Hot Painted Ferrari Art Car by Ton Pret

Dutch modern painter and fashion artist Ton Pret reveals Ferrari Art-Car on Open Art FairThe Ton Pret Ferrari project is an unique art-car project where Dutch modern artist Ton Pret transformed a high-powered Ferrari 355 into 'The Fastest Artwork of Holland'. The project was executed in the summer of 2010.Ton Pret ArtistTon Pret started as a painter in 2005. His success emerged fast and work was

Art Car Phone Looses Dial Tone - Destroyed by Roof Collapse

The Phone Car Crushed by Collapsed Roof - Front SideThe world famous Phone Car created by Howard Davis was brutally damaged recently when the roof of the Avon Industrial Park collapsed due to snow build up. The Phone car will not be making any long distance calls anytime soon, but with a little TLC and some bondo it can be up running soon. Our best wished for a speedy recovery goes out to you.The

VServices: HTML5 Image Editor

HTML5 makes the web so powerful that you can do almost everything on the web. Till few years back, Flash was the only solution to build rich applications on the web. Things have changed a lot with HTML5. HTML5 Image Editor, one of the services of VServices, is an image editor on the web. It demonstrates some of the cool things which can be done with HTML5, CSS3 and related technologies. The application has been built using the Aviary’s Photo Editor (codenamed as Feather).

HTML5 Image Editor

• Click here to access the image editor.
• Enter the URL of the image you have already uploaded on the web and click on “Load Image”. For example, copy the URL of your Facebook profile picture.
• Once the image is loaded on the page, click on “Edit Image”. Aviary’s toolbar will appear next to the image with lots of options to edit your image.
• The toolbar includes few filters (Instant, Toy Camera, Old Photo, etc) which can be applied on your image. The other tools included in the toolbar: Sharpen, Whiten, Rotate, Flip, Resize, Crop, Redeye, Blemish, Colors, Saturation, Blur, Text Overlay, Stickers Overlay, Custom Draw Overlay, etc. 
• Once you are done with editing the image, click on “Save” from Aviary’s toolbar. After processing the image, a download URL will be provided on the screen.

Tip: Use HTML5 Image Editor with Dropbox

• Dropbox is a web based file hosting service that syncs your files online and across your computers and mobile devices.
• Create a free Dropbox account here. Download and install the Dropbox windows application. Also available for Mac, Linux and for Mobile platforms. Note: If you create an account using the above link, I will be earning 250 MB extra free space.
• Take the Dropbox tour to understand how it works. Also, understand how “Public folder” works with Dropbox.
• Once you have the Dropbox application installed on your PC or mobile, you can just copy the file you want to edit to the public folder. Get the public link to the uploaded file.
• Its easy to use and the uploaded files stay with your account. And, I don’t have to take the pain of file management on my server.

I have been looking for tools to quickly edit the photos I take on my mobile. I have tried many apps on my Nexus One but I was not comfortable with any of them. Hence, this tip and the application. With this application, I can upload the photo to my Dropbox public folder using Dropbox Android application and then edit it on the web.

-- Varun

Introducing VServices

On a daily basis, we are dependent on many utility services which are scattered on the web. VServices is an attempt to bring together all the services under one roof. It is a collection of services to make your life easier on the web. These services are developed and curated by me. VServices is powered by Google App Engine. I have spent some time in setting up a platform where in I can build services with ease. The first addition to VServices is YouTube Download Helper. I have included some web development tools also to VServices. More services will be added soon.

YouTube Download Helper

Recently a friend of mine (@psankar) posted a nice article about downloading all YouTube videos of an user. He has employed a technique using shell script. Performing the same task using a Firefox plug-in / GreaseMonkey script will be an overkill for the download server. (Downloading a single video is an easy task. Downloading multiple videos and bundling them as an archive file is not so good for the server). The only manual task in the technique recommended by @psankar is the construction of a list of video URLs from the user’s page. You can use “YouTube Download Helper” to automate this task. 

