I'm a huge fan of the AMC TV show Mad Men. My wife and I have gone as far as making ourselves gin martinis to sip while watching the show, though I haven't yet tried an Old Fashioned. If you're as much of a fan of the show as we are, check out AMC's new Mad Men Yourself site.

Just like the site that lets you create a South Park character with the distinctive features you choose, Mad Men Yourself lets you create a stylized version of yourself in the vein of the late-60's era when the show is set. You have your choice of hairstyles, clothing options, and even accessories, all perfectly appropriate for the period.

While these sites are simply blatant marketing efforts intended to raise awareness for the shows they represent, I think this is marketing at its finest. Give us something fun to play with that lets us associate with the show, and lets us take away a little creation that somehow feels uniquely ours, even though it's simply one of a set number of overall options. Clever, and a win-win for the user and the network.

Now excuse me while I try to find a way to make myself look a little more like Don Draper.

Speech bubbles are great way to add commentary to pictures. To do this just fire up a graphic program like Photoshop, import your photo, make a new layer, select a shape, draw a shape, create another layer, select the text tool, type what you want, move it around and then save it. In the mean time, that fantastic comment that you wanted to share has gone passé. Of course you could have avoided all this nonsense by using Kyolo.

Kyolo has just one purpose in life, to place speech bubbles on your pictures. There are no layers or strokes here, just upload your photo, choose from 3 different speech bubbles and type away. It couldn't be any simpler.

But for those wanting just a little more control over their bubbles you can certainly rotate the bubbles and increase or decrease the font sizing.

Once you are happy with your artistic creation you can choose to save the photo locally or email it off to your friends to spread a little sunshine to their otherwise dreary day.

Information Architects has put together a remarkable map of the "top 200 mos successful websites" arranged by category, popularity, and other characteristics.

The map is available as a desktop background, a PDF file, a OSX screensaver, or as a clickable online map. Scroll your mouse over various sites to get a thumbnail preview, or click to go through to the source sites.

This is actually the second version of the map. The Web Trendmap 1.0 lacked a few of the features of the new map:

• More websites have been added including some Japanese, German, and Chinese sites.
• The lines have been renamed and streamlined for Sharing, Tools, Tech, etc.
• A trend forecast has been added
• Sites have been labeled Web 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, and 2.5.
  

[via Random Good Stuff]

ImageChef is a family-friendly site that allows you to create custom images for your blog, forum signature or general amusement. Without having to register any kind of account, you can modify text in a variety of image templates. The resulting pictures can be easily saved or emailed to friends.

ImageChef will host your pictures if you're a registered user (registration is free), and provide the snip-its of code so that you can embed your artwork in your MySpace, Friendster or TypePad account.

Though sometimes cheesy, the provided image templates do allow for some creative Tom Foolerly. If you find yourself wasting a lot of time, please feel free - no, encouraged! - to post a link to your creation via the comments.

Google, Apple and Dell are among a recent group of companies that have joined the Khronos Group, a developer of the OpenGL graphics standard.

The Khronos Group is funded by members to create open standard royalty free API's that allow playback of dynamic media across a wide array of platforms and devices. Khronos members are from a broad spectrum in the industry, and include many companies from operating system vendors, system and handset OEM's, game developers, application developers, and wireless carriers.

Through their new membership, Google, Apple and Dell will be helping to create new standards, and new market opportunities for the graphic and dynamic media industries.

[via sda asia]