Taking flight with www.aviary.com.
The folks at Aviary offer a sweet of free Web 2.0 tools for creating, editing and optionally sharing images and audio. What this means is for you is a convenient place to work of these file types for the convenience of your web browser.
Phoenix
One limitation is that only .jpg, .gif, and .png files are supported for upload, requiring you to find a means to convert other file formats (check out www.zamzar.com) before working on them in Phoenix. Even so, Phoenix can save your bacon when you don't have access to your installed image editing software.
Peacock Visual Laboratory
Peacock is a visual effects tool that lets you apply a variety of effects to images to create something entirely new. To get a real feel for how Peacock can help you get your creative juices flowing, watching the 8 minute video demo is well worth the effort.
Toucan, Raven and Falcon - more image editing tools
Toucan provides online color swatch picker and works in conjunction with Phoenix and Peacock. One of the really neat features of Toucan is the tool that allows you to see your color pallets through the eyes of someone with a color vision impairment.
Raven allows you to create fully scalable vector graphics online. Vector graphics can be scaled as large or small as needed without loss of image quality. Raven works much like other software vector applications such as Adobe Illustrator.
Falcon is for image markup. It's great for annotating a screenshot, for example. You can even take the screenshot with Falcon, making it a neat tool for sending that how-to image to a friend or colleague. Falcon comes with Talon, a downloadable plug-in for the FireFox browser that enables the screen capture functionality.
Myna Audio Editing
If you've ever used GarageBand or other audio creation software, you will be very impressed with Myna. Like GarageBand, Myna comes with its own library of loops and sound clips so you can create your own copyright-free audio clips for your video projects and podcasts.
Sharing your creations
Like many Web 2.0 services, Aviary includes file sharing services and lets users control permissions. One note on this topic is that the FAQs state that setting a file's permissions to private is only permitted in "Pro" accounts, yet the subscription page states that all services are free for now. Also included is the FAQs are some good answers on the topic of ownership and derivative works.
Conclusion
Aviary's suite of applications are indeed impressive. The fact that they all work in nothing more than a web-browser is outstanding. Recently, Aviary announced an alliance with Google Apps which will bring some of Aviary's tools right into Google docs and Gmail. Neat!
References:
Screenshots of Aviary website are all mine. Peacock video embedded by permission.
Peacock is a visual effects tool that lets you apply a variety of effects to images to create something entirely new. To get a real feel for how Peacock can help you get your creative juices flowing, watching the 8 minute video demo is well worth the effort.
Toucan, Raven and Falcon - more image editing tools
Toucan provides online color swatch picker and works in conjunction with Phoenix and Peacock. One of the really neat features of Toucan is the tool that allows you to see your color pallets through the eyes of someone with a color vision impairment.
Raven allows you to create fully scalable vector graphics online. Vector graphics can be scaled as large or small as needed without loss of image quality. Raven works much like other software vector applications such as Adobe Illustrator.
Falcon is for image markup. It's great for annotating a screenshot, for example. You can even take the screenshot with Falcon, making it a neat tool for sending that how-to image to a friend or colleague. Falcon comes with Talon, a downloadable plug-in for the FireFox browser that enables the screen capture functionality.
Myna Audio Editing
Sharing your creations
Like many Web 2.0 services, Aviary includes file sharing services and lets users control permissions. One note on this topic is that the FAQs state that setting a file's permissions to private is only permitted in "Pro" accounts, yet the subscription page states that all services are free for now. Also included is the FAQs are some good answers on the topic of ownership and derivative works.
Conclusion
Aviary's suite of applications are indeed impressive. The fact that they all work in nothing more than a web-browser is outstanding. Recently, Aviary announced an alliance with Google Apps which will bring some of Aviary's tools right into Google docs and Gmail. Neat!
References:
Screenshots of Aviary website are all mine. Peacock video embedded by permission.
I was interested in finding out which tools you found interesting. You are so technological and I'm always interested in what you have to say regarding technology. You've helped me a lot through these courses! Aviary seems interesting, but I wonder how I could incorporate it into my classes?
ReplyDeleteUsing the audio editing application, you might teach students how to make their own loops to avoid copyright issues on the web.
ReplyDeleteWow, these tools sound great! I am often times without my Mac and find time that I could be working on my projects, but don't have the tools. It seems like the Aviary Suite would allow me to upload projects and then work on them from any computer. That would be awesome. Thanks for posting this, I think I will be trying this out.
ReplyDelete