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Pencil is a free open-source animation program. Not aimed at professionals, it allows just about anybody to create old-school 2-dimensional animation. Working with layers, it supports both bitmapped and vector drawings. Using virtual "onion skins", you create one image, and then use that to create your next one by displaying a semi-transparent rendering of your first image, just the way the great classic animators used to painstakingly create all the old pre-computer cartoons. You can draw your images within Pencil, or you can import drawings from other apps, or even scan them in from your real-world drawings.

The camera layer lets you move the viewer's point-of-view around your drawings. There's also some support for a sound layer, so you can add voices or music to your creation.

When you're all done with your masterpiece, you can save your animation to the default XML format, or as a series of PNG images. You can also save it as a Flash movie, or as a QuickTime file (Mac only).

Pencil is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows users.

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So what the heck is that color? Whether it's on a web page or in a document, there's going to come a time when you have to match a color that you see on-screen, but you have no idea what color it is. Sure, it's easy to match a background color in Word or Excel, for instance, if the document creator used one of the canned preset colors. But what if they chose a different one? Not so easy now.

Pipette is a slick little tool that you can use to figure out just what color you're looking at. Fire it up, drag the little eyedropper tool to the area of your screen in question, and it displays the hex value (e.g. #3190C7, a nice aqua color) of the pixel at that location. You can drop that number straight into your HTML or CSS code and you've matched that color.

Pipette is a Mac application. It runs under OS X versions 10.2 and later. You can download it as a Universal Binary, or a platform-specific version for PowerPC or Intel machines.

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Most spreadsheet apps, like Excel, give you the opportunity to create charts and graphs based on your data. Enter sales performance for the month, and you can turn that textual data into pretty pictures which, frankly, are often easier to comprehend than are a page full of numbers. There are times, however, where the limitations of tools like this are apparent. You may need more horsepower to take care of business here.

Plot is a free 2D scientific plotting program. Since it plots graphs as its primary purpose, it will probably do a better job. With Plot, you can enter the data to be graphed directly, or you can import it from other tools. You can export your plots to several different formats, useful for inclusion in presentations or display on the web. With a built-in macro language, you can automate tedious tasks.

Plot is a Mac application. It runs under OS X 10.3.9 and is distributed as a Universal Binary, so it'll run on either PowerPC or x86 machines.

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One of the fun things about living in the Mac world is the ease with which you can change file and folder icons. In Windows, you're pretty much stuck with the generic folder image, or the canned icon that comes with an application. On a Mac, it's pretty easy to customize those and make your machine your own. If only there were enough icons to get it all done.

Img2Icns is a free tool that lets you create icons out of other images. With its simple interface, you just drag the file with the picture you want to icon-ize (is that a word?) and drop it on the app, and you've got an instant icon. If you want to change the icon for a file or folder, just drag it over the application window, and you've got your new icon in place.

It supports oodles of image formats, so the sky's pretty much the limit here. All the proportions and transparencies of your originals are preserved, so there are no surprises when you're done.

Img2Icns is a Mac application.

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Make no mistake about it: we love Photoshop. It's a great tool, and we've barely scratched the surface in terms of using all its capabilities. It's awfully expensive, though, to say nothing of putting some pretty big demands on our system. It would be nice to find a tool that does most of what we need day-to-day without the heavy lifting required by this app.

ImageWell is a lightweight graphics editor for Mac that lets you resize, rotate, crop, and flip images. You can add annotations or watermarks, to explain or claim ownership to your pictures. It supports taking screen shots, so you don't need deal with intermediate files when grabbing stuff off your screen. You can even import directly from your digital camera. With support for PNG and JPEG images, it's perfectly suited for working with your web site or blog. Export images directly to your FTP server, iDisk, or your Flickr account.

A free download, ImageWell will run on your Mac. It requires OS X 10.3.9 or later.

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Grab is a quick-and-easy tool to use to grab a screenshot on your Mac. It does a fairly serviceable job, unless you need anything fancy. Want a specific file format? Want to add translucency to the image? You may be out of luck.

Capture Me is a native Mac tool that lets you make your screenshots and more. Save your images as PNG, JPEG, TIFF, or GIF files. Add translucency to them. Save to the desktop, or place them on your system clipboard. All the flexibility is yours. Adjust the size and shape of the regions you're grabbing. You can even create short QuickTime movies. It incorporates some minor AppleScript support, so it may help you to automate the process.

Capture Me is a Mac application. It is distributed as a Universal Binary, so it'll run on both PPC and Intel machines. It requires OS X 10.4 or later.

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There's always a need for more computer programmers out there, but unfortunately not everybody's thrilled at the prospect of keeping track of semicolons and curly-braces. With this in mind, the folks at Carnegie Mellon University created Alice.

Alice is a development environment that allows for error-proof programming. Using a drag-and-drop interface, users write code by dragging onscreen tiles that fit together into programs. As the result of fitting these pieces together, students actually create 3D animations. While interesting in their own right, these animations allow immediate feedback to the user, showing how re-ordering a series of tiles (instructions) impacts the behavior of the resulting program.

While users think they're creating animations and games, they are also seeing how languages like Java and C++ work, since the tiles correspond to statements in those types of high level programming languages. They claim that upwards of 10% of all computer science programs in American colleges use Alice in their curriculum.

Alice is a free download, and is available for Windows (Win2k or later), Mac (OS X 10.3+), and Linux.

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Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (the late '80's), our computer screens were filled with visions of flying toasters. Those days have returned with ToasterClone.

Featuring the winged appliances of yore, and a healthy dose of toast, ToasterClone brings back the joy (and silliness) of cookware on your computer screen. You can choose the classic white-in-black motif, or the modern full-color version.

ToasterClone is a free download (distributed under Creative Commons), and is available for both Mac and Windows systems.

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Way back when, you used to leave a "visiting card" with the servant of somebody you wanted to visit with, in essence announcing that you were out there standing in the street waiting for an invitation to enter. You don't see those too much any more. In the real world, they have more or less been replaced by business cards, serving as a reminder of somebody you've just met with. There really aren't any business cards on the Internet, but the need to introduce yourself and remind folks who you are is still just as real.

Hyplet lets you build a "hyplet", a little ID card or business card, suitable for placing on a web page or attaching to an email as a signature. With a bunch of templates to choose from, you can add your name, contact info, web page, and other pertinent information to get people to where you are. Personalize it with a photo, or add an avatar to present your alter ego to the world.

Hyplets can be used as "flyers" also. Need a quickie image to publicize your blog or announce you next big event? Build a hyplet with time and date; add contact info and you're good to go.

Hyplet is an online service. It should be compatible with most systems with a modern browser.

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Sometimes thinking is just too hard. When you look at any task or project, there can be so darn many considerations to keep track of: little pieces, big picture, dates and deadlines. It's a wonder you can ever get anything done.

Mind mapping is a technique where you dump all that "stuff" in your head onto a piece of paper. By grouping related thoughts and concepts, drawing arrows and boxes to show relationships and timing, eventually you can bring some sort of order to all those bits and pieces.

WiseMaps allows you to do all this paperwork on your computer. Not only does that make it easier to arrange and rearrange your thoughts as you clarify what's going on, but you can also share your mind map with others. WiseMaps uses SVG and VML to allow you to embed your mind map in web pages, either for your own review, or so that you can show others what you are really talking about.

WiseMaps is a free online service. It requires that users be using IE 6 (Windows), Firefox 1.5 (Win, Mac, Linux), or Safari ver. 3 (Windows, Mac).

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