Check out the 3 minutes entry video which says it all:

Then go grab a semi-public beta at Colin Devroe, or just wait a few hours until it’s public beta.

• Graphs that show your progress over time, either with the same route, or how far you manage to run in (example) 60 minutes.
• Map integration. Let me put my runs on a map like on Nike+
• Route playlist planning. Don’t know if that would be useful, but I thought it would be cool if I could put up a map for my run, grab data from previous runs of the same route, mark different sections of the run with a marker (like part 1, part 2 etc), and then drag in songs from iTunes to fit the different parts. Like power songs in the hills, slower stuff when it’s flat etc.
• Some way to integrate the running with iCal. Bitch me if I’m lazy!

If you have any ideas, put them here or in the thread at Flickr. Ditto if you have any good suggestion for other Mac software that uses the data the Nike + iPod collects.

how I keep in touch with (some of) my friends?,
originally uploaded by geirarne.

Brilliant table by Geir Arne. How would your chart look? Put up 10 of your friends, and check them off for e-mail, phone, sms etc.

Lego iPhone,
originally uploaded by gilest.

Why wait until June? Make your own iPhone today.

Screenshot: The latest creations in the Flickr Amazing Circles group

But now there are 1 002 members in the Amazing Circles Flickr group, and member number 1 000 is JJjunki from Tsukuba, Japan. Welcome! Here’s a circle JJjunki made.

The group now approcahes 10 000 Amazing Circles, with the most active members close to 200 circles each.

Also, a big applause for Nadano Kamome, who started this with the picture “How to edit Reversing world” in October 2005. I almost met Kamome in April 2006, when I visited Japan with my family. Almost, because we couldn’t find a spot and time where we both could be at the same time. I think we even passed each other on different trains between Kyoto and Kobe at some point! Next time, Kamome, I promise! I’m definitely going back to Japan, which was just brilliant. Remind me finishing my Japan series that I started (brilliantdays.com – tag “Japan”), but never finished.

If you do a Google search for “Amazing Circles”, you’ll get over 37 000 hits. That’s a quite a bit for a name I “invented” only 15 months ago. According to Trendmapper (Amazing Circles chart), it has been as high as about 95 000 hits back in May 2006. And when Digg caused a stampede in February 2006, the site went down. Heh.

Some people have gone bananas with pictures of themselves. So if you want to make some really scary new year’s cards…

My sister is visiting from halfway across the country. I asked her how long she’s staying. She said “Till Sunday.” And I realized… that meant absolutely nothing to me.

This is a good thing. A thing worth celebrating. I had (for that brief time) achieved a state of blissful disconnection from the Real World… to the point where I truly had no idea what day of the week it was. Woo hoo. Here’s to holidays from clocks, calendars, and duties of all kinds.

That is the real beauty of holidays: A “blissful disconnection from the Real World” – what a wonderful expression. And having “…no idea what day of the week it was”.

Thanks, Mary-Anne! You put words on something I have been feeling the last days.

Then Matt Mullenweg wanted some advice on which dress his girlfriend should wear in an upcoming wedding:

(original Flickr posts here and here.) And the winner was the dress on the left. The jury is still out on Matt’s tie…

This is the new web: Communicating with others, and letting you decide. Just as Time Magazine have figured out too too:

In 2006, the World Wide Web became a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter.

The “help me decide” tag

What if we tag all posts like this “helpmedecide” – in one word and no spaces? Tag your posts for Technorati (tag: helpmedecide), your bookmarks for Del.icio.us (tag: helpmedecide) and your pictures for Flickr (tag: helpmedecide) (and similar services).

I’ve created a Flickr group for this. So if you want the world to help you decide, just take pictures of the different choices you have, and make a new thread in the Flickr group. Buying a house? A car? A dress? Can’t decide on the christmas presents? We’ll help you decide!

And feel free to post links to posts and pics in the comments. I’ll promise to vote!

Fireflies,
originally uploaded by BURИBLUE.

