Lately I have been experimenting with Apple's Quartz Composer software, and have found it to be really limitless in its possibilities. I'm still working on getting it to recognize enclosures properly in RSS feeds that it downloads, but everything else has been quite easy and intuitive. Here is a sample of one of the experiments I have been working on that uses microphone input to change the size of a particle generator: .qtz file, .mov file If you're on a Mac, you should be able to download and open it in quicktime player or as a screensaver.

Lately I've been hearing quite a bit about Twitter, the Web 2.0 equivalent of the IM status message. I was finally compelled to register an account (everythingdigital), and so far have had a mixed experience with the service. I think the idea behind Twitter is excellent, and some of the third party apps that are being developed for it are really looking great (I use Twitterrific). The public timeline is very interesting to watch, especially during major events such as sports games or the Macworld Expo. I haven't tried SMS or IM updating yet, but I expect it would add a whole new dimension to the equation. On the downside, there are a couple quirks with the web site that I find a bit frustrating. Most notable is the rather odd user search functionality, basically consisting of a text box on the home page. I have tried searching for a couple people with it, and it took me a good deal of time to realize that the miniature images that were appearing beneath the text box were actually the search results. This means that to find the person you are looking for, you must move your mouse over each image until a name pops up in the hover text and you can see if it is correct, not a very convenient way to perform an activity so central to Twitter. Also, the 148-character limit on posts can be a bit restricting, although I can understand the need to keep updates short and sweet. What I have a harder time understanding is the 160-character limitation on direct messages to friends. I can't see what is gained by placing such a small size limit on what is essentially email within the Twitter system. Despite these complaints, I do find Twitter to be an interesting and entertaining service that I recommend everyone try out, even if it's not going to replace your RSS reader and IM client.

A late-night inspiration yesterday led me to the idea of grabbing lists of song/book/movie titles from various online retailers and mashing them up into a list of possible charades challenges. So now, I present to you the EverythingDigital Charades Generator. The charades generator pulls in the Netflix Top 100, iTunes top songs chart, and LibriVox New Releases feed, all of which are updated frequently and therefore constantly provide a new stream of titles. It is most certainly still in beta, and will often return titles unsuitable for charades, so let me know if you have any suggestions for improving it or know of any additional RSS feeds of titles.