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Located in Indianapolis, “Silver in the City” is an unconventional gift store—“A Gift Store For Everyone Who Isn’t Everyone”—that has recently launched an attractive re-branding campaign.

Created by Young & Laramore, the comprehensive re-branding project overhauled all of the gift store’s marketing materials, including print ads, packaging and business cards.

Centered around striking typography, witty slogans and skillful use of color, the new brand identity is both playful and stylish—more importantly, the humorous and unexpected copywriting makes one feel that shopping at the store would be a fun experience.

Scroll down to view more images from this creative re-branding campaign.













[via Young & Laramore]

According to New York City Administrative Code § 17-172, basically every place that serves food has to hang “a sign graphically depicting the Heimlich Maneuver or a comparable technique instructing on how to dislodge food from a choking person” in an area where it can be easily viewed by the public, or face a fine. This same law says that no one is any under obligation to help said choking person; it’s just important that there’s a notice instructing how to do it. The final section of the law, states that the Health Department “shall make signs available, and may charge a fee to cover printing, postage and handling expenses.”

Unfortunately, the design for this “sign” is crap and could be the reason why many restaurants don’t bother hanging it up at all. In an effort to keep everyone in compliance, ANIMAL created a more cleanly designed version and is offering it free of charge (download the PDF here). All the copy was ripped straight from the official sign except for the thing about “Stayin’ Alive;” we got that from the American Heart Association.

We sent the newly made posters to some of New York City’s most iconic restaurants with the hopes that they in turn will proudly put them up.

(Poster design: Nate Cepis/ANIMALNewYork)

The post Here’s a Choke Poster That Eateries Don’t Have to Be Ashamed to Put Up appeared first on ANIMAL.

A fashion magazine editor and devout Muslim is suing Duane Reade for $40 million, claiming that a former Manhattan pharmacist sexually assaulted her during a bogus breast examination. Hayat Ammouri, 42, claims in her suit that pharmacist Monesh Hanoman tricked her into the breast exam during a free blood-pressure test at a Lexington Avenue Duane Read— and then proceeded to grope her and pinch her nipples. [ more › ]

Surely one of the more bizarre stories you’ll read this week: Glendon Scott Crawford, a 49-year-old employee of General Electric living in Galway, NY, had a plot to build a device that would kill people in their sleep using high-radiation X-rays. Crawford called it “Hiroshima on a light switch,” and he intended to use it to kill Muslims. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling Klansmen.

Crawford, who had an accomplice in 54-year-old engineer Eric J. Feight, had everything he needed to build the x-ray gun–except funding. For that, he went to a friendly North Carolina neighborhood chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as a local synagogue (where he “announced his intention to build a weapon that could help Israel kill its enemies while they slept,” according to the Times).

Both groups turned Crawford over to the authorities, and he was arrested this week. Apparently, the thing really could have worked. “From our investigation, the device — and there are a number of components that needed to be put together,” said John Duncan, a prosecutor, “Would have been capable of emitting X-ray radiation that would have caused death.”

(Photo: Michael Connell/Flickr)

The post KKK Thwarts Mad Scientist in Plot to Build Death Ray appeared first on ANIMAL.

Human Rights Watch has released near-infrared satellite images confirming the destruction of the town of Abu Jeradil and surrounding villages in Central Darfur. The April 2013 attack is believed to have killed 42 people and burned 2,800 buildings-88 percent of all buildings in the area.

According to Human Rights Watch, villagers who fled the area said in May that the attackers were Sudanese government forces, including a militia leader sought by the International Criminal Court named Ali Kosheib.

Abu Jeradil (Focus Area 1)

Abu Jeradil (Focus Area 2)

The satellite images are shown in false-color near-infrared to highlight fire burn scars and building damage.

On April 8, men armed with rifles, anti-aircraft weapons, heavy machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades arrived in Abu Jeradil riding in dozens of government land cruisers, witnesses told Human Rights Watch. The men fired their weapons indiscriminately, burned homes and shops, and stole livestock, food, clothes, beds, and water pumps, witnesses reported. The intentional destruction of civilian property, along with the destruction of structures and goods crucial to the survival of the civilian population, are war crimes, Human Rights Watch says.

