Gigamaster

The Miserable Ones

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:30:00 PST

Les Misérables, (literally "The Miserable Ones", translated variously from the French as The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. It follows the lives and interactions of several French characters over a seventeen-year period in the early nineteenth century, starting in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion.

The novel focuses on the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his experience of redemption. It examines the nature of law and grace, and expatiates upon the history of France, architecture of Paris, politics, moral philosophy, antimonarchism, justice, religion, and the types and nature of romantic and familial love. The story is historical fiction because it contains factual and historic events. Contrary to what some believe, it does not use the French Revolution as a backdrop. The French Revolution took place in the eighteenth century; Les Miserables takes place in the nineteenth century. The only "revolution" depicted is the June Rebellion, a student uprising.

Les Misérables is known to many through its numerous stage and screen adaptations, most notably the stage musical of the same name.

Watch on line

Les Misérables (English subtitles) part 1

Les Misérables (English subtitles) part 2

Director : Josée Dayan
Writers : Didier Decoin, Victor Hugo (novel)
Casting : Gérard Depardieu, Christian Clavier and John Malkovich
Country: France, Italy, Spain, Germany, USA
Language: French, English
Release Date: 2000, 7 January 2001 (USA)

Les Miserables - 25th Anniversary Tour

2010 marked the 25th anniversary year for Les Misérables.
Les Misérables is now the longest running musical in the world and in October 2010, celebrated its 25th anniversary with a theatrical first - three different productions of the same musical staged at the same time in one city - http://www.lesmis.com

Les Misérables (wikipedia)
Internet Movie Data Base

Flight Assembled Architecture

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:29:00 PST

Zurich, 1st december 2011 the first installation to be built by flying machines opened its doors to the public.

The installation, called "Flight Assembled Architecture", was conceived and built by teams led by Fabio Gramazio & Matthias Kohler as well as Raffaello D'Andrea at the ETH Zurich. It illustrates a radically new way of thinking about materializing architecture: Use a multitude of mobile flying agents working in parallel and acting together as a scalable production means. As you can see in the video, the quadrocopters are programmed to interact, lift, transport and assemble small modules in order to erect a building.

The tower is actually a 1:100 model of a "vertical village" with a height of 600 meters and housing 30'000 inhabitants. To learn more about the technology (control architecture, collision avoidance and freeway based flight, prick placement, safety systems, etc.) and architectural aspects (geographic location, transit times, access plans, structural and wind tunnel analysis, etc.), have a look at Flying Machine Enabled Construction

Can we see the fourth dimension?

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 23:00:00 PST

Our world is three-dimensional: width, depth, and height. Humans cannot "see" the 4th dimension only project it in the 3 dimensional world.

Lets start with the popular game Tetris

4D-TRIS is an alteration of the well-known Tetris game. The game field is extended to 4D space, which has to filled up by the gamer with 4D hyper cubes. The software is written in C and uses OpenGL and SDL ..

Introduction

In a normal 2D tetris the goal is to drop down blocks of squares in a grid, and fill lines with these squares. There are 3D Tetris games (based on BlockOut). In these games you have to drop solids built up from cubes to a 3D grid (like a well) and fill its planes. Now the next step is the 4D Tetris. Here you have to handle 4D hyper-cubes and fill 3D spaces of the “hyperwell”.

The problem is in creating 4D Tetris, that we can see only 3D and we have only 2D displays (yet). 3D tetris solves the problem by perspective projection. We see the upped side of the cubes fully, represented with 2D squares, and they are shrinking by falling down to the floor plane. If we use two perspective projection in a series, we can represent the 4D gamespace also. In this case, we see the upper “side” cube of the hypercube, and these hypercubes shriking down to the “floor” cube of the game space.

Explanation of the game and 4D
Project site / download site
Music : Simzer, Orient - Cybe'jana

More 4-D Game Projects

Snake 4-D

This game was created by Pella, a biologist who wanted to learn to program, fascinated by the 4th dimension, the rotation of hypercubes and hypersphere.

"after founding the function to project the 4th dimension I wanted to do something interactive with it, something where one can learn where and how the object moves in a 4 dimensional space. So I came up with the idea of a simple game: Snake ."

The game is based on the nokia snake, the rules are the same as the original game...
1. eat food, 2. don't hit the border, 3. don't cross yourself.

