Taliana Design has designed a range of iPhone cases to suit iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. They are available for purchase through RedBubble. What do you think of the range?

Inkling is a device produced by Wacom that converts your hand drawn sketches into vector images, so that you can use them digitally. It consists of two parts: a pressure sensitive stylus and the receiver that converts your sketch which is affixed to your piece of paper.

See how it works.

Computer Arts have released an iPad app, showcasing some of the best work by the best graphic designers and illustrators from around the world. Browse individual portfolios, access information about designers, even contact the artist directly. It’s just .99 cents through the iTunes App store.

Check it out.

 

Original image by Computer Arts.

The ‘oppopet’ (‘oppo pet’) series of wireless computer mouses (or do we say mice??) are produced by elecom in collaboration with nendo  (canada-born, tokyo-based designer oki sato).

The animal shaped tail doubles as a USB receiver. The ‘oppopet’ doesn’t need a driver and can be used by simply connecting the USB tail to a laptop or computer and runs on a single AAA battery.

It also comes shaped as a fox, dog, dolphin, cat, pig, squirrel, chameleon, and rabbit.

Images courtesy of DesignBoom

Islandstone have developed a Firefox Add-on to replaces Comic San MS from web pages with a user-defined font. Bless them.

Comic Sans Remover

There are a lot of smartphone apps emulating Lomography techniques. It seems however, that traditional Lomography and shooting film is not quite dead.

Lomography.com.au as it suggests, “is revolutionising the way people see, and record, the world around them.” Browse the Shop, for film, books and accessories to get you started and of course view the range of Holga, Lubitel, Diana, Lomo LC and other style cameras. Be sure to visit the News section, where events, competitions and exhibitions are held in your state.

And don’t forget to review the 10 Golden Rules before shooting. The most important one, the Lomo motto, “Don’t Think, Just Shoot.”

From 1 March to 3 March 2011, Adobe held it’s annual Refresh sessions across Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. This one was particularlydifferent being held in cinemas, complete with muffins during morning tea and popcorn mid afternoon. Equally impressive were the two sign language translators that signed the entire time.

The focus of the sessions was to bring us designers and developers the latest on building rich applications and content development across multiple platforms. It also included a town hall and Flash Builder sessions, BlackBerry PlayBook show and tell (the first time it was shown publicly in Australia), and sneak peeks.

The session opened with a keynote by Richard Galvan the Flash product manager and people what an eye opener. If you’re building websites for
desktops only, you might want to rethink that, based on the stats he displayed. With more and more people viewing online content on TVs, smart phones and add the influx of tablet devices hitting the market, each vying to claim their place in the market, you need to start designing websites that are optimised across multiple devices.

In his session, Richard also showed us a sneak peek of Flash’s ability to resize a Flash document and it’s graphics, including anything on the timeline, movieclips, buttons and layers. If anyone using Flash, has ever been asked by a client to resize an entire document when you’ve just about finished the project, you will know, this will be a major time saver. Please let this be in the next version of Flash.

Then it was over to Paul Burnett, APAC Evangelist, to explain and demonstrate Air, HTML5 and Building Apps and Content for Multiple
Devices. He created an app, called Mini Dodgem AIR Hockey and yes that’s basically the crux of the game. Two cars, trying to slam the Adobe squish ball into their respective goals to score. Using Flash he was able to publish it as a desktop app, then to an iPad and then a Galaxy Tab without changing anything. What was more amazing, was that he then output it to a TV and then to the BlackBerry PlayBook, again, no changes to the actual app. To complement the game he also built controller apps, allowing an iPhone and an Android phone, to control the cars on the TV, Galaxy Tab, iPad and PlayBook. One app, multiple devices, all working exactly the same. Mission accomplished.

Then Sarim Aziz from Rim showed off the yet to be released Blackberry Playbook. Can I say. Oh. My. God. We got to touch, play, tap and swipe but no holding the Playbook. Impressive.

Then it was time for the Town Hall session where designers and developers could ask and discuss anything about Adobe products and developments.

After the banter, Michael Stoddart, also an APAC Evangelist, discussed Adobe’s Digital Publishing Solution, demonstrating how InDesign files could be output to digital magazines, which could then be used on iPads and other tablets. It’s an exciting time to be in the digital age.

Ryan Stewart, Platform Evangelist, followed lunch with a look at the next version of Flash Builder code named Burrito and the new components designed for mobile, code named Hero.

To finish the day all the presenters came back on stage and showed some future technologies including a Stage Video demo showing 1080p Flash video running using a tiny amount of the CPU, a demo of Molehill, the new 3D api for Flash and then finally, the Wallaby demo that showed the ability to take a .fla file from Flash and output an HTML only animation.

Refresh 2011 tour is now heading to Seoul, Hong Kong and then Singapore. You can follow #adoberefresh on Twitter.

Anyone else attend Refresh 2011? What did you think and what was your favourite sneak peak?

References:
mad.com.au
blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/02/the-multiscreen-revolution.html
tv.adobe.com/channel/max/max-2010/

For lovers of Lego. These giant storage boxes were commissioned under licence from Lego and can be clicked and stacked together. I found these at http://www.aplaceforeverything.co.uk

They even have a giant Lego Man Storage Head.

Images are copyright and are the property of http://www.aplaceforeverything.co.uk

Alison from Desktop Mag, posted her Cityshrinker City Packs article earlier, featuring work by Melbourne photographer Ben Thompson, where his images gave the impression they were in miniature/model format.

This is also known as Tilt Shift Photography.

Below is a Photoshop tutorial on how to create the same effect with your own images.

1. Begin by chosing your image. I’ve chosen a city skyline.

2. Quick Mask and Gradient Tool
We need to initially work in Quick Mask Mode, do this by selecting the Quick Mask icon at the bottom of the Tool Palette. Then select the Gradient Tool. Make sure you have selected the Reflected Gradient option (fourth icon at the top).

3. Quick Mask and Gradient Tool
With the Gradient tool selected draw a vertical line, starting from the centre of image where it will be “in focus” and drag it to where the image will start to be “out of focus”. When you release your mouse, a red gradient will appear over the top of your image.

Be warned when trying to Quick Mask your image in the “right” spot, it can be a massive “pain in the arse”, in trying to get it in the right position. You’ll see what I mean.

4. Once you are happy with the mask you’ve made, you will need to go back to Standard Mode. To do this, click on the Quick Mask icon again at the bottom of the Tools Palette. The red gradient should disappear and leaving a rectangular selection box.

5. Then go to Lens Blur to blur the image. Go to Filter > Blur > Lens Blur

6. Here you can begin experimenting with how much you want to blur your image.

Once you’re done and happy with the result, click the Ok button.

I’m not done yet. While I like the result, I still want to play with colours to give it a miniature feel, by making it brighter and saturated.

7. Hue/Saturation
With your layer selected, in the Layers Palette, click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the palette (4th one) and choose Hue/Saturation. Alternatively go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Now play around with the Hue, Saturation and Lightness.

You’re done. Here’s some other examples.

Original images courtesy of RGB Stock

Check out Taliana Design’s business cards as featured on Creattica.com