The Open Clip Art Library grew from a project between Jon Phillips (of Fabricatorz) and Bryce Harrington, in early 2004. From humble beginnings, it has evolved into a massive collection of over 24,000 scalable vector images, all created by 1200+ artists from around the world.
The Open Clip Art Library is an increasingly useful and powerful platform, through which, all work uploaded to the site is dedicated to the public through Creative Commons’ “Public Domain Dedicated”. Anyone can download and use the entire SVG library for any purpose, including both free and commercial works!
OCAL now boasts an easily navigable collection, made possible by new thumbnail previews. It has now become much easier to search and download clip art that suits any situation. The new site layout includes an updated theme, from Andy Fitzsimon, that emphasizes user interaction by placing more importance on the portal to upload created work, as well as displaying selections from the ever-growing collection.
Behind the scenes, members of Fabricatorz, including, among others, Bassel Safadi, Michi, Ronaldo Barbachano, and Brad Phillips, have helped push The Open Clip Art Library onto the Aiki Framework. This new PHP + MYSQL platform allows programmers to easily create and work with content management systems from the web.
Please help support the new Open Clip Art site launch by registering (if you haven’t already) and uploading artwork of your own!.
Read the entire Announcement 2.0 here and at the Fabricatorz post.
by Nathan Willis
The open source 3-D modeler Blender can perform so many different jobs that it can get a little intimidating. In addition to designing three-dimensional objects, Blender can handle rigging, character animation, kinematics, video editing, video game design, and in fact almost the entire tool chain required to produce a 3-D movie. Fortunately, if you have more modest goals in mind — say, simply creating a 3-D logo, Blender can do the job without forcing you through the entire learning curve … if you know where to look for help.
“The Blender user interface; even at start-up it can be intimidating to the new user, so it is helpful to run through a tutorial just to familiarize yourself with the tools.”
Office applications like OpenOffice.org can bring out the worst in people. The same people who wouldn’t dream of driving a car without a few lessons will start pounding away in a word processor as though it were a typewriter, ignoring basic features like styles and templates. In the end, they may produce the documents they want, but only with far more effort than is necessary. They might as well be pushing a car instead of turning the ignition key.
Nothing stops you if you really want to format manually, any more than anything prevents you from using the soles of your shoes to slow down a car instead of the brake. OpenOffice.org does nothing to stop you from indenting each new paragraph in Writer or setting each number format in a Calc cell on its own. For small, unusual documents, manual formatting may even be quicker.
By Bruce Byfield
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For your personal use only
Your free fillable Valentine’s correspondence set is here and ready for you to use immediately: a card, envelope round label (WL-350) seal and a wrap-around envelope label (WL-7000).
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Joan Vieweger, Co-Founder of Choclatique…chocolates out of the box!, provided us with some beautiful images to show how she uses Worldlabel labels for her merchandise. After you take a look at this packaging, you might remember that Valentine’s Day is just SIX DAYS away! Before you get caught short, you might visit Choclatique. They were Voted “Most Gifted Chocolatier” by the International Chocolate Salon last year!
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Clip Art of the Month for February 2010 will focus on Content regulation.
Whether one stands in favor of Apple’s products or against them, it’s impossible to deny Jobs and Company’s impact on our technological lives. Last week saw the unveiling of what Apple believes will become a “third category” of mobile computing: the iPad. The iPad aims at simplifying the user’s computing experience by merging elements of Apple’s existing laptop and phone releases.
In the new millennium, computing platforms have trended toward more open source solutions. While it may offer the end user a more simple and streamlined experience, the iPad also seems to assert Apple’s intention to focus on technology as a controlled gateway for proprietary consumption.
Images by Frector, adam_lowe, Minduka, flomar, and Tranberry (all above) demonstrate Apple’s influence on modern design and why it cannot be ignored. The reception of their latest product has been decidedly mixed. How will the introduction of the iPad affect the Open Clip Art Community? What ramifications might this have as open source computing progresses? Time will tell. In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts and continue supporting Open Clip Art Library by using and contributing vector artwork.
Clip Art of the month is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.
Cloud computing is all the rage these days. But while the idea of using your browser to access your applications and documents sounds like a great idea on paper, in practice there are all kinds of reasons to stick to your desktop software. Take OpenOffice.org, for example. None of the available Web-based word processors can compete with Writer when it comes to features and flexibility. But even if you don’t subscribe to the idea of ditching OpenOffice.org in favor of a Web-based productivity suite like Google Docs or Zoho Docs, you can still put some useful Web-based services to some practical use.
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OpenOffice.org is an excellent all-around productivity suite as it is, but you can add a few useful features using extensions to make it better suited for use in a business environment. Here are a handful of extensions worth considering if you are using OpenOffice.org as a business tool.
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