…and this is what you get. Amzingly cool photo by Toby Keller (“Burnblue”). Put your camera on a tripod, and open the shutter for 323 seconds. Yes. 323. It must have been very dark when shot. But look at the great colors. And the fireflies seem to have been flying on command.

See my other favourites at Flickr here.

Update: 92 seconds ain’t bad either…

Here’s a how-to on how to create quite realistic looking bubbles on your pictures, using Photoshop or GIMP. It’s based on the Amazing circles technique I have written about before. Join the Amazing circles group at Flickr if you make any, bubbles or not.

When finished, make a screenshot, put it on Flickr and tag it websitesasgraphs.

Not that I didn’t know it already: This site needs a cleanup. A kiss.

So these are taken by Kai who has a much better cameraphone. There are five pictures in all.

It was a great concert. Ever since Harald Are Lund at NRK played a track from New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) on my crappy radio back in 1980 or something, I have loved Simple Minds. I play all their records on my iPod, but must admit that New Gold Dream still is my favourite (and the one giving the name to this site).

We came early, and without trying hard at all, we ended up at the front row. Which was brilliant. Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill singing and playing a meter away.

After the concert we were standing outside, talking. Then a friend of mine, let’s just call him Gunnar, wants to have a beer. It’s sunday, it’s almost 23:00 at night, and all of us are going to work at 7:00 next morning. For some strange reason Gunnar wins the discussion, and we cross the street heading for the pub. Next thing that happens is that Jim Kerr, Mel Gaynor and Charlie Burchill comes out, passes the spot where Gunnar wanted the bear, and heads for the band bus.

Thanks, Gunnar. I promised to remind you about everytime we talk about music, concerts or drinking for the rest of my life, so consider this a start. Who knows, maybe even nice people like Jim and Charlie wouldn’t have stopped for a chat with five fans outside a venue in the cold February night in Oslo… Or maybe they would have.

Where’s my iPod?

There’s also a Flickr user called Stunning Nikon on Flickr, that has all the ads as images (one of them – featuring Kate Moss – above).

If you want to check out likely candidates for the Nikon Stunning Gallery the next days, use Flickr’s own “Interesting” feature. See the pictures people have tagged for Nikon rated by how interesting they are. There are over 3 000 photos tagged as of today, and some of them of very high quality, even if some users seem to have tagged every photo they ever have taken…

Marketing

This is clever marketing by Nikon. The fact that I’m writing about it proof in itself. But the smartest thing about it is this: Right now hundreds, maybe thousands of photographers all over the world are looking through their photos thinking “Which one would be good enought for the Nikon Stunning Gallery site?” Or “Which photo in my stream is good enough?”

And when people see that excellent photographers like Mark Burdett, Nils K. Windisch and Roger (NJ Dodge) have “nikonstunninggallery” in their tags, they will click and find out what it is. “Hmmm… These guys are all using Nikons…”

There’s also a companion site called Stunningnikon.com, with some ads, (way) too much Flash and Kate showing some more skin with a beat to it.

BTW, here are the ones I have “dared” tagging for the gallery…

Andy Rosen posts awesome photos from his rock photographer era in London, 1976-1984. The above shot of Simon Le Bon is one of the over 60 great photos so far. Other include Siouxsie and the Banshees, Clash, Boy George, Jim Kerr of Simple Minds, Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode and Malcolm Maclaren.

Overtime I will post the entire collection online. There is a mass of stuff. I’ve already discovered a fogotten 10 rolls of the Clash playing to 50 people and Billy Idol at Bob Geldofs 21st birthday bash both in swimming trunks. I also have a very rare collection of the characters at the Blitz Club, a very creative scene that followed punk, which was led by Steve Strange.

On his blog “Andy Rosen Punks”, he posts stories for some of the photos.

Dunechaser does it again. This time he has made a set of co-called minifigs with “Geek Luminaries”. The above is of course Steve Jobs with a first generation iPod (BTW, this demonstrates the beauty of the iPod design: What other gadget could be immediately recognized as itself with just one simple piece of Lego…?)

See also the corresponding post on his blog.