Downloads : There are 3 version of the game...
(you don't need to download all three to play)

Mac OSx : Snake4d | Snake 4d Stereoscopic | Snake 4d youtube version | All
Windows : Snake4d | Snake 4d Stereoscopic | Snake 4d youtube version |
Unix: Snake4d | Snake 4d Stereoscopic | Snake 4d youtube version |

Credits
Four-Space Visualization of 4D Objects
A thesis by Steven Richard Hollasch
4D Maze Game
John McIntosh, November 2002/February 2008

A graphic novel on the nature of mathematical truth

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:00:00 PST

According to the Logicomix book’s web site:

Inspired by the epic story of the quest for the Foundations of Mathematics, this was a heroic intellectual adventure most of whose protagonists paid the price of knowledge with extreme personal suffering and even insanity. The book tells its tale in an engaging way, at the same time complex and accessible. It grounds the philosophical struggles on the undercurrent of personal emotional turmoil, as well as the momentous historical events and ideological battles which gave rise to them.

Told from the perspective of logician, philosopher, and pacifist Bertrand Russell, the book weaves together the trials and tribulations of thinkers such as Frege and Wittgenstein while exploring topics as diverse as logic, the institution of marriage, and predicate calculus.

Web Site : Logicomix

Employees Motivation Demystified

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 21:30:00 PST

Employee motivation in times of crisis.

What does our CEO get if he does a good job?
- A fifty million dollar bonus.

What do I get if I do a good job?
- More work.

What's your best guess about why I'm not motivated?
- Bad genes.

Via Dilbert

Why Two Individuals Might not Cooperate

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 21:00:00 PST

The prisoner's dilemma is a canonical example of a game, analyzed in game theory that shows why two individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interest to do so.

It was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at RAND in 1950.
Albert W. Tucker formalized the game with prison sentence payoffs and gave it the "prisoner's dilemma" name (Poundstone, 1992). A classic example of the prisoner's dilemma is presented as follows:

Two men are arrested, but the police do not possess enough information for a conviction. Following the separation of the two men, the police offer both a similar deal—if one testifies against his partner (defects/betrays), and the other remains silent (cooperates/assists), the betrayer goes free and the cooperator receives the full one-year sentence. If both remain silent, both are sentenced to only one month in jail for a minor charge. If each 'rats out' the other, each receives a three-month sentence. Each prisoner must choose either to betray or remain silent; the decision of each is kept quiet. What should they do?

Zero-Sum Game

A situation in which one participant's gains result only from another participant's equivalent losses.
The net change in total wealth among participants is zero; the wealth is just shifted from one to another.
A zero-sum game is also called a strictly competitive game. Options and future contracts are examples of zero-sum games (excluding costs). For every person who gains on a contract, there is a counter-party who loses. Gambling is also an example of a zero-sum game. A stock market, however, is not a zero-sum game because wealth can be created in a stock market.

In contrast, Sion and Wolfe gave an example of a zero sum game that has no value. Zero sum games with a finite number of pure strategies are known to have a minimax value (originally proved by John von Neumann) but this is not necessarily the case if the game has an infinite set of strategies. The existence of such zero-sum games is interesting because many of the results of game theory become inapplicable if there is no minimax value. The game is equivalent to a continuous Colonel Blotto game.

Nash equilibrium

In game theory, Nash equilibrium (named after John Forbes Nash, who proposed it) is a solution concept of a game involving two or more players, in which each player is assumed to know the equilibrium strategies of the other players, and no player has anything to gain by changing only his own strategy unilaterally. If each player has chosen a strategy and no player can benefit by changing his or her strategy while the other players keep theirs unchanged, then the current set of strategy choices and the corresponding payoffs constitute a Nash equilibrium.

Stated simply, Amy and Phil are in Nash equilibrium if Amy is making the best decision she can, taking into account Phil's decision, and Phil is making the best decision he can, taking into account Amy's decision. Likewise, a group of players are in Nash equilibrium if each one is making the best decision that he or she can, taking into account the decisions of the others. However, Nash equilibrium does not necessarily mean the best payoff for all the players involved; in many cases, all the players might improve their payoffs if they could somehow agree on strategies different from the Nash equilibrium: e.g., competing businesses forming a cartel in order to increase their profits.

The Bowerbird's Dilemma

While reading about game theory over on Wikipedia, Henry Woodbury followed a link to The Bowerbird's Dilemma and nicely shared The Mathematical Cartoons of Larry Gonick, a very educational and funny collection of cartoons.

Your browser's zoom-in option might be useful here!

