Archive for November, 2007
VectorMagic Brings the Abra Kadabra to your Photos
Nov 4th
Recently as I was just browsing the web, I stumbled on this website through a set of forums. Apparently this site allows you to change your bitmap images to nice scalable vector images! What’s the difference between a bitmap and a vector image though? As you might already know, a bitmap image uses pixels to render the photograph, whereas a vector image would use geometrical shapes such as lines and circles to make it much more scalable. Try enlarging one of your images – then you’ll see what I mean!
VectorMagic is a project of Stanford University’s, and is a website that allows you to upload a bitmap file and convert it into a vector file. Due to traffic constraints, VectorMagic limits the picture to one megapixel after converting, but it’s a pretty simple matter to just scale it back afterwards. You will be able to download the files as either a .EPS file which can be edited in Photoshop, or a .SVG file (which I have no information about). From my experience though, Photoshop transforms the .EPS image into a bitmap image again for editing. I’d recommend getting Corel Paintshop Pro, the Vector equivalent of Photoshop, to properly edit your vector images.
VectorMagic is a very promising tool – and is great for transforming logos and such. However, those bitmap images lose a bit of detail through the process, making the resulting image a bit cartoon-ish, I daresay. This can be slightly remedied by using the “high” detail selection.
An example of a bitmap image transformed to a vector image.
As for any recommendations I could suggest – why not use something like Flash or Silverlight to render VectorMagic? As the golden age of the internet dawns, why not use something that will be a little more future-proof? Although I am satisfied that this program gets the job done, I still think it can go a bit further in the aesthetics department. Also, as it is funded by an educational institution, I realize that it’s difficult to support heavy loads of traffic – so please, branch out to other servers so the one-megapixel limit can be lifted! PLEASE!
Overall, my verdict is VectorMagic still has a nice sparkle to it, and it’s certainly a keeper. But, unless it becomes more aesthetically-pleasing, I’m afraid the Web 2.0 will take off and leave it behind, which would be a shame!
Link here: http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/
What’s OpenSocial?
Nov 1st
Recently, I’ve seen tons of news articles on something called OpenSocial. This didn’t really jump out at me till I saw it associated with Google. Then Friendster. Then Myspace. And then, I discovered it was rivaling Facebook’s developers’ applications. What’s OpenSocial got to do with this?
OpenSocial is a united way to develop applications that will work with social-networking sites. Think Myspace, with those funny Facebook applications like Free Gifts and whatnot. Either way, since these sites will all be united by OpenSocial, would the possibility of an application working on all the sites be likely? And even with Facebook 7,000 applications ahead, will OpenSocial be able to catch up?
If you ask me, I think OpenSocial is just another way Google’s fighting back against Facebook and Microsoft (they’re business partners now) by joining forces with various social networking sites, namely Myspace. All I’m going to say is this gets more interesting by the second!