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I used to spend way too much time trying to figure out how to make a background tile seamless when I could have just googled and found the instructions online. Then almost by accident I came across some applications that let me make seamless and patterned background tiles so easily that I’ve become a little obsessed with them. Making background tiles is a little like putting together a puzzle except that it’s a puzzle with endless right combinations. Lots of fun when the software is so easy to use!

Here are three of my favorite tools for making background tiles. I’ll start with the simplest one;

• BgPatterns is a web app that lets you change colors, choose from a variety of shapes and add texture to background tiles that you can make, download and use. Some of my tiles look like this – or like this –
• At colourlovers.com ‘Seamless Lite’ is available to use online. Make tiles, color them and you are all set. ‘Seamless Studio’ the full version of the ‘lite’ program is available for a free fifteen day trail as well. It is an easy to use program with a clear, easy to understand and brief manual, and I have to admit it is a little addicting. Here are a couple of sample tiles made using Seamless Studio – and –
  Seamless Studio lets you upload your shapes that you create yourself to the program as well. The possibilities are endless. Colourlovers also offers a community and colour palette development software. It’s all a little much for me, but I did like Seamless Studio enough to get it for myself.
• Last but not least there’s this software that’s well, like a kaleidoscope. The trial version, which restricts the features available as well as only letting users download lower resolution tiles is available online at repperpatterns.com. Just hit the free demo button and give it a try. Beautiful patterns, automatic colour adjustments and endless variations from one image file. Very easy to learn and use. Here is one colourful sample – – and a less colourful one –

Well nobody needs as many seamless background tiles as there already are online. Now I know that making exactly what I need is faster than searching for it online. And these three little programs have caused me enough trouble. They encouraged my lazy artist days. . . no need to work at my art, I can just play endlessly at making patterns. Way to go guys! But seriously, thank you. Thank you so much!

I have been away from school for some time now and when I came across Zotero my first thought was, ‘Well guess I don’t need that anymore!’ Then I took a closer look and thought ‘Wow, this could be better than bookmarks!’ and it pretty much is.

Zotero was first released in 2006 as a Firefox extension. Now there are connectors that allow the standalone edition of Zotero to work with Safari and Chrome as well.

The standalone version of this software is an independant program that is currently still in beta development and is available for Windows, GNU/Linux and MacOS X operating systems. There are also a number of apps available for mobile devices. Check out the Zotero website to get the latest information on the development of this open source software produced by the Center for History and New Media of George Mason University.

Even if you are not a student, scholar or researcher Zotero is a useful tool for saving information to complete a project, whatever that project is. Before I added Zotero to my browser ideas for new posts tended to disappear in my bookmark files. Not that the bookmarks disappeared but there was no quick and easy way to add notes, images or other information that I needed to keep the idea alive.

It didn’t take very long to get comfortable with Zotero although I still need more time to explore all of its features. Even so, using this software has reduced the amount of time I spend copying and saving files and more importantly gives me one convenient place to store all my ‘idea’ information. I can add audio, video, PDFs, images and smapshots of web-pages as well as my own notes so I don’t forget what I was thinking of putting together with all that stuff.

Click on the icon that appears with books or articles from participating libraries or publishers such as Amazon.com or PubMed, and Zotero can automatically save the full reference information for that publication. It is also a useful tool for working with citations, though I haven’t explored that one yet myself.

The first 100MB of storage on the Zotero server network is free and you can automatically synchronize your data across any number of devices. Sharing by setting up either public or private groups is also possible.

And if you are a student, scholar, scientist or researcher you can check out the Research and Tools page of the Center for History and New Media and it is likely you will find even more useful software.