Webware

Adobe Kuler with Flickr image

Although I've yet to find a personal use for it, I've always been intrigued by Adobe's Kuler technology. Most of the implementations we've seen so far, which includes the Web site and integration into Adobe Illustrator, have targeted at generating shareable color palettes from individual user-specified colors or from palette-color drawings. But Adobe extends that to continuous-tone imagery for Flickr users, who can load images into Kuler to generate image-based palettes. John Nack describes how use it (he doesn't explicitly state that you launch it from Kuler, not from Flickr, which confused me for a minute).

The software automatically selects various color points in the image, which you can change simply by dragging the circles. Selecting different "moods" swaps various colors in and out. Maybe it's the images I selected, but I find the different moods produce very similar results. In Illustrator, it can generate palettes based on color "Harmony rules"--complementary, analagous, shades, and so on--and it'd be neat if it could, say, pick the most frequently occurring color in the image and generate palettes by hunting for the nearest color matches within the photo that meet those criteria. The whole idea is also conceptually related to a recently released WordPress theme that does similar color extractions to automate your photoblog design on-the-fly to match your photos.

That said, while playing with the tool I couldn't help but imagine the even neater things Chris Harrison might be able to visualize using a set of palettes returned by the mass of Flickr users. If you haven't seen his stuff, check it out. Pretty amazing.

While March Madness continues to unfold, there's a way geekier sporting event of sorts taking place on the Web. There's no money involved or athletic talent required. All that's needed is a Twitter account and an interest in taking part in some pure and unadulterated tomfoolery.

I'm speaking, of course, of the Twitter Color Wars, an online event/club/social network/mind control experiment created by Welebrity Ze Frank. It's a wonderfully overcomplicated way to take advantage of the hordes of people using Twitter to recreate a virtual color war using the service's following and direct messaging features.

Joining one of the existing teams is as simple as following a team leader. Each team has its own templates for changing your background and profile picture to match the horde. To create your own team all you have to do is provide the site with your special team Twitter account log-in (note--there are already plenty of teams so just join one instead). Ze Frank is using the log-ins to send out system-wide messages to participants, effectively acting as a Twitter administrator using the API.

See which teams have the most members and track some of the goings-on at TwitterColorWar.com.

(Credit: CNET Networks / TwitterColorWar.com)

So, what's the point? Already there's been a simultaneous text-based Ro-Sham-Bo (Rock-Paper-Scissors) game played earlier today. A video version of the contest is being unveiled on Monday. There was also a fanmade Guitar Hero top score competition, and a Color Wars theme song challenge. I have no idea what's coming next, but that's part of the fun.

One site that's tracking the entire endeavor is TwitterColorWar.com. You can see which teams have the most members (updated by the hour). There's also a channel that tracks smack talk amongst the various teams as noted by the "#smacktalk" hash in people's tweets. Since Twitter is an open platform, enterprising developers could create their own little games and apps if people manage to care care long enough.

Here at Webware we're not giving out an official endorsement mostly because our allegiances are skewed. I'm a member of the plaid team, while Caroline--being the front runner she is--is a member of FF1CAE team (also known as magenta). You can find the entire listing of teams here.

As a word of advice, if you intend on interacting with some of the challenges, it might be a good idea to install a desktop client like Twhirl (review) or Snitter (review) if you want to stay on top of your game. The notification features on both make it easy to see if you're getting a message from your team leader. In the case of yesterday's rock paper scissors game, there was only a minute to send out your tweet, so timing is important.

Mozilla has released a third beta version of Firefox 3, bringing about 1,300 changes to the widely used open-source Web browser.

Firefox 3 Beta 3 should be more stable, perform faster, use memory more efficiently, and fit in better on various operating systems than its predecessors, Mozilla said.

Beta 3 of Firefox 3, shown here running on Windows XP, uses new interface elements made of vector graphics. It helps improve performance, Mozilla said.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

Having tried the new version out for a while this morning, my top impression hasn't changed since beta 2: the best thing about the new version is faster performance. Pages load faster.

Other improvements, according to the Firefox 3 release notes, include a better tool for seeing who owns a Web site; better protection against sites known to install viruses, spyware, or other malicious software; the plugging of 350 memory leaks that previously could waste more and more computer memory; the ability to locate downloaded files; a better tool to find and install plug-ins; and , now enabled by default.

The new Firefox beta can be downloaded from the Mozilla Web site, including versions for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux localized for several languages.

The new Firefox beta also adopts more of the native style of Mac OS X, Windows Vista, and Linux--the latter having been a point of some contention earlier given some technical difficulties. Also interesting from an interface standpoint and giving the beta a new look is the use of vector graphics for elements such as the back arrow and reload button.

I like Firefox 3's new location bar drop-down feature, in which Firefox presents various sites I've visited or bookmarked. For example, typing "can" retrieves a list that includes various Canon Web sites I've visited as well as Icanhascheezburger.com. (Alas, though, everyone's favorite LOLcats site seems to have a rendering problem with the new browser in the form of 10 "favorite" buttons.)

Beta 3 apparently improves the "frecency" formula that selects what to display in the drop-down list based on how frequently and recently you visited the sites. My only beef with the location bar drop-down so far is that it's a visually chaotic jumble of URLs, favicons, and titles in different fonts and colors.

Coincidentally, I was able to give the new Firefox 3 beta a short stress test, and it fared much better than its predecessor.

I found a misbehaving Flash ad Tuesday that made Firefox 2 chew up about 98 percent of my CPU power and thereby caused my system--especially Firefox--to slow to a crawl. Today, I found that same ad on another Web site while trying the Firefox 3 beta, and although it, too, maxed out my CPU, Firefox now was usable, though sluggish.

Firefox 3 sports a new add-on manager to find, add, disable, and uninstall plug-ins.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

There are some reasons I won't be moving full time to the new beta, though.

Unsurprisingly, given warnings in the release notes, several plug-ins I use still aren't compatible: Foxmarks, del.icio.us, Fotofox, and FireFTP. And Yahoo Mail only can be used in its older classic mode for me.

For the Yahoo Mail problem, there's some hope: Mozilla is waiting on Yahoo for a bug fix for the mail site, and the Firefox release notes now offer a less pessimistic warning that the newer Yahoo Mail interface "may not work for all users right away."

The release notes also warn that Windows Live Mail doesn't work; a plug-in must be installed to play Windows Media Player content on Windows; Firefox often will stop responding to keystrokes when using Google Documents on Mac OS X; and printing is broken on many versions of Linux.

Name That Color lets you pick any color with two clicks.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Have you ever known exactly what color you wanted to use to paint a room but had trouble describing it to another person or finding it in a paint catalog? How about finding the hexadecimal code for adding a specific color to your Web site?

For those of us hue-challenged Web users who can't tell Kenyan Copper from Korma, Chirag Mehta has created a very cool Web application for determining a name for any color you want to use, as well as its hexadecimal and RGB values.

Simply and accurately titled Name That Color, the Web-based application consists of a color wheel with a tint/shade box in the middle. Combine both input tools to specify the exact color you want, and that color's name, hex value, and RGB values will appear on the right. The larger outer box will display the color you've selected, while a smaller square inside that box will show the actual color of the closest named match. ... Read more

Kuler is a free tool from Adobe Labs that lets users design and share color schemes for use in Web sites or other projects. If you've ever designed a Web site or PowerPoint presentation before, you know that choosing a color scheme is often trial and error. Kuler lets you tune up to five different colors at once and makes the process surprisingly easy, allowing users to simply adjust selectors over a large color wheel. Users can then go deeper, adjusting the finer details of a color, and Kuler makes small adjustments to make sure the other colors will be compatible.

For nondesigners, Kuler is still fun to play around with. If you end up creating any color sets you want to use, you can save and export them to use with any of Adobe's Creative Suite 2 applications. For home-improvement enthusiasts, Kuler provides extensive color information like CMYK and RGB values, which your local paint store might be able to match.

Kuler runs right in your browser. Try it here.

(Credit: CNET Networks)