Sunday, February 22, 2009

Money

Turn Your Old Video Games Into Cash At Nintari

9:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Sell or trade your unwanted video games of any vintage on Nintari to score cash for new games. Nintari has listings covering everything from early 1980s consoles to current releases. You can list your used games either as trades or by setting a cash value. Alternately you can cruise the extensive used game listings that span nearly 30 years worth of console gaming—you may just find that Game Gear game you never got around to beating. If you have a tip or track of turning your used games into cash, share with your fellow readers in the comments. Thanks John_Ryan84! Nintari More »
Fix

Build a Get Smart-Style Shoe Phone

8:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Paul Gardner-Stephen, an Australian engineer, has created a detailed tutorial on building your own Bluetooth-enabled shoe. Why? Because the only thing more awesome than talking into empty space is talking to your shoe. In all seriousness, however, he created the first shoe as a prop for a local play. After crafting it, he decided that integrating communication tools into basic and necessary articles of clothing would be an excellent way for medical care workers to stay in touch with elderly patients who might be resistant to altering their routines. While your motivation for putting a Motorola headset into the heel of a pair of engineer boots might only be as noble as winning a bet with your buddy that you can order pizza with your foot, Paul’s tutorial will still get you there. What the phone-in-shoe question really begs however is, what other things should such technology be embedded in? Sound off in the comments below and maybe you’ll find out you’re not alone in somehow seeing tasers and belt buckles entwined in function. Build a Get Smart Style Shoe Phone [via Hacks Zine] More »
Organise

Maxto Divides and Conquers Your Screen Real Estate

7:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows only: If you’re looking for a lightweight tool for compartmentalising space on your monitor and need support for multiple screens, MaxTo lets you subdivide to your heart’s content. Upon first running MaxTo, each of your monitors is grayed out and a several small buttons are displayed. Using the buttons, you can divide each screen horizontally or vertically and grab the dividing bar to resize the space. Each space can then be further divided as small as you desire. The grey background is slightly transparent, which makes it a breeze to line up the dividers bars with existing window sizes (like when you’ve got your browser windows just so) or wallpaper details. You get five basic templates you can load on a per-monitor-basis for quickly sizing windows to common layouts without having to fuss with the settings. Once you’ve arrived at a happy layout and save your settings, from then on any window maximised in that portion of the grid you’ve created will be sized to fit. More »
Design

Obamicon.Me Turns Snapshots Into Stylised Obama Posters

5:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | The Obamicon.Me webapp turns your uploaded images into stylised pictures, modeled after the the distinct four-colour campaign posters used by President Obama. You can upload a picture or grab an instant capture from your webcam for the base of your HOPE-ish pictorial. Once it’s loaded into Obamicon.Me, you can adjust the saturation of each of the four colours, zoom and rotate the image. Then you select from several preset slogans, or insert your own. If you like the results, you can right-click and save them or keep them on the site for linking. For more random picture fun, make sure to check out MorphThing and blend your face with a (non-elected) celebrity’s. Obamicon.Me More »
Design

Learn A New Photoshop Trick With VunkySearch

1:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | One of the best ways to learn a new trick in Photoshop is to grab a tutorial that catches your eye and dive right in. VunkySearch offers just that kind of eye-pleasing, pick-up learning. Users can comb through VunkySearch using keywords or simply hit the randomize button to see dozens of tutorials from different sites thumbnailed on the main page. Clicking on a thumbnail pulls up a larger sample, and the lesson can be browsed in a lightbox-style window on VunkySearch or you can go to the site directly. The tutorial-in-a-window setup is surprisingly smooth, getting you back to the tutorial gallery quickly if you need a different perspective. For some more interesting Photoshop tutorials to increase your photo-editing-fu, check out how to spice up your pictures with lighting effects and creating photorealistic reflections. If you have a favourite site for finding awesome Photoshop tutorials, share it in the comments! Vunky Search [via gHacks] More »