If you are in the process or thinking about learning a particular genre of art. The
Art Instruction Video Showcase page has a fair selection of sample videos that you can look at. These are on colored pencils.

Bobby Chiu discusses self improvement, starting on new goals, and motivation, while giving a digital painting demonstration. He says to convince yourself to do or not do an action. Don't resist actions, come up with great reasons to want to do that action. Visualize what the end result will be if you take action. What would the successful version of you be doing?

Adobe has released Photoshop Express - a free online photo hosting service and editor. Express has many features, that you can use to do photo editing online, in a very simple format.

Some features:

* Photo hosting (2GB)
* Load/Browse photos from Facebook, PhotoBucket, and Picasa (Google)
* Edit photos
* Preview edits in live mode and with scenario example previews
* Make 2D/3D slideshows and share them (perfect for portfolios and photographers)
* Share photos/galleries
* Rate photos

Here is a six minute video (there is no audio) of my use of the Photoshop Express demo website.

The second part of Bobby Chiu's video where he discusses limitations and expanding your mind to achieve success. Break limitations by thinking that they really don't exist.

From the public domain film, "Habit Patterns" (1954). The word
virtue comes from Latin. It denotes "strength of character leading to
courageous deeds". St. Augustine says that "virtue is a good habit
consonant with our nature". The virtues are dispositions or habits of

Viscosity is an abstract art creator by Jeff Weir that won the Best Art award at SXSW. "It allows anyone to create beautiful pieces of abstract art in a matter of minutes or hours, depending on how much time you spend on the details. You can choose from a preset block of colors, which can be completely customized, and then you simply drag various brushes through the lines to create your art. If you’re into detail, you can also drag each point of color into a specific location on your virtual canvas.

Roboform is a great tool that I've used for many years. It stores your username and password for all the different sites that you need to login to access. You don't have to remember them or look them up if you've written them down in a book. Once you've save the information, Roboform will remember it and fill in the information into the username and password fields when you return to the site. Favorite feature: the ability to save pascards into folders. If you have multiple accounts at one site i.e. Google Mail, you can create a gmail folder that holds all your gmail account data.

Lana Hawkins of MomPaysforCollege.com explains how valuable she finds Roboform in this video.

Text to Speech Maker is made by Xrlly Software. It will convert text to a variety of audio formats such as wav,mp3,vox files. You can get a free trial from http://www.xrlly.com/text-to-speech.htm.

Balabolka is a Text-To-Speech (TTS) program. All computer voices installed on your system are available to Balabolka. The on-screen text can be saved as a WAV or MP3 file. ... Balabolka uses various versions of Microsoft Speech API (SAPI); [you can] alter a voice's parameters, including rate and pitch. It can be downloaded from http://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm

For more information on other Text-to-Speech programs, check out the Text To Speech Tools mini guide by Robin Good.

The makers of the picopad have come up with PicoPad® Wallet Notes®. A pad of 15 refillable sticky notes and 1 tiny-but-functional pen.

Tales Of Mere Existence "Procrastination"

"Presdo is an online scheduling application that helps you to quickly, and attractively, schedule events with a group of people. It’s very minimalistic from the get go, only requiring you to type in what you want to do with your guests before bringing you to another page where you can add locations and more event details. ... You can add a location by entering in the exact address or you can do a search based on the type of place you’re looking for and the location.

"Anxiety is a super-lightweight To-do list application for Mac OS X Leopard that synchronizes with iCal and Mail. Its aim is to provide a streamlined, easily accessible interface to add and check off your tasks ... Anxiety utilizes Leopard's Calendar Store to remain in sync with iCal and Mail. Add, remove, or check off a task in either Anxiety or one of these apps, and the changes will be reflected in the others."

Anxiety can be toggled on or off via a menubar item and can float above other windows or subtly fade out when you switch applications.

Procrastination Animation

http://symphony.lotus.com FREE office productivity tools to download. A great alternative.

A digital painting done by Marilyn Sholin, Corel Painter Master. She states that portrait paintings can be done quickly in Corel once the tips and tricks are learned.

http://www.blublu.org/
The new short film by Blu: an ambiguous animation painted on public walls.

Made in Buenos Aires and in Baden (fantoche)

http://www.blublu.org/
http://www.blublu.org/sito/video/muto...

music by Andrea Martignoni
produced by Mercurio Film
assistant: Sibe

Video demonstrating the Freemind mind mapping software.

Bobby Chiu discusses perspective and point of view as it applies to art and life. Look at situations from different points of view. Imagine how you look to other people; how do they see you? It will help you to communicate better in relationships and also in art.

http://www.freelinereport.com

5 tips to boost your productivity using Windows XP.

Taskbar Shuffle
freewebs.com/nerdcave/taskbarshuffle.htm

Tabbed Windows Explorer [QT Tab Bar]
http://qttabbar.wikidot.com/

Texter
lifehacker.com/software/texter/lifehacker-code-texter-windows

http://marcgrabanski.com/

A digital painting by Daniel Ching using ArtRage.

If you are in the process or thinking about learning a particular genre of art. The Art Instruction Video Showcase page has a fair selection of sample videos that you can look at. These are on oil painting.

Glyph Trash is a generative art experiment that takes user typed glyphs and blasts it off as projectiles. Over time these glyphs build up producing abstract images. It uses the fonts installed on your computer and was created by Ben Rhoades in 2006.

I did not find it very compelling. Here is a video demonstration of my session using glyph trash.

From Expert Village:

Learn how to utilize your calendar and to-do list with out making yourself crazy in this free personal productivity video from our expert on personal success and business profitability.