Access “YouTube Download Helper” here. Enter the YouTube username whose videos you wanted to download. You can select the uploads or favorites of the user. YouTube Download Helper uses the YouTube API to fetch the videos of the user. Click on “Download Video URLs” as text file and feed it to the shell script written by @psankar. For downloading individual videos, click on the download button in the table. It opens http://keepvid.com to download the video. Note: Downloading YouTube videos is against TOS of YouTube API. I claim no responsibility for any legal issues in this regard.

-- Varun

Dias de los Muertos Taco Truck - Kinetic Sculpture Race

Dias de los Muertos Taco Truck - In ParadeThe Kinetic Grand Championship is a 3-day, 42-mile bicycle race over land, sand, mud and water. Many refer to the Kinetic Grand Championship as the “Triathlon of the Art World.”The race began 40 years ago in 1969, when world-renowned sculpture artist Hobart Brown challenged Ferndale artist Jack Mays to a race down Ferndale’s Mainstreet. In their kinetic

The Sauna - Riding the Alps in Style

The Sauna was built from a Volvo 240 and taken on CzechWrecks 2009, a 1500 mile 4 day journey starting from Calais, France through Swiss and Italian Alps all the way to Prague, Czech Republic.What we have here is about 1/3rd of a ton of wood paneling being applied to the Volvo. If you are wondering whether this wood had any impact on performance, I am assured it did. What performance they had to

Android 3.0 HoneyComb Preview

The platform preview of the next version of Android (Android 3.0 codenamed as HoneyComb) is out. Now, there is no more confusion on the version number of HoneyComb and it is going to be Android 3.0. And, as many of you would have already seen it on the Andy Rubin’s video, HoneyComb is designed for devices with large devices like tablets. A new “holographic” UI theme has been introduced in HoneyComb. A preview version of the Android 3.0 SDK has also been released today for the developers to get familiar with the new UI patterns, APIs and the capabilities of Android 3.0.

Platform Highlights

• UI framework. New UI theme, components, richer widgets, drag and drop, and other new features are added to enable rich app development for larger screens.
• High Performance 2D and 3D graphics. A new 3D graphics engine called RenderScript has been included which enables adding rich 3D scenes. Also, there is a built-in GL renderer that lets developers request hardware-acceleration of common 2D rendering operations in their apps.
• Support for multi-core processors. Android 3.0 is optimized to run on either single or dual-core processors.
• Rich multimedia. New multimedia features such as HTTP Live streaming support and easy media file transfer through MTP/PTP, give developers new ways to bring rich content to users.
• Enhancements for enterprise. New administrative policies, such as for encrypted storage and password expiration, help enterprise administrators manage devices more effectively.

Android 3.0 HoneyComb Home Screen

  

Android 3.0 HoneyComb App Menu

Android 3.0 HoneyComb Widgets bar – Hard press on the home screen to get this.

Android 3.0 HoneyComb Browser. (Was crashing frequently)

Android 3.0 HoneyComb Search Bar (Onscreen Keyboard was not getting loaded)

SDK tools Highlights

• Preview SDK tools can be downloaded and installed from here.
• The Preview SDK includes: An early Android 3.0 system image for use in the Android emulator. An Android 3.0 library with non-final APIs. A new WXGA emulator skin for an extra large Android Virtual Device. The emulator performance seems to be slower than the previous versions.
• An improved UI builder has been included in the Eclipse ADT plug-in.

More information about the platform and the preview SDK can be found here and here.

-- Varun

Make your GreaseMonkey script fully compatible with Chrome using TamperMonkey

Google Chrome announced its support for GreaseMonkey back in Feb 2010 which opened the gates for GM script writers to write thousands of scripts for Chrome. Any script that doesn’t use specific GreaseMonkey API (GM_*) should work fine with Chrome. However, a study conducted by GreasePot reveals that about 40% of scripts in userscripts.org use GreaseMonkey API. In other words, only 60% of the scripts in userscripts.org will work in Chrome. Top APIs being used include GM_getValue, GM_setValue, GM_xmlhttpRequest. Chrome does not support any of the GreaseMonkey API for security reasons. The rest of the post will sketch out two mechanisms to make your script fully compatible with Chrome.