Prisoner's dilemma
Game Theory
Theory Of Games And Economic Behavior
1944, complete online edition
The Mathematical Cartoons of Larry Gonick
Bowerbird - Wikipedia

World Giving Index 2011

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 20:10:00 PST

This is the second edition of the 'World Giving Index', the largest study into charitable behaviour across the globe involving 153 countries in total.

Using data from Gallup's Worldview World Poll, the report is based on three measures of giving behaviour - giving money, volunteering time and helping a stranger.

The results show that the USA is officially the most charitable nation in the world, moving from fifth place last year to first place this year. Ireland is the second most charitable country and Australia the third.
Overall the World Giving Index, demonstrates that the world has become a more charitable place over the last 12 months - with a 2% increase in the global population 'helping a stranger' and a 1% increase in people volunteering.

The analysis includes:

the global view
changes in the three giving behaviours
regional comparisons
comparisons between 2010 and 2011 data

Download a copy of the report (.pdf 1.57MB)
Download a copy of our world map (.pdf 351KB)

Site : CAF online

Interactive Map : World Population

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 20:00:00 PST

The size of each territory shows the relative proportion of the world's population living there.

In Spring 2000 world population estimates reached 6 billion; that is 6 thousand million. The distribution of the earth's population is shown in this map.

India, China and Japan appear large on the map because they have large populations. Panama, Namibia and Guinea-Bissau have small populations so are barely visible on the map.

Population is very weakly related to land area. However, Sudan which is geographically the largest country in Africa, has a smaller population than Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa and Tanzania.

Note: Many of the maps' subjects relate to people, so this map serves as a good reference map for comparison with many other maps.

Site : World Mapper

Anatomy of a Vegan

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:00:00 PST

Becoming a vegan is certainly not without its challenges. The diet can be quite strict and hard to get used to for those of us who have had meat all our lives. You should always do your research before adopting a new diet. Becoming a vegan is more about changing your lifestyle. This infographic by Infographic List shows what vegans are all about:

Via Best Infographics
Credit : Infographic List

How Social Media is Ruining our Minds

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:57:00 PST

Assisted Living Today has put together an infographic that discusses how social media is changing our brain. With more people relying on the Internet to get things done these days, scientists are wondering how these technologies affect how our brains work. Social sites such as Twitter and Facebook do have the potential to change the way we think and behave. Life as we know is speeding up and changing forever. That’s why the average attention span has become so short these days.

Via Best Infographics

The King's Little Pathway

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:48:00 PST

I was looking for a new challenge and came across, El Caminito del Rey, The King's little pathway is a walkway, now fallen into disrepair, pinned along the steep walls of a narrow gorge in El Chorro, near Álora in the province of Málaga, Spain. The name is often shortened to Camino del Rey (King's pathway).

In 1901 it became apparent that workers at the hydroelectric power plants at Chorro Falls and Gaitanejo Falls needed a walkway to cross between the falls, to provide for transport of materials, and for the inspection and maintenance of the channel. Construction of the walkway took four years and it was finished in 1905. In 1921 King Alfonso XIII crossed the walkway for the inauguration of the dam Conde del Guadalhorce and it became known by its present name.

Filmed with a Sony handycam by Daniel Ahnen who had a deadly accident May 2011.

The walkway is one metre (3 feet and 3 inches) in width, and rises over 100 metres (350 feet) above the river below. Constructed of concrete resting on steel rails supported by stanchions at around 45 degrees into the rock face, it is currently in a highly deteriorated state and there are numerous sections where part or all of the concrete top has collapsed. The result is large open air gaps that are bridged only by narrow steel beams or other support fixtures. Very few of the original handrails exist but a safety-wire runs the length of the path.

Several people have lost their lives on the walkway in recent years and after two fatal accidents in 1999 and 2000, the local government closed both entrances, but not the gift shop.

In June 2011, the regional government of Andalusia and the local government of Málaga agreed to share costs of restoration (including car parking and a museum) of €9 million. The project will take approximately three years to complete. Many of the original features will remain in place and the new materials that are used will be in keeping with the old design.

The King's Little Pathway 3D Virtual Tour

If your hands didn't sweat...
watch these Russian Kids having fun!

Last News about Daniel Ahnen
- No trace of missing German trekker yet
Dehradun, May 18 (PTI) The German trekker, who went missing from Ghastoli area in Chamoli district eight days ago, has not been traced so far, an official said today.The search operation launched with the help of Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) to locate Daniel Ahnen continues, but he remains untraceable till now, Chief Development Officer of Chamoli, V Shanmugham said.Ahnen was member of a 73-member team which had left Joshimath for trekking on the Arbatatal route on May 1. The German accidentally slipped and fell into a gorge near the base camp of Ghastoli on May 10.There were four foreigners -- one Italian, one Swiss and two Germans, four helpers and 65 porters in the team, he said.The team was scheduled to return on May 26 but cut short the trek following the accident, Shanmugham added.

