drawing

Update at 12:27 p.m. PT: Zynga has indeed acquired OMGPOP but didn't disclose terms. AllThingsD's Peter Kafka reported that Zynga paid $180 million plus another $30 million in employee-retention payments.

It's looking like all the rumors surrounding Zynga and OMGPOP were true.

Zynga has acquired OMGPOP for $200 million, All Things Digital is reporting today, citing unnamed sources. Zynga has not publicly confirmed that's the case and has declined CNET's request for comment, but the company plans to hold a call with journalists at noon PT to make a "news announcement."… Read more

With a focus on both the occasional graphics user and the professional, CorelDraw Graphics Suite X6 (download) hits the market toting a wealth of tools that make manipulating graphics much simpler than before. Hobbyists can check it out to make newsletters, calendars, or banners, while business users can use it to make simple marketing collateral or sales presentations. And of course, designers can use it design things as well.

The new version of the Suite, X6, comes with native 64-bit and multicore processor support, which bumps up the speed of this program noticeably. This means less waiting when exporting, printing, … Read more

Rumor has it that game maker Zynga is in the running to buy the company OMGPOP, which makes the newest chart-topping game Draw Something.

If the acquisition goes through, it will be Zynga's biggest buyout to date, according the tech news site TechCrunch, which spoke to sources with direct knowledge of discussions between the two companies.

"Given that OMGPOP has raised around $17 million to date," TechCrunch reporter Kim-Mai Cutler wrote in an article speculating about the acquisition. "I'd expect the price for this deal to be in the $150 [million] to $250 million range.&… Read more

Mark Licea resurfaces today after a half-year absence from the show, but he can't miss out on our revolt against Michael Bay for tearing apart another memory from our childhood.

Over the weekend, the director announced that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in his upcoming reboot will come from space instead of a green canister of toxic ooze.… Read more

My addiction came suddenly. One moment I was browsing through the App Store, and the next I was sitting on my couch, crafting a stylus like a mad MacGyver so I could up my game in Draw Something.

The unexpectedly addicting app has taken the Apple and Android app markets by storm, rendering thousands of smartphone users addicted to drawing. Yes, drawing. Even if they suck at it.

That's part of the appeal, I guess: you don't have to be a trained artist to have fun and master this game. It's about conveying a message and helping … Read more

HANOVER, Germany--Who says robots don't have a sense of aesthetics?

Fraunhofer Institute showed off a robot that drew people's portraits here at the CeBIT tech show. It drew a big crowd, too--metaphorically speaking--with a steady throng watching its slow progress.

The robot actually didn't have a sense of aesthetics. Instead it had a camera, an algorithm to convert a digital photo into outlines, and an ability to draw those lines very precisely on a whiteboard.

Check the video below to see it in action. It's a thing of trigonometric beauty in its own way. … Read more

Draw Something (iOS | Android) offers turn-based gameplay that brings friends together as teammates to draw basic items (and sometimes more-complex ones) to see how long they can continue to guess each others' drawings correctly.

Once you've created a game with a friend through Facebook, Twitter, or by registering within the game, you're given three choices (easy, medium, or hard) of objects to draw that your friend will need to identify. Once your friend receives the drawing, he or she is given only a handful of available letters to use for the word (probably to make it a little … Read more

It may not be a mobile version of Adobe Illustrator, but Skitch can handle basic image annotations and sketches exceptionally well. It's easy to learn, its tools work well, and it can even export your work to Evernote.

Getting started with Skitch is simple. From the Home screen, you can open up a blank canvas, import an image from your gallery, or take a new photo with your mobile device's camera. Also new to Skitch is a feature that lets you pull up and add annotations directly onto a Google Map, which is perfect for giving detailed or … Read more

I've written about several iOS apps here that add effects to your photos, but most are just for adding a retro look, tuning your images, or making a photo look hip for social networking sites. I've found some great ones like PhotoToaster, Photogene2, and SnapSeed, but there's another genre of apps that make even more drastic changes to your images.

This week's collection of iOS apps is about taking your photos to the extreme. The first turns your images into line-drawn cartoons. The second fills in your image with words to produce a thought-provoking effect. The third puts your image through a coffee grinder, and brews up a bubbly colorful mosaic.… Read more