Digital: Pixlr

Gone are the days of salivating to the latest release of Creative Suites by Adobe only to find out that, well...it costs more than two months of your rent. Introducing Pixlr, a "browser based" image editor that can be used as an alternative to Adobe Photoshop. I came across Pixlr on stumbleupon and I like the idea behind it.

You don't have to be a graphic design major, or "know a guy who knows a guy who can get photoshop for dirt cheap". Pixlr is free and there is no catch. Given that this is a browser friendly editor, you can download a Firefox add-on designed for "grabbing" pictures off the net and editing the image on your browser in a matter of seconds. I edited my twitter profile avatar with the add-on:

Just in case you were wondering, the shades were grabbed off Polyvore.com. Yes, they are $325 Alexander Wang shades. I know, they look just like the real thing!

For tips on how to use the editor, check out the Pixl blog. My favorite tool has to be the brush tool. With a growing brush collection, you can transform your image with brushes ranging from doodles to vector stalks, true stroke of genius.

online and offline identity

The rise of social media (is anyone tired of hearing those words?) has brought about change in the ways we interact: globally, professionally, personally…and just about every interaction you can slap “ly” on. The fact that social media is changing our daily interactions is undisputed. So much so that social networking sites such as Facebook, last.fm, flickr etc are creating brands of themselves (even real brands are copying them). The news is out, social networking is here to stay.

So what do we make of this? Naturally, we respond in kind. When Facebook opened its doors to all members of the public back in 2006, what was once used (and known) as a “college networking” site transformed overnight to a global social networking site. People from all backgrounds became a part of it, old friends reunited, mother’s chimed in, teachers signed up, your bosses added you. It opened the door for new friendships, embarrassing photos, & pointless but funny status updates (pre-twitter era). But it reached a point where people began thinking of privacy and perhaps thinking of how their offline identities were catching up with their online personas.


Today, most people are developing their online brands.

The question I ask is how we can stay true to ourselves without giving away too much. Twitter raises this concern for me, in particular. Facebook saw a rise of private profiles as more people migrated there. What about twitter? When people are free enough to give you up-to-the-minute status updates of their lives (or at least, the lives they chose to reveal) what happens when you find out that your future employer checked out your twitter page or your friends find out you follow Britney Spears? Get a nickname I say!

just make sure it’s real...

Twitterrrific

I finally gave in! I signed up for twitter about a month ago. Ironically enough, this was immediately after I had a debate on the point of its existence with my friend. To be honest, I just didn’t want to be left out. All that talk about “follow me on twitter” was driving me crazy! I started off adding celebrities (forget gossip magazines let’s hear it from the horses mouth, I thought). But a few weeks later, John Mayer’s incessant tweets put me off:



Hmmm, what about family & friends? I sent invites(and even personal emails) and lets just say they don’t tweet.

Next step, I added ad industry/trend spotting publications, the likes of Ad Age, PSFK, Fast Company etc and from there I added ad agencies. The result? In the less than a week, Tom Morton, Executive Planning Director of TBWA\London & Rory Sutherland new chairman of the IPA and self proclaimed “Fat bloke at Ogilvy” gotta love him) added me. Naturally that made me happy because 5 years ago you would probably have to schedule a time to meet up with people like them to hear what they have to say. Now, I know that Tim Lindsay reports to his bosses in the states and that Rory watches Mad Men. So what? My point is that social media is breaking down the boundaries and in doing so offering us the opportunity to learn about the world at large. The million dollar question is, how long will twitter last?

Click on the bird to the right to "follow me on twitter" :)