Button Button

Click On This, Drag That

While navigating my browser a moment ago I realized how used to pushing buttons on my computer I had gotten. It is bad enough with the mouse and with the track pad on my MacBook I feel even more like I am just moving my finger on the screen. I fully realize there are tablet PCs, iPhones, Ipod touch, PDA, and other devices with touch screens which are even more directly tactile for pressing and moving things in a virtual environment. I am not even going to get into the VR Visors, helmets, gloves, globes¹, touch tables, and performance art touch screens or the projected interaction advertising systems where you can touch an image projected on floor or wall... or the projected keyboards and screens experimented with that project keyboard and screen on any actual desk surface or tabletop. ...or did I just get into them?

The thing is we have gotten very used to manipulating virtual items. We are used to on-screen controls for things like the VCR and DVD or the Cable-box or... Even the monitors we use most often have on-screen controls even if not touch screen.

Have you ever wanted to use your remote control like a mouse on your TV screen to move things around, like to move a TV logo out of the way so you could read the important subtitle it is blocking? Perhaps you can do it right now and if not you might be able to in future. I am just making an observation about how some of the more technologically comfortable of us might be getting very comfortable with the idea of pushing virtual buttons on a web page or other piece of software. I really look forward to having an electronic desk top... not a desktop on my monitor, but a monitor surface as my desk's desk top. Of course there will be the issue of having real objects placed on top of the virtual objects and I would imagine coasters with felt bottoms would be a must. ...or coffee Verboten! Personally I think any tabletop surface intended for touchscreen monitor use, other than something for the drafts man or equivalent should be designed to cope with things like beverage or spaghetti spills.

...hmm I would imagine that a really good touch screen desk would work around things put on it. Can you imagine your information doing a word wrap around the coffee cup sitting on the desk at the moment so that none of the words end up under the cup? Well, maybe not, but the desktop software would avoid place documents under lamps or stacks of paper if possible... I can imagine the warning message:

*** Warning Desktop Is Dangerously Covered Some Documents Might Be Hidden Please Clean Desk ***

I am sure they could use one of the trademark "you done something naughty" Windows sounds for it.

Later!
~ Darrell

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¹ I wrote about a virtual reality globe the Virtusphere July 20 2008.

A Hunting We Shall Go - Looking for stuff on the Internet

Looking For Artists - II

I found an image on my computer and I realized that it is one I would like to review on "Blended Realms" however it is an image that I found quite a while ago before I ever figured I might be interested in seeking its source. So I decided to seek that source out this afternoon.

I thought I might share that hunt with you as an example of how I hunt for stuff. I am normally fairly successful so I thought I'd share.

The image is a file on my hard drive called "CoolestPictureEver.jpg" (image to the left -- image from deviantArt) and you might think it would be difficult to find from that. But it is always worth starting with a simple search. I might have taken a different first step... but I will come back to that. The image did not have the link that I have conveniently included in this article... I found that after the process I am about to outline.

The first thing I did was go to my Firefox browser and type "Coolest Picture Ever" into the search window. Firefox has a search window right on the browser toolbar and it defaults to Google. I can set it to a number of search engines including directly going to "Google Image". I also have an Application added to my Firefox which lets me customize Google to my preference. You'll be able to do these searches from Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, or others including Flock and other Mozilla derived browsers.

When I searched using Google Image I could immediately look at the results to find if I had found the image I was seeking. Google Image: coolest picture ever

I immediately recognized the thumbnail from the Incredimazing Site! I also recognized this as the site I first saw the image on. But they are just a "Social {PIC} Collective" which I take to mean are like a blog/image collection service and the person didn't really say much about where the image was from other than having a large image of it. But looking at the picture was where I realized the alternative way I could have searched! At the bottom on the "matting" of the image is some information on the image. The name, artist, and copyright notice. "Space Lane - By Dinyctis" "Copyright 2004 - All Rights Reserved".