No trace of missing German trekker yet, 18 May 2011
Daniel ist tot, 5 August 2011 (German)
Daniel Ahnen's video Credits : Michael Darius for the soundtrack "Magic of politics". Lyrics J.F.Kennedy
Facebook Page of Daniel Ahnen
http://www.youclimb.de/

Commodore 64 Training

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:20:00 PST

One of my first computing experiences happened with a Commodore 64, then a 128 shared with my bro.
By that time, we used to say "if you want to play, code your games". We had a lot of fun sharing tapes and disks with friends. At school I made my first digital work and print a tiger head on a Mac. Good memories ^_^

Commodore 64 Training Tape with Jim Butterfield

During the C64's lifetime, sales totalled between 12.5 and 17 million units, making it the best-selling single personal computer model of all time. For a substantial period of time (1983–1986), the C64 dominated the market with between 30% and 40% share and 2 million units sold per year, outselling the IBM PC clones, Apple Inc. computers, and Atari 8-bit family computers. Sam Tramiel, a later Atari president and the son of Commodore's founder, said in a 1989 interview "When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years."

Part of its success was because it was sold in retail stores instead of electronics stores. Commodore produced many of its parts in-house to control supplies and cost. It is sometimes compared to the Ford Model-T automobile for its role in bringing a new technology to middle-class households via creative mass-production.

There are many interesting C64 sites containing C64 related things. One special kind of them are C64 related news servers. They write about C64 game remakes, about C64 related web pages, about new C64 related PC software and about all kind of C64 related retro activities.

www.c64.sk
http://www.lemon64.com/
http://www.commodorefree.com/
http://www.doperoms.com/
What is Your Computer History?
Amiga.org

Charts of Euro-Zone Crisis

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:12:00 PST

A series of excellent annotated charts on the main indicators of the European crisis.

Slideshow

The Wall Street Journal

Interest Rates from 1831 to 2011

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:27:00 PST

An interesting long term perspective of interest rates back to 1831

Fascinating chart from Jim Bianco, looking at interest rates back nearly 2 centuries.

Source : Bianco Research LLC

25 Rules of Disinformation

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 13:33:00 PST

From Twenty-Five Ways To Suppress Truth: The Rules of Disinformation (Includes The 8 Traits of A Disinformationalist) by H. Michael Sweeney. These 25 rules are everywhere in media, from political debates, to television shows, to comments on a blog.

Consciousness TV
Full article

Apocalypse Now [1979]

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 12:37:00 PST

Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic war film set during the Vietnam War, directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen), of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando).

Plot

The film drew attention for its lengthy and troubled production. Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse documented Brando's showing up on the set overweight, Sheen's heart attack, and extreme weather destroying several expensive sets. The film's release was postponed several times while Coppola edited millions of feet of footage.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Apocalypse Now has a 99% "Certified Fresh" rating and was received with critical acclaim. Its cultural impact and its philosophical themes have been extensively discussed. Honored with the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama, the film was also deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" and selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 2001.

Adaptation

Although inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the film deviates extensively from its source material. The novella, based on Conrad's real experiences as a steam paddleboat captain in Africa, is set in the Congo Free State during the 19th century.[6] Kurtz and Marlow (who is named Willard in the movie) both work for a Belgian trading company that brutally exploits its native African workers.

When Marlow arrives at Kurtz's outpost, he discovers that Kurtz has gone insane and is lording over a small tribe as a god. The novella ends with Kurtz dying on the trip back and the narrator musing about the darkness of the human psyche: "the heart of an immense darkness".

In the novella, Marlow is the pilot of a river boat sent to collect ivory from Kurtz's outpost, only gradually becoming infatuated with Kurtz. In fact, when he discovers Kurtz in terrible health, Marlow makes an effort to bring him home safely. In the movie, Willard is an assassin dispatched to kill Kurtz.

Ref.: IMDB, Wikipedia

War - Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 12:05:00 PST

The Wall Street Journal interactive chart features dots that can be clicked for a short biography of the dead soldier.

Interactive Chart

As of August 27, 2003, deaths since Bush declared the end of the war exceeded those during the invasion.
Updated daily.