Google Chrome GM_* emulation

• An userscript to emulate the GreaseMonkey functionalities in Chrome. Supported functions: GM_setValue, GM_getValue, GM_deleteValue, GM_registerMenuCommand, GM_xmlhttpRequest, GM_addStyle.
• GM_getValue and GM_setValue functions use Chrome’s local storage to store the data.
• GM_xmlhttpRequest can be used to make only *same domain* AJAX requests. This is a major limitation with this approach.
• Download and install the script from here.

TamperMonkey

• A Chrome extension which provides enhanced userscript support on Google Chrome and Chromium browsers. All GM_* functions are supported. This is a cleaner solution than the above script.
• GM_xmlhttpRequest is supported with cross domain access.
• A small UI has also been included with the extension from which you can manage the installed scripts.
• The extension also takes care of checking if there are any new versions of the installed userscript is available. This will be useful to keep your userscripts up-to-date. If you a GM script writer, recommend your users to install this extension before installing your script.
• Download and install the extension form here.

-- Varun

[How to] Setup Google I/O style animated Countdown clock

Google has just launched the Google I/O 2011site and the registrations will commence soon. The agenda shows that a lot of interesting sessions have lined up for the event. To add to all these fun, Google has added a cool animated clock on the home page which will count down to the event date. Vic Gundotra from Google tweeted about the event page on his twitter few hours back. As soon as I saw the animation, I got excited and started digging into the implementation details of the same. To my surprise, Google has not obfuscated their JavaScript as they generally do with their animated doodles. Hence, reverse engineering the counter became an easy task. I have setup a count down clock for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 which is happening in India next month. Check it out here.

Steps to setup the counter

• Box2D JavaScript port has been used to bring in the explosion effect. Box2D is a 2D rigid body simulation library for games. You can use it to make objects move in believable ways and make the game world more interactive. More info here.
• Download all the necessary JavaScript files – base.js, box2d.js, io.js
• Change the variable “countdownTo” to the date you are counting down to.
• Include the JavaScript files in the HTML file and write script to initiate the counter. Smart developers always look at the source. You can look at the source of the demo page here. Or, visit this page to have a look at the HTML used in the demo page.

-- Varun

Blowing Kisses with the Lipstick Art Car

The Lipstick Art Car is a 2003 Pontiac Vibe embellished with kisses and other items installed solely in celebration of lipstick. Minneasota artist Patti Paulson created the car in 2010. During parades, Patti leaves her mark when she "lays the smack down" on the crowd to the beat of well known kissing songs blaring from her radio.

DocType HTML5, Hyderabad

DocType HTML5 is a one day conference on HTML5, CSS3 and related technologies. The Hyderabad version of the event happened on 23-Jan-2011 at IIIT, Hyderabad. Since the event was organized in an educational institution, the student turnaround was huge. Almost 75% of the participants were students from IIIT-H or from other colleges. The organizers had to arrange for parallel sessions in the very last minute because of the overcrowd. That means a speaker should give the same session twice and they did very well. Overall it was a good experience – learnt a lot of new things, refreshed the things which I already know. 

New Ideas in HTML5

Kiran Jonnalagadda (@jackerhack) from HasGeek started the day with a session on “New Ideas in HTML5”. He gave a brief intro to HTML5 and discussed about Semantic markups, DocType declarations in HTML5. He also discussed about the Postel’s law and how it is adopted by modern day browsers. Shall link to the presentation once I get it. I have used Thinking Space – a mind mapping application for Android to capture the session and here it is.

CSS3 and Presentation

The session on CSS3 and Presentation was delivered by Shwetank Dixit from Opera. He discussed some of the sexy features of CSS3. Some of the properties include – font-face, border-radius, transition, text-shadow, box-shadow, selectors, transforms, etc.

HTML5 in IE9 (Sponsor session)

Harish Ranganathan from Microsoft gave a session on HTML5 features supported in IE9. He also talked about the new tools which are introduced in IE9 to ease the developer’s task. Microsoft was the platinum sponsor for the event.

