SOMEWHAT FRANK

Aviary: Powerful Online Tools For Artists

There are a number of desktop tools for designers and artists but it seems an online version of those tools is something that is lacking. From a photo editing perspective picnik and Adobe Photoshop Express offer easy to use tools for editing images. But they are fairly simple tools and do not offer vector image creation or editing. Aviary is looking to change this by offering a number of tools for  the creative to do everything including image editing, typography, music and video. Aviary is a website for artists of all genres to create, edit and share their works directly in their favorite browser. This collaboration is something that similar desktop applications do not offer.

Sprout Builder Easy Flash Toolkit Now Public

Creating flashy multimedia pieces of content for the Web might have just gotten a little easier as Sprout Builder opened its doors to the public today. This Hawaii-based startup first popped up on my radar at DEMO 08 as they first reveled Sprout Builder. The Flash toolkit makes it easy for anyone to create a rich interactive page, widget or part of a page without knowing how to write a line of code.

Scrapblog Takes Scrapbooking Online

Do you have a scrapbook? Traditionally, creating a scrapbook was a very physical activity which helped to preserve your real life memories in a book format to look back at and share at a later date. Scrapbooking has turned into an billion dollar business and even merits its own conferences and trade shows. Technology has improved over time and enabled scrapbookers to create a scrap book masterpiece digitally online and then export it to the more traditional paper medium of a bound scrap book. Scrapblog, a Miami-based startup, is leading this charge by offering scrapbookers an easy to use online Flash-based toolset.

AOL Gets Goowy, Acquires Widget Startup

AOL has just announced the acquisition of Goowy Media, a San Diego-based Flash startpage, widget and desktop application startup. One of Goowy's bi-products is yourminis a slick startpage that I previously reviewed and named one of the best beta products of 2006. It is pretty rad.

Goowy's widgets can be distributed to just about any page or social network on the Web (as shown below) which is comparable to offerings by ClearSpring, Widgetbox and Gigya, which have also been getting buzz in the widget advertising space. These distribution capabilities will come in handy on myAOL as well as helping to syndicate AOL network content. Goowy also offers widget metrics in a dashboard that closely resembles the feed metrics dashboard of FeedBurner which was acquired by Google for $150 million.

SplashCast's Shiny New Player

SplashCast Media, a Portland-based media player startup, has launched an update to its exisiting SplashCast media player. SplashCast has added a number of features to the player as it continues to improve the product that launched earlier this year.

Fonts Dance In Adobe Flash Video

Have you ever seen fonts dance like this? To the sound of Obadiah Parker's covering Outkast's "Hey Ya!", Brian Shaler leveraged Adobe Flash typography animation technology to create this video that make fonts dance.

Yourminis Flashy Personalized Homepage

Yourminis, a Flash-based personalized dashboard of widgets created by Mark Cuban-backed Goowy Media, has been making some aggressive changes since its launch late in 2006. Yourminis offers users one of the most customizable homepage experiences I have seen to date as it leverages Flash to present desktop-like features on the web.

Yourminis, nominated for the 'Best New Site' award at the upcoming SXSW Interactive conference, recently made some changes to focus more on the social aspects of the web by reconfiguring the URL for the personalized homepage from Yourminis.com to Yourminis.com/start. The former URL has been replaced with an html-based “community landing page” which highlights Yourminis’ personalized homepage, desktop widgets, featured pages, widgets and users. The “community landing page” enables users to interact with the widgets as well as with other Yourminis users, thus emphasizing the social aspects of the product. Users can create tabs and share tabs with the rest of the community and I quickly created a tab made up of few Somewhat Frank related items - it can be seen here. Another user configured tab that I am particularly fond of is the Chicago Cubs tab shown below (Go Cubs!).

Of the comparable personalized homepage startups like Netvibes and Pageflakes among others in the space, Yourminis offers the most whiz-bang experience with a number of slick widgets. However, Yourminis could be criticized for being too overwhelming, with its flair and countless configurations, to a first time user. Yourminis’ recent change to a “community landing page” for a first time experience might help to assist overwhelmed users, however it also puts users a click further away from adopting the personalized homepage.

Aesthetic shimmer aside, performance and accessibility are still important aspects of a personalized homepage. With Yourminis I have encountered a couple of hiccups in respect to both as I have had to re-save changes upon returning to see them reverted, and I also have tried to access Yourminis from a public computer and found it inaccessible due to the absence of a Flash browser plug-in. That aside I still find Yourminis a compelling dashboard experience.

Bottom-line:  Yourminis offers a Flash-based personalized homepage experience that might be your cup of tea if you are looking for a flashy approach.

