I’m officially a lomo junkie. My beloved bought me this Fisheye 2 during our trip to Taiwan. Toyed with it on several occasions, and the result’s out today! Was pretty anxious of it at first. Full post on the images coming soon. Yay! So anyone got expired film to spare?

If you have no idea what is Tilt-Shift. Probably you can have a short read on it at wikipedia. But perhaps to some, when done right, can produce really unexpected and sweet result (look at UNIQLO CALENDER). While to other, it’s being done to death. Of course, this is merely a quick tidbits on how you can “almost” achieve the effect without even touching Photoshop or other image editing tool, but with just few line of Actionscript. And yes, designers can do it too!

Demo : See it in action!
Download : The Source file. (Flash CS3, AS3)

(more…)

Like any multitudes of web services or start-ups, it wouldn’t really pick up until after a period of 2 years approximately, or usually.  While most of the famous ones are technologically advanced, like making full good use of AJAX etc etc technologies to leverage the site and beats their competitor hands down which is still relying on existing technology that is buggy and mostly ignorant to improve on the usability or sourcing out for better updated alternatives. That has always been a cycle repeating over the course. Old is new again.

Below is a compilation of various useful stuff that is spawned out of the Twitter API that I hope you will like it.

Utilities / Value Added Services

Backup My Tweets
Have you ever felt so frustated that you couldn’t find back what you were typing few days or weeks ago? You can use this service to backup all your tweets that you are posting from now on Basically what it does is to become a tape recorder for all your tweeting conversation. Pretty layman idea, but it works. But there’s more to it. You can backup literally almost, everything you use daily, emails, blogs etc.

Twitter Counter
This is one of the most mindless yet straightforward social experiment, to see how much followers you get on your twitter account. A billboard chart, ala twitter.

We Follow
Perhaps the  popularity of this service has gone out of control that there is a need to have a directory listing fellows of genuine twitterers. Here you will find lists of popular self-submitted twitter celebrities or even individual.

Tweleted
This site would come in handy whenever you feel frustated from losing your tweets over accidental deletion. Or, you felt a bit evil in retrieving some embarassing tweets of people you know. A cool and sweet idea. But as the author said, there are no certain gurantee in the result returned. But it’s cool just to try it out.

http://www.tweetlater.com/

Tracking Services

TweetMeMe
Always wanted to know what is the hottest discussed topic around the interweb? (Realtime) But you are not sure where to look at? This site would help to keep you hooked on how days, weeks or even lifetime. Designed around the ‘digg’ philosophy where stories that is tweet’ed would accumulates an amount of number and then eventually goes up to the top of the main page. A very user-submission-centric site where the contents are dynamic and this would definitely be like one notch up compared to ordinary news source. Of course there would be question on the credibility of the news source. But nothing beats a real time feed like this.

Tinker
If you are looking at an alternative source for topics that is greatly discussed on the current, this site gives you an opportunity to lurk through the list of popular topics.

Klout
If you are ever curious about how influential a person might be on the twitter network, you may know track the influential details through this site with a detailed analytics. Kind like your Analytics for websites but this targets at a social profile. I can see how the game is changing from tracking websites is just a normal counter to even analyzing a person’s action and statistics on the web.

Twitter Grader

Wanted to know where you are standing on the social network? But instead of racing in terms of follower’s number. This site rates you in terms of an overall activity to the account. Just like your school’s exam. With a twist. via ijafri

Desktop Applications

Destroy Twitter
Not a very appropriate name to have for an application towards that service. But it does generates a bit of buzz and talk of the town on the creative approach to the naming convention and features that it offered compared to its competitors. But one thing for sure that you would be impressed are not only the slick clean interface, but rather the smooth transitions and really optimized code that makes it run smoother than other.

TweetDeck
It does seem that there is a rise of using in AIR Application since the boom of need in tweeting for users across the world, especially in the North America. Nevertheless there would definitely be more ‘practical’ AIR application would be churning out throughout this entire year instead of some technology demo and some drag and drop uploading widgets. One of the first Twitter desktop app I have tried, and so far impressed by it. Though there are several other alternatives that people preferred. What I particularly liked about this app that it tracks the status messages and tells you how many new one has appeared since the last time you opened the app. Pretty cool.

Tweetie Mac
As claimed by those that had used this app, the interface is so well thought of that you would mistaken that it came out of Apple themselves. If you curious on how it works better than the Windows counterpart of AIR apps. Check out their promotional video.

Flock
As the browser itself claims, that it’s the social web browser. Where the center of important lies in the social networking features that it provides on top of the existing powerful Mozilla browser. Though I may not remember when and who started it first. But this browser did bring social networking features to the masses in one package, say most of the popular ones are included. That created a need and desire for other browser maker such as Safari to include a facebook publishing functionality. I’m not sure when it would be, but it would be possible that your car might be tweeting in the near future, or a button on the dashboard to post directly on the web.

Mobile Tweeting

TweetSG

Have you ever dreamt that you would eventually able to update your twitter status on the move? With your mobile phone? Through SMS? You can now, through a local Singapore number. Their instruction on how to use the service.

sgBEAT
Having this is like installing TweetDeck or other equivalent desktop AIR app on your phone.

Blog Enhancements

Twittar
So what happens when you have not enough of twitter? You bring your madness everywhere! Including to your blog as well. This addon allows your website visitor to user their twitter avatar, where applicable. For wordpress only.

Tweetable / Tweetable @ Wordpress Plugins Repository

What happens when you always ended up in reposting what you have published in your blog manually? A waste of time. This plugin allows you to simultaneously broadcast a link to Twitter on what you have published on your wordpress blog, neat. Needs a bit of setup, but it’s really worth the time.

Facebook Connect @ Wordpress
Give even more power to your blog by allowing facebook users to login directly to their account through your site. This allows a wider and larger audience potentially becoming your visitor, or even customer.

Others

VW Twitter Banner Ad
The explosion of this cult of social network has expanded and influenced creative advertising to implement and integrate features that is provided to developers onto banner ads. With this new batch/generation of ads coming out, it’s no surprise that more of these would soon follow suite. (think about integrating facebook) via adverblog

Twittervision 3D
How about for something different, an eyecandy but serve absolutely not much purpose except than realtime tracking of Twitter updates around the world? The creator of flickrvision as well.

If you yet have enough on what you can do with Twitter, follow the links below for more inspiration or activities :

• Newbie’s Guide to Twitter
• Top 5 Twitter Related Trends to Watch
• Twitter Hashtags (#)
• And finally, Twitter Mashups Award winners!

And I’d hope this short write-up would contribute to your early venture into this very exciting phase of the inter-webs. More like a Web4.0? We skipped few steps ahead. What do you think of the list above? Does it help you? I’m also just starting to pick up on this game, though been registered for a while then. Silly me. Leave your thoughts below on this page

And here we are at the final conclusion of the travel log to Perhentian Island, Terengganu, Malaysia. If you have been reading the previous 2 part of the story, through this 4 day 3 night trip, we had been staying at two places, namely Shari-La Resort and Bubu Resort(pictured below). It’s rather a pleasant trip with this kind of setting, since we did felt that having the 3 days 2 night trip to BuBu only is pretty hectic and rush, though they had made a package that it’s designed for a weekend getaway from the city.

Take a glimpse at what BuBu would offer you in the package. Though the listed item on the board has a list of planned schedule, it really depends on the weather somehow. But you would eventually get to all those places at the end of the trip.

(more…)