Multimedia Kit

The next session was delivered by Parashumram from Microsoft. His style of delivery was awesome. The presentation which had fancy animations includes canvas, video, audio tags of HTML5. He also briefed about support for SVG in HTML5. View his presentation here.

Geolocation, Offline and Mobile

Dhaval Trivedi from SourceBits was the next one to give a session on Geolocation, Offline storage and mobile. He clarified that Geolocation is not a HTML5 feature but a related technology. He also discussed how to add support for platforms which don’t have a native support for Geolocation APIs. Then, he briefed about some of the dos and don'ts of offline storage. Performance tips for mobile were also useful.

Accessibility

The last session of the data was delivered by Shewatank again. He focused on the need for making the site accessible for differently-abled persons. He talked about how screen readers work and some of the standards available on accessibility. 

-- Varun

Electric Goat Scooter, All the Rage - Alex Harrah

Alex Harrah could possible have created the worlds first electric art scooter. He took your basic scooter and replaced the handle bars with goats head or possibly a rams head. Either way horns for handlebars and cup holder is a nice Gothic touch.Alex uses this scooter to get around due to being diagnosed with Alpha-1 as a result of having been a heavy smoker in the past. He now campaigns against

Art Car Central Scraped by Impostor Blogger

I found a site tonight that has totally stolen the entire content of Art Car Central.But don't be fooled by the impostor "art car zone" because it will never measure up to Art Car Central. I cant get a hold of the author of that so I am posting this for their benefit, so if you get this "please quit stealing and scarping the material found on Art Car Central. I wonder how long it will take to

StreetSafari Rally Art Cars from the UK Now a Regular Feature!!!

StreetSafari, organizer of the world's best banger rallies, has teamed with Art Car Central to showcase some of the countless creations of our teams over the years.For those unfamiliar with banger rallies, here is a quick introduction: buy a car on a budget (£250 or $500), repair it, make it legal for the road, take it on a journey across Europe or the States with other like minded people.

17 Crazy Ways To Prank Your Friends Car

Is it late night, feeling mischievous, and have nothing better to do on Saturday night? Why not prank your friends car next time you and your friends are out and about hanging out at Dennis at 1 o'clock in the morning. What better way to say "You rock dude" than to cover your buddies car with a bunch of TP or plastic wrap. Or show your boss how much you appreciate him by covering his car in

Vanadu Ford - Post Apocalypse Gothic Hunter Camper

I am not sure which category to put this Ford Van called "Vanadu" in, but its definitely Post Apocalypse Gothic Hunter Camper. You start with the fencing up on the roof with a broken spire that looks like a grave site. And various decorative flourishes scattered around to give it the Gothic retro look.You continue with various car parts welded together, fins, grill, lights, vases, horns, chimneys

Retro Vinyl SSR Art Car - Artefacts

"Artifacts" art car was sent in by Graphic Designer Gary Grayson who covered his really cool Chevy SSR pickup truck in a vinyl wrap to advertise his Art Print Business. Some work with paint some work with pixels on vinyl:)

Art Car submitted by Ghetto MySpace

Its not so much about this graffiti art car and the guy sitting pretty on the roof with the Gatorade bottle, as it is about guy who sent this picture. Dan Goodman stand up comic is the creator of a web site called Ghetto Myspace with real pics from the web's worst hood that is both both fascinating and terrifying at the same time. I warn you, I got sucked into it 20 pages deep and viewer

4 Startfish + 4 Barbies = TWCRV aka The Worlds Cutest RV

I got an "art car" submission the other day for an RV owner who had about 4 star fish, 4 barbies,  one shark, three fish, one Easter bunny, one seagull, two happy faces, a cat painted tire cover, a bunch of burning man stickers, and two bikes. The rest of the RV is totally bare. At first I rejected the submission which I rarely do but I had a change of heart after I looked up the definition of an

More events in Q1-2011

Earlier I have posted about the tech events happening in Jan 2011. There are more interesting events happening in the first quarter of 2011. Listing down some of the events which might excite you. Shall update this post as I get to know about more events.