Others include Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds (with a penguin), Larry Wall, Steve Wozniak, Charles Babbage, Tim Berners-Lee and Jeff Bezos – on a Segway!

Custom made Lego

And here’s an idea for Lego: Start making a total list of all bricks you make. Every single one. Put it on a web page.

And when people like Dunechaser make models like these, make an easy system for people to tag their pictures with the names of all the bricks they have used. Example: The Steve Jobs model is 5 pieces, or bricks. The hair, the head, the upper body, the legs and the iPod. And I guess you could say that the hands are changable to other colors to, so then it’s 7 pieces.

If all these had a number, one could add these numbers in the description of the drawing, and put it in some kind of format that was clickable. And which set me right to the “Custom Lego” webpage. A form was automatically filled in, and all the little pieces were picked up by a robot in a Lego storage somewhere, and sent to me.

Imagine the coolness of this: There are thousands or millions of Lego figures that people have created and put on the web. But unless you – like Dunechaser – have collected a huge number of Lego bricks and pieces, you’re not able to make Steve or Bill or Linus yourself, even if you can figure out which pieces that are used in the models.

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A bit down the trail we found these rocks dressed with pieces of cotton:

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So my daughter (for whom I have read the six Harry Potter books twice each, and number two three times) says:

“Hey look dad, they are wearing pillows just like Dobby!”

Dobby shows up in the second Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

And the first Harry Potter book is called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (the original title)….

Just a thought…!

It shows a woman (the sign to the lover right), wearing a hair ornament next to a tree…

Go to Japan in April. Visit cities like Kyoto, Nara and Himeji. You’ll see beautiful trees with white and pink flowers.

I imagined that they would smell nice, but they actually don’t. They don’t smell at all. A little disappointment. But they look amazing. And if you’re lucky, you’ll be standing under some trees on a windy day, and you’ll be surrounded by small, soft flowers, like you’re trapped in a snow storm, only it’s warm and soft. And you’ll find flowers inside your clothes for days reminding you.

Bring your girlfriend, and kiss under the cherry trees…

I took lots of pictures of Sakura. See my Sakura Flickr photo set here. There are loooots of pictures of Sakura at Flickr now, and the best ones are found here.

Wikipedia has more about Sakura, and about the Prunus Serrulata (Japanese Cherry).

Sakura, a well-known and ubiquitous symbol of Japan, are represented on all manner of consumer goods, including kimono, stationery, and dishware. Cherry blossoms are an enduring metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life, and as such are frequently depicted in art, and are associated with both samurai and kamikaze.

Japan-guide.com has a great list of places where the cherry blossoms are beautiful. I can highly recommend the Heian Shrine in Kyoto (what a wonderful park!)…

The Philosopher’s Trail in Kyoto…

…and the Himeji Castle:

Update
twin_lens at Flickr has posted two very detailed lists of where to see the best blossoming in Kyoto, one for plum blossoms and one for cherry blossoms. The season is almost over now, so bookmark it for next year.

USA

Bert P. Krages has posted an article about your rights when taking pictures in the USA. There’s also a pdf file to print and put with your camera.

Also see Jim McGee’s article at Vividlight.com, with advice on what to do.

And Kantor.com, with a “…synopsis of where you’re allowed to shoot and when you’re allowed to publish what you take.”

Not about photography, but being pulled over, searched or arrested – see this 45 minutes long video on Google on how to behave when in contact with the police.

The first segment is about being pulled over for speeding, but teaches some good principles.

Then at about 22 minutes, about how to behave if the police just stop you on the street. Probably the most useful part for photographers.

The last part deals with house searches etc.

If you just want the conclusion, fast forward to 42:20 and learn the “three most important lines you may ever have to deliver in your entire life”. Heh…

UK

Linda Macpherson at Heriot Watt University has posted a similar one for UK at Sirimo.co.uk.

Australia

Andrew Nemeth has a long article about Australian laws at 4020.net. He also has links to some other countries’ laws, and cases where photographers were taken to court.

Your country?

If you have link to the laws in your country, feel free to use the comments below and I’ll update this article.

