A quick post after having received an invite from TechCrunch to try out the Wix-experience beta.

I was a little skeptical, but for what its purpose is I am content and even a little excited. It provides some nifty widget creation options, and allows for a number of customizations.

Currently I have just scraped the surface. Though I can already conclude that its User Interface is friendly and simple for those non-geeks who just want to spice up their own profiles.

I have yet to try out integrating the widgets into public services offered. But they offer a wide range of custom embedding for myspace, facebook etc.

I finally got around to testing my first of Aviary‘s web-based applications, codenamed Phoenix. I really like what I see. Built intuitively with an interface similar to Photoshop or GIMP, Phoenix is a niftly flash based Image Editor.

I was impressed by their teaser back in July, and must admit this first tool alone was somewhat worth the wait.

The tools in Phoenix work well. Although  my Photoshop shortcus are rather useless I enjoyed playing around with my above picture online. The blur filter did not work exactly as I wanted it to. But I think that with a little more getting used to I could use Phoenix for main basic Image editing needs.

Now I will have to soon try out Adobe’s own online solution.

In the name of design I started my practical (home) exam in Mulitmedia-journalism a Tuesday morning in December. Inspired over the years by a number of slick and shining splash-screens, I knew that I wanted to design a cool hoover (vacuum cleaner) illustration.

Our assignment was to design a website and fill with content for the support group: Menn mot hybelkaniner – Men against dust collecting at home. We had to interview people, come up with tips and techniques for keeping the house clean. Check out a copy of the webpages here on stepheno.net .

I am sorry that all the pages are in Norwegian, and as this was my first Flash video conversion I am not sure how fast they load.

Adding some multimedia content to the more traditional webpages using interactive accessible video. The pages were all designed in Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 (which also kept me stuck at school for the software) since I did not have time to code it all raw. (I normally prefer raw-coding instead of WYSIWYG, since I feel you have much more more control.) Considering the site was created in less than I week I am quite pleased with the result, although doing it all over, or with a couple more hours of time I would have made a number of changes.

TechCrunch reports that a project called Aviary has an ambitious goal of providing graphical online application to create multimedia artwork.

The online application range from Photoshop and Illustrator resembling applications 2d and vector graphics as well as a 3d application for editing and rendering. Some of their creative applications are code-named Phoenix, Raven and Hummingbird.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The complete list of their birds/tools here. Information will most likely be updated on their website: creationonthefly.com.

Choosing color (colour) schemes and palettes can be a challenge. Now a site called ColourLovers offers a Social Networking solution for different color combinations.

This above specific page is part of their blog and the post is titled: Color Inspiration from the Masters of Painting. It offers some color-combos from several famous historic paintings.

Previously I wrote about ColorJack for Comparing Complimentary Colors

(Via Drawn)

Earlier this month I wrote about Motiongraphics on T-shirts, below is another innovating music video that I became fascinated and inspired by. Taking something like a dice, a simple everyday object and making it nicely display mosaic animation.

Screenshot above from the music video. Watch it on YouTube or better quality here (.mov)

The music video is directed by Wade Shotter (Factory Films) for the song Ankle Injuries by Fujiya & Miyagi.

(Via Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection)

Half a year ago I briefly mentioned about a Mac tablet in a post about the iPhone,I hoped that Apple would rather produce a Mac tablet rather than the iPhone. However time showed that Apple’s announcement was the iPhone and not a Mac tablet computer. Nevertheless Mac tablet designs continue to surface. This latest tablet is an impressive concept designed by Yann Le Coroller.

Picture copied from Yann Le Coroller’s website.

Wayne Smallman also wrote some in depth opinions regarding Mac tablets that could be worth reading.

(Via CrunchGear)

FormatPixel gives you desktop publishing capabilities online. Although you are much more limited compared to industry standards such as InDesign, FormatPixel gives you just enough control to design newsletters, leaflets etc.

Above is a screenshot of a quick layout I created in about 15 minutes. The negative aspects I can point out initially are the fact that images cannot have a larger resolution than 72dpi, and have to fit within various size limits. I am unsure whether this only applies to the free version, or also to the paid subscription packages. (In the free version you are limited to 1 project and 512k storage).
Nevertheless this could be a nice and handy tool for simple desktop publishing operations, and best of all another online application.

For an even more simple approach to designing online (news)letters I wrote about another solution in January: LetterPop! Create Your Newsletter Online.

With the large amount of music videos around nowadays, I enjoy finding innovating ideas. This music video, D.A.N.C.E by Justice, features motiongraphics placed on top of footage of people wearing t-shirts. The music is also catchy, and as others have commented does resemble Daft Punk.

Picture screenshot from the DANCE music video. See the video at DailyMotion.

For more info about Justice check out their MySpace page. The director/creators of the music video are apparently Jonas and Francois from the production company called irène75.

(Via Drawn)

Do you struggle to remember what fonts look like? Would you like to compare fonts against each other without manually formatting individually? Well then give TypeTester a try. TypeTester allows you to compare a number of fonts on the fly,  and best of all online.

You can also compare colors and sizes. Thanks to LifeHacker for the link.