We Are Organized Chaos

Beta Spotlights – Colorotate

For this week’s post, I wanted to keep it simple. A friend of mine showed me this site and even though I haven’t had much time with it, it’s definitely worth a Beta Spotlight posting. It’s called Colorotate! This site is a tool for all designers. You can create, share, and view other users’ color palettes while creating art. Although many of you who may read this will think that this site is similar to Adobe’s Kuler, I can assure you that it has its differences and may even be better. I’ll let you decide…

“Colors come to life in 3D! – Browse color palettes, or create your own. Adjust, mix, and blend to your heart’s content.”

Photoshop CS4 plugin available Fall ’09! Pretty Cool!

Key Features:

• Login and/or create a Colorotate account by using your Google account. Simple as logging into Google and creating Colorotate display user name!
• Intuitive: In 3D, you can quickly see the multidimensional nature of your colors and the relationships between colors in a way that matches how your eye and brain perceive color.
• Agile: Change your colors one at a time, blend two colors together, or transform a full palette of colors all at once with contrast and color joysticks — adjustments that previously have been beyond your reach.
• Reliable: Take the guesswork out of setting up color harmonies or color contrasts by adjusting the distances between colors in 3D.
• Efficient: Use Colorotate’s quick drag-and-drop to adjust hue, brightness, and saturation. Import and export in Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE). Soon, you’ll be able to save even more time with our Photoshop Plugin.
• Piggyback: Browse themes created by the community, or search by tag, title, or creator to discover new color ideas.
• Community: Post your palettes, and tag palettes to engage with the ColoRotate community, or discussions. In the future, look for features like comments and ratings.
• Photoshop CS4 plugin coming Fall ’09.

Enjoy…

Beta Spotlights – Ruba

For this week’s post, I wanted to share a site with those of you who love to travel around the world. It’s called “Ruba“, and if you’ve never heard about it; it can be a traveler’s best friend. I will definitely use this for my next trip out of the country. For a phase 2, I hope they integrate some type of video interface to allow users to upload travel videos. Most of all, it would be cool if they make this into a mobile site as well, so users can update their travels right there and then.

“Discover Your Next Perfect Trip – Ruba.com is a community who is passionate about finding and sharing the greatest travel destinations worldwide.”

Key Features:

- Make your own Travel Guide

• Name your own travel guide
• Choose your activity during that visit
• Upload or add existing photos to your travel guide
• Add multiple destinations to your travel guide
• Write a review about where you were
• Share your guide via Twitter, Facebook, HTML embed, and/or URL

- Facebook Connect to ask your friends the best places to visit
- Create a User Profile
- Check out other users’ travel guides for references
- Review a city and/or specific activity within that country
- Google Map mashup of places you or other users have visited

Enjoy…

Beta Spotlights – Humble Voice

So it’s Thursday and that means Beta Spotlights for the week. If you like all things art, such as photography, design, music, film and writing, then Humble Voice is for you!

“Humble Voice is geared toward you—made by artists for artists.
It’s not just your space.”

I’ve run across this site here and there and never actually took the time to see how powerful the content can really be. After taking some time out of my day and spending a couple hours on it, I would say that Humble Voice is an eclectic collection of art that needs to be seen & heard. The quality and diversity of work posted to the site is like I’ve never seen. Up and coming artists, photographers, musicians, and film makers will leave you in awe…

Key Features:

• Humble Voice Point System: The Point System is the backbone of the Humble Voice Community. The more you contribute to Humble Voice, the more points you earn. The more points you earn, the better the stuff you can get.
• Create a personal profile to share your photos, design, music, filmwork, etc.
• Easy drag and drop profile builder to customize your profile in any way
• Personal Blog, Bulletin Boards, and Event Postings
• Personal Music Player, Video Player, Photo Gallery, & Word Gallery
• Featured Artist Spotlight
• Humble Voice TV Spotlight
• Live Forum Chat
• Chat with friends

Enjoy…

Beta Spotlights – Indaba Music

Starting every Thursday, I’ll be posting up and coming Beta sites that seem interesting, cool, and innovative in their own ways. To kick it off, I want to introduce everyone to INDABA MUSIC.

“Indaba Music is an international community of musicians, music professionals, and fans exploring the creative possibilities of making music with people in different places.”

Being a music lover like myself as well as a fellow musician, I was intrigued in what Indaba Music had to offer. Indaba Music brings musicians from all over the world together to create musical art with no limits. I understand that creating music with others in a room is an experience like no other, however, this takes music creation to another level by using key social media elements the web has to offer. Not only does it allow users to share their music, but a user can save their musical sessions online for other artists (who are part of the community) to view and edit. I think that is amazing…

Key Features:

• Create musical sessions online with other musicians from around the world
• Create a personal profile, blog, share music and photos
• Search through your gmail, yahoo, & aol email accounts to see if your friends are a part of Indaba Music
• Watch & post to music sessions
• Get hired for musical projects
• Featured “Artist Spotlight”
• Forums & groups
• Chat & join rooms with other musicians or virtual band members
• Live and digital global musical events
• Musical contests such as PBS: The Music Instinct, John Legend Remixes, The Stephen Colbert Challenge, and others…

Enjoy…