Are you a photoshop user? Do you love making graphics? You may or may not know about Brush Art.
Basically you can search to your hearts content and find amazing brush art graphics all over the web.

Check out the  tutorial below to see how you can create graphics with brush art

In this demo we will be using brushes from brusheezy.com

Step 1: The first step is to search on your favorite engine to find some brush art that you would like to use. I searched brush eezy- as this is where I get most of my brushes from 

CLICK ON IMAGES FOR LARGER VIEW

Step 2: You will be taken to a site where they have a catalogue of brushes. Browse through to find some brushes that you like.

Step 3: Click on one of the brush design images 

Step 4: You will be taken to the download page for that brush (design seen on right) In this case the brushes are birds.

Step 5: Click on the download file and save it somewhere on your computer where you can find it

Step 6 : Open up a new file in photoshop and click on the brush icon tool located in the toolbar

Step 7: Click on the brush icon located at the upper left of the screen

Step 8: Click on the small arrow to bring down the list of actions 

Step 9: Scroll down until you see Load Brushes

Step 10: Click on load brushes and find the file that you downloaded

Step 11: Once you have done this the new brush patterns will appear in your brush library

Step 12: There you go! You have just downloaded and loaded up your new brush for you to play with!

Advice: Be creative download a whole bunch of brushes and play around. Don’t forget you can apply filters such as neon glow ! Also don’t forget to save your brushes so you don’t have to load them again! This action can be found where you load your brushes.

As many of you know I am in progress of my Masters of Digital Media. In the spring of 2008 the Masters of Digital Media Program and the UBC Fisheries Centre collaborated on a project to produce a virtual ocean.

The two teams got together to visualize and understand human impacts on fish populations. The MDM students were given access to live data of the fish populations off the Gulf of Mexico. They then moved forward and used the blender game engine to visualize the data. They modeled the ocean and then attatched live data to visually show what is happening in the oceans. This in my mind is ground-breaking, visualizing this data effects people more than just numbers and pie charts.

I am one of those people who have over 15 Ning networks. Some them have many members some of them not so much. So I was very excited to hear that just recently Ning announced that they are releasing a new iPhone interface for all Ning network users. This will look like the iPhone Facebook application and give networks users and creators the ability to stay connected to their niche networks wherever they are! The release date is early September!

Below is a screenshot of the new interface :

Today I stumbled upon some very important and cool information. In Feburary of 2009 the FCC in the US is moving away from analog TV to be fully Digital. This means if you have an analog television set, it probally won’t work anymore. Google has stepped forward and realized that this is a fantastic opportunity.

‘The space between the channels on your television is where the future of communication, wireless Internet, and even portable television lives. The potential for these White Spaces is limited only by creativity, ingenuity, and the need for clear rules of the road. The Wireless Innovation Alliance, a coalition of creators, developers, and leaders in technology, urges the FCC to determine and adopt rules that will realize the potential of TV white spaces for us all. Learn more about the Alliance and their Partners.’

Basically this is an initiative started by Google to let the FCC know that this whitespace should be accessible by everyone. This will be a huge push forward in wireless communication.
For more information visit :

 Wireless Innovation Alliance

 Free The Airwaves 

Public Knowledge

Free Press

Well it looks like Apple is giving their iPhone users a little break. They are extending their already 60 day free trial for another 60 Days.

Apple stated on their website:

‘The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was rockier than we had hoped.  While we are making a lot of improvements, the MobileMe service is still not up to our standards. We are extending subscriptions 60-days free of charge to express appreciation for our members’ patience as we continue to improve the service.’

On my Mac I run Tiger and this seemed to be a huge problem when .mac became mobileme. Things were not working , files needed to be found and deleted… something an average person would not know how to do.

Props to Apple for giving us more time to save up 100 bucks for the yearly subscription. 

MobileMe is a necessity for smart-phone communication and Apple seems to be doing a great job so far. You do get 20G of storage … which isn’t so bad.