Flashforward2008 is going to be in San Francisco this August. This annual conference is directed at Flash designers and developers and those who aspire to be called a designer or developer. Every year Flashforward features a Film Festival with open nominations of the best Flash content out there. In 2008 the categories have changed to the following:

1. Application
2. Cartoon/Story/Narrative
3. Code
4. Experimental/Art
5. Game
6. Motion Graphics
7. Navigation/Experience
8. Sound
9. Typography
10. Video

Anyone can submit links to Flash based works in all categories that are 'innovative and compelling.' Previous winners include Paper Vision 3d, the MoMA Contemporary Voice exhibition, and the amazing Tokyo Plastic. If you do submit a nomination to Flashforward2008 via the official film festival page, please let us know in the comments below with a link. The deadline for nominations is Father's Day, June 15, 2008.

Logoease is a simple, web-based logo-creation tool that offers basic stock clip-art and fonts. You start by choosing a logo image from a general set of categories, and then you're taken to the main editing screen where you can add text and arrange your logo.

You can add up to five lines of text of various fonts and colors, and you can change options like bold, italics, and font size. Your logo picture can be colored, and objects can be layered with "send to front" or "send to back" functions.

When your logo is finished, you can download a zip file containing a .jpg, .eps, .tiff, and .png of your logo. You'll need to signup for a free account (surprise) to be able to download the logo. When we first tested the site, we got errors when attempting to save our logos; however, the site appears to work properly now.

[Via makeuseof]

Six Apart, the company behind the Moveable Type and TypePad blogging platforms is moving into the services and advertising businesses.

Last week the company purchased Apperceptive, a company with experience developing attractive blogs and web sites. Now anyone can sign up for assistance with their own blog at the Six Apart services page. The company is offering a variety of packages covering such things as pre-launch blog design, and tune-ups for existing sites. Each package will set you back $200, and you'll need to be using TypePad to take advantage of the services, but there's also a $200 migration package if you want to switch platforms.

Six Apart is also launching an advertising network that will group similar web sites in order to attract big name advertisers. Other blog advertising networks like Federated Media do the same thing, but Federated Media typically only accepts big name blogs. It'll be interesting to see if Six Apart can open up the process to smaller web sites.

[via TechCrunch]

Sure, you make fun of the chintzy Time Machine animation when you're out to sushi with your geek friends, but secretly you adore it. When the night is late, and it's just you and your Mac, you turn on Time Machine simply to gaze longingly into its starry goodness.

But don't you wish that you could just get that pesky Finder window out of the way, so you could stare into the full, unadulterated Time Machine backdrop? Well, we've got the next best thing, friend: the Time Machine Screensaver.

The Time Machine Screensaver is a Quartz Composer Movie that is pretty much an exact clone of the Time Machine animation. To install the screensaver, you can drag it onto the Screen Saver window, or put it into your default Screen Saver folder, or copy it to the Screen Saver alias included with the download. Once you see it in your Screen Saver preferences, select the Time Machine Screen Saver, and off you go.

Now, it's just you and the Time Machine. Face to face.

If you want something a little more "Leopard" themed, with the colors from the default Aurora desktop picture, you can download it from the Time Machine Screen Saver discussion forum.

[via Softpedia]

Twins Visions is a new desktop image manager and editor that's sort of like Picasa if Picasa had image editing capabilities, prettier visualizations, and the ability to occasionally crash your computer. Let's start with that last part first. Twins Visions is beta software, and while it works fine most of the time, we did see our first BSOD in months while testing it out.

But if you're okay with installing buggy beta software on your PC, Twins Visions is worth checking out. The program lets you do all the usual things like sort and display your images or play slideshows. But it also features a nifty 3D picture viewer that lets you sift through images in multiple folders and even drag and drop images from one folder to another.

Twins Visions also features basic image editing tools like resizing, cropping, or adding effects like grayscale, pixelizing, or embossing images. You can also enable Flickr integration for viewing and editing your images saved on Flickr.

The public beta expires on October 1st. We're going to go out on a limb and guess that at that point you'll either be able to pay for a commercial version of the application or download a new beta. But for the next few months at least, you can try out Twins Visions for free.

[via Go2Web2.0]

Stardock today announced Object Desktop 2008 for Vista and Windows XP. Stardock products are essentially synonymous with Windows tweaking and customization, and Object Desktop is their flagship product.

For the first time, Object Desktop will be split into two versions: Regular and Extra Crispy...oops, we mean Ultimate. The Ultimate version is 20 bucks more, but from our vantage point it seems to be worth it; you get around 10 added programs for the extra Jackson (doesn't quite have the ring of "Benjamins," does it?).

Both version include WindowBlinds, a program to alter the look of the entire Windows GUI; IconPackager, a one-click icon manipulator; DesktopX, a desktop enhancer that adds widgets and more; and Deskscapes, a progam that allows you to run animated desktops on your Vista machine (not limited to Vista Ultimate).

Existing Object Desktop users get the Ultimate version for free. That makes us warm and fuzzy inside.

