows for easy spreadsheet sharing.

I noticed that MicroCharts' free download is a trial version of the software that expires in August 2007. It's a generous trial window, so I was curious to know what would happen after that. I emailed Andreas Flockermann at BonaVista Systems, the company behind MicroCharts, to find out. Flockermann said that the final pricing has not yet been determined, but should be in the ballpark of $300 for a license, while the font needed to view such charts will remain free. Sparkmaker, in contrast, offers its Office add-in free of charge for personal and academic use, and sells commercial licenses for $200. While these prices may seem high to Office users accustomed to paying $30-$50 for a useful add-in, the addition of fresh-baked fonts (which can run anywhere from $40 to $100 apiece) makes both of these prices seem a bit more reasonable.

Here's a chart to sum it up. Color values indicate which service "wins" in each category; the best model for your needs will depend on which categories are most important to you.

I discussed the uses and abuses of Sparklines in a previous post. Click here to read JA's post on MicroCharts.

UPDATE: Microcharts has since added a lot of new functionality and brought down its prices. In addition to the details I mentioned here, you should make sure to check their site out to make your own evaluation based on their product's new features. They have also informed me that they will be releasing Microcharts 2.0 in May 2007.

A Free App for Time-Lapse/Split Screen Video, and How To Donate A Buck To Earn Instant Karma

Just yesterday I reviewed Chris Wahl's wonderful illustrating blog along with two other "inside the artist's studio" webspaces. After praising him for posting video of his computer screen during a sketching session, I mentioned that "someday" someone would be able to easily pair two camera images without any hassle so an artist could show us their hands at work on keyboard and tablet as well as the screen view. Today I came across Phil Piwonka's Mac-app Gawker, which does just that and much more - its primary purpose is to enable the easy creation of time-lapse video. [Addendum, 7/15/06: Piwonka has a Gawker-centric blog - which I somehow missed the first time around - and is now accepting donations via PayPal. Since I haven't had any takers for my own pay-it-forward project (see below), I hope he has better luck!]

I'm out of town to present a teacher training workshop and am using a work-provided PC, so I haven't had a chance to play with this yet. But it looks like there are multiple replay speeds to choose from, making this an ideal (and free) application for science-class data collection. The last You Tube video I posted here seemed to precipitate a couple of early posts' untimely retirement into the archives, and the examples provided are far less interesting than what your students will think up.

If I had $70, I'd buy Chris Wahl a webcam so he could do this. In fact, I'd buy him the webcam at left, the Logitech Quick-Cam Pro 4000, highly rated by Epinions users.

What if we leveraged the Power Of The Internet to make this happen?

If you're a fan of Chris' work or of any young artist who benefits from people like him taking the time to make their skills available to aspiring illustrators, consider a donation today using the link below. I will personally buy Chris the webcam and have it shipped to his home in Sydney, Australia, and will refund anyone who donates after we've already reached our goal (did I mention I'm an optimist?). If we don't reach the price + shipping, I'll still pass on what readers have ponied up so he can start his own webcam fund, and if we get close I'll finish the job myself.

Help Send Chris Wahl A Webcam!

This is not a joke, and I do not know and have never met Chris Wahl. I'm not even that into comics - to be honest, I haven't been much of a collector of anything since my pre-teen years when a sizeable investment in Gregg Jeffries baseball cards left me high and dry back in the late '80s. Click the above link to help send a webcam to a very surprised comic book artist in Australia who is reaching out to young illustrators! (Just don't tell him yet, you'll spoil the surprise.) You don't have to have a Paypal account to send a donation.

While I'm PC-bound, I'll be taking the PowerPoint 2007 beta for a test drive, along with logging some novel-writing time. Stay tuned for a report on the former; for the latter, we'll all have to wait a bit. [Addendum, 7/15/06: You can do this yourself, thanks to Microsoft's excellent new online test drive, a great intermediate step for those willing to play with a beta version and those who just want to know a little about the software.]