overlays

Get current weather radar and future forecasts

RadarCast is the newest weather app from the people who developed the popular NOAA Hi-Def Radar, but this app brings you future weather predictions along with several other features.

Built for checking the weather around you or at another specific location, RadarCast gives you the latest data from local radar sites using real-time animated weather overlays. There's a lot of room for customization as well. You have the option to look at map, satellite, and hybrid views, and you also can control the weather pattern loop speed, the interval between individual frames, and change the number of frames in … Read more

Flashy photography apps for iOS

I've written about a lot of photo apps here in my weekly iOS app collections because it's always fun to add a little pizazz to your images. But rather than dragging out the Instagram (iOS | Android) clones and retro photo makers, I wanted to try something a little more "out there."

If you know where to look, there are several image effects apps in the App Store that give your photos some really drastic changes using overlays and unique neon lighting effects. Not every photo will benefit from these apps, but with a little creativity, I think you'll find that these apps can produce great results.

This week's collection of apps is all about adding drastic effects to your photos. The first uses several types of bright overlays to add strange effects to your photos in a couple easy steps. The second adds more features letting you add multiple effects on the same image. The third lets you add multiple overlays as well, but you can also adjust opacity and use masking tools and filters to really trick out your photos.… Read more

How to quickly see previews of links on the Web

If you spend a lot of time perusing sites like eBay or Craigslist, you know what a pain it is to open each individual link for a sale to take a look at the pictures and information. Whether you open the link in your current tab and press Back often, or are a multi-browser-tab master, there has to be a better way to do this, right? Google found a better way by incorporating previews into its search results, so why not use that same idea across the entire Web? That's where the ezLinkPreview extension for Chrome comes in handy. … Read more

Mediocre merging

Our least favorite type of program is the kind that takes what should be a simple task and needlessly complicates it. Unfortunately, that seems to be the entire point of Merge. This program takes the process of merging two images--something that can be done easily in countless other programs--and makes it a confusing, frustrating, nonsensical mess.

The program's interface is both unintuitive and extremely unattractive. A dockable toolbar on the right side of the interface contains a series of unlabeled buttons and collapsible menus that represent the program's features. We had an easy enough time selecting the two … Read more

Overlay.tv gets an API, labs sandbox

Overlay.tv, a service that lets users add links, images, and even other videos on top of Web video has a new API for developers to build applications on top of its technology. The company has also put out a new labs page where developers can promote their applications and see what others have built.

One of the early stars of the bunch is a special YouTube uploader built using Adobe AIR. It lets you upload videos from your desktop without having to use YouTube's Web-based uploader. Once a file is up and hosted on YouTube you can then … Read more

Report: YouTube tinkers with e-commerce program

Google is trying to expand YouTube's e-commerce profile by offering viewers in Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands click-to-buy products, something that it had offered only in the U.S. and Great Britain, according to Peter Kafka at All Things Digital.

Kafka reported Wednesday that in these countries YouTube isn't satisfied with just posting links to Amazon or iTunes at the bottom of the video page.

The company is now linking in the form of transparent overlays that appear within the videos. The links can only be seen while watching clips on YouTube and can't be found on … Read more

Under the Radar: Eye candy that's actually useful

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--The Web has come a long way. The aesthetic of a site can oftentimes determine whether or not a wary user will dig deeper and explore your site. The four companies below offer some of the most beautiful products shown off Tuesday at the Under the Radar social media and entertainment conference, but are they really useful? For the most part, yes. Read more about them below.

Animoto, one of my colleague Elinor Mills' favorite slideshow tools and as CEO Brad Jefferson calls it "The end of the slideshow" (in the boring, stodgy sense, of … Read more

Veeple lets you add moving tags to Web videos

Veeple is a new video-captioning service that lets you add small moving notes or links to Web videos. It will host clips up to 100MB in size, or you can simply access the ones you've got hosted on other sites like YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook.

The one standout feature is how incredibly simple it is to add the various types of annotations. All you have to do is click your mouse to start recording, then once again to stop. The note will follow your cursor, so if you're dealing with a moving subject, you're not limited to placing a note in one spot and having it lose placement.

There are several types of captions and annotations to use, from basic speech and thought bubbles, all the way to text overlays and links to off-site Web pages. There are also links to eBay, MySpace, and Facebook--the latter two effectively let you live-tag any of your social-networking buddies. For instance, in one video I tagged one of my friends with his Facebook profile, and the other to his MySpace page. A person watching the video only needs to click on that link to get jumped right there, but will know what they're clicking on without having to read a description because of the little site logos that are used to represent the links. In theory, Veeple could add many more services down the line, or plug into those site data APIs to let you search through your buddies to make tagging easier.

Another service that's been experimenting with live tags is Asterpix, which recently released its auto-tagging service. I prefer Veeple's tagging system to Asterpix's despite the fact the entire process is manual; however both offer a huge leg up to YouTube and other's standard captioning offerings.

Check out the video embedded after the break to see it in action. Keep in mind there's already a lot going on in this video, so the amount of visual overload from these live captions depends on how much self control the Veeple author has.

[via VentureBeat]

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Netdisaster adds Led Zeppelin and acid urine to any Web site

Editors note: To turn off the Flash ad, click the "remove disaster" button in the upper-left corner of the screen.

You know those highly intrusive Flash ads that you occasionally find while surfing? The kind that march all over the page and are impossible to ignore and sometimes get rid of? From that same technology comes an enjoyable service that lets you see your favorite sites in a whole new way. Netdisaster, which picked up an innovation award from Yahoo UK three years ago is still pretty innovative by letting you turn any Web site into a playground of destruction and/or defilement.

The service provides more than 30 ways to destroy a site, and a good majority of them manage to do it humorously. All you need to do is plug in a URL and pick the terror you wish it to befall. Certain options cause more damage than others, and many feature an "auto-repair" option that will seal up the holes caused from explosions, letting the mayhem continue into infinity. This is especially helpful if you're using the chainsaw tool or nuclear blast, as they tend to do some pretty serious damage.

The one thing I really enjoy about this service is that you can try out other disasters without having to jump back to the home page and plug in the URL all over again. You can tweak the options ad nauseam, and simply click one button to get the action going again. It's a nice touch, and really keeps you trying out everything that's there.

If you're a really big fan, you can also install the toolbar, which lets you call up a disaster on any site you're on without having to click off the page. Webmasters also have the option of adding disasters or the disaster selector toolbar to any of their pages with a few simple lines of JavaScript, which I've done after the break.

[found on DownloadSquad]

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