Author: Shohini Sengupta

Facebook is a guilty pleasure that so many of us cannot do without. We may forget all about the assignments that are due, all the deadlines to be met, or the people we should have conversations with in real life, but we simply cannot ignore Facebook. Whether it is to carry out the daily ritual of poking friends, to catch up on the latest gossip within the circle, to take endless quizzes that will miraculously tell you who your soul mate is, or simply to let your inner farmer take over, Facebook is certainly an indispensable part of our daily lives.

However, what is life without a good laugh? In this post, I have compiled a few Facebook parodies, covering the many aspects of Facebook, as a tribute to all Facebook addicts —

Facebook and Staying Connected:

Now you will always be in the loop!

Facebook and Friendship:

Good Samaritan, anyone?

Facebook and Gossip:

You would think this is enough to make a successful soap-opera!

Facebook and Dating:

Who said matches are made in Heaven? They’re made on Facebook!

Facebook and Farming:

FARMVILLE! Need I say more?

Facebook for Gangstas:

This is as elite as it gets!

Facebook for Senior Citizens:

You are never too old to Facebook!

Facebook for the Digitally Suicidal:

Never fear, for help is always near … or on Facebook, at least!

Facebook for Cats:

I can haz Facebook? LOL!

Facebook for Stalkers:

Every status update,
Every person you date,
Every single poke
Every keyboard stroke
I’ll be watching you!

Got any more Facebook parodies to share? Let me know!

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Google Chrome has become one of the most widely used web browsers within a short span of time. One of its many user-friendly features is that the address box also doubles as a search box. For those of us who unfailingly type in a search command into the address bar of a browser by mistake, this feature is nothing short of a life-saver!  However, all the Firefox loyalists out there needn’t feel left out. With Foobar safely installed, you can now have the benefit of integrating Firefox’s address and search boxes, combining them into one functional box!

Once you install this add-on, every time you type in anything other than a valid URL, (an address having HTTP, FTP or ABOUT), your address bar functions like a search box and you are also given a list of possible choices to select from. Typing in a recognized address, on the other hand, takes you directly to that page. Very handy, right?

Moreover, when using the address box for searches, you also get to choose the search engine to be used. The featured search engines include Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Wikipedia among others. Thus, you experience great flexibility along with dual functionality!

Foobar has the capacity to easily become one of those extensions that you grow so used to that you take them for granted. It is simple, yet rather appealing in its effectiveness. I would highly recommend it to all Firefox users!

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There are currently several programs that let even novices create abstract wallpapers without prior knowledge of complicated design tools. These programs have friendly interfaces and are generally rather easy to use. In one of my previous posts, I had talked about the wallpaper creator tool by X3Studios, which lets you create abstract vector-based wallpapers. Now, if you have a weakness for abstract fractal-like wallpapers, then you will find the free Flash-based Flame nothing short of addictive!

Compared to X3Studios, Flame does not provide you with as many options. Yet, there is tremendous potential for variety within its limited options. You have either a black or a white background, and are also provided with a brush tool which can be customized. Apart from color, saturation and opacity, you can even adjust other options such as size, softness, chaos and noise to change the nature of your brush strokes. All that you have to do to create fractal-like shapes and doodles is move your mouse around!

The trick lies in exercising control over your mouse movements. For smoothly flowing sheer color strokes, it is best to move your mouse quickly without keeping it in one spot for too long. Slow mouse movements simply translate into a harder, more intensely focused color, which may not be a bad thing if that is what you’re aiming at in the first place.

Finally, once you deem your masterpiece completed, you can save your artwork to your computer. There is, however, one rather crucial limitation. Your wallpaper can only be saved at a resolution of 1680 × 1050 pixels.

In spite of this, you can easily find yourself whiling away your time with Flame, enthralled by the sheer diversity present in every entrancing endeavor of yours!

Here, I have shared a couple of wallpapers that I made using Flame and would love to see the ones you create! I hope you have as much fun as I did!

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The modern age is more attuned to technology than any other era before it. For instance, you don’t need pen and paper to express your thoughts any more. We are quite content with the use of technology for taking pictures with a digital camera or even creating digital art. Essentially, in the latter case at least, we are letting artificially generated images be considered the fruits of creativity. In such a case, is it truly unnatural to give music composed artificially the same respect that the compositions of the musical masters of yore have commanded?

It is this very debate that has puritans squirming and composer-cum-computer programmer David Cope and his innovative approach to creativity searching far and wide for vindication.

