Tech at the speed of Warp

Some time ago I wrote about how some companies that have future in front of them are running out of money. It would seem that at least some of them are getting back on their feet. One of my favorite candidate when looking at the underdogs of Web 2.0 is definitely Litha-Paint. They are the only good vector based online drawing application that I know of.

Lately, Litha-Paint published a blog that follows the development of its application. One thing I noticed is that they described their "out of money, please donate" message as a joke, hmmm....fishing for money .. aa guys... Well played, well played. One constant theme is funding so if anyone has a ear for it please check it out. They deserve it.

They had a skype meeting with one possible investor but refused to fund as they needed to see them in person and ... as I figure ... have problems with getting visas for USA. Hmm... yep they are now on official US gov black list as hackers. A proper definition of what US gov considers a computer threat can be read here, trust me its interesting ... aaa ... opinion.
Litha-Paint changed server provider and are looking to get out of Alpha version. The long development cycle is understandable as they are trying to create a fully fledged vector based web application or at least I hope so. It is a giant task by any means. They are currently adding support for layers and if they manage to cram that in it would be a big step forward.

Any, guys please change the color, I mean ... green? and ultra green at that. Why green?

Best of luck....

Labels: Design, Money, Web 2.0

We can debate was the War in Iraq necessarily, did they have WMD etc. But, one thing is non debatable, people died. Iraq War Coalition Fatalities web site displays animated flash map of Iraq with one day per frame. Its fast and a scroll bar would be nice as you cant stop or rewind the animation which is a shame as it is really nicely done. Thous features would add whole different dimension to the animation making it a tool. Only thing you can control is which country's fatality's in Iraq you would like to see animated on the map.

Not only instant death on the battlefield is recorded and displayed but also death from injuries in hospitals. You will recognize these, they appear on different locations and sometimes even on sea, presumably a ship.

Data is gatherd from icasualties.org and geographical locations from www.globalsecurity.org. s
When this article was written the last update was 10/23/06.

Labels: Money, Visualisation

It is really sad to see companies that have innovative technology and services running out of money.
One example is litha-paint.com. I first found litha-paint when I was searching for a drawing application online that could beat paint brush but did not require any bells and whistles. I found litha-paint. Litha provided, or did provided, a unique service of drawing online using vectors much like Corel Draw. Of course it wasn’t as powerful as Corel but it provided an application that was unique and different then the rest of Web 2.0 community.
Now it is out of business, hopefully not for long.

Update: It seems that Litha was offered free hosting and will continue to push the limits of what is possible with Web 2.0. More info later.

Labels: Money, Web 2.0