"Satellite images show the total destruction of villages during the April attacks in Central Darfur," Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, says. "How can the Sudanese authorities claim there's nothing they can do when their own security forces were involved and the war crimes suspect Ali Kosheib is on the loose?"

Human Rights Watch has called for the Sudanese government investigate the abuses and prosecute those responsible, as well as to surrender militia leader Kosheib to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Satellite technology is helping human rights groups confirm attacks on civilians and dispute government denial of human rights abuses. In May, satellite photos undermined the Nigerian Army's claim that it had only destroyed 30 homes, showing instead that 2,300 houses had been burned. In Syria, data mining has helped activists track casualties amid the confusion.

Read the full story at Human Rights Watch.

Former President of TigerDirect (and parent company Systemax, Inc.) Carl Fiorentino finds himself accused of mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering for redirecting $230 million to manufacturers and suppliers who paid him kickbacks or bribes. Prosecutors claim Fiorentino was responsible for the company’s purchasing decisions but rather than going with the low bidder, he [...]

The Batman Theme Played With Real Bat Sounds

That’s right. The duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-BAT-MAAAAN theme has been recreated using ultrasonic bat sounds. The frequencies were shifted into the audible range, and then assigned a key so they’d match the original composition.

I think Adam West would approve.

Bonus: Meet a blind man who uses clicks from his tongue to navigate his world: Human echolocation!!

In a world where TV shows can garner massive cult followings, where their franchise lives well beyond the show itself and the fans are genuinely ‘die-hards,’ you might think the risk of hiatus isn’t there.

You might think that if a show manages to pull in millions of viewers then it’s sitting pretty.

You’d be wrong.

All of that still isn’t enough for network television; they’re obsessed with ratings and if a show doesn’t satisfy its targets then it’s living on borrowed time. Just think of Body of Proof, which enjoyed a total of 7.4 million viewers for the season finale but still suffered the cut. Shows on networks don’t need to be anything but massive seat fillers, crowd pleasers.

Somewhere along the way, a show that’s worried about ratings will lose its artistic beauty as it’s forced to focus on survival rather than entertainment.

But cable can serve as a safe house for shows killed on one of the big five networks. It can provide a place for the shows that were treated unfairly, for the shows that didn’t get to where they wanted to go creatively because they didn’t get the right number of eyeballs to look at them.

Futurama had a bumpier transition to cable than others. Originally on Fox’s comedy block in 1999, it was canceled in 2003. In 2006, Comedy Central acquired the rights and created a series of new movies and in 2010, decided to bring it back to full series, which débuted last night.

The simple fact is that network television is a tougher market to succeed in because they’re more reliant on advertising revenues. Not only do you need millions of viewers to tune in every week, you also need to churn out as many as 24 episodes a year. The two demands place an immense stress on even the most talented of writing staffs.

The complicated jigsaw puzzle of network programming isn’t new; shows have been jumping from network to network since the days of Leave it to Beaver and Get Smart. However, finding new life on cable is a growing trend–if not in actuality, then hypothetically, thanks to the blogosphere and Internet. There are comment sections that exist purely for viewers to muse over which network shows would perform best on cable channels.

Among the most notable moves was Cougar Town, shifting from ABC to TBS in early 2013. Compared to ABC’s demand for high ratings, its performance on TBS was robust enough for it to be considered an accomplished transition. Despite its strong promotional campaign, the show’s numbers dipped slightly on TBS, but not enough to hamper its perceived success.

Not all shows can be resurrected on cable, though. This past season, ABC’s Happy Endings was clearly going to get the chop, and when it did, all eyes were on USA Network – would they pick it up? Would TBS? It’s starting to become a ‘well if a network cancels it, it’d be perfect on this cable station’ situation. Unfortunately, USA passed on the show, as did its parent network, NBC.