Cope’s brainchild is Emily Howell, a composer who is one of a kind. She is actually a computer program. Through Emily, Cope carries out what he calls “algorithmic composition” — studying classical music composed by the masters, working out the seamless manner in which the notes were brought together, and then applying that knowledge to create new variations in notes. In other words, composition with the help of algorithms.

Emily whipped up a storm of controversy when word spread about her existence. However, those who had heard her compositions without knowing that she was not a human being, found the music indistinguishable from the pieces composed by human maestros. They even went on to say that the music was deeply moving.

So is Emily plagiarism or pure genius? Is she grossest disrespect to human creativity or a triumph of art, science or even both? Emily may be condemned and her creator called the heartless “Tin Man” from The Wizard of Oz.  Her compositions may be called soul-less by those who know of her origins in the hands of man. It is clear however that, in spite of everything, she cannot be ignored.

Visit this site to hear some of Emily’s compositions first hand!

[via podcomplex]

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Given the number of hours most of us spend at the computer, it isn’t hard to assume that we go through a range of moods and emotions during that time. Also, we often have music playing in the background while we multitask at the computer. Usually, it is nothing short of a pain to come up with a music playlist that perfectly complements your mood.

Moodstream by Getty Images is a simple but great interface that effortlessly provides you with a blend of music, images and video based on your mood. All you need to do is select your present mood from the given presets of Inspire, Excite, Refresh, Intensify, Stabilize, and Simplify and be treated to a beautiful and satisfying audio-visual amalgamation!

Moreover, you can further customize your stream by altering the mood spectrum present on the Moodstream mixer. After you have changed the mood spectrum settings of happy/sad, calm/lively, nostalgic/contemporary etc. to your liking, just refresh the stream for the changes to take effect. You can even play around with the image transition type, duration of images and video or even the presence of more or less vocals in your music selection.

The best part about Moodstream is that it adds another dimension to your stream by incorporating the visual aspect. However, unlike some other mood-based services available, Moodstream does not play the entire song. Instead, it plays short 30 second segments which blend or cross-fade into each other, depending on your settings. Nevertheless, if you come across a particular image or sound spippet that you really enjoy, you can always save it to your Moodboard for future use!

Do you know of other great mood-based music services? Come forward and share!

[via Lifehacker]

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Have you ever wondered whether the oh-so-impeccable images that you see in posters and magazines are real? Many of these perfect shots have been retouched, or “airbrushed” using Photoshop before being unveiled for the whole world to see. However, sometimes these manual manipulations go a little too far. This post will be taking you through some of the worst Photoshop disasters in recent times.

Disaster #10: Head or pelvis? Which is smaller? I dare not hope for either.

Disaster #9: Whose arm is it anyway? Julianne Moore may have lost her clothes but she sure has made up for it with a very flexible right arm, not to mention the perfect legs.

Disaster #8: Talk about entwined legs!

Disaster #7: What happened to all the water?

Disaster #6: Who said that working out was the only way you could get a six-pack?

Disaster #5: Looks like it was a bad hair day.

Disaster #4: Warning! Do not splash into unknown waters. You may have your face transplanted.

Disaster #3: Talk about generating crowds!

Disaster #2: Oh, you have to crane your neck to spot this one!

Disaster #1: And finally, at the top (or in this case, bottom) of the list we have: Two sunsets for the price of one! Can there be a better holiday package?

These were only a few of them. Know of more Photoshop disasters? Let us know!

[pictures from Photoshop Disasters]

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Didn’t we all love those afternoons in which we would take a walk down memory lane, tangibly helped along by a photo album? While the online albums popular at present are a great way to stay connected with friends and family scattered across the globe, sometimes we do want to hold a cherished picture in our hands. Thus, a need often arises to have all the numerous photographs, ranging from candidly captured moments to arty snapshots, in a printed form.

To address that very need, several websites have mushroomed in the past few years, which offer users a host of printing options for their digital photographs. Many of these sites not only allow you to take photo prints but also let you create beautiful mementos and other gift items with your digital photographs.

In this post, I will list some of the best sites for printing digital photographs, which ship to India and the United States of America.

One great website for digital printing is Picsquare, which lets registered users print photographs, greeting cards, calendars, T-shirts, mugs, laptop skins and a host of other items that make great gifts filled with sentiment! Registration is free and a user can make online payments via credit card. Apart from printing uploaded pictures there are also options to print photographs from Facebook, Flickr or PicasaWeb. Users can easily create personalized orders with prices starting at as low as Rs. 2.95 for a 4″ x 6″ photo print.

Snapfish is another excellent website that offers its services in over 20 countries. The site offers users the options of ordering high quality photo prints, greeting cards, stamps and even customized stationery gift items. Pricing here also starts at Rs. 2.95 (9¢ for US users) for a high quality 4″ x 6″ photo print, regardless of whether the finish is glossy or matte.

