Almost every printer in the world prints business cards. Many will print business cards cheaply. And if you want to print your own business cards all you need are some blank ones and a good quality printer.
But what if you want a business card that will really make you stand out? And — further — what if you aren’t a graphic designer and if you don’t want these business cards to cost a small fortune? Fortunately, there are a handful of cool websites where you can create unusual business cards that will wow that potential client or business partner — and do so inexpensively.
A review of Spot Cool Stuff’s six favorites:
Continue →
Kids’ drawings are no longer stuck existing only as, well, drawings. The internet, together with 3D printers and other inexpensive personalized production methods, have created a cottage industry companies that can transform your kid’s artwork into a stuffed animal or a customized carpet or, now, a sculpture.
That last item is thanks to Barcelona-based start-up, Crayon Creatures.
Continue →
Moving into a new place, or doing some interior redecorating, and not quite sure how to arrange the furniture? You could drag your sofa, tables and chairs around your home. Or try an approach that faster—and less painful for your back: dragging your sofa, tables and chairs around with your computer mouse. That becomes an easy and fun proposition at the new website awkwardly named The Make Room.
Continue →
A decade from now word clouds may longer be popular. As we write, they are all the vogue.
Word clouds (also sometimes called tag clouds or weighted clouds) are visual representations text data that display frequently used words or phrases. The larger the word or phrase in a word cloud that word appears in the source.
Some websites use world clouds as a means to show what content they have. Some news outlets use world clouds to analyze a speech or political debate. And now you can make your own word cloud using this cool website: Wordle.
Continue →
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. London’s Tate and National Gallery. New York City’s MoMA and Frick Collection. The State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
To experience those art museums there is there is not—and Spot Cool Stuff believes will never be—a better alternative to traveling to each and visiting in person. But Google may have developed the second best way of experiencing the world’s greatest art museums: by touring them on your computer via the Google Art Project website.
Continue →
The U.S. dollar—official tender in the United States as well as Panama, Liberia, East Timor and a handful of other countries—is one of the world’s most widely used currencies. Its bills are also widely regarded as one of the world’s ugliest. To help spur a monetary makeover Richard Smith, a creative strategy consultant, launched a website to collect ideas for new notes: The Dollar ReDe$ign Project.
Of the various designs that have been submitted to the site, one of Spot Cool Stuff’s favorites most also happen to be the most controvertial.
Continue →
Spot Cool Stuff laments the general direction children’s toys have taken away from requiring imagination. Surely, part of the issue has been the proliferation of online gaming websites aimed at kids.
But if websites have been part of the problem maybe they can be part of the solution? That’s the idea behind the Israel-based start-up Shidonni.
Shidonni has a variety of fun, imagination-enhancing online games for children. Kids can draw animals, for example, upload the drawing to the Shindonni site, and then have their animal creation roam around the virtual Shindonni world for others users to see.
And here’s our favorite part: On Shidonni you can take a child’s drawing of an imaginary creature and then turn it into a real life stuffed animal!
Continue →
