Wednesday - September 26, 2007

The AIRy Fairy Pixelmatorist.

My desktop now has two running AIR apps: airpress and twitterAIR. AIR is Adobe Integrated Runtime. I like how the little AIRapps look and behave: like widgets all grown up. They are cross-OS rich internet applications deployed to your desktop. 

Wordpress + AIR = airpress. It's a 0.3 (gulp) release. It imported my Wordpress.com entries without any trouble. I have a few quibbles about the UI. I don't think I need to open a separate text window to actually enter text in an existing window. My images show broken placeholders. Still, it's promising.

twitterAIR deserves the adjective "nifty." Just like Twitterrific, it lets you tweet and read tweets on your desktop. Unlike Twitterrific, it will run on Windoze. ;)

I downloaded and paid for Pixelmator today. Now this is what image editing software should be on a Mac. Download the demo version and start playing. It feels natural - if you're used to iLife and iWork shortcuts, it's only a short step to Pixelmator. It doesn't take forever to load, unlike Photoshop; I immediately made it my default editor for iPhoto. The UI is sexy. And I don't say that for a lot of UI's. Black on black - perfect for black MacBooks, and your inner Goth Lolita. I've tried the "new layer from iSight" tool, which uses my MacBook Pro's built-in webcam to take a shot and insert that as a layer. That function alone is worth the price of entry. Neat effects abound, especially under the Distortion dialog.

Presenting my first Pixelmator-iSight mashup, "The Horror." That's me and Derrick, an emissary of Darkness in a skirt, and watermelon flames.