Sketch

Digital Physiognomy provides users with a way to discover personality traits simply by creating their picture. While the program promises big results, several factors drag it through the mud.

The program's interface initially felt intuitive. The facial characteristic tools are easily manipulated and their results do not take any special key to decode. However, users will most likely want to read the Help file if the face they created isn't coming out right. Users will find the tools to create a face to be childishly simple to understand, which is a positive. Users can download a real picture … Read more

Photo To Color Sketch provides users with a fast way to convert their standard digital photos to something more artistic. With simple commands and noticeably different results, this program will quickly find fans.

The program's interface is quite simple, focusing mostly on before and after shots of your photograph. Command icons are above and the controls to alter a photo are simple to understand and master. Our only complaint was that the Help file was very primitive, giving only a little instruction. Converting a picture into a sketch was as simple or difficult as users would like. Divided into … Read more

Whiteboard Collaborative Drawing is a free app that turns your iPhone or iPod Touch's screen into a small, shared drawing space, like a whiteboard or sketchpad. The simple touch-screen interface lets you choose the width of your "marker" (from a fine, pencil-like point to a wide spray-paint-style brush), with six different colors plus an eraser. You just tap on the screen to begin drawing, and you tap with two fingers to bring back the settings screen.

Whiteboard Collaborative Drawing becomes even more useful over Wi-Fi, as users on two different devices on the same network can draw … Read more

Our friends at Ambrosia Software just told us about their 15th Anniversary Games Bundle, and if you're looking for a great gift for the Mac gamer in your life, this is a great deal.

The $19 bundle includes six games from Ambrosia's stable of fun and creatively-written games for the Mac: Apeiron, Bubble Trouble, Redline, SketchFighter, Aki Mahjong, and Darwinia.

Apeiron and Bubble Trouble are arcade-style, friendly games with bright graphics and entertaining game play for kids and adults alike. Aki Mahjong is an elegant take on the tile-based Chinese Solitaire-type game.

SketchFighter is designed in a pen-and-ink … Read more

Google has released SketchUp 7 (download), the latest free version of its 3D modeling software, along with its premium counterpart, SketchUp 7 Pro.

Like previous iterations of the software, SketchUp 7 will enable you to model just about anything you'd like as long as you start with a predesigned template. The new version, released Monday, offers simple templates that help you gauge size through feet or meters, but it also includes architectural design, Google Earth, and a product design template to aid you in your modeling endeavors.

Once you choose a template, you're brought to a relatively simple … Read more

We all know that Google is more than capable of doing excellent webware for productivity, but isn't 3D design a bit of a stretch?

Google SketchUp for Windows and Mac is a 3D-modeling program of powerful drawing tools that boasts an intuitiveness many design programs fail to achieve. On first impression, SketchUp looks like it sacrificed function for simplicity, but that's not the case. Despite the extremely user-friendly interface, SketchUp offers a high-end range of powerful 3D-drawing tools that let you experiment and play with new designs.

Using basic shapes in 3D space for your outline, you can … Read more

There's apparently some kind of nostalgia kick going on around the "T-Qualizer" shirt that was all the rage a year ago. Yesterday we saw the same creators come out with an equalizer frame (the "SpeaQualizer)," and now there's the "T-Sketch."

This latest example of illuminated superfluousness features a sewn-in panel where you can write a message, which in turn shows up in colored lights powered by AAA batteries ranging from a "gentle glow" to a "pulsing strobe," according to Pocket-lint, depending on the appropriate delivery for the missive.… Read more

Long before I got into the business of writing about tech and Mac stuff, I worked with 3D graphics on Macs for my father's visual analysis firm. We were hired to create 3D models of architectural projects and superimpose them on photographs of a proposed site to study how a project would look before it was built and how it would affect its surroundings.

Some of our clients wanted to make the project look nice for city officials so it would get approved by city planning departments, while others wanted to prove that the new project would obstruct the … Read more