CafePress and Zazzle got you down when it comes to creating an online shop? Check out Pikistore: half site builder, half storefront for apparel that sports whatever logo or design you slap on it. Believe it or not, it's from the same folks who did Comeeko, the zany comic strip builder our very own Caroline McCarthy called "the best Web 2.0 site in the history of the universe."
Pikistore's angle for getting you to ditch the competition is that the online store you create exists as its own destination, and not a part of some network of other stores. Unlike Etsy, which does something similar, but focuses on the network of other sellers as part of the advantage, Pikistore is all about letting you create a standalone site that can be populated with your products, then giving you a way to make it a part of your existing blog or Web site.
Make your own custom clothing to sell to others with Pikistore.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Like other online store makers, you can take a single design and populate it onto a multitude of products without any sort of repetitive reproduction on your part. You can set markups and pick which items you want to let people buy, from mouse pads to kitchen aprons
It's also got some pretty slick-looking themes you can simply click to reskin the look and feel of your site entirely. Users of WordPress, or any other Web-based blogging platforms, will be familiar with this, and advanced users who want to make the store simply match with their own sites can drop in the CSS and whatever graphics, logos, or backgrounds they're using. It also allows for free domain transfer, which means you can link it up to your site's .com address without having to sign up for a premium plan--something we've rarely seen in a free service.
As for the end result, most shirts cost around what they do on other services. Like competing customized apparel stores, you don't need to buy an entire box of shirts; you and your buyers can simply get them printed one at a time. What makes the service especially cool is that you can track some of these purchasing statistics, including where your traffic is coming from, and what operating system and browser your users are on. These are the things typically found in analytics services like Google's, and very helpful for helping to target your audience.
I'm interested to see what the final product looks like, something that can only be accomplished with a purchase. My one qualm is that the editing interface might be a bit complicated to novice users who aren't comfortable going outside the general boundaries of the theme builder. Intermediate to advanced users, however, will find the high level of customization refreshing.
In case you're wondering what it's like to actually create a Pikistore, I've embedded an example video below (try not to get nauseous):
Related: Web Shirts: 20 rad T-shirt sites
Pikifx (pronounced "pickie-fix") is a new online photo editor for adding a bevy of effects and tweaks to photos without resorting to software apps. It comes from the same folks who made Web-based comic creator Comeeko (review), which has renamed itself Pikisnips. It's also a sister site to Pikipimp, which is virtual paper-doll-like prop tool for mucking about with digital photos.
Like other solutions that have cropped up in the past year, Pikifx lets you easily upload a shot from your hard drive or snatch it off the Web with a URL. From there you can choose from a small selection of tools such as a cropper, a text editor, a resizer, and an effects panel to make small adjustments. Once finished, you can output your image to one of five popular formats, e-mail it to a friend, or grab embed code for blogs or forum posts.
The real question is whether or not Pikifx is up to spec with some of the other popular online photo editors (see Picnik, Wiredness, Fauxto, Phixr, SnipShot, and Pixenate). For the most part, the answer is yes. It has a large selection of filters to play with, the results look good, and best of all, it's free. What might be its only shortcomings are speed, which is a bit sluggish, and the previewing tool, which is simply too small to be useful. There's also no way to hook it up to your online photo galleries on services such as Flickr or Photobucket, which some of the others handle really well. Regardless, it's a solid photo editor, and like others in its class, it's more than capable of replacing basic photo editing software on shared or public computers.
[via Mashable]
Pikifx has several image effects to play around with. You can also adjust effects once they've been applied.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Warning: This will be addictive. Earlier today I read about Comeeko on ShinyShiny, and let's just say I haven't gotten much else done at the office for quite some time. (Sorry, editors.) Comeeko is a fun and super-easy way to arrange your photographs into comic book panels and then share them with your friends. It's highly Ajax-y: we're talking drag-and-drop functionality, easy uploads, and the like. You can't get up to a particularly high resolution (i.e. to print, or to order prints) but Comeeko makes it easy for you to share it on a blog, forum, or MySpace profile.
This is not for serious electronic comic artists who want to create a legitimate storyboard. Comeeko is way too limited for that. Rather, this is a way for you to turn your online photos into a dorky comic-style display. Needless to say, it's a lot of fun and a great procrastination tool. And maybe if it catches on, the site will add a bit more functionality.
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