Networks, particularly NBC, have fallen on hard times recently. As Josef Adalian say’s in his Vulture article, “many smart… executives have tried to cure the Peacock patient over the last decade, and so far, they’ve all failed.”

In 2008, the cop drama Southland premiered and like so many dramas that came before it, ratings were low and the audience wasn’t there. It was canceled after the first season. Enter TNT: a cable channel that knows its audience and swooped in to save the drama. Southland went on to air for four more seasons, enjoying steady growth in ratings and viewers throughout that time.

Networks can still house some fantastic comedy - 30 Rock, The Simpsons, Parks & Recreation, How I Met Your Mother–however, cable offers a reprieve from the cut-throat world of trying to launch a comedy on a network. With a larger offering for a more diverse demographic, viewers can definitely find a show that appeals to them on their cable stations, more so than on a network.

Join the conversation about this story »

Instagram's new video feature brought many users head-to-head with Vine users in what might become the greatest divide since Myspace versus Facebook.

Although various forms of the #RIPVine hashtag have been trending online since Thursday's announcement, the Vine community is far from dead. Many of Vine's core users who have garnered a large following expressed their loyalties in just six seconds. (Less is more, right?)

SEE ALSO: What Do You Think of Video for Instagram?

Here's how #TeamVine is responding to the news

Homepage image via iStockphoto, itakephotos4u Read more...

More about Lists, Vine, Instagram, Social Media, and Pics

You've got to love the wide, weird world of sports Twitter, that magical place where the actor who played Steve Urkel can find beef with a national NFL writer about the fantasy football prospects of a little-used tight end

Our cast of characters here is former Family Matters star Jaleel White, New England Patriots tight end Jake Ballard and USA Today writer Mike Garafolo

Ballard's teammate Aaron Hernandez is currently at the center of a murder investigation, with his prospects of playing next season up in the air. If he's not able to play, Ballard will likely see a lot more playing time and some improved stats. That's a fact that has apparently not been lost on White, who seems to be quite the fantasy football player and posted this to Twitter Wednesday: Read more...

More about Nfl, Entertainment, and Sports

Now that Facebook has unveiled video on Instagram, creating videos is an easy process. It makes good on Instagram's intention: bring simplicity to the video experience.

It's hard not to see Instagram video as a response to Vine, Twitter's uber-successful video sharing tool. And although Instagram's video feature improves upon Vine, it's also lacking a core part of the Vine experience

Namely, the ability to embed your videos elsewhere.

This isn't a huge surprise. Instagram never made it particularly easy to embed or syndicate photos. The app supports the oEmbed standard, which means that services such as Embedly and web apps such as WordPress can display Instagram photos inline or in other apps. But there is no easy "embed" button for end-users. Read more...

More about How To, Features, Embed, Instagram, and Social Media

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom is for anyone who wants better photos from their phone, but doesn't want to add too much bulk. Handling it at a product demo in New York City today, I was surprised about how small the device is, and it did a decent job of capturing images of distant objects with a minimum of blur due to camera shake.

While the S4 Zoom is small and light for a 16-megapixel point-and-shoot camera, it's definitely bulkier than your typical smartphone. The lens in back adds about a half-inch to the thickness when retracted, and the bottom of the phone has some extra chunk to provide a grip when using it as a camera. Size-wise, it's somewhere between the GS4 Mini (both have a 4.3-inch screen) and the Galaxy Camera. Read more...

More about Samsung, Tech, Gadgets, Mobile, and Galaxy S4

There has been a lot of talk recently about how best to succeed as a professional photographer, now that “everybody is a photographer”. A recent post here by Alex Ignacio emphasized how important it is to “specialize and focus” — Ignacio believes that if we don’t, we’ll “perish”.

As someone who trains aspiring commercial photographers, I agree that some doors may shut if you don’t specialize, but many more will open if you’re versatile.

Focus, persistence, a stubborn refusal to surrender — those traits have always fallen under the “duh!” section of how to succeed in the business of picture-making, and pretty much everything else.