Books on photography and law

(if you read this in a feed reader, you won’t see the embedded Google video. Click through to my page to see it)

Or head over to the projects home page, where you can read about it and download the video.

Jeff Han

One of the persons behind this is Jeff Han, here at Etech06.

(Credit: James Duncan Davidson/O’Reilly Media)

Jeff has an amazing list of cool projects behind him.

Use your body

What I like the most about the video, is that you use your body to control it. Watch when he/she zooms on the map by using both hands – stretching it out. And pulling it back in again. So much better for you than using one finger scrolling a little wheel on a mouse. See my Use your body to control the computer and More “Africa” in your computer posts for more about this.

He asks me if I *really* want him to call the police. Again, I answer nicely, yes. At this point he goes back inside. I go around to shoot the other side of the building and his boss comes out and he’s pissed. You’re not allowed to photograph this building he says. “Says who,” I say. “Says me, I’m the owner,” he says, you’re on my property.”

I like Thomas. Not only does he take great pictures but he’s also clever. And standing up to this “post 9-11″ scare stupidness is important. So because of 9-11 people should not be allowed to take photographs of buildings? Of course not.

But. What the hell? Post 9/11? What’s that supposed to mean? Let’s see, ok, so I’ve got photos of a building. Yep, there’s the door, yep, guess what, it’s got glass windows. Wouldn’t want those top secret photos of the building’s revolving doors to get out there now. Just imagine the strategic advantage that that door shot would give a terrorist! He could, well, he’d know how to get into the building for pete’s sake.

It’s just stupid. I’m tired of dealing with security at almost every single building that I shoot. News Flash! Photographing architecture is NOT a crime. It’s not illegal!

Read the whole post at Thomashawk.com.

Flickr group

And Thomas: I made a a new Flickr group for pictures like that. Not pictures about getting the finger in general. But pictures that got you in trouble beacuse someone “invented” new rules “post 9-11″.

Update:

Your rights

I’ve tried to collect some links to photography laws around the world here.

My favorites are these two:

…which is a temple pole (a huge one!) inside a temple in Kyoto, and…

…which is…? Can you guess?

I would say that’s good company. And all of them in my top 50 bookmarks and in my RSS reader.

7779-01,
originally uploaded by CountBlockula.

Batman and Batwoman never looked this cute!

All icons are marked with notes – hover over them to see what they are (on Flickr, I don’t have that functionality on my site).

Flickr group

I also made a new Flickr group for your menubar screenshots. I couldn’t find one, so I made one. There are Mac groups, desktop groups, but none that is about all the stuff you can put in the menubar.

So come and join. Post your menubar, add notes telling which ones you use, and also add links to their sites if you have.

,
Apple family, originally uploaded by niallkennedy.

From the comments on this picture:

If some of the 70s godawfulness I see coming back again is anything to judge by, it might be a good idea to invest in a cave and survival gear so you can retreat for a bit.

So true.

There are over 100 pictures tagged “macstickers” at Flickr at the moment.

Do you put stickers on your laptop, Mac or PC? I don’t. And if you do, which stickers do you have?

From the left, Mao Zedong, Kim Jong Il, Marx & Engels and Stalin.

I wish someone could make a tool that did the same with the names in my OS X Adress book!

Update: Here are lots more…

Update: Removed the links as the user has deleted the pics at Flickr.

take nothing but pictures…,
originally uploaded by _rebekka.

Rebekka takes wonderful photos. This one is from Iceland. I love the title.

Update Zach tells me that it’s Jeremy Keith that made the buzzword bingo, and there’s an interactive version at Jeremy’s site. Thanks, Zach!

The original idea probably comes from a Dilbert strip, this one. Which of course is a good excuse to mention that Scott Adams blog is much funnier that the cartoons he makes.

Look at Podcasting. Does it really matter where a band starts now? Not really. Indie music finally gets a steroid boost with the Podcast network. Humanisation has provided tools for human nature to co-opt the internet.

