Skip to Content

Submit your nominations for the Luxist Awards' Best in Decor
AOL Tech

creative posts

Filed under: Design, Kids, Macintosh, Commercial

Doozla: drawing so easy a child can do it

Doozla
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.

Filed under: Fun, Time-Wasters

Find inspiration from the Idea Generator - Time Waster

Idea GeneratorBeing an entrepreneur is hard work. Sure you made millions on your "scary aquatic toy". But how are you going to come up with your next bit of "expensive temporary furniture" to keep your empire going?

No, we're not playing a game of Mad Libs. We've just been spending too much time with the Idea Generator. Need a bit of inspiration? Give the wheel of ideas a spin. This little web application has just the right combination of eye-catching but simple graphics and the lack of any practical use. In other words, we can't take our eyes off of it.

Here's how it works. Give the wheel a spin and it will choose from a relatively small list of words. The first two words or phrases generally describe the third. So you wind up with "oversized rubber exercise machine," or "jewel encrusted shrinking house." In other words, every idea is just crazy enough that you can be nearly certain there's a startup dedicated to each fictional product. Perhaps there's still time to register multi-lingualtemporarymovie.com

[via Creative Bits]

Filed under: Macintosh, Blogging, Apple

Apple a historic past and a fruitful future?


Few companies inspire such wicked fanboy love as does Apple, and few have such creative 'haters'. Here's two things we've stumbled on just today that illustrate the Apple love that's flying 'round in the lead up to the iPhone.

First, a history of Apple in pictures. It's all there. Jobs, The Woz, The Apple I, The Lisa -- the predecessor to the original Macintosh -- and a ton of candid shots that really give the Cupertino kids some personality, no matter how minimalist and mock-turtleneck they may be these days.

Second, a fruity and creative version of Apple's logo. Notice anything missing? That's right. This picture is a tounge and cheeck way of saying, "Anything but Apple". So much for yo momma jokes, this is the way to spell out your distaste.

Filed under: Audio, Utilities, News, Windows, Macintosh, Podcasting, Productivity, Adobe, Commercial

Adobe Soundbooth beta

Adobe Soundbooth
Audacity is good, useful, and perfect for many things. It is free, open-source and has plenty of features to cover the basics. Many Mac-ites like ProTools, or another equally powerful package for audio editing and production. Adobe's new Soundbooth beta is decent, and has some potential, though it doesn't look free and most likely won't be. It is more like Audacity in that it offers very simple to use tools for the "creative professional." ProTools users may like it too for its quick and dirty style. It is available in beta form for both Mac and Windows and does just what you would expect, edit audio, cleanup noise or clicks in your track, and goes further than audacity by offering several presets to apply effects to your tracks with merely a click. Adobe definitely made this app act a bit like Photoshop, giving it a history panel to see, review and delete changes that have been made to your audio file on the surgery table. Not a bad first effort, though it has some performance issues to work out, and the installer isn't quite completed. The beta expires on 2/28/2007, just so you know.

Filed under: Audio, OS Updates, Windows, Apple, Microsoft

Monaco - Microsoft's version of GarageBand?

monaco music microsoftYou mean Microsoft isn't going to quit making iLife-style apps just because Macs can boot into Windows? Well, I doubt Windows Movie Maker is going anywhere. And Max, Vista's photo application, is set to be a major selling point to the consumers out there. So I can only think Monaco, or Vista's answer to GarageBand, will also be at least a bullet point on the back of the box (which box remains a question). There's a heated discussion on this topic over at ArsTecnica's M-Dollar. One comment to note: Microsoft set out to dominate the office, which they did. Apple set out to dominate the creative studio, which they did. Now we see each traveling to the other corner of the ring (Apple's got rack-mountable servers, a true server OS, and iWork for what its worth), what will be the result? I can't wait to see the Monaco interface. I have been intrigued with Max, and it'll be interesting to see what Vista technologies are leveraged by Monaco in a similar fashion. So far not enough details have emerged about Monaco to make a call... Let the Studio battle begin!

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chromium Pre-Alpha on CrunchBang Linux
Safari 4 Beta
10 Firefox themes that don't suck
IE8 RC1
Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party
Download Squad at the Crunchies
WordPress 2.7
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Windows 7 Hands On
Comodo Internet Security
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

More Tech Coverage

AOL Radio