Whether your going to design a blog, website or portfolio website. Choosing your colors become an important factor in your design. Color plays a major role in how the design is perceived by the audience. There are plenty of tools out there made especially for this, but like anything else some are better than others. Here are 10 color tools that I think are exceptionally useful.

Kuler

Kuler is a community driven web app that lets your browse color palettes created by others. You can also create your own by using the color wheel, harmony rules, and color sliders.

Colorotate

As well as being a useful way to choose colors, ColoRotate looks cool and is actually fun to use. Instead of using two dimensional viewers, it presents color palettes to you in 3d and in real time.

Color Scheme Designer

Color Scheme Designer has been around for a while, but was just recently updated with a brand new interface and a new color scheme generating engine.

Color Blender

Color Blender let’s you select a preferred color and then it generates a six color blend based on that color. From there you can tweak each individual color.

Do you know any other useful tools for choosing your design colors. If you do leave a comment.

KOMPAKT brings this new edition of our beloved POP AMBIENT series to the world. It was released as of Feburary 2009. I however didn't get my hands on it till about a month ago. The people at Kompakt, have most definitely delivered in the compliation. Pop Ambient 2009, the ninth installment in the series, marks a shift in aesthetics from previous volumes, moving away from deeply textured synth washes in favor of a slightly darker and more organic sonic palette.

Among the new recruits of Kompakt, everybody's favorite ambient-noise-postrock peripatetic, Tim Hecker, checks in briefly with a glacial episode of abrasive bit crushed post-Kosmische; "Shosts in Silver" lets fragments of piano recital drift into soft squalls, slowly swelling into waves breaking over scarred terrain. Debutantes, The Fun Years, inject new flavours with "I Am Speaking Through Barbara," making the most of the recursion of a gruzzy post-rock guitar figure, sweeping it back and forth, ramping and mussing it up with distortion and delay, fragments of voice and captured audio-detritus. A somewhat redundant addition, though, is Type-ist, Sylvain Chauveau, who contributes two pieces already aired on his Nuage full-length - "Fly Like a Horse" and "Nuage III" being equal parts ho-hum classical chamberism and humdrum laptop-folk pensiveness. (igloomag.com, 2009).

Sample of Pop Ambient 2009

Tracklist

While not exactly to scale, This is a pretty interesting concept idea of the evolution of cellphones via Russian Matryoshka dolls. It's a concept toy by designer Kyle Bean.

This is one of the best representation of a blast from the past. You can't get more modern and retro in the same breath as this. This tape (see below) is an MP3 player that follows the 45/60/90 minutes norm, holding 10/15/20 select songs in digital format. Who doesn't love the Tape. Right?

There are a couple of things regarding this player that really stands out. Like for example, if you want to forward or rewind a song, you need to manually do it by rotating the spools with your finger or pencil. To play just slide the Play Button. Charging it depends how good are you at …you guessed it…rotating the spools! Rotating the second hole of the tape charges the kinetic battery. An LED light indicates the power status: Green-full charge; Amber- Medium Charge; Red- will die out any moment.







Go ahead and leave a comment.

A Logo is a graphical element that, together with its logotype (a uniquely set and arranged typeface) form a trademark or commercial brand. Typically, a logo’s design is for immediate recognition. The logo is one aspect of a company’s commercial brand, or economic or academic entity, and its shapes, colors, fonts, and images usually are different from others in a similar market. Logos are also used to identify organizations and other non-commercial entities.

Here are some logo designs that are creative and original and can give you some inspiration in your design of a company logo.

Samsung’s first Android phone is finally coming and this time for real. The Samsung i7500 will be the first Samsung phone running Android 1.5. The 11.9-mm slim quad-band GSM, tri-band 7.2Mbps HSDPA (900/1700/2100MHz) candybar packs a 3.2-inch, 320 x 480 pixel AMOLED touchscreen, WiFi, GPS, 5 megapixel camera with Power LED, 1,500mAh battery, 8GB of storage (plus MicroSD expansion for up to 32GB more), and a standard 3.5mm headset jack.

