effects

To achieve a miniature, tilt-shift effect on subjects, one can typically rely on specialized lenses or miniature-styled programmed modes found in today's cameras. A Norwegian design studio called Skrekkogle has done the opposite with its Big Money Project.

Instead of "shrinking" a subject with special effects, they have created a massive 20:1 euro cent coin to make a subject appear small, like a miniature scale model, in comparison.

Skrekkogle's giant coin was available for sale at its Web site, but is, alas, currently out of stock. More pics below. … Read more

My Sketch makes your photos into hand-sketched artistic drawings in only a few easy steps. Upon launch you get the option to take a new photo or choose one from your iPhone photo library. Once selected, My Sketch immediately has you crop the image to your liking, either in portrait or landscape layouts. The next step is to choose a style, and My Sketch offers 20 different types of sketch styles, from long-line sketches to pastel styles. It takes a couple of moments, but once the high-res sketch is finished, you have a chance to apply some finishing touches with … Read more

KooBits 4.0 bills itself as "the place to shelve my e-books." This free e-book reader for Windows can store and display electronic book in the most common formats, such as PDF and EPUB, but it offers greater interactivity and enriched multimedia content such as games and video with the proprietary KBJ format. It even offers free books.

Koobits opens with a user interface spread out like the open pages of a book. We clicked the welcome screen, which took us to the My Library page. An animated tool tip quickly demonstrated how to create and add new … Read more

We all encounter times when we need text with a little pizzazz, whether we're working on a Web site, a presentation, or something else that requires eye-catching visuals. Pos Text Effects is an easy-to-use program that lets you create text-based graphics that can be used as signs, headers, banners, and so on. Even if you don't know anything about design, Pos Text Effects is a piece of cake to use.

The program's interface is plain and intuitive. First, type or paste your text into the text box. There are typical formatting options here, including buttons to set … Read more

Children who use cell phones are at no greater risk of developing brain tumors, the latest paper in a series of epidemiological studies suggests.

The study, which was conducted in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland, was recently published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. It surveyed almost 1,000 children between ages 7 and 19. The group looked at children who had been diagnosed with brain tumors between 2004 and 2008, as well as a control group drawn randomly from the general population.

Subjects were asked about how often they used their cell phones for voice calls. Some … Read more

Microsoft Word is arguably the most widely used business application in the world, yet few Word users think twice about the format of their documents. People may change Word's default font size and style or switch between a single space or double space between lines, but that's about it. If you'd like a simple way to communicate your message more effectively without looking flashy, try these simple Word format tweaks.

First, a word of warning: nearly any document can benefit from a little creative formatting, but it can be easy to overdo the effects. Remember, the goal … Read more

With Pho.to Lab for Android you can transform your photos using a menu of over 400 novelty photo effects, frames, and photo collages.

Perhaps one of the simplest photo apps we've encountered, Pho.to Lab launches directly to a huge menu of effects. Choose one, apply it to either an existing photo or a new one, select the area of the photo to be used, and hit Process. From there, you can share your resulting masterpiece via Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, or any of your device's other installed applications. You can also set it as a Contact icon … Read more

LOS ANGELES--While last year's Microsoft E3 briefing focused on the Kinect as debut hardware, this year seems to be about integrating the Kinect more deeply into mainstream games.

EA Sports, EA Games, and Ubisoft are among the first to formally announce baked-in support for Kinect in their 2011 Xbox 360 games. Tiger Woods, Madden, FIFA, Mass Effect 3, and Ghost Recon Future Soldier--along with, according to developers, many more--will support the Kinect in unspecified ways. Forza 4, the latest iteration of Microsoft's racing simulator, will also support Kinect.

It looks like there will still be standalone Kinect games, … Read more

As its name suggests, Camera360 is an all-around, effects-heavy camera app for your Android mobile device. Depending on how complicated you want to get, it could serve as a power-packed replacement for your device's stock camera app.

Camera360 rolls the functionality of several different camera apps into one. It lets you wrap frames or scenery around your photos, or add whimsical effects like Ghost, Infrared Thermal, or a Warhol-like Four-Color Poster. And, of course, there's also a long menu of filters to choose from, including two different HDR filters, Black & White, Retro, and Lomo styles among many … Read more