The Anteater's Review: Best Bytes and Beyond

Reviews of new and upcoming web hotspots and services.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Art Fun for Everyone

As a service to my students visiting my site from home (and anyone else who happens upon this blog), I've created a list of some entertaining art-related websites.

Imagination Cubed - This incredible site web app by GE allows users to collaborate on paintings. Many of my students enjoy the replay features.

Artpad - Like Imagination Cubed, Artpad is a web app that allows you to paint and replay your painting. However, unlike GE's app, this one tries to simulate real painting.

Paint Like Jackson Pollock! - A very simple yet highly addictive "Boredom Breaker", Jacksonpollock.org simply simulates Pollock's process in creating abstract expressionist painting.
Mr. Picasso Head - What do you get when you cross Picasso with Mr. Potatohead?

Mondrimat - "Boredom Breaker" a la Modrian.

Pixelface - The National Gallery of Art website has several kid friendly web toys including this one where you can paint a famous portrait of George Washington's face in pixels.

Draw Toy - ZeFrank's web toys are a big hit. This one is a simple paint app.

Collage Machine I and Collage Machine II are two more NGA web toys. They allow you to create a collage of several available images.

Online Etch-a-Scetch - The web version of one of the greatest drawing toys invented. Note: Shaking your monitor will NOT erase the Etch-A-Sketch.

Grafitti Creator - This site is a big hit with students. This web app allows you to create grafitti art in varying 2-D and 3-D styles without the investment in spray paint or the risk of arrest.

By they way, it's impossible with most of these sites to save your images so I recommend using a screen capture tool. My students use GIMP's screen acquire utility.

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Less Than Jake is Releasing a New Album


The following post is a slight departure from my typical reviews covering tech related sites and services. I'm using this post to promote an upcoming album by one of my favorite bands. Included are a few links a highly recommend trying out if you enjoy such musicians as Pain, Rancid, Blink 182, Catch 22, and various ska/punk bands.

Less Than Jake is a self proclaimed pez obsessed three-chord pop-punk-ska band from my hometown, Gainesville, Florida. They've been around for over ten years now and have quite a large international following thanks to their incredible sound, larger than life stage presence, as well as some powerful marketing (Street Team, MySpace, etc.). The band made appearances on several movie/video game/tv soundtracks, has performed before stadium crowds and on the Warped Tour and is well known for highly intense shows as well as commiting random acts of a pranky nature (like recently getting arrested for tresspassing and disturbing the peace during an impromptu video shoot in a Los Angeles mall.) At any rate, that intro should suffice... on with the news...

LTJ is releasing a new album, "In With the Out Crowd" on May 23rd. The album will be available at many independent record stores as a full length album and a special edition 3-disc set. You can currently listen to tracks from the album and see videos on their Warner Brothers website. The 3 tracks I've heard are incredible and reflect the diverse sound from previous albums in their discography... a dash o Losing Streak, a few drops of Pezcore but mostly their recent albums Borders and Boundaries and Anthem. LTJ has a little something for everyone. I've included some info I've found about the future release as well as a currently available EP, "Absolution for Idiots and Addicts".

Track Listing
1. Soundtrack Of My Life
2. A Still Life Franchise
3. Overrated (Everything Is)
4. Fall Apart
5. In-dependence Day
6. Don't Fall Asleep On The Subway
7. Land Mines and Landslides
8. The Rest Of My Life
9. Mostly Memories
10. Let Her Go
11. Hopeless Case
12. P.S. Shock The World

The Special Edition Set will include the CD, a DVD featuring the making of "In With The Out Crowd" and a CDR including the following...
-318 photos
-26 MP3's of live songs
-13 live videos (MP4's/Quicktime Files)
-10 buddy icons
-5 wallpapers
-a screensaver

A new EP, "Absolution for Idiots and Addicts" is currently available at independent retailers and on iTunes.

Track Listing
1. Overrated (Everything Is)
2. Negative Sides Of Optomistic Eyes (Non-Album Track)
3. We, The Uninspired (Non-Album Track)
4. The Rest Of My Life

Here are a few links you may want to check out.
Less Than Jake's Website
LTJ on Myspace
LTJ's Street Team
LTJ on Squidoo

By the way... you can get LTJ Ringtones on your cell phone by texting LTJ to 73804*