For someone entering the field in 2013, I’m probably not the first to point out that the impediments are great. However, the biggest challenges a new photographer faces probably aren’t the ones that everybody cries in their craft beer about (Everybody has a camera! Nobody wants to pay me! The X100s only comes in chrome — wah!). They’re just symptoms of the real problem: we haven’t completely figured out what the job description of a professional photographer looks like anymore. But don’t worry, HR’s working on it.

If you’re a photojournalist shooting stills for print, you may be just barely keeping your head above water. If you’re a mid-price wedding photographer grumbling about mouth-breathing bottom-feeders, or crowdsourcing from invited guests with better gear, aesthetics and apps than you have, sooner or later you’ll find yourself in the same leaky boat (if you’re not already paddling).

If you want to shoot cars for a living and don’t know what it means to skin a wireframe, your exit’s coming up. And if you think being a professional photographer nowadays has nothing to do with video, audio and non-linear editing skills, think again, bucko, then go back into the darkroom you just crawled out of.

Look. It’s always been tough being a professional photographer. Maybe it’s tougher now than it used to be, maybe not. People smarter than me have already told you that the digital revolution has touched every aspect of our lives, most profoundly, our working lives, so I won’t repeat it here.

Making pictures has always been a stupid way to make a living, UNLESS YOU REALLY, REALLY WANT TO DO IT MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD, NO MATTER WHAT, EVEN IF YOU DIE AT THE END. If that’s the case, then the way forward is actually pretty simple to define, and not all that different today than it’s ever been. If not, maybe you should get a real job and join the local camera club.

I’ve been around this business a long time, and so have many of my friends and colleagues. I stay tuned in to what my students are finding once they get out in the big bad world. Sure, even the most committed ones aren’t working at National Geographic (yet), but they’re not working at Starbucks, either, unless it’s to help keep their businesses on track.

For those of us who’ve done it, and for those who prove that you still can if you’re serious about it, here’s what I think still works:

Be Nice

You heard me — be nice. To everyone you meet. It’s more important than anything, because everybody you know can either help you succeed directly, or can lead you to a person who can.

It’s not the 80‘s anymore. It’s no longer fashionable to be an arrogant egotist now, because there are too many people of equal or greater talent competing against you who aren’t. And they’re often being hired by nice people who were in the second grade back when being prickish was part of the song and dance routine many photographers performed for their clients.

It’s simple: people like and want to help people they like, so be likable. It doesn’t make any difference if you’re a specialist or a generalist. There comes a point where your talent and expertise are assumed — you can demonstrate through your work that you know what you know. Your success will come primarily from who you know, and these days, who you know had better like you.

Shoot Everything Well

“Jack of all trades, master of none”, you say? I agree! Just don’t confuse the skills of your trade with the markets you want to sell them to. You must first master a number of fundamental skills in order to practice your trade, which, if you’re reading this post, I can only assume is professional photography.

Skills come first, and skills are mastered through ongoing education, practice, more education, and lots of trial and error. We then apply those skills (with a little specialized tweak here and there) to the market or combination of markets in which we choose to compete.

My somewhat informed opinion about how best to do this (and my advice to my students and to the eloquent young photographer and author arguing the case for specialization) is to shoot more, as well as you possibly can. More quantity, certainly, but more importantly, more variety. Everything informs everything else.

When you learn to shoot a food shot deliciously, it informs your ability to shoot a business portrait with authority, which informs your ability to shoot an editorial feature convincingly, which informs your ability to shoot a fashion spread stylishly, all of which might even make you a pretty decent wedding photographer.

I’d even suggest that the very act of specializing in something like wedding photography to the exclusion of everything else may account for why there have always been so many mediocre wedding photographers. Maybe not.

The great New York advertising photographer Michel Tcherevkoff, answering a question from one of my students a few years back about how to succeed as a photographer now that everybody takes pictures, said “there’s always room for excellence, mediocrity, not so much.” Michel should know: he’s been excellent since I was in short pants.

I like to think of it this way. Professional photographers, unlike everybody else with a camera, don’t “take pictures”. We solve problems