Hot links for July 3rd

Hide this thing – We were just talking about this practice at work the other day. Turns out just about everyone’s had some fun using Photoshop to hide stuff in client work at some point in the career (usually early on). Now Jeremy’s come along to make a bona fide movement out of it.

lightwriting – I’ve messed around with this technique myself, but I can’t hold a torch to this stuff.

We Are the Web

Looking at the title of this video, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was in for.

I was wrong… so so wrong.

If you’re brave enough to associate yourself with the video (and fight the good fight for net neutrality), you can nerd it up with your very own cotton billboard.

reinvigorate returns

After a loooong hiatus (about 2-1/2 years by my watch) Sean’s reinvents reinvigorate, one of the best analytics tools I’ve had the pleasure of using. Like most things these days, it’s a closed beta. I got my invite out of the blue today — can’t wait to get the code going and check out the new features.

Remember Quicktime VR?

Funny how you forget some of the creative venues you used to pursue. One huge one struck me on the head on a recent trip to Chicago. How in the world did I forget about Quicktime VR? I had the perfect opportunity to use it but, didn’t have anything suitable to create it. Dang.

I bought my first digital camera back in 1997 (dang, was it really that long ago?) The Apple Quick Take 200 with a whoping .3 megapixels. I started to get a little nutty and veered off into the world of photo VR courtesy of the Kaiden VR rig.

Ah, then I remembered why I forgot about it. It was a huge pain in the butt. The camera was all but useless and the stiching software was a nightmare. The camera eventually broke and the VR rig ended up in some box somewhere.

Fast forward 9 years and I was kicking myself for not having that rig with me. Funny what 9 years of technology can do. The cameras are wicked easy and I’ve been using them for years but, for some reason it never dawned on me to try the VR rig out again. Heck, even the software has gotten easier. Alot of cameras even ship with stitching software. The things they are doing these days with VR are absolutely stunning. Here’s a few links to some of the better ones. Find any more? Post the links in the comments. Now, if I could just find that Kaiden rig?…

http://www.panoramas.dk/
(click the pull down menu in the upper right corner to go directly to the panoramas. credit to nctrl for pointing this one out.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panoramic_photography
(wikipedia entry. alot of great links at the bottom. Includes description of film based panoramas as well as VR.)

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/qtvr/
(yup, an Apple plug. Imagine that.)

http://www.panofx.com/gallery.html
(comes in flash and java as well.)