He then lists some good reasons why companies should start blogging:

1. Because the internet is humanising, and blogs help humanise a company.
2. Because the blogosphere helps keep your finger on the pulse of the industry, and being a part of that sphere adds credibility.
3. Because consumers are smarter today. E.g. – We’re sick of corporate speak. We can see right through it.
4. Because it means you can communicate with your communities unfiltered, and it promotes instant feedback.
5. Because it builds a network.
6. Google.
7. Because you become the expert.

Taking off my pants on the subway has become a yearly event for me. It has all of the emotions associated with a real holiday: stress, excitement, joy, laughter.

Lots of Improve agents took the subway without pants, so many that the NY police arrested several. LOL. No humor, eh?

Pretty soon there were about 25 cops on the scene. All types of cops arrived, including plain clothes cops. One of them was wearing a Mets jacket. They all seemed to be irritated that they had “busted [their] asses” to get down there only to find eight people in their underwear.

All about it at Improv Everywhere, and lots of pics at Flickr, here and here.

Or…

Maybe it’s just me playing with this one…

Could be…

See all the others here. I was no. 32.

Oyvind guest star in South Park

Originally uploaded to Flickr Brandnewbrain.

In the newsletter Pamela Robinson continues her series on successful interviewing, and also answers questions from readers of the newsletters. Like this answers from a woman thinking about how having a baby could influence her career.

If you are in the creative arena, there is more of a tolerance and acceptance of kids… in fact many of the creative execs, writers, & directors bring their children to work at times, and have the flexibility to take time off when needed – for a doctor’s appointment or a soccer game. However, the more corporate positions (on the business side) tend to be less tolerant of catering to the children’s needs, and of course this varies from company to company.

I think she is right. In the creative arena, where I work, there IS a bigger tolerance of kids. And their parents! And exactly that is why many of us are so creative. Yes. It’s as simple as this: People who spend a significant amount of time with kids get a new way to look at things. And also learn that there is no need to take themselves so seriously all the time. Not to mention perspective: After washing poo or nursing a fever sick child, you do think differently the next time you sit down with your Wacom tablet. Taking your small kids to work also helps you see things that you didn’t think about at all before: Why did you put that thing over there? Why do you have to do it like that?

I even let the kids make promos with me. They loved it, the result was excellent, and my boss was happy. And the show got lots of viewers.

How to make amazing circles

You make your own amazing circles, the full instructions are here. And do post them on the Amazing circles group at Flickr.

Promax members – upload your pictures!

Promax BDA has conferences all over the world, in cities like Vienna, Dubai, Jakarta, Mumbai and New York this year. If you’re attending on of these conferences, take pictures and upload them to the Promax group at Flickr. So far there are only pictures from Promax Athens 2005, so find those pictures and upload them! See my post about sharing your Promax BDA pictures.

The picture is from a presentation by Carlos Ferreyros, Creative Director of ca square, USA. The slide reads “Vision without action is daydreaming. Action without vision is a nightmare.” I think it is a Japanese proverb. Do you know?

Update: The picture used in the article is also at Flickr, here.

I guess one of them is David April, who has made some circles at Flickr. I checked out his site and found a good idea for the christmas cards. If you don’t think my cow card was good enough, how about a Harry Potter Card with your own kids and your dog?

You need a camera, kids, a dog and Photoshop. Check it out.

So who’s next? My bet: Amazon.com will buy Wists.com. Or maybe Yahoo shopping.

Why? It fits Amazon like a glove. They only need to add an extra “find this item on Amazon” under ever bookmarked item. Beacuse people will of course bookmark lots of stuff that’s NOT on Amazon. And being able to see what people bookmark at Wists all the time, would help them deciding which items to take into their store, which ones are popular outside Amazon, and what people in general wants. Some of the same reasons they bought 43things some time ago.

But for now, Wists isn’t owned by a big web company. But it’s still great!

If you haven’t used it, head over and make a new free account. Then drag the bookmarklet made for you to your browser bookmarks bar. Every time you see something on the net you would like to buy, click the Wists bookmark and Wists will show you a white page with all the pictures from the page you left. Click the picture of the object you want to buy (often there will be site icons, navigation arrows, ads and other pictures. But just choose the one that shows the object you wanted to bookmark).

