IndieFeed

IndieFeed is a simple website. Each day of the week it posts a full length song in one of six genres. Sunday is alt rock, Monday is indie pop, Tuesday is hip hop, and so on. They take Saturdays off.

Its music player is simple. The page flips through each song silently by genre until you scroll over it or click to play. The player flips through the artwork that goes along with the album and also gives a short description of the song. And at the end of each song is a short, but informative review of the band in general. Each song is also available for free download, and most of the songs are archived.


IndieFeed is a spontaneous way to find new music. It is not a good way to find tons of new bands - TasteKid is better for that. But it is a great way to get a steady input of new music. It's gives a very filtered selection, so it's great if you don't have a lot of time. Also, IndieFeed accepts submissions, so you are very likely to hear something brilliant that isn't anywhere else simply because it isn't well known. IndieFeed is a fun website to visit every day, just to hear what's new.

Digital Cross-Processing

Often, I'm sad about having dull digital photos, but for various reasons, I don't have the time to go through and make a thoughtful edit.
I've found an Action for Photoshop that makes colorful photo edits in just seconds, by one click.

It's digital cross-processing.

Cross-processing is a technique that originated with film photography: during developing, the wrong chemicals were used, which causes colors to be switched, changed, or amplified. What's great about this Action is that it has many options. Within the one download are many ways to create cross-processed photos.

The four lower photos have been digitally cross-processed.
The top photo is the original.

Cross-processing is a popular technique among artistic film photographers, particularly lomographers. Cross-processed Lomo film yields ridiculous colors.

Photo by Teppo.

This Photoshop Action is very useful for making nice-looking photos very quickly, but it's even better when used as a tool for making a thoughtful edit. When the action is used on a duplicated layer, the layer can be played around with. Different blending modes and transparencies produce different effects, and typical photo-editing tricks can also be applied.

Poladroid

I found a really great application, which works for both Mac and PC. It's called Poladroid. It easily turns your JPEG images into digital polaroids. But it's quirky. Like an actual polaroid, these polaroids take time to develop, and if you shake it, it develops faster. But the wait is worth it, because the images it produces are great.

It's still in beta testing, though, so it has a few problems. The application doesn't automatically come to the front when switching to it from another application. But other than that, this is a brilliant application.

This app is designed for people who have an interest in old, lo-fi photography, for people who are nostalgic about a dying medium, or for people who just like interesting looking photos. This is a seriously fun app for anyone who likes to play with images.

Poladroid is already making its way around social-networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, but it's still in its Early Adapter stage. It's starting to tip. It's not super popular just yet, but I imagine it soon will be, considering the growing photo-editing trend (Picassa, Picnik, etc.). I anticipate that in a few years, there will be editors like this for tons of other types of old photos. Already there is one to make photos look like they were from the 1800's.