Image courtesy The Feed

So you’re strolling down the sidewalk beachside on Cape Code, or the Jersey Shore, or in Venice, or Santa Cruz, or wherever, and there they are, set up with their easels and charcoal:  caricaturists.  You know:  those folks–often art students at the local college–who do a quick sketch of you and your boyfriend and then sketch you writing a penny-farthing bicycle, or doing a skateboard stunt, or something.  Probably your Mom or your sister or your uncle has one stuck on their fridge, right?

Well last year, The Feed kinda did the Web equivalent:  Secret Portraits.  Here’s what they say:

Over the past year we’ve pimped people’s profile pics, created 

This morning I wanted to make sure that I was straight about what the difference between clams and oysters was, beyond taste; I must have slept through that lesson in Biology. As I often do, I turned to Google and posed my question in the search bar. The first site that popped up answered my question perfectly, and when I took a look at the site which had provided my answer, I was pleasantly surprised to find that what it does is answer questions about the differences between things. As they explain …

Differencebetween.net not only facilitates your understanding of a topic, but it also enables you to differentiate two similar subjects. The site provides

Image courtesy of LostandTired

Last night while viewing to the RadioAndroid.net show I was able to be part of something pretty special. It’s been a while since I was able to listen in on the show but I’m certainly glad this was the one I was able to attend. The show starts at 10pm on the east coast, so I don’t usually have time to watch the whole thing, except this time there was an essay contest in which I was able to participate. The contest winner would receive a LG G2X as a prize if selected as the winner. I figured not many would write in with an essay so my chances… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?  Why do flight attendants tell you to remain seated until the aircraft comes to “a full and complete stop”?  Is there such a thing as an incomplete stop?  Or perhaps a half-full stop?  Why can you be underwhelmed and overwhelmed but not “whelmed”?  Why can’t you find small, medium, and large eggs any more; why is it just large, extra large, and jumbo?  Why do fast-food places only seem to have two sizes: way too small, and way, way too big?  Why is daily life, well, so stupid?

Despite what my wife Sami tells me regularly, it is clear that I am not the only… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

It’s a cliché these days, but let’s face facts:  Media is evolving at a ridiculous rate.  For the longest time, you had stuff written by hand, or chiseled out of some kind of rock, or painted on walls, or something.  Slow, hard to transport, not easily copied.  Then we got the printing press, and things improved somewhat.  Movable type.  The Telegraph.  Radio.  TV.  But lately it’s just gotten ridiculous, with the internet begetting the Web begetting all kinds of crazy-ass stuff like blogs and RSS feeds and Instapaper and God knows what.  So if someone wants to stay current — like your good friends here at GD! — they have to evolve.  Like Shawn at what used to be… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Mitchell Oke left me a message asking if I had seen Google yet this morning. Of course, he left it last night, since he is hours ahead of me in Australia. I took a look, and he is correct … it’s brilliant.

From the Google Blog:

The electric guitar brings back memories for me of exchanging riffs with friends and wearing out cassette tapes as I meticulously learned songs. Today, we’re attempting to recreate that experience with a doodle celebrating the birthday of musician and inventor Les Paul.

For the next 24 hours on the Google homepage, you’ll find an interactive, playable logo inspired by the guitar developed

We all know Photoshop is a great product.  While I may be partial to the open source program called the Gimp, Photoshop is still the king of editing programs.  When you really know your stuff, you can do some pretty amazing things with Photoshop.  

A co-worker and teacher of mine, Gene Strickland, has done something pretty amazing, and he’s posted it on YouTube for all to see.

The above video is Gene painting Captain Jack Sparrow.  The results are fantastic!  The video has been greatly speeded up so you can see him paint the picture in what seems like mere minutes. Even though the video was only minutes long… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

There is an old story about an illiterate man who was walking along when he saw a rock with a perfect hole drilled right through it. Amazed, the man stopped and looked a bit closer. Upon examination he realized that every few minutes a drop of water fell from the top of a cliff far above and landed on the exact spot where the hole was. It was then that he realized what had happened. One drop of water had little impact on something as hard as the rock, but one drop of water, followed by another and then by another eventually became powerful enough to wear the hole into the rock… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

I’m really digging this whole Kickstarter concept. If you are not familiar with Kickstarter, it is

an online threshold pledge system for funding creative projects. Kickstarter has funded a diverse array of endeavors,ranging from indie film and music to journalism and food-related projects.

One of a new set of fundraising platforms dubbed “crowdfunding”, Kickstarter facilitates gathering monetary resources from the general public, a model which circumvents many traditional avenues of investment. Project owners choose a deadline and a target minimum of funds to raise. If the chosen target is not gathered by the deadline, no funds are collected (this is known as a provision point mechanism). Wikipedia

I’ve always loved watching caricature artists quickly plot out their exaggerated perception of their subjects, but this new offering from Orange UK’s The Feed takes the art to a whole new level. They are offering “secret portraits” of twitter users based on a tweeted self-description. I am about to enter mine, and I thought you might want to give it a try, too.

1. Describe yourself in a tweet – and don’t forget the #secretportraits hashtag
2. If your tweet intrigues us, our illustrators will dive into your Twitter profile to find out more about you
3. They’ll draw a secret portrait based on

Mahjong — which like Channukah seems to have almost as many “correct” spellings as there are people trying to spell it — is one of those games that has been around forever, and makes its transition to new computer platforms with rather amazing rapidity.  I played Moonlight Mahjong on the iPhone for a long time (and I loved how they kept adding to it over time), and have the HD version installed on my iPad now as well.

Now Astraware–a game maker that I quite like, personally–has added their version of Mahjong to the list.  Past Gear Diary Team member (and all around good guy) Clinton Fitch has a nice review of it up

A few years ago I lost a good bit of weight thanks to the South Beach Diet. From a health perspective it was good. From a wardrobe perspective however… well that was a different story. Suddenly none of my suits fit. It was the same story with my dress shirts, and replacing them was going to be an expensive proposition.

I happened to mention my need to go shopping to a co-worker, and she told me that her father gets all of his clothes custom-made and often for far less than he would if he were shopping “off the rack”. How did he manage this? Well his tailor came in… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

I first heard about Sporcle on the Howard Stern show.  Howard was joking that his crew spends most of their time, time when they should all be working, playing on the site.

What’s Sporcle?

Sporcle is a trivia based web site and not only is it super addicting, it’s super fun.  Well of course it is right?  I mean what’s addicting that’s not fun … at least in the beginning?

The site features a ton of short user and site created “quizzes” where you have to name as many of the correct answers as you can in the given time constraints.  The quizzes are… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

LinkedIn was once described to me as ‘Facebook for professionals’. In keeping with that analogy, it is fitting that LinkedIn has now come out with something that is more or less the same as Facebook’s ‘Fan’ page that many entertainment companies have. It is called ‘LinkedIn Company Following’, and is as simple as searching out a company you are interested in, and clicking ‘Follow’ on their profile page.

From the Mashable article:

However, instead of receiving status updates from the companies you follow, you will instead get information such as recent hires and promotions, new job opportunities and company profile updates.

“Follow” has been added as a tab on company pages now as

The fact that today’s cameras are taking capturing images unlike we’ve ever seen before should come as no surprise to anyone.  Technology grows every day and with it the ability to capture images both digitally and on film does as well.

What might surprise you though are the photos on Utah3d.net.  Utah is a state filled with scenic landscapes and one site shows it to you unlike any I’ve ever seen.  Utah3D.net contains a portfolio of ultra hi-res pictures that are all taken in a 360 panoramic allowing you to scroll around, up and down, side to side and view every inch of each shot.

Utah is known for its