I recently got an invite from someone at the kirupa.com forums to some Aviary tools. I only have access to two tools at the moment (Phoenix and Peacock), and only tested Phoenix (Peacock was a bit too complicated to test).

All I’ve got to say is, wow. This toolset is quite impressive. It has some very nice basic features, a few filter effects, hotkeys (!), and it is very smooth (it’s slow at times, but that’s because of my limited CPU). The interface is very nice, although the icons and panels are a little too big and take a lot of real estate IMO.

Still, it’s a little buggy, and there a Feedback menu on the toolbar for easy, well, feedback. I’m going to play more with Phoenix and try to make something cool. I really want to test Hummingbird (the 3D editor), but I don’t know how to sign up for the beta or even if it’s available.

I have a few invites remaining, so if you want to try them, just post.

Today is 6-7-08, the day selected by some people as Drawing Day. The people on the site want to reach 1,000,000 drawings online, and I would love to be a part of that. I have marked this day on my calendar, but somehow I forgot about it and I haven’t drawn anything! But no worries, the day isn’t over yet and they say it might go on for at least a week, and besides, it still isn’t June 7th on the other side of the world.
So, if you haven’t yet, start drawing and upload it on anything, anywhere! I’ll porbably post it on this blog, and my DeviantArt account too.
Happy Drawing Day everyone!

On a completely unrelated side-note, I’ll be changing themes often over the next few days until I find one I really like, so expect  some changes.

May 1st just went by, and all the participants now have their rebooted sites up. There must be at least a hundred participants for this. I registered on the site last month, just for kicks, but I never really got around to making my site.

Head on over to the site and have a look at all the new sites that went up at the same time, and cast your votes for your favorite.

http://www.may1reboot.com/2008/

It has been laid out so well, everything is explained thouroughly, with simple and understandable examples and it’s searchable. It’s basically one giant tutorial about ActionScript! If there is one, I would love to buy a print/book of the online docs, because I hate reading on the monitor for extended periods of time. And yes, I’ll be reading the online docs for extended periods of time.

Only recently have I discovered that SU has a “Stumble with query” feature. You type in the search query you want, and just stumble away. You might end up with something you had no luck googling, or just end up with something interesting, and still within your search terms.

To start “query stumbling”, just click the ‘All’ dropdown menu on the StumbleUpon toolbar, and click ‘Search’. Enter your search terms, and click on ‘Stumble!’.

Here’s a screenshot. Notice I’ve already started stumbling for “actionscript”.

I think I might have a few invites with me, so if you want some, just post.

Adobe put up a new site called Photoshop Express.

It’s just like any other photo sharing website for photographers and hobbyists. But there’s a very cool feature to it.

You could edit your photos on a very nice Flash interface. With options from basic color manipulation to very complex image distortion. I’ve only played with it for a few minutes, but it seems like a good and easy way to quickly upload photos while editing them at the same time.