Related Articles:
The History of the Personal Homepage
Widgets Live! Everywhere
Widgets and Web 2.0

SplashCast Launches Mixed Media Embeddable Video Player

SplashCast, a Portland-based startup, launched today (January 30, 2007) to offer an easy way to create and share videos, photos and audio online with its embeddable player. SplashCast is a Flash-based site and enables users to create a Flash player to play custom videos comprised of photos, uploaded videos, YouTube videos or even RSS feeds from YouTube or Flickr. Since SplashCast is Flash-based it will allow MySpace users and the rest of the web to place video or slide-shows on their sites with ease. Check out this instructional video by Marshall Kirkpatrick, formerly a key contributor to TechCrunch, for more details on how to get started with SplashCast.

Simple to setup and use, a SplashCast feature that I found interesting was the ability to create a video by passing an RSS feed from Flickr or YouTube. I decided to create a video which randomly pulled videos from my YouTube video feeds. Since it just pulled in a feed I was able to create the SplashCast video very quickly. Code was then offered to be snagged and placed on the page below as shown. 

SplashCast is backed by QMind, its parent company, and raised $1.3 million for the use of related software in enterprise e-learning and is now working on another round of funding. To stay up to speed on the latest from SplashCast check out the SplashCast blog.

Bottom-line: SplashCast makes it very easy to create Flash-based video to be embedded into any page.

Empressr For Slick Online Presentations

Empressr offers the unique ability to create, share and store Flash-based slide presentations online with ease. Empressr aims to impress by offering the ability to incorporate rich media features, like streaming video and animation into an online presentation. Empressr has incorporated an easy to understand set of steps to help users create crisp looking presentations without prior knowledge of Flash technology. Empressr is free to use and store up five presentations on its secure servers and premium options are available additional presentation storage space. Finally, Empressr presentations use addressable URL to offers users the ability to share presentations with easy.

Empressr is easy to use and offers a great solution for anyone looking to create solid presentations without purchasing PowerPoint or other types of presentation creation software. The only negative I could see was that you cannot currently export your Empressr presentations for offline use. This could be troublesome in the case that a conference hall or other venue does not have an Internet connection. However, it appears Empressr understands this concern and is looking to address this issue with future enhancements.

Bottom-line: Empressr is an online application that allows you to easily create, share and store presentations. Take Empressr for a test drive for yourself here.

Woohoo Brings Sexy To Photo Slideshows

Woohoo, an AOL Pictures by-product, recently upgraded to offer a more robust Flash-based snaggable photo slideshow widget. The previous widget offered the ability to show images in a clickable stack called the photo collage as shown below or by visiting this link.

The upgraded version of woohoo offers not only the photo collage layout but five additional layouts or "woohoos" which could add interesting Flash effects to any photo slideshow. Users can customize the size, color and layout of the various widgets. By publishing the widget users  receive a link to share with friends and family or HTML code which can be embedded into a blog, web site or social network page like MySpace or AIM Pages.

I would urge you to play around with each "woohoo" as all 6 are interesting visual presentation options. If you are not happy with those options woohoo offers developers the ability to customize even more of the widget. I created a custom sized woohoo slideshow with one of my favorite woohoo effect called Ken Burns. The Ken Burns effect refers to a technique of embedding still photographs in motion pictures made popular in Ken's award winning documentaries such as The Civil War and Baseball. The effect is characterized by slow zooming and panning effects, and fading transitions between images. Check it out below or visit it directly.

Bottom-line: Woohoo offers a great way to organize your AOL Picture photo in a sexy slideshow which can be shared via email or by displaying it on your blog, social network page or another web site. Woohoo!

Mix-Mas: A Virtual World For Sending Customized Holiday Greetings

With the holidays upon us hopefully you have sent your holiday wishes to all your family and friends. However, if you have not and you are still looking to send a holiday greeting you could send them a dancing elf greeting or you could give something a little more interactive a try. I recently was sent a greeting via Mix-Mas, a product created by Mantis, which brings holiday greeting customization and social interactivity to a new level. Mix-Mas is a flash-based web service that lets you send holiday greeting that all live together in a holiday greeting virtual world.

With Mix-Mas you can create a custom avatar to represent you in your greeting. The avatar will live in the Mix-Mas virtual holiday greeting world. While creating your avatar you can select from a number of options very similar to WeeWorld. A screen-shot of the creation screen can be seen above. After creating your avatar messenger you can send the greeting to anyone. I have created one here. Upon recieving the greeting you are directed to it in the Mix-Mas virtual world as shown below.

You will notice a number of other avatars which carry the messages as well. If you click on any avatar they will display their holiday message adding a web 2.0 social hook to the holiday greeting product. You can see my holiday greeting here or search Mix-mas by avatar name (i.e. Frank Gruber). If you still need more details check out this Mix-Mas video demo or by clicking the video below.

Bottom-line: Mix-Mas is a fun new way to send online holiday greetings. Create a custom avatar and send a holiday greeting today. Happy holidays!