animated GIFs
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Imgur now lets you easily make gorgeous GIFs from online videos
Are you an animated GIF virgin? Do you hang your head in shame when your friends share their custom made GIFs? If so, then the new video to GIF tool from the popular image hosting service Imgur might be perfect for you. All you need to do is plug in the URL of an online video (I tested it with several YouTube clips), choose a portion to animate, and wait while Imgur converts it. It's worth noting that you likely won't end up with a true animated GIF, though. Most of the time the tool spat out one of Imgur's new "GIFV" files, which loop like GIFs, but more closely resemble video files when it comes to sharing them. The big benefit of GIFV? It produces higher quality animated images with smaller file sizes than traditional GIFs. YouTube is testing out its own quick GIF conversion tool as well, but Imgur deserves credit for trying to evolve the archaic image format.
New York Congressman knows what the kids like: Trump GIFs
Remember last week when Speaker of the House John Boehner was raked over the coals for reducing a complex political argument to a series of glib Taylor Swift GIFs? Well, now it's New York representative Charlie Rangel's turn. The apparent congressman for life posted a direct response to Speaker Boehner's attack on Obama's free college plan, with a series of GIFs of his own -- these ones featuring Donald Trump. Does the congressman have some salient points about the benefits of making higher education more affordable and accessible? Probably. Are those points lost among a sea of head scratch-inducing GIFs? Yes. Like Boehner and others before him, the seemingly undefeatable Rangel (even in the face of multiple ethics violations and scandals) made the mistake of putting virality ahead of content.
John Boehner, Politics and the nuance of Taylor Swift GIFs
For an excellent example of how not to use the web to make a point one need look no further than Speaker of the House John Boehner. The Republican from Ohio took to the internet to lay out his argument against President Barack Obama's plan to provide free community college to millions of Americans. His chosen medium for conveying that message? Taylor Swift GIFs. Now, whether or not Swift endorsed the use of her image for spreading a political message is beside the point (though, I'm sure nobody asked her). What's more important is that the man who is next in line for the presidency after the vice president reduced a complex political argument to a series of 12 only barely appropriate animated GIFs.
Gifx adds animations to your photos to create movies, GIFs
Gifx grants anyone the ability to create animated movies and GIFs using a photo or video, plus custom animated effects that the app includes. Overlay one or multiple animations and play around with the opacity to get the desired result on the content you imported. Plus, optionally resize and rearrange the effects to fit specific portions of the image or add masks for more decoration. The app is free with in-app purchases for the iPhone. Animated GIFs were originally popular in the far earlier days of the Internet - I'm talking in the 1990s, but they were basic compared to what they are now. They've been slowly making a comeback for the past few years and now it's hard to visit a popular website without seeing one. Gifx is pretty bare bones in terms of functionality but it does have over 200 animated GIF effects to apply to your photos and videos. This is not the type of GIF creator for making short films or loops. Rather, Gifx is more like an enhancer, turning ordinary photos or footage into something a bit more decorative and flamboyant. Start off by importing an existing photo or video or snapping a new one with the camera, then head straight into the GIF creation process. For testing purposes, you're better off tapping "Free GIFs" to browse the preloaded selection. Most of the options are just wavy, trippy designs that loop continuously over the media in the background. The pink slider adjusts the transparency. Dragging all the way to the right completely hides the underlaying media, which arguably defeats the purpose. I found that in most cases, applying an effect with just about 10 percent opacity makes for a masterful look. It's as if an image itself has movement, as opposed to blatantly appearing as a random effect laid on top of it. Many of the effects have either Instagram icons or locks on them. That's because many of the effects require an in-app purchase to unlock. However, the Basic pack and Mixed pack are free to obtain by completing tasks like following Gifx on Instagram. Otherwise, to get the most bang for your buck, chances are you should take the plunge and buy the "Unlock All" pack, currently 50 percent off at US$3.99. The pack is both a curse and a blessing. It's a curse because many of the features it unlocks should really already be in the app. For instance, to save the images as animated GIFs of high-quality, you need to purchase the pack. For free, Gifx just saves the animations as low-quality, 15-second movies. Even masks cost money. It's almost a bit misleading that the title of the app has "GIF" in it, yet in order to authentically create one you have to pay up. Gifx works well and has decent animations, but most of its potential is hiding behind the in-app purchase. Without that, you get a few effects and the ability to essentially create movies. Gifx is really only worth your time if you splurge on unlocking everything it offers. It's available in the iPhone App Store.
Jeff: Screen sharing through GIFs
When you're trying to explain something to someone, often a screenshot isn't enough as you need to show how something progresses over time. Screencasting tools are wonderful, but the file sizes can border on the ridiculous and sharing can be an issue as a result. Along comes Jeff (US$9.99), a new Mac app that makes it drop-dead simple to capture a whole screen or a portion of it, then turn the video into a short GIF that makes sharing much more simple. Jeff is absurdly simple to use. Launch the app, and you'll see a menu bar icon - a J in a circle. Click on it, and a little dialog comes up. Follow the simple instructions by clicking the record button or use Shift-Command-5 to record a section of a screen or Shift-Command-6 to record all of a screen. For a quick example, I decided to do a search on the App Store for Solar City's new app, which I want to load onto my iPad so I can obsess about how much energy my PV panels are generating. Here's the GIF: (Note: the GIF may stop playing after one time through. To restart it, please clear your browser history (one hour is fine) and then reload the page) All I had to do is click the button, drag out a rectangle over the iTunes app, click a Start button, perform the actions I wanted to show, then click the Stop button. When setting up Jeff, I linked the app to Dropbox. After about two minutes, the completed GIF was sitting in Dropbox waiting to share. Jeff showed a small version of the GIF that I could click on to view it in a web browser, and there was also a button for copying a link to Dropbox. In addition, Jeff also supplies a number of other ways to share the link via email (the first image is also included), Messages, AirDrop and various forms of social media. Two features I'd like to see developer Robots & Pencils add in a future version of Jeff are 1) the ability to scale a capture to a preset size and 2) the ability to control how often screen captures occur. This would provide much more control over the size of the GIF file. Scaling in the Mac's Preview app is time-consuming after the fact and it would just be nice to be able to adjust a slider for frames per second as well. Other than that, I like Jeff (the app, and I also like Jeff Gamet, the blogger/podcaster) and think it's a great way to capture and share screens easily. Jeff is well worth the $10 if you often need to explain things to other people visually. Jeff requires OS X Yosemite 10.10 or later, so be sure your Mac is up to the task.