Source :
The Wall Street Journal
Associated Press

SOA : School of Assassins [USA]

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 11:13:00 PST

Inside the School of Assassins

A school dedicated to teaching torture, to educating soldiers on how to rape and murder American and assassinate South America people; an institution whose mission is to demonstrate how to ‘disappear’ innocent civilians with total impunity.

Now imagine it’s funded with American taxpayer dollars and that it’s located on American soil. But you don’t have to imagine, because for the past 62 years, the School of the Americas has done exactly that.
From Pinochet's soldiers in Chile, D'Aubuisson's death squads in El Salvador, Banzer's minions in Bolivia, Galtieri's operatives in Argentina and Rios Montt's soldiers in Guatemala to the present-day generals responsible for the coup in Honduras and the drug war killings in Colombia, the School of the Americas has a dark legacy. Renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the school has graduated 65,000 soldiers from 18 countries.

Founded to fight communism in the Western Hemisphere, it quickly became known as the School of the Assassins. But for the past 20 years, Jesuit priest Roy Bourgeois has watched over its gates and held its graduates accountable for their crimes. The School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch) began with just 10 activists in a small apartment across the street from Ft. Benning in the US State of Georgia.

"I think that as Americans, we have a particular responsibility when our government has been involved in a lot of atrocities throughout history, but even more so today when our military aid is not being used in accountable ways," said Charity Ryerson, an activist with SOA Watch who spent six months in federal prison for intentionally trespassing on Ft. Benning to draw attention to the school's crimes.

SOA Movie

Four students from the University of Illinois at Chicago embarked on a trip to attend the November SOA Vigil hosted by the SOA Watch at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia. This site documents our journey and experiences there and seeks to educate and raise awareness about the School of the Americas.

Father Roy: Inside the School of Assassins

The activist priest Father Roy Bourgeois campaigns to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas.

Students Against School of the Americas

http://www.pbs.org/itvs/globalvoices/

http://www.soaw.org/

Touch Screen Made of Paper Invented by Japanese

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 05:47:00 PST

Human touch gives the printed butterfly a color

The technique is called polychrome paper computing. Invented by Kohei Tsuji and Akira Wakita of Japan’s Keio University, it involves using paper that changes color thanks to temperature-sensitive liquid crystal ink contained in tiny microscopic capsules. It works similar to plastic touch screens. A component detects small changes in electricity caused by touching. In this case, it's a thin sheet of copper foil. A paste of silver acts like an electrode and a paste of carbon acts as a heating element.

Anabiosis is a pictorial artwork based on the polychrome paper computing technology. In this work, human touch gives the printed butterfly a color. Adalbert Seitz (1860-1938), an Entomologist of Germany, has edited "The Macrolepidoptera of the World", 16 part series of lithograph of butterflies and moths from the world. The butterflies created by Seitz, has a presence and beauty as if they are alive. Anabiosis is developed to give a dynamic aesthetics to a beautiful butterfly Seitz has drawn on paper. By touching a butterfly on a piece of paper, this gives a feeling of a resurrection by parting a life of human into a butterfly.

For more information visit the website,
http://metamo.sfc.keio.ac.jp/project/anabiosis/

(C) Wakita Lab. Keio University, SFC.

Free Online Image Editor : FotoFlexer

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 05:30:00 PST

FotoFlexer is another free online image editor. It’s a fast and easy photo touch-ups and basic editing.
As with most of the other web image editors, it has integration with the major photo sharing and online community sites. FotoFlexer does have a great selection of photo effects, shapes, retouch, doodling, etc.

FotoFlexer Open API

The FotoFlexer API provides a simple interface for external websites to harness the power of FotoFlexer. Utilizing minimal code, any website can add industry-leading online image editing capabilities. Possible uses include:

Photo Repositories
Dating Sites
Social Networks
Online Auctions
Classifieds
And more!

There is no registration process, no API keys, and no REST or SOAP. Setup is a breeze!
FotoFlexer even provides sample code to get you up and running in no time.
To get started, read this guide, download the Integration Kit, and view the live API demo.
Visit the Developer Center for more info.

http://fotoflexer.com/

Free Online Image Editor : Pixlr

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 01:47:00 PST

Pixlr, the most popular online photo editor in the world!

The Pixlr API enables web developers to use Pixlr applications on their own site. Everything that is done on Pixlr site can be done on yours. Added advanced image editing capabilities is very easy.

Using the API is completely free.