There is not an official a release date for T-Mobile USA but because it will have 1700 3G band, this is a good candidate to be launched on T-MO.

The Samsung I7500 is a cutting-edge smartphone, featuring a 3.2″ AMOLED full touch screen and 7.2Mbps HSDPA and WiFi connectivity, giving users access to Google™ Mobile services and full web browsing at blazing speeds.

Features:

HSDPA 7.2Mbps / HSUPA 5.76Mbps (900 / 1700/ 2100MHz)
EDGE / GPRS (850/ 900/1800/1900)
OS
Android
Display
3.2″ HVGA(320×480) AMOLED
Camera
5 MP Camera (Auto Focus), Power LED
Video / Audio
Video: MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV
Audio: MP3, AAC, AAC+, e-AAC+, WMA, RA
Value Added
Features
Full Web Browser Google Search, Maps, Gmail,
YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Android Market
Connectivity
Bluetooth® 2.0, USB 2.0, WiFi, MicroUSB, 3.5mm ear jack
Memory
Internal memory: 8GB
External memory: Micro SD (Up to 32GB)
Battery
1500 mAh
Size
115 x 56 x 11.9mm

* Google, Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Google Calendar, Google Talk are trademarks of Google Inc.

Reference: CellphoneSignal.com April 27, 2009 by T-Marco

Airtight Interactive Picture Viewer is a website that offers 4 different types of viewers for your website. The following customizable image viewers are free to download and use. Pro versions are also available for purchase with advanced customization options. Although to use the free version you must keep the SimpleViewer download link in the bottom right corner is clearly visible. I find all of these viewers to be an advantage to keep users interested and interactive with your site.

Simple Viewer
Simple Viewer is a free, customizable Flash image viewing application. Lightweight and easy to use, it features smart preloading, a resizable interface, thumbnail menu and optional description text.

Demo: Simple Viewer


Tilt Viewer
Tilt Viewer is a free, customizable 3D Flash image viewer. Images can be flipped to show a description text and an optional link. Designed to provide a fun, intuitive user experience.

Demo: Tilt Viewer



Auto Viewer
Auto Viewer is a free, customizable Flash image viewer , designed to display a linear sequence of images and captions.

Demo: Auto Viewer



Postcard Viewer
Postcard Viewer is a free, customizable Flash image viewer. The interface is based on the real world metaphor of a set of postcards shuffled onto a surface.

Demo: Postcard Viewer

StellaStarr
Vocalist Shawn Christensen of Stellastarr gives this indie band a unique vocal sound. This bands indie mid tempo tones will have you enjoying their CD's all the way through. Stellastarr will be releasing a new album in July 2009 called "Civilized". They currently have 4 songs up on Myspace for preview for their new album. I am looking forward to the new release.

800Beloved
This band is a new favorite of mine. I came upon this band on ISO50 blog and immediately enjoyed the sounds of this bands pop/gothic sound. So I did a little bit of research on the band. 800beloved is frontman Sean Lynch. The son of famed Michigan poet Thomas Lynch, by day Lynch works as a cosmetologist at the family funeral home in Milford, MI while pursuing the masterfully music stylings of 800beloved at his downtown studio at night. I also found out information on the bands name. The “800″ in the bands name is taken from modern pop-culture’s affair with the North American toll-free phone number extension 1-800, while the word “beloved” points to the band’s lyrical usage of ironically naive subject matter. Give them a listen. You can also listen to the whole album "Bouquet" on Myspace.

Note: His studio looks like so much fun.

Reference: MotorCityRock.com 2003-2009

I was introduced to PostSecret by a friend. When I was at her house she had an interesting book sitting on her coffee table. It was called: "PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives". After browsing through this book, I was hooked and from there I found the PostSecret's blog and I get my fix once a week.

PostSecret is an ongoing community mail art project, created by Frank Warren, in which people mail their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. Select secrets are then posted on the PostSecret website, or used for PostSecret's books or museum exhibits.