Ffffound Alternatives
There is so much great stuff on Ffffound that you can easily spend all day there browsing images. Ffffound is a fantastically well designed image bookmarking site by tha ltd, the brain child of famed Japanese Flash master Yugop. Ffffound has wisely chosen to keep membership by invite only in order to keep up the quality of the submissions. Which is great unless you don’t have an invite.
Vi.sualize.us is a good alternative for the rest of us, despite have one of the worst URLs ever (try remembering it). It’s a nice and responsive web app that makes image bookmarking a one-click operation (especially via their Firefox plug-in). Until now I’ve bookmarked web images by dragging them to my desktop, but that’s so 2004. In my quest to push all my personal data into the cloud, I’m now uploading all my image bookmarks.
Another source of cool images is the new tumblr image blogs that are popping up recently such as this isn’t happiness and arts and crafts. These image blogs mainly showcase found web imagery of the cool and/or retro variety. Subscribing to the feeds ensures great quality images interspersed among your daily news stories.
Best Flash Upgrade Prompt Ever?
Noticed this upgrade prompt when viewing the TODAY, CREATE. blog through Google Reader. I don’t think it could be any more to-the-point 😉
Augmented Reality Video for Bogdan Raczynski
This is an oldie but goodie. Ben Dawkins‘ 2004 video for ‘RPMDAP’ by Bogdan Raczynski downloads break-dancing pixel guys into a typical crappy UK student flat. Also succeeds in making batch files sound cool. How long before someone does something like this in papervision?
5 Interesting Web Games
The casual web game market is really heating up with some of the big money finally realizing that there is a huge audience for this type of content. At the same time there seems to be an explosion in the number of great games that are out there.
Here’s 5 interesting web games that I’ve run across recently. These games all share the following attributes:
- Instant game play. Fast loading, no install required.
- Intuitive controls. Web games can use the mouse, the keyboard or both. Dual mouse + keyboard controls can give a high degree of responsiveness (think Quake).
- Uniqueness. Web games need some kind of unique hook to differentiate themselves from the myriad of other games out there.
- Playability. Ultimately a game has to be fun to play. Playability is an elusive quality that often comes through a large amount of iterative tweaking and trial and error.
99 Bricks
99 Bricks is an ‘anti-Tetris’ puzzler where the aim is to build the tallest tower possible using 99 bricks. Features real-time physics to determine whether your tower will remain upright. Made by the egg-heads at WeirdBeard.
Tasha’s Game
Tasha’s Game is a very friendly and playable game with really nice mouse + keyboard controls and a unique storyline. It’s a little on the easy side and well suited to a lunchtime session. Built by DoubleFine, the game studio behind Psychonauts.
Draw-Play 3
Draw-Play 3 is a unique experience that builds on the Linerider concept where you draw the play-field for your character to walk on. Built by Eggy. Level 15 was as far as I got 🙁
Robokill
Robokill is a very slick and playable mouse + keyboard shoot-em-up in the vein of Smash TV that features very nice detailed graphics. Built by Rock Solid Arcade.
Vampire Boy
And just to prove that using the latest technology is not important, Vampire Boy is a 10 year old web game that’s as fun now as when it first came out. Beautifully responsive controls and attention to detail make this a joy to play. Built by Benjamin Pitt of RobotDuck.
Let me know in the comments if you know of some other cool games that deserve a link.
Custom Portraits by Paul Turner
I just built a website for my dad, Paul Turner. He’s a very talented portrait painter (among other things) who is starting to sell custom portraits on the web. I sent him a digital photo of my son, Caspar, and 2 weeks later I received a very nice pop-art style portrait printed on fibreboard and ready to hang. It always get compliments from guests. So support an independent artist and get yourself a portrait!
Another talented artist in my family is Abby Stiglets, who has some of her strange and beautiful paintings on display here.
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