Carve a Virtual Jack o' Lantern

Hey Halloweenies. Just two days to the spookiest holiday of the year. Get into the spirit with a little online pumpkin carving!

Odosketch

Dust off your beret and get to work. Odosketch is an online tool that let's you create very natural sketches that look like they were done with colored pencils. It tracks your movements as you draw, so when you're done you can watch a video of your sketch being created.

Some of the featured sketches are truly amazing. Especially as someone who isn't an artist it's fascinating to me to watch the process people use to create these amazing images.

Design Your Own Domestic Reform

Greetings Web Diversions fans, from your Los Angeles correspondent. Web D headquarters is still settling in after the relocation but we feel we've made you wait long enough . We hope to bring you more regular posts from here out.

In preparation for Barak Obama's upcoming relocation you can deck out his new digs in fine Ikea style.

Ikea's Embrace Change '09 contest supplies you with a Flash version of the oval office and an assortment of tables, chairs, and even an Obama family dog. Design your room and then send your suggestions to your friends, enter it in Ikea's room design contest, or send it to the White House directly from the site.

Free. Will. Power.: Cool videos and T-shirt Design Contest

Naral Pro-Choice America has launched a new website, Free.Will.Power, to get younger audiences involved in the issue of reproductive rights. It features 3 videos of spoken-word artists with awesome soundtracks by DJ Spooky. Here's one that launched today:



(Side note: as of today, YouTube now supports larger video dimensions. Jams.)

They also have a t-shirt design contest. The winner gets $1,000 and their design will become the official T-shirt of Free.Will.Power. Comment with a link to your entry so we'll know to vote for you!

Design Your Own Tequila Bottle

1800 Tequila is letting you design your own bottle. Just upload your artwork and rotate, re-size, and position it to fit on a bottle. Once you're done you're automatically entered into a contest to win $10,000 and appear in an ad campaign. Also, if you're feeling flush, you can pay $475.00 (not including shipping) to have the bottle you designed created and shipped to you. This is especially silly when you see the tiny, tiny print on the bottom of the buy page that says "For legal reasons, your custom bottle will not contain 1800 tequila". So $475.00 for an empty bottle? What a deal...

And coming soon, the website will let you design your own "kicks". Web Diversions will keep you posted...

Make Your Own Demotivation Poster

Ah, the ubiquitous motivational poster: high school counselors love them, middle management loves them, and whoever decorated my dentist's waiting room loves them.

But for snarky, pessimistic people like me there's Despair, Inc., which makes demotivation posters and calendars. And now they're giving you the chance to make your own demotivation posters. Just upload a picture, choose your font and colors, and add your own funny headline and caption. Then you can download the image for free or, for $12.95, you can order an 11" x 14" poster.

CONTEST ALERT!!!

We want to see what you come up with! Post your image online and put a link to it in the comment section of this post. We'll pick the 3 we like best and post them on Web Diversions. Here's one we made:

  

Happy Valentines Day from Web Diversions!

A bonus Thursday post. Why? Because we love you, silly!

This year, celebrate V-day by making your own Valentine's day candy heart!

frank and beams

Sure, Frank Lloyd Wright's butler set fire to his home and ax murdered his wife and step children while the flames raged, but he can put that all behind him now by helping you design a virtual home.

At Architect Studio 3D you can design a house with some tips from Mr. Wright. It starts by picking your "client", whose needs you will attempt to meet when designing (or you can just ignore them and go hog wild building your dream house). From there you get to choose location, design the exterior, landscape, and design the interior, from the walls to the leather chair in the reading nook.

To be honest, the selection of materials isn't what it could be, but for a free program it's well developed. You can change from floor plan view to a 3D view that allows you to move through the house, changing your view, using your mouse. When you're done, you can tour your house and add it to the "Design Gallery".

Design Your Own Pool

Are you one of those people who thinks the most enjoyable part of playing The Sims is designing houses, right down to the little patch of daisies around the mailbox?

At swimmingpool.com you can design your own pool, including patio, landscaping, and fun accesories like water slides and hot tubs. You can even add a barbeque. It's all done by just clicking and dragging. A relaxing way to waste some time.

http://www.swimmingpool.com/