• International World Wide Web Conference, India. Mar 28-Apr 01. The WWW Conference series aims to provide the world a premier forum for discussion and debate about the evolution of the Web, the standardization of its associated technologies, and the impact of those technologies on society and culture. The conferences bring together researchers, developers, users and commercial ventures – indeed all who are passionate about the Web and what it has to offer. Some of the speakers for the event this year include: Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Sir Tim Berners Lee and many more. More info here.
• ACM India Annual Meeting. Jan 28-29. Computer scientists and engineers from the Industry, Government and Academia are expected to attend the event, to discuss the current science and technology trends, celebrate ACM‘s spirit and India’s accomplishment in computing, and meet fellow CS professionals. More info here.
• DocType HTML5. Jan 23 in Hyderabad. Feb 5 in Ahmedabad. An event organized by the volunteers of HTML5 developer community to discuss the features and power of HTML5. Register here.
• New Contest in TunedIT : Music Information Retrieval. Jan 10-Mar 28.  TunedIT, a leading research platform in the area of data mining, encourages participation in the new competition “Music Information Retrieval” launched at TunedIT Challenges platform. The task is to recognize different properties of provided music samples, based on extracted sound features. More info here.
• International programming contest: Challenge 24. Feb 19. An annual 24 hour programming contest organized by The Electrical Engineering Students’ Hungarian Association. Register here.
• Kurukshetra 2011. Feb 2-5. A techo-management fest organized at Anna University, Chennai. One of the events of the fest is Barcamp, where Android discussions are also made. More info here.

-- Varun

Remarkable 22ft Mercedes Finn Jet Art Car Limo- Video

I was just go another remarkable "Finnjet" art car video that really gives you a much better idea of the magnitide of this car. The Finn Jet, created by Antti Rahko, is a 22-foot-long, 7,500-pound compilation of chrome made from 40 different cars, based on two Mercedes-Benz station wagons welded together. There are also parts from a 1962 Chrysler Imperial thrown in the mix, plus 86 lights and 36

Hot Westcoaster Mailster Art Car For Sale

This hot 1965 Westcoaster Mailster Art Car is now for sale right on craiglist for only $2500 in Phoenix AZ. This old mail truck in phoenix runs great and still has the original v twin motor with a 3 speed manual transmission. Its a must have for this years art car parade season.

Miami EV Project - VW Golf Art Car by LEBO Studios

Have you ever sat around with your friend and though, "hey, we should make our car an electric car"?Danny Alva and Donato Helbling woke up one day and decided to turn their VW into an electric car. This DIY project can be found Miami EV Project for all to see and keep up on their journey.They took a Volkswagen Golf III, gave it an amazing paint job by LEBO Studios, called the Buzz and swapped

Best Man Mobile Wedding Chapel Art Car for the Busy

If you’d like to get married in a special place that doesn’t have a church or chapel nearby, you can always call upon the services of the Best Man mobile wedding chapel. This Art Car is a 1942 American la France, converted by professional tuners, on a TV show called “Trick My Truck”. It belongs to Darrell Best, an ordained minister who uses it to get people married, wherever they like. Based in

15 ways to freak people out while driving - Double Trouble Art Car

If you are the kind of person who wants it both ways then welding two front ends of a car together might be your cup of tea or coffee. Or maybe you just happen to have two cars of the same make that were recently rear ended. These cars definitely have a better turning radius and definitely can get themselfs in and out of tight parking spots. Besides, they make it really easy to freak people out.

Burning Man Shark Attack Eats Two For Breakfast

Here is a grisly shark attack at Burning man, and by the looks of it, two of them were eaten alive...

Mercedes Art Car or Illuminati Conspiracy

I am not sure what a half a Mercedes art car with the face of Karl Max and Jimi Hendrix means but here are some thoughts.1) Goofy kid who thinks that Karl and Jimi were in a band together.2) Artistic commentary: Karl Marx a German communist philosopher wrote against the capitalistic system in his Communist Manifesto is represented in this half Mercedes Art Car. 3) Its part of a secret government

Programming Language “Scratch”

A friend of mine recently shared an interesting article about making household appliances easily programmable. The article talks about a project named “Scratchable devices” worked upon by computer science Professor Michael Littman and some of his students at Rutgers University. The idea is to make it easy for anyone to program their household devices using a graphical programming language Scratch. I dug deep into the language and some areas where it is being used.