JibJab is back with a personalized GIF maker
Wise to the fact that even your mom is over animated e-cards, a denizen of an internet past is trying to reinvent itself. JibJab -- which rose to fame a a purveyor of political satire and "Starring You" video gift cards -- is today launching JibJab Messages, an iOS app that lets you personalize GIFs with your friends' faces, filters, and meme-style text.
A GIF is worth a thousand words thanks to an iOS custom keyboard
Admittedly there are some things better said with a GIF than with words. But the folks behind PopKey seem to think that everything can be said better with a short looped animation. The app is a custom keyboard for iOS 8 that swaps letters and numbers for your favorite reaction GIFs. Did your friend say something stupid? Why tell him he's an idiot with old fashioned words when Scar can do it so much better. Once it's available you'll be able to bring up PopKey simply by tapping the globe icon in the bottom of your iOS keyboard. Then you can choose from a host of hand-selected GIFs or even upload your own for a custom keyboard. You can browse your options either as images, or search by keywords like "clapping" or "facepalm." You will have to long press the image you want, then long press in the iMessage window to paste your GIF of choice, but it's definitely a lot quicker then firing up Safari, doing a Google image search, finding what you want, copying that, then opening your text message to reply. Sadly (or thankfully, depending on your perspective) there's no word on when PopKey will launch just yet, but you can sign up to be notified at the website.
Crush Tiny Titan's spirits in Madden 15 challenge
By now, you might have heard of Tiny Titan, one of the more adorable glitches to pop up recently in the Madden NFL series. The little sprout of a linebacker has the heart of a champion, but also has troubles fielding kick-offs and tackling runners. Rather than ignore the glitch entirely, EA Sports opted to turn Tiny Titan into a Madden Ultimate Team solo challenge in Madden 15. Those that log in to the card-collecting, team-building mode this weekend can play against a special Browns squad on rookie difficulty with the miniature phenom leading the defense. We'd say he bites on play action passes, but it's really more of a nibble. Beating the challenge gives players a Tiny Titan collectible item that can be sold for 1,000 coins, if you don't have any kindness left in your soul. [Image: EA Sports]
Feedback Loop: Amazon's new phone, trust issues with password managers and more!
Do you need a break from watching the World Cup? Good! Because the latest Feedback Loop is right here. Amazon released a new phone this week and we discuss if it meets our expectations; we speculate on what makes password-management apps trustworthy; Kris shares her thoughts on a new startup that aims to disrupt coin machines; we share our favorite browser extensions that protect our most personal data; and we get ridiculously excited about Twitter's support for animated GIFs. You can find all that and more below!
The Stilly-est camera app ever
no, no, No, No, NO! It all started innocently enough this morning when Dave Caolo pointed out a Tumblr page devoted to GIFs from an app named Stilly (US$1.99). Now, thanks to Dave's keen eye for the absurd, I have wasted untold minutes looking through a long page of GIFs and started making my own with Stilly. The app is simple, making an animated GIF of whatever motion happens to flash in front of your iPhone camera when you push the large red-and-yellow shutter button. You really have only one setting -- you can choose to change colors between your images, resulting in an even more jarring GIF than usual. The eyebrows of doom! Your final product is stored to the Photos app camera roll, and you have a choice of sharing the GIF to Tumblr or sending it as a message. Note that choosing the Tumblr destination actually gives you the opportunity to send your images to many more places: other camera apps, Google Drive, Dropbox, Path and more. The jittery GIFs won't be popular with everyone; some of them are almost enough to make you want to cough up a hairball. But Stilly is just enough fun to be worth the two bucks.
PBS traces the history of animated GIFs: deal with it (video)
PBS's Off Book has a new short doc available online called Animated GIFs: The Birth of a Medium which, as you may have guessed, traces the history and evolution of the animated GIF over the course of a very informative six and a half minutes. The makers don't settle the dispute over pronunciation (and, really, who could), but they do mine its origins as relic of internet eras past to a post-modern staple of web 2.0 culture. We could tell you more, but that would just ruin the fun. Head on after the break to watch the episode in full.
Safari Extension highlight: Stop animated GIFs, make your own CSS
Earlier today I was looking for a Safari Extensions that could stop animated GIFs, and another to allow me to override CSS on a particular page. After a fruitless search of the official Safari Extensions page, Google turned up both Deanimator and User CSS. Deanimator takes care of my first request. Namely, it stops animated GIFs dead. Meanwhile, User CSS lets me override a page's CSS. I can use it to change fonts or colors, hide ads and more. Both are quite useful. The next time you're searching for an extension to complete a particular task, consider checking out the Safari Extensions Tumblr site. That's a great site that keeps growing. As an aside: I've got 22 Safari extensions installed, and exactly half of them are designed to make the web less annoying.