When you have chosen your picture, the next page will ask you for tags. If you have bookmarked an iPod, you could tag it “ipod” and “christmas” and “Susan” (unless Susan knows about your Wists page and would discover that an iPod nano is heading for her christmas tree). To avoid that, you can mark items private. That way, only you can see them.

The items NOT marked private will show up on your Wists page, like these on my Wists page.

If you’re in a group, you could choose a tag that is special just for your group, like “ipod222albany”. You can see all items bookmarked with a certain tag by typing wists.com/everyone/ and then the tag. Like this: wists.com/everyone/ipod.

People use Wists for so much more than shopping: People bookmark Flickr pictures they like with the tag Flickr. And these are the items people have tagged “wishlist”. The most popular items on Wists are here.

There’s even whole sites based on Wists. Cribcandy labels itself “bookmarkable stuff for your home” and highlights cool stuff for your home. You can of course subscribe to the RSS feed of any user, like the Cribcandy Wists RSS or my Wists RSS). Or the RSS feed for a tag, like the iPod Wists RSS.

A few hacks:

1) Notice that when you are on Cribcandy or any page on Wists, you can copy any item you see to your Wists. There’s a link right under the picture (if your’e logged in).

2) Subscribe to all the Wists for a user by hitting “Add to my subscriptions” on a user page. So if you’re looking at my Wists page and want to subsribe to it, click Add (Oyvind) to my subscriptions.

3) If you want to make your won site, showing off cool things to boy or bookmark, just use Javascript to show your Wists on your site. Mine are here. Customize the settings first, then click “get code” in the lower left corner and copy the code to your site.

4) The Wists API lets you do all kinds of other neat stuff.

If you have more tips, add them in the comments below, or tip me! I would love to hear from you.

Wired Tech Trend

Originally uploaded to Flickr rich115.

Update: Picked up by Boingboing too.

Submit them to the new 50 paces group at Flickr. It’s started by Lex in Toronto, Canada. Why?

In early January, I will collect and print the photos submitted to this group, laminate them and they will be hung on trees embedded in the river ice every 50 paces. Photos will be hung on the corresponding tree – i.e. the “50 paces” photos will be on the 50 paces tree. The “1000 paces” photos will be on the 1000 paces tree. By inviting other Flickr photographers from around the world to participate I hope to have a colourful and fascinating set of photos for the installation.

The reason why she got the idea is very cool (which proves there is an idea waiting everywhere you’re going):

Last winter I lived my father’s island life waiting for the ice to form on the river so I could cross to shore. Part of this process included testing the ice to make sure it was safe to cross. The rule is that every 50 paces, you stop and chop a hole in the ice to test its thickness. Where the ice is safe to cross, you marking the path path by putting trees in the holes you’ve chopped in the ice. These trees become a road to and from the island until the ice is unsafe to cross again.

Here are some of the pics people have submitted to the group so far.

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If you like Sara’s pictures, consider helping her. She has skin cancer and writes about it here.

This red thing is my triple-wow.

The Photoshopped transparent photos group takes it one step further. Use some Photoshop magic and obects appear transparent even if they’re not. Here’s one example:

(Picture by simplethingsuask)

Hmmm. Open picture. Choose “Send to group”, scroll down to your new group, click, click “ok” on message. Click to open next photo. Wait. Repeat.

Way too much work!

Luckily someone has a halfgood solution until Flickr makes a system to handle this better:

A quicker way would be to use the organizr. Pull up the appropriate group in the right-hand window, the photos you want to add in the left-hand window, hold down the ‘a’ key and click on the photos one by one. This will add them to the group. Much faster than using the dropdown box method.

Great, curiouskiwi!!! Just what I needed. There’s a whole thread on FlickrHelp discussing this.

Now, I won’t write anything about this until member number 1 000…

Photo by King of Jive.

Photo by Niall Kennedy.

It’s so bad that I wonder if there are any designers at Microsoft at all? Can’t be. It’s so bad that good sites write long interesting articles on it.