How it works

The /editor and /express pages takes special parameters either as query string or form parameters. You don't have to do anything special to get the application to recognize the parameters, Pixlr checks for them on every request.

Javascript library

You can use the parameters specified below in anyway you want, but if you just want something simple and quick Pixlr's javascript library is probably the thing to use.
You have some examples on how to use the js library: developer.pixlr.com
You can download the library here.

http://pixlr.com/

Download Pixlr-o-matic for iPhone and iPad, Android device , Windows and OSX, Facebook or as a Chrome web app.

Free Online Image Editor : SumoPaint

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:23:00 PST

Add Sumo Paint to Your Website in minutes!

The Partner programm enables you to customize, re-brand and control Sumo Paint from your own website. With tons of advanced features, it's the web's most robust customizable image editor.

Open, Edit and Save
You can use Sumo Paint to open, edit and save images back to your website.

Customize Interface
Define how Sumo Paint looks on start up. You can hide the controls, choose the visible panels and maximize the image panel to full screen.

Customize File Menu
Remove any elements from the file menu and customize it to suit your specific needs.

Customize Default Image
You can define Sumo Paint to start up with your own template image or with a customizable default image.

Your Service - Your Logo
Make Sumo Paint truly your own by branding it with your logo and service name. Make the logo a link and get traffic to your site from your paint application.

Simple Tool for Setup
The setup is done with one simple visual tool. No programming needed, this could not get any easier!

Embed with iframe
You can open Sumo Paint into a seperate window, or house it inside your website

SumoPaint online
http://www.sumopaint.com/app/

SumoPaint Partner - Free and Pro
http://www.sumopaint.com/getpartner/

The web is what you make of it

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 23:47:00 PST

Tanjore - its one of the most creative Chrome's adverts !

Inspired by the real story of G. Rajendran, an artist from Tamil Nadu (Southern India) who used the web to bring the dying art of "Tanjore" paintings back to life and became a successful businessman in the process. The art is supposed to have originated in 1600 A.D and is an important part of the local social and cultural heritage.

Movie : Miss Bala 2011

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:40:00 PST

Miss Bala - Mexico's official submission to the 2012 Academy Awards.

Director: Gerardo Naranjo
Genre: Action/Drama
Language: Spanish with English subtitles
Year : 2011
Cast: Stephanie Sigman, Miguel Couturier, James Russo, Irene Azuela, Noe Hernandez

This film explores the many extremes of modern Mexican society when the world of beauty pageants and the current drug war collide. Stunning Laura, the only witness to a night-club massacre by a group of narcos, realizes her goal of becoming Miss Baja California - although the gang's hand in the coronation makes it fall short of what she had dreamed it would be. Laura becomes irrevocably absorbed into the mechanism of a powerful Tijuana drug cartel, and is used injudiciously for the purposes of forwarding their economic regime.

Official Site: http://www.missbala.com/

Oh My God - Hysteria 2011

xoopserver@gmail.com (Nuno Luciano) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:30:00 PST

A romantic comedy about the invention of the vibrator.
Based on a hysterical true story. So British ^_^

Produced by the all-female trio of Sarah Curtis, Judy Cairo and Tracey Becker

Director : Tanya Wexler
Writers : Jonah Lisa Dyer, Stephen Dyer, Howard Gensler
Stars : Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy and Jonathan Pryce
Year : 2011

Plot

Hysteria is a British romantic comedy film directed by Tanya Wexler.
The film, set in the Victorian era, is about the invention of the vibrator.
The film's title refers to the once-common medical diagnosis of female hysteria.

Sony Pictures Classics announced, November 10, 2011, that they have acquired all US and South African rights to HYSTERIA. The film had its World Premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival.

HYSTERIA, a mischievously inspired romantic comedy, is based on the surprising truth of how Mortimer Granville came up with the world’s first electro-mechanical vibrator in the name of medical science.

“HYSTERIA is meant to be both funny and smart. It’s really a movie that says you are in charge of your own happiness,” says Director Wexler. “Sony Classics is the perfect company to unleash HYSTERIA into American movie theatres. They understand ‘smart and funny’ movies better than anyone else out there. They are just what the doctor ordered.”

“HYSTERIA is a winner on all counts. It is funny, fresh and warm. From director Tanya Wexler’s expert film-making to her accomplished production team (sets, costumes and cinematography are all impressive) to the great performances from the entire cast (Maggie Gyllenhal is at an all-time career best here), this is a movie audiences will embrace in a major way,” says Sony Pictures Classics.