What is Scratch?

Scratch is a graphical programming language where in you can control the flow and execution of the program just by connecting a set of blocks. It is a fun way of learning a programming language and is mostly used for training kids. It is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab by a team led by Professor Mitchel Resnick. The education perspective of the language proves that programming can be a vehicle for engaging powerful ideas through active learning.

Where is it used?

• BYOB (Build Your Own Block) – An advanced offshoot of Scratch has been developed by a team at Berkley. In the project “Scratchable devices”, anyone can write programs to instruct the device (just by drag-dropping the blocks). These programs are then converted into radio signals which can be read and processed by micro-controllers on the device.
• Google's App Inventor for Android is inspired by Scratch. The blocks editor of App Inventor uses the Open Blocks Java library for creating visual blocks programming languages. Open Blocks is distributed by the MIT's Scheller Teacher Education Program. Open Blocks visual programming is an variant of Scratch.
• Scratch language can be used as a fun environment to ease kids and newbies into programming.

A demo video on Scratchable devices

-- Varun

HMS Uranus Art Car - Boldy Going Were Few Dare To Go

The HMS Uranus Art Car is boldly going were few dare to go. Oregon watch out!!!

Nautilimo - Floridas Floating Pink Limo For Rent

Joe Fox is the captain of this unique pink boat limo call the Nauti-Limo. If you happen to be in Florida keys why not take a tour in style in the World's first Cadillac style Nautical Stretch-Limousine on the water! Its designed to carry 1-6 passengers, powered by a 100 hp Yamaha engine and has all required safety equipment on board. Its available for birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and I am

Tech Events, Jan 2011

Attending a tech event – If you are a technology enthusiast, there is no better way to kick start a new year. There are lots of exciting events lined up for this month. The first event, which most of you guys are eagerly waiting for, is CES (Consumer Electronics Show). CES is one of the biggest electronics show held each January to show case the new electronic products from different companies. The next biggest event happening this month is Facebook Hacker Cup. There is also a TEDx event organized by VIT University - TEDxVIT.

Events in January 2011

• Consumer Electronics Show 2011. January 6-9, 2011. CES is one of the biggest electronics show held each January to show case the new electronic products from different companies. Many cool products and technologies have been introduced in the CES previous years. Some of the expectations for this year include – 1. Windows 8 from Microsoft 2. Sandy Bridge processors from Intel. Watch the event live here or here or here.
• Facebook Hacker Cup. The Facebook Hacker Cup is an annual worldwide programming competition where hackers compete against each other for fame, fortune, glory and a shot at the title of world champion. The competition commences with a 72-hour Qualification Round on January 7, 2011. Register yourself for the event here.
• TEDxVIT. January 23, 2011. TEDx event organized by VIT University. Dr. Mylswamy Annadurai, the project director of Chandrayaan-1, Chandrayaan-2 is one of the speakers for the event. More info here.
• Titanium Week Webcasts. January 5-7, 2011. If you are a mobile application developer, this will be an useful one for you. Appcelerator Titanium is a mobile web based application framework solutions allowing web developers to create native applications for iPhone and Android. Appcelerator Inc is organizing a free webcast series to get you started on the Titanium framework. There are three different webcasts planned – Titanium for Web developers, What’s new in Titanium Mobile 1.5, Developing native Android apps with Titanium. Register here.

If you are based in Chennai, you can check out events in Chennai during January 2011.

-- Varun

Jeff Towns Art Car Lights up and Burns Rubber - Accessorod

Jeff Towns has managed to combine the best of three worlds, Art, Safety and Burnt Rubber. He has turned his 80's Oldsmobile art car in to a glow in the dark burning rubber monster machine. Nice work.