Party tip: Put up your Mac with a camera and Photo Booth running, next to the stereo or bar. Choose one of the more wacky effects. People will fall over laughing. It’s hilarious.

Update:: An alternative for Photo Booth is the shareware WebcamTweaker.

Also see Anina’s blog and the previous post here.

As for now, it only displays 5 random pictures from the Macintosh group at Flickr, which is … well, quite lame. Why would I like to use someone else’s Mac pics as a screensaver? But the readme file says:

“Future plans include:

-Ability to specify which group to use for pictures
-Ability to specify the picture count desired”

Make a square selection

1. Open an image in Photoshop (screenshots are from Photoshop CS2 on Mac). Higher resolution and size will give better results. I have used a picture I took myself some time ago. If you want to use the same picture for this How to, you can find it here.

2. You need to make a selection that is squared. Use the selection tool, and set the aspect ratio to fixed:

3. Enter the same number in both fields. 1 and 1 works.

4. Make a selection.

Apply the filter

5. Apply the filter Polar Coordinates:

6. In this step, use the bottom radio button, marked “Polar to Rectangular”:

7. Now your image will turn into something that may look interesting at best, but we're not yet there:

Rotate and apply filter again

8. Rotate the selection 180 degrees. There are a few different ways to do this. One of them is to use the Edit menu, then Transform and Rotate 180 degrees.

9. Now apply the same filter we did in point 5. But do NOT just choose it from the top of the Filter menu. We are going to change one of the parameters so you have to choose it from Filters > Distort > Polar Coordinates… again.

This time, choose the upper radio button, labeled “Rectangular to Polar”:

Crop and save

10. Crop your picture to get rid of the stuff surrounding your new Amazing circle:

11. Voila!

Save and upload to Flickr.

12. I have created a group for Amazing circles. Please join!

You might want to have a look at all the other posts I have about Flickr!

Update 1: 100 members

Now 100 members on the Flickr group. Read about it here.

Update 2: 400 members

As of December 25, 2005, the Flickr group has over 400 members, and appproaching 3 500 amazing circles. Wow!

Update 3: Digged

Digged!

Update 4: Amazing circles with GIMP

Flatfield at Flickr has posted instructions how to make Amazing Circles with GIMP.

Update 5: Dumpr.net

If you’re lazy just use the new automatic Amazing circles tool at Dumpr.net.

Sponsored links

Total training: New Advanced Adobe Photoshop CS Training.

Amazon.com: The Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers

Amazon.com: Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers: A Professional Image Editor’s Guide to the Creative Use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC

I [heart] undo

Originally uploaded to Flickr jkottke.

Jason Kottke has posted this photo from the AIGA Design Conference. It reminds of a friend of mine who had been working 16 hours a day on a big project, sitting in front of her Mac editing in Photoshop.

She came back to her apartment, and had some milk. She was tired and poured lots of milk on the table. Then her left hand flew onto the edge of the table, her thumb pressed down and another finger hitting an imaginary Z key.

It took her several seconds before she realized the the real world doesn’t come with Apple and Z – the undo combination in all Mac software.

Also: If you’re designing stuff, and want this look without using actual tape, Fuse has a font called Tape type, designed by Fuel.

what could have been

Originally uploaded to Flickr ChrisDodo.

Superglue! hahahaha (see prevoius post)

In an ideal world… Nanotalby

Originally uploaded to Flickr blackbeltjones.

…isn’t a crappy iTunes phone AND a sleek iPod nano. We want a sleek iTunes nano phone.

Attack mode!

Originally uploaded to Flickr Eirik Newth.

Lucky you, Eirik! Playing with the new Roboraptor. I have to hide this post for the kids…

Technorati Tags: games, robots

This is a good thing. Start the competition! Hotel wifi has been too expensive for long, and hopefully others (like Best Western) will follow. See this post at Flickr.

I recently paid NOK 50 (7,84 US Dollars or 6,33 Euro) for 30 minutes in a Norwegian hotel. It was at Fru Haugans hotel in Mosjøen, Norway. Way too expensive, even though it was better paying a lot for it than not getting it – which was the option at the other two hotels I asked at in Mosjøen.