Now, "Space Lane by Dinyctis" would probably give me very good results from Google if the artist existed at all on the Web! Indeed entering "Dinyctis" alone produced results. The first listed in my search was "dinyctis on deviantART" which is actually a heading with subheadings. The main result was good enough for what I wanted.

"Space Lane" was even the piece of artwork featured on Dinyctis' page so I could go directly to the page on the work rather than search through his gallery pages.

The tools I want to pass on are that you can type in file names into a search window on Google Image or Google to potentially find an image. I suggest not including the suffix like ".jpg" ".gif" or ."png". I suggest perhaps looking first at the image to see if there are any identifying marks on the image. That is a step I forgot to take -- there might have even been a Web address in the information at the bottom of the image. Of course if Google wouldn't have come up with anything... or if it came up with too much, I could have gone to a site like deviantART to search like I mentioned in the previous "A Hunting We Shall Go" article.

Later!
~ Darrell

115.

A Hunting We Shall Go - Looking for stuff on the Internet

Looking For Artists

Often when I find pictures on the World Wide Web there is very little information on who created the image or where it was originally found. I'm very curious and would like to know who is due the credit for the artwork and if they have done other pieces of work. If I might want to use the piece of artwork I would like to know who to ask for permission or if that permission might even be granted already. Some pieces of artwork have had that permission granted for use under certain circumstance - for instance under non-commercial circumstance.

I've started doing reviews of artwork with a friend of mine, Mags Alden on another Blog, "Blended Realms" and while using some material for reviews is acceptable "fair use" a person really needs to have an artist to review when reviewing the art. So I have had to play detective when seeking the name of the artist and if they have a site or where their art might be found. I have learned a few tricks.

The trick I will share here is a site called "deviantART".

"deviantArt" is a web site where artists in all sorts of genres whether electronic, text or traditional can come together to share their work with each other and the world that is connected by the Internet. I have found that often I can find pages for artists I might not find elsewhere on the web. Sometimes all I have is a name or a signature along with a description of the work and the media of the work whether oil, watercolour, photograph, manipulated photograph, sculpture, story, poem, prose, or mixed media or...

A recent piece of artwork I was looking for was an image of the moon sitting in a field*. (image to left -- image from deviantART) I actually could find a number of representations of that image on the internet, but none with any clue on the artist. My good friend Mags came to the rescue and suggested "why don't you try deviantArt?".

It never really crossed my mind as I am used to researching and looking for other things using a number of other techniques and resources and they have allowed me to dig up a great many artists of various works I have found uncredited on the Web.

So I went to deviantART's front page. Knowing it was a matter of computer photo manipulation I chose to look under Digital Art though I considered Photography. Under that there was a subsection for Photomanipulation. There were further subcategories and I might have chosen Fantasy or Landscapes & Scenery, but I thought I might try my search in just the Photomanipulation category. So I decided to simply enter the two keywords "moon" and "field".

The results of that search were 421 poplular "deviations" submitted in all of time in Photomanipulation for "moon field". (Of course the results of this search probably will change over time, but this gives an example of the results.) The first page had 24 of the 421 images -- perhaps the most popular? In any case the image of interest was on that first page and actually categorized in "Surreal". It is called "World of Sleepers" by ~Karezoid Sep 28, 2007 and there is a link there for it. "World Of Sleepers". Anyway, it was that simple for me to find the artist and image when all I did have was an anonymous picture on the Web.

There are other ways to search for sure and other tools I can use and do use. But this is one I wanted to share. It is true that I might have gone through all 421 of those images and not found it. Then I would have tried something else. Or I might have tried other key words. I might have tried landscape. I might have tried moon and whatever that greenish colour is or maybe landed moon? I did have luck in other searches with "moon in field" though, but only finding other copies of the image.

So if you are seeking an artist, you might like me try looking through deviantART.

BTW, can you find me there?

Later!
~ Darrell

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* "World of Sleepers" by Michal Karcz (Karezoid) Review of this picture is on "Blended Dreams".