neat websites

colorblender.com allows you to play with color sliders, and it automatically calculates a 6-swatch color palette for you. it gives you both the rgb and html equivalents of the chosen colors, and it also gives you options to pick variations based on that color palette. you can even individually edit colors in the palette, and save palettes for future access. i find this tool extremely helpful in my design work… also if you’re doing something like trying to pick colors to paint a room, i can see how handy this would come in.

these folks built a life-sized game of mousetrap.

pandora.com is a really cool website that helps you discover music that you may not have heard before, based on your current tastes. you start by entering the name of an artist that you like, and your “personal radio station” immediately starts playing. keep adding artists or songs that you like, and the radio station refines itself to encompass more of what you might like. it plays a blend of the artists and songs that you’ve specifically named, and others you may or may not have heard before. there is a feedback system where you can indicate whether the current song does not fit on your “station” or whether you really like it. pandora adjusts what it plays based on that feedback. i’ve had a lot of fun with it.