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Showing posts with label fun online application. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fun online application. Show all posts

MAD MEN Caption Challenge and A New MAD MEN Yourself!




AMC has issued a caption challenge for Mad Men fans. Three fabulous retro illustrations by Dyna Moe (of "Mad Men Yourself" fame) each with five options for the best caption. Vote now for your favorite.

1.

Which caption should win?
• "Umm, guys?... Should we have invited Peggy?..." -- from Panco
• "These morning bull sessions are getting out of hand gentlemen."-- from Liza Ogilvy
• "90% of creative is horsing around." -- from mishyshelly
• "Road Tested...Sterling-Cooper approved" -- from Blonde Dynamite!
•"Forget My Old Kentucky Home, next stop the Belmont Stakes!" -- from kathiemarie
Vote here

2.

Which caption should win?
• "Could you be a dear and grab me my brandy manhattan...And a straw?" -- from TheHaphazardBlonde
• "Don't forget to vacuum under the bed."-- from Teach123
• "I knew you'd been smoking in here!" -- from Kerco
• "This is nothing. You should have been at Lutece." -- from Take_Break_Share_Love
• "Who's the comedian that called maid service?" -- from PeeJay
Vote here

3.

Which caption should win?
• "No, Betts, you can't see Russia from here. That's New Jersey." -- from elscoot57
• "Meditate on THIS emergency!" -- from Betts
• "I'll get Dick, you get Don." -- from BoredBeauty
• "You sure Sally gets her temper from Don?" -- from Kevin Ament
• "Don's a worthy target, but I'd rather be Duck hunting!" -- from Strawberry73
Vote here

Learn all about illustrator Dyna Moe here

NEW SEASON, NEW YOU

Mad Men Yourself has been updated with new clothes, new accessories and new backgrounds for the new season!

Countdown to Christmas Eve With Google's New Santa Tracker, Chrome App and Interactive Website.




For the past few years I have been writing posts about Norad's Santa Tracker (once a partner of Google's) and how it works as a nice online activity to enjoy with your children and friends. Now that Microsoft's Bing has partnered with Norad, Google has gone all out and created their own Google Maps' Santa Tracker and until it launches on Christmas Eve, you can explore a fun interactive animated site with plenty of games and goodies or download a Google Chrome app for added entertainment.




above: screen grabs of the Village briefing and windtunnel

Santa’s many developer elves, who are hard at work in the North Pole helping Santa prepare for his big day, have combined their elf magic with the latest and greatest in Google Maps technology and sleigh engineering to allow you to follow his progress around the world, and also learn a little about some of his stops along the way.


above: a sneak preview of the Google Santa Tracker which launches on Christmas Eve.

Even without using Google chrome as your browser, you can enjoy the following at the Google Santa Tracker Site:

•Create a Custom Phone Call from Santa in the form of an mp3 file you can send to your friends (This is really cool. It takes a few minutes to make the first one, but it's worth it.)



•You (or your kids) can play one of three games that operates with your keyboard.

Present Drop:


Village Racer:


Jetpack:


If you use Google Chrome, you can download the app and enjoy even more fun like a dashboard tracker, play around with Santa's blimp or elf bus and write messages on a frosty browser window.




•You can Follow Santa on Google+

The friendly elves have also invited you to explore Santa’s village while Santa gets ready for his journey. So go ahead and explore his village, you might just find some fun activities and meet some interesting elves.

The Google Maps Santa Tracker is created and developed by Google, with a little help from Santa’s elves. Need help or have another question? Visit their Help Center to learn more about Santa Tracker.

Related links:

Pinstagram, The Ultimate Mash-Up. Your Instagram Photos In Pinterest Format.



above composite of instagram and pinterest logos ©iihih

I was wondering how long it would take for the ever-growing Pinterest platform to combine with the incredibly popular Instagram app. Not long as you will see with Pinstagram, a new site by co-founders Brandon Leonardo and Pek Pongpaet.

Below is a reprint of the article "Pinstagram: How Instagram Should Look On the Web":


We have all seen those mythical hybrid animals, like the zeroed, a mix of zebra and equine, or perhaps the more commonly known beefalo, a mix of buffalo and cow. You may even be familiar with the leopon, the result of breeding a male leopard with a female lion. Hybrids are real. And there are others too, mind you. But it's not all fur and feathers; many such hybrids live on the Internet. Especially sites like Pinstagram, a "Pinterest for your Instagram images," as co-founder Pek Pongpaet describes it. In an increasingly visual Web, it's a wonder that this hybrid didn't come about sooner.

Like most things on the Internet, Pinstagram happened fast.

"We were joking one evening about how Instagram is worth $1 billion and how Pinterest's valuation might already be in the $500 million range," says co-founder Brandon Leonardo. "And we were thinking about the idea of a Twitter for Facebook, what that would be like. Then I could tell Pek started thinking about it. The gears started turning; he was visualizing a Pinterest for Instagram."



Not more than 24 hours later, Pongpaet had already coded and designed it. This sort of fast turnaround is pretty natural for Pongpaet and Leonardo, who come from a hackathon "get stuff out as fast as possible and ask questions later" type of background.


above: Pinstagram on the iPad

If this sort of idea had popped up within a larger company setting, for example, it would have "taken months," says Pongapaet.

Since Pinstagram's debut just a few weeks ago, the site has already seen about 6,400 Facebook likes of Instagram images, thousands of tweets and a few hundred pins.

Pinstagram: An Indicator of the Evolving Visual Web

Services like Pinterest and Instagram are integral to the future of the visual Web. No longer do people send photos to document memories; they are lifestreaming as it all happens, with pictures telling the story. It's no wonder that Facebook snatched up Instagram while it still had the chance.


above: my own pinstagram page

"The visual medium has always had international appeal," says Pongapaet. "Sending pictures is very common. If you stick to English, you'll alienate a lot of people. Visual mediums let you transcend all barriers. It takes seconds to process a photo."

What about Webstagram, the Instagram Web viewer? Isn't this a sufficient way to view Instragram images on the Internet? For some, it's perfect. But like many news Web sites, Webstagram is organized around "popular," "my photos," "liked," "hot," "photo of the day" and more. It feels more like a news website and less like a glossy, Pinterest-like magazine.



"The reason I built Pinstagram is because this is my world view of how Instagram should look on the Web," says Pongapaet. "Our core focus is to recreate the Instagram experience on the desktop and to be able to extend that to our users."

Not everyone wants to see their Instagrams in a Pinterest-like layout, however, and Pongapaet acknowledges that.

"There are always different interpretations," he says. "That's what great about art, about having different APIs - people all have different interpretations."

Pinstagram just integrated into Facebook Timeline. As the Instagram-Facebook integration continues to rollout, so will this nifty Pinterest-Instagram hybrid beast.- by Alicia Eler on May 11th, 2012 for ReadWriteWeb.

Below is a video interview with Pongpaet about Pinstagram:


Pinstagram

I Am Loving Wordle: A Fun & Easy Text Cloud Generator



I am loving Wordle.

Wordle is a free online app for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.



Simple, easy, applicable options include available color palettes, your choice of all upper or lower case- or a combination, choosing whether or not the words are vertical, horizontal or half and half and more. You can edit as you'd like or use the 'randomizer' for variations.

Think about using them for presentations or report covers, screen savers and more. Inventive, malleable and creative, Wordle does have some limitations (read more about the FAQs on the site).

And for those creative types those who like a little more control and wish to determine their own hex colors and weighted words, he now has Wordle Advanced.

Here are a few examples I just generated in less than 5 minutes, using the paragraph from the beginning of this post and the 'randomizer' tool:












Wordle was created by Jonathan Feinberg (shown above)
In his own words he also credits all these helpful folks.

Go play with Wordle now.

Please donate

C'mon people, it's only a dollar.