design reverb

What is Kuler? Will it keep my beer cold? No, it won’t.

Kuler is Adobe Labs’ latest web application geared toward the design crowd. It is a online color scheme creator, for lack of a better term.

Here’s the main page of the application:

With kuler, you can creat your own scheme, search other users schemes, and share your schemes online. You can even download them as Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ase) files, but those are only usable if you have Adobe’s Creative Suite 2 programs. If you don’t, you can always use the screen color picker in your copy of Color Schemer Studio, or of course you could use the Colorzilla add on in Firefox.

Reminds me a lot of the ColorSchemer.com scheme gallery. Except here you can actually create the color scheme online. Then share it with the world, so that other users may download your creation.

Download others themes, or create your own to let others use. You do have to have an Adobe ID to create or download, but sign up is easy and painless.

The Adobe Labs page says Kuler is being released as a technology preview, free of charge. Now whether that means it will someday be charging for it, I do not know. So for now, check it out for free, download some of the great color schemes available online, and give a try at creating your own.

I personally have been using Color Schemer Studio(shown below) for years, mainly for color picking and some themes, but this may be a great online alternative.

Check out Kuler, or Color Schemer Studio. They are both great applications.

EDIT: Just got this link from Lunarforums:

http://www.colourlovers.com/ – looks like a good resource also!

So long old friend, it’s been good to know you…

Well my old MS Wireless Intellimouse Explorer finally bit the dust. I’m on my computer an average of 12 hours a day, and have used this mouse for the last 5 or so years, so I was pretty happy it lasted this long. The left button finally gave out, and I was getting rather tired of changing batteries. It seemed I was getting to the poing of needing new batteries once a week or so. All in all though the Intellimouse was a pretty sturdy workhorse and I was really happy with it.

In with the new…

So what to do now? I could just use the mouse that came with my Wacom Intuos 3, but I like to keep my mouse next to my keyboard, and it would be awkward with the way my setup is now.

So I took off to my friendly neighborhood electronics shop and big box warehouse stores. Played with a few on display, checked pricing online, and voila – my choice…drum roll…

The Logitech MX Revolution. Find it at Amazon less than $65.

I love it so far, though I’ve only been using it for about half a day. I’ll be sure to post more comments once I’ve had a chance to put it through the rigors of day to day abuse.