If you've never played with Object Desktop before, you should give it a shot; but only if you have countless hours to waste trying to find that just-so look for your machine.

In our experience, we've spent hours and hours adjusting, tweaking, repackaging, downloading, etc...just to slink back to the normal Windows GUI after the novelty of customization had worn off.

But that's just us.

Object Desktop requires XP or Vista.

Thanks, Stephanie!

If there's one thing we know about Flickr users, it's that they'r not shy about sharing their opinions. Shortly after Microsoft made an offer to buy Flickr's parent company Yahoo!, images mocking the deal started showing up all over the site. And now that Flickr has added the ability for uses to upload short videos, a large group of Flickr image-only purists has formed a "NO VIDEO ON FLICKR!!!" group.

Over 6,000 members have already joined the group, and more than 1600 have signed a petition asking for the new feature to be removed.

Basically, their argument is that there are plenty of places for people to upload and share videos. What's made Flickr special is its focus on images. Of course, anyone can filter out videos from their search results just by clicking on the advanced search options. It would be nice if the feature were more prominently placed, but why ask Flickr to modify its search bar when you could just try to incite a riot?

[via Thomas Hawk]

If you're the more astute blogging type, it probably came to your attention a week or two ago that WordPress 2.5 was released. Depending on what kind of web space maintenance type person you are, you may or may not have upgraded immediately.

Today's big admission at Download Squad is that some of us, ahem, ignored the Upgrade Now! link for the last two weeks. It wasn't that we didn't care. It wasn't that we didn't think it was important. We usually love the opportunity to click on new buttons and thingamahoosies and break them see what they do. What was it, then? Was it laziness?

Pfft. Yeah. Probably.

But hot on the heels of the 2.5 release comes lots of talk and flurry about WP 2.6. It's something that would strike a lot of users as odd. Sure, developers have roadmaps, and plans, and direction for future releases well before current releases are completely polished. It usually takes a little more than two weeks for those sorts of things to be laid out on the table.

It would strike people as odd if they hadn't already laid their eyes upon the radically different 2.5 dashboard.

Desktoptopia is a utility that changes your desktop background automatically with well-designed pictures that are chosen by the Desktoptopia team. Originally created for Mac OS X, a PC version is now available in beta.

On OS X, the app installs as a preference pane where you can change the rotation time (hours, days, etc.) and select feeds from which to pull pictures. Desktoptopia offers categories like abstract, film, photography, and typography. You can also add your own feed, which greatly increases the functionality of the program.

When Adobe launched Photoshop Express last week, we were so excited to try out the powerful online image editing application that we didn't read the fine print very closely. But one of our readers was kind enough to point out the fact that Adobe reserved the right to do some interesting things with your photos.

Specifically, Adobe's terms of use stated that the company could "use, distribute, derive revenue or other renumeration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate" and use your images "in any format or medium now or later developed." Now, while it makes sense that users need to grant Adobe some non-exclusive rights to their images so Adobe doesn't get accused of any wrongdoing by publishing your images on the web, the whole making money off of your images even after you remove them from your account thing seemed like a bit much and led to a few complaints.

Now Adobe has revised its terms of use. And while the company still has the right to display and distribute your content, the new terms clearly state that Adobe does not have the right to sell your content or to use it at all once you remove it from your account. And if you want to prevent Adobe from displaying your image publicly in the first place, all you have to do is refrain from clicking the share option.

[via Gizmodo]

What's really cool is you can reverse the process as well - a nice touch especially for your aging grandparents - like a face lift without the surgery. Dodo is a great tool to have in your editing arsenal and since it's web based, you can have it with you anywhere you go.

You can sign up for an Aviary account at http://a.viary.com. Be sure to log in, then log out and log in again to activate the Dodo tool.

Digital photography has become a way of life for lots and lots of web users and there is no shortage of services out there to host your digital pictures (Flickr, SmugMug, Picasa, Windows Live Spaces, not to mention social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace). As more and more day-to-day computing tasks move to the cloud, the market really needs a solid, web-based editing suite. With Adobe Photoshop Express, which launched its beta today, we get just that.

We look at a lot of web software and services, but have to say that Photoshop Express one of the slickest web-based applications for photos that we have ever used. Although services in the past like Picasa or Picnik have offered some basic photo editing capabilities, what Photoshop Express is doing is in a completely different league. Like many other photo services, Photoshop Express will let you share and display your online photos; each user account is given 2 GB of space to store and share photos (this is free, additional space and extra features will be available in the future, pricing TBD) and you can embed links to the Photoshop Express hosted galleries or direct-embed individual images.

So you want to start your own blog. One of the first things you'll have to do is decide which blogging application you want to use. There are a ton of options, ranging from the incredibly simple (LiveJournal), to the infinitely customizable (WordPress). But one of the easiest blogging clients around is Google's Blogger.

Blogger is not as easy to customize as WordPress, but Blogger's simplicity also makes the process of setting up a blog a lot less daunting. You can literally start blogging within minutes of signing up for a Blogger account. Google will also host your blog for free, which means you don't need to pay for domain registration or web hosting. WordPress does also offer free hosting, but WordPress doesn't allow free account holders to include advertising. Blogger does. So if you have dreams of quitting your day job, but don't want to pay a few bucks a month for web hosting, Blogger provides a good way to test the waters.

But while Google offers a handful of widgets for customizing your blog, if you really want to make your web site your own, you're going to have to get your hands dirty editing your blog template and adding some HTML and JavaScript code. Fortunately, you don't have to know much about HTML or CSS to implement the tweaks in this guide. As long as you're handy with the copy and paste keys, you should be all set. So let's get started.

Doozla is a drawing application (Mac OS X only) designed for children from Plasq, the geniuses behind Skitch and Comic Life. There are 4 main ways to use Doozla: free drawing on a plain white background, drawing on a webcam capture, drawing on one of the included background pictures, and coloring-book mode.

The interface is fullscreen and child friendly since it provides large icons and a simple feature set. There are standard tools like a color chooser, eraser, paint bucket, and ellipse tool, and clicking any of the tools triggers a jolly voice to vocalize the name of the tool or color that was chosen.

Unfortunately Doozla only saves drawings in .doozla files (not .jpgs, .gifs, etc.), so it's not very easy to share creations. However, you can print the drawing to a standard printer or to a PDF.

Doozla costs $24.95, but a 30-day trial is available.

Almost every small business has a Web site and a high percentage of those sites are mired in Web 1.0 parameters. Perform a site self-checkup to determine how Web 2.0 your small business's online presence is. We're talking about all of your online presence and not simply your Web site. Here are 10 ways to grade your business's Web 2.0-ness.

1. Last update – if you haven't updated your Web site yet in 2008, it is definitely old web and not going in the Web 2.0 direction toward interactivity. When content doesn't change, your site is nothing more than a brochure online.
   No updates yet in 2008? Give yourself a C.
   
2. Who, When Where – if you aren't regularly checking your site's visitor trends, possibly using Google Analytics, then you don't know who is visiting your site, when they are paying attention or where they are coming from. You could run a promotion and never know if anyone online saw it. How old-web is that kind of thinking?
   No site stat research when marketing is everything? Give yourself a D.
   
3. Buy me! – does your site scream BUY SOMETHING rather than equally illustrating why your product or service is essential? Show us some case studies, success stories or testimonials in addition to pitching your product.
   No examples of your product's usefulness to buyers? Give yourself a C+.
   
4. No response – when is the last time you paid attention to website-generated email or calls and analyzed how much web-based contact your small business receives? Are you considering how to raise your online contacts through different, not necessarily more, online strategies?
   Not planning how to garner more online contact? Give yourself a C. If you don't yet know that Google Forms can be used to collect survey data, mark that down to a C-.
   
5. Still breaking the law? – if you are sending unsolicited email through your personal email program like Outlook, then you're probably violating the 2004 CAN-SPAM Act and fines are $10,000 per instance. It's time to invest small business dollars in a compliant email application. Start with Constant Contact and research from there.
   Still blasting from a personal email application? Give yourself an F because it's toying with disaster.
   
6. Feeding time – have you resisted adding an RSS feed to any portion of your small business presence because you really don't understand what RSS is? Get one your kids to explain it and then generate a weekly updated online feed for your business.
   Not feeding your customers yet with good information? Give yourself a C-.
   
7. Remote access denied – if your staff still has no intranet and your sales force can't find up-to-the-minute pricing and forms, try the new Google Sites and get everyone on the same online page. Add a calendar and share it with your staff to give your business more bang for its virtual buck.
   No online sharing? Degrade yourself to a D-. Information is king.
   
8. Identity Interrupted – does your logo designer know who your PR and Web firms are or are they each operating in an information vacuum? Worse, are you still trying to figure out if you need any of the above? Get your old logo converted into a high-resolution graphic and share it with your Web designer to pull together your branding and small business identity online and in print.
   Using a Publisher-created logo online? Give yourself a D+.
   
9. Anti-social – very few small business owners know what Twitter is and fewer use it. Are you closing your ears to comments made about your service or your product? Why not Twitter and send a "track [your company name or product]" message or at least use a Twitter search engine to see what's been tweeted. What else should you track? See what Cameron Olthuis, Jeremiah Owyang or Joseph Jaffe suggest.
   No ears on? Give yourself a B- only because Twitter is sort of new but not for much longer.
   
   
10. Remote island – spend time with one or two quality small business blogs a week by subscribing to their feed and figuring out which posts are important to your business. Try Small Business Resource for starters.
    Don't know how to subscribe to a feed? Give yourself a D+ because RSS is simply not new; it's everywhere.
    

The end of the first quarter is upon us and you've probably just paid first-quarter taxes. Now is the time to score your online presence and raise your grade during the rest of this fiscal year. Got more grading areas? List them in comments, please.