Another top site for digital photo printing is ZoomIn, which delivers quick shipping of the ordered prints to any place in India, the US or Canada. With free registration, unlimited storage, integration with Flickr and Picasa and a range of print formats at reasonable prices, a user is spoilt for choice.

Apart from dealing in digital cameras, G.K. Vale also offers very good digital printing services in India. Marginally more expensive than Picsquare or Snapfish, this site offers 4″ x 6″ photo prints for Rs. 3.99 along with various other photo gift options.

To round up the list, there is iTasveer, which lets registered users order a wide variety of customized photo gifts, from T-shirts to Teddy bears! iTasveer offers Flickr and Picasa integration, unlimited storage and India-wide shipping.

Hope you find these useful! Lastly, do let us know if you come across some more great sites for digital printing!

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What do you get when Art and Science shake hands and heartily greet each other? The answer is simple: innovation. There are many who agree that Art and Science are two sides of the same coin and that you cannot truly have one without the other. Artist Marco Fusinato is one such believer who has taken abstract art to a whole new level with his “Mass Black Implosion” collection.

Fusinato has applied mathematical transformations to sheet music delineating experimental compositions and literally made you “see” music. The artist has simply added a new dimension to the musical notes, which were, by themselves alluringly abstract. By line drawing over existing scores of avant garde music, Fusinato shows us what “free noise” would look like.

As a result, you find sound waves and equations staring back at you when you look at Fusinato’s Mass Black Implosion. No, this is not a case of synesthesia, but simply a testament to what the human mind can do! Those viewing Fusinato’s collection, can not only hear the musical compositions but they also have an idea of what the sound they hear would actually “look” like.

So when you now look at a piece of sheet music, would you find notes leaping out at you? Let us know!

[via io9 and Illusion 360]

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Do you remember the hours you spent coloring as a child with your favorite pack of crayons? I remember spending many an hour blissfully unaware of the rest of the world, creating my own world of electric-blue cats and buildings with purple roofs, with my trusted box of Crayola(TM) crayons by my side.

Now, although I’ve left those years far behind, my interest got piqued the moment I saw this post on a man launching crayon rockets on the Internet. Curiosity got the better of me and I immediately began to read.

John Croker, who has spent years pursuing his quirky hobby of Rocketry, launched his own armada of crayon rockets into the dry skies of Sierra Nevada after spending almost six years working on them. Inspired by a friend who had once mentioned that one of his rockets resembled a crayon, John decided to  make flying crayons a reality! Well, he didn’t actually charm a box of crayons to zoom out into the sky, but what he did was pretty close to it.

John built a pack of eight rod-shaped rockets with fins that looked exactly like larger-than-life Crayola(TM) crayons (minus the fins, of course) and made them fly out of what looked like a very large Crayola(TM) crayon box. Although only four out of the eight actually flew, not everyone can boast of making crayons fly a couple of thousand feet into the air! John has written extensively about the experience, along with how he built and painted his crayon rockets on his website.

It seems that even adults can make crayons can fly, and not just in their imaginations!

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We all love to personalize our computers to our taste, right? And the first step towards doing just that is putting up a great wallpaper! While it can be a lot of fun to surf through websites which offer loads of wallpapers for free download, after a lot of searching we often end up wishing for something a little more attuned to what we had in mind. The solution to this is simple: why not make your own wallpaper?

Abstract vector-based wallpapers are great ways to make your computer look more like an extension of your personality and X3Studios makes their creation extremely simple! With their free wallpaper creation tool, you would neither require Illustrator nor need to scour the web to build up a collection of stock images before you start work.

With the X3Studios tool, which you don’t even need to register for, your web browser will serve as your workstation (or play-station, if you, like me, find such creative work nothing short of fun). There will be a palette and element selection guide in the workspace set up in your browser and you will have free reign over all the numerous background textures and abstract design elements to do as you please with! All the elements selected by you can be customized with the help of  the sliders on your right that let you play around with brightness, color, saturation as well as element size and spatial orientation.

X3Studios scores over other image-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop with its extremely simple user interface which makes life easier for all the novices out there who would like to try their hand at something like this without feeling intimidated by the software!

To top it all, the wallpaper that you create can be downloaded at high resolutions ranging from 1024×768 to 1600×1200.

Lastly, you can also turn to the wallpapers saved by others for inspiration as well as download purposes. So go on ahead and let your creativity stretch its wings and take hold of your computer! Below is a glimpse of the one I created. Have fun making yours!

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