Update

Doc Searls posts about ridiculous prices for broadband at Royal Sonesta Hotel Boston. 56K is free, Premium service is $10 day. Bally’s in Las Vegas is even worse.

If you experience bad service with wifi at hotels, upload a screenshot or even a picture from the hotel at Flickr. Tag it “bad service”.

Update 2
Hotelchatter lists best wifi hotels 2006. The winners are Kimpton hotels.

Kimpton doesn’t count on their lobby WiFi network to reach the top floors of their buildings, instead, at the hotels we visited, Kimpton actually had two separate WiFi networks–one for the lobby and the other for the guest rooms. Both networks are easily accessible by clicking on a standard terms and conditions. Furthermore, during our Kimpton visits, friendly staffers went out of their way to ask us if we were getting a good reliable WiFi signal in both the lobby and our room, and guess what? We were.

Coldplay – Centre Bell, Montréal, 03.08.2005 – 07

Originally uploaded to Flickr fusaka.

Coldplay is playing here in Oslo at October 31. Tickets are in house, and concert added to Upcoming. Add yourself if you’re going!

Defenestration

Originally uploaded to Flickr Dawn Endico.

Yeah, I know. Lot’s of Flickr posts lately. But this one was too cool to be missed. From an art project in San Francisco.

Also see the Defenestration project’s home page.

http://apple.com/dangermouse

Originally uploaded to Flickr a superhero by night.

Flickr user “a superhero by night” thinks Apple marketing got it a bit wrong this time (for once I must add). So he improves the new Mighty Mouse web page.

Those Pesky Ninja’s!

Originally uploaded to Flickr Michael Heilemann.

LOL. Seth Godin would love this.

Update Seth does love it. See Seth’s blog

As you can see: Michael Helleman is more famous than HC Andersen. Lars von Trier beats Niels Bohr. Viggo Mortensen beats Søren Kierkegaard. And Brigitte Nielsen beats Karen Blixen. Ah, the joys of pagerank.

The main page is Explore/Interesting, and there’s a calender for every month passing. Like this year’s July, June, May and April. You can also have a quick look at the most interesting photos the last 24 hours.

Wallpaper

Originally uploaded by Special.

Special has made a nice set of wallpapers at Flickr. Also see the wallpapers by Special’s friend, thepipes.

One example: For this post, I have added these tags:

tags / technorati / flickr / delicious

I have set my blog up so that when you click on a tag, you see all other posts I have tagged with the same tag. Other tags I use a lot are mac / gtd / feature_requests

Del.icio.us is popular site where you can store your bookmarks online. You save a bookmark, and tag it with the keywords (tags) that you like. So if you bookmark this post at Del.icio.us, you could use the same tags I have used at my site:

tags / technorati / flickr / delicious

Try clicking any of these, and you will get all posts on Del.icio.us tagged with these tags.

Same goes with Flickr: You upload your digital photos, tag them what you like, and others can search on the tags.

The most popular tags on Flickr has it’s own page.

TagClouds is a new free service, that scans through all the words in your blog or website. And then makes a TagCloud for your site. Here’s my TagCloud:

It shows the most used words on my blog, and clicking them will show you all posts on my site with that tag. I must say that it misses the point completely, as most of these words only have been used once or twice on my site. I have to check if I have set it up wrong…

Technorati is the last place to have in mind when using tags. If you set up your blog software correctly, it will “ping” Technorati everytime you put a tag on your pages. Like Flickr and Del.icio.us, Technorati keeps track of which tags are popular any time.

And if you would like to see the latest blog posts from all over the world, using the same tags I have used so far, here are the links to the Technorati tags:

tags / technorati / flickr / delicious

Start tagging!

There are already some tagged with werenotafreaid, and there’s a group for it too.

Here’s an example of the We’re not afraid! photos. Go make your own…

There’s also a Missing persons group for the London bombings at Flickr.

Technorati Tags: flickr, peace