Webware

DoInk is a free online drawing and animation tool that runs right in your browser. You can treat it like Microsoft Paint and use it to do just a quick doodle, or take advantage of its layer cloning and vector-based designs to create relatively advanced animations.

I chose the latter, and put together a pretty slick looking animation in just a few minutes. Adding additional frames is simple and intuitive, and the app saves everything you're working on in the background (and in the cloud) so there are no local files to worry about. You can also hop between projects at any time, just like you would in a software app.

DoInk feels a little bit like a desktop application, but runs entirely in Java.

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The app does a great job at cloning individual frames, and will show each one that came before it as a "ghost" that remains in the background while you work on the new one. If you notice one or more of them needs to be a little longer you can also begin cloning it several times right from the timeline that sits in the bottom of the screen. This lets you make minute adjustments like moving a character's mouth, or background imagery to create a realistic looking animation.

When done with any creation you can share it with the DoInk community, e-mail it to a friend, or embed it on a blog or social-networking profile. I've embedded one below that behaves like a YouTube video and won't start until you hit the play button. You can also publish anything you've made straight to YouTube, which is a nice touch.

(via Delicious)

(Credit: Eric Franklin/CBS Interactive)

Turning your Gmail into an editable document used to be as simple as one, two, three clicks. Thanks to a new Gmail feature, however, it's now as simple as, well, one click.

Created by Jeremie LE and David K, the new feature, when activated, lets you turn the contents of an e-mail into a Google document with the click of a button.

To activate this feature, from your Gmail account click on Settings, then click on the Labs link. Scroll down to the Create a Document section. Check Enable and click Save changes. Now, you'll see a Create a Document option to the right of whatever thread you're viewing. Clicking on it will dump the entire thread into a Google document. Simple, easy.

When I first read about this, I thought "Wow, how lazy do you have to be that you can't just copy and paste your e-mail into Google doc?" Well, you are very lazy if you can't just do that. However ,if dumping your e-mail into a doc is something you do on a regular basis, this feature makes this process much more convenient. I'm a person that makes Google Docs constantly and many of them are based on an e-mail--usually an idea I've sent myself, so for me a one button option makes idea dumping that much more efficient.

Flash games can be obscenely fun to play, but not so easy to make. There is, however, a wonderful market of game building tools, including standouts like Microsoft's Popfly, and Sploder that have seen steady improvement. PlayCrafter is a new entrant to the fray with a tool that lets you build very simple, enjoyable games that run right in your browser.

Like the Incredible Machine and games that have come since, Playcrafter is a piecework creation tool that centers around combining various parts ruled by an in-game physics system. All game pieces are drag and drop, and each bucket of parts can be customized by color, point value, or in some cases down to their interaction with the in-game physics engine (hello, zero-friction mini golf).

Included in the builder are genres like Breakout (see Pong), Mini Golf, and Memory. These are simply templates, as you can remove each element to begin anew. There are also various sets of ready-made parts that plug in to the building environment. You can simply mix and match these to create a franken-game that blends genres completely.

Making a good game is about more than templates. Playcrafter requires a little bit of gaming know-how to create games that make you want to come back for more. The good news is that you can dive right into a creation that's half-baked in order to play-test it, and figure out where the weaknesses are, something that makes building games almost as fun as playing ones created by others.

Creating a new game is a drag-and-drop affair. Even newbies can put together complex levels without using a lick of code.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

When finished with a creation, you can share it with others in the built-in community page. The "fair," as it's called, shows which games have received the most play, along with their general difficulty level. You can also quickly eyeball which ones are worth playing from their thumbnail and see when they were last edited.

Playcrafter is off to a really fantastic start. There's a revenue sharing system in place that rewards game makers for heavily played titles, and enough game types to let you build 10 or more titles that are completely different from one another. Players looking for a truly unique experience, however, will still want to rely on honest to goodness game developers that distribute their work to sites like Kongregate, Miniclip, and others since Playcrafter is missing some of the deep community elements like in-game chat, and a rewards and payment system that will let creators make premium titles--all things to expect in future updates.

Video of the tool in action is after the jump.

LetsTalk has launched a new service this morning called ToneMine that lets you build your own ringtones. The service uses a multitrack composer that lets you drag and drop short, prerecorded sound clips onto an editing canvas. There are eight themed "packs" to choose from ranging from hip-hop and salsa, all the way to heavy metal. You also get some shared sound clips that will show up no matter what pack you've chosen.

The eventual goal is a takeaway ringtone you'll be able to use on your phone. You can get it sent directly to your handset via your carrier (which is configured when you sign up for the service), or download it as an MP3 ringtone to transfer on your own. You can also share it with other ToneMine users in a massive pool. There you can preview other people's ringtones and go in to remix them if you'd like to change something. It also keeps track of how many times it's been listened to and downloaded by other users.

Despite the selection of eight packs, there's really not that much to play with, although the editor is quite snappy. As an occasional user of Apple's Garageband application, I felt like the one thing it's missing is the capability to extend a looping sound clip. Instead, you're often dragging more clips together as well as you can. The service is also missing some of the commercial tie-in you'll find on competitors like Razz and Ringblender--the latter of which actually lets you go in and remix bits of commercial songs. It also reminded me a little bit of MusicShake, which demoed at last month's TechCrunch40 conference, although with a little less extensibility.

On a side note, for any 24 fans, you can get that wonderful CTU office ringtone free of charge from the site. I've embedded it after the break.

Put together all sorts of sounds, then spit them off to your phone to annoy everyone around you at meetings and in other public places.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Ah, the digital age. It's brought us so much, and without it, I'd be jobless. So for obvious reasons, I'm very appreciative of the existence of digital music. One of its perhaps lesser-known benefits is that with it, any Tom, Dick, or Harry with a sense of rhythm can be a musician. And that's not a bad thing, although certain traditional musicians may beg to differ. Personally, I think anything that adds variety to the creative landscape is positive, although there are certainly exceptions (William Hung? Seriously?) Anyway, if tinkering with audio and making your own music sounds appealing to you, I recommend trying a free demo of Live or checking out the online mixer at JamGlue. Are you hooked yet? Making your own music can be addictive--be careful: before you know it, it's 4 a.m. and you've got to be up for work in three hours.

Once you've determined that this is a worthwhile hobby, it's time to purchase some worthy software and, if you plan on getting really serious, a fast and powerful PC (Macs are great for media manipulation) with a huge hard drive--it's amazing how much space uncompressed audio takes up. As far as software is concerned, GarageBand is a perfectly acceptable starting point for Mac users, and it even comes standard in iLife ($79, free on new systems). For Windows, try one of Sony's Acid products, or you can invest in Live, which will work on either OS. All of the aforementioned apps include more than 1,000 royalty-free loops each, meaning you can mix, match, and create with impunity. If you tire of those, you can find plenty of sample loops online. Just be wary of what samples you use if you intend to make your music available to a large audience--if you have a popular track, it could come back to bite you in the butt.

Produced something stellar that you want to share? Try Beatport.

Widgetbox has rolled out a new and fun widget-creation tool for blog readers and creators to make their own widgets called Blidgets. A typical Blidget pulls the latest stories or posts from your blog and presents it in a small, customizable widget. All it needs from you is a URL or an RSS feed, and the Blidget maker takes care of the rest. You can even set the Blidget to show pictures and text from a blog's posts. It's all very simple and easy to set up.

When you're done with your Blidget, you can publish it and use Widgetbox's metrics (which we covered in December) to see how and where your Widget is being used, with easy-to-understand statistics. You can also embed it anywhere on your Web site or your blog.

For power users, there are some things left to be desired with the Blidget maker. Images are a bit on the large side, which takes away from the otherwise clean interface. Also, your chosen logo image can't be moved, which is a shame because it would look slick if you could seat it next to the title text. There are also only two sizes to choose from, narrow and square. I would have liked to see a short and wide version also. If you want to change things like that and have some technical savvy, you can always use a widget-creation tool such as Apple's Dashcode or use your favorite text editor (Yahoo Widgets has a good guide here).

You can check out the Webware Blidget here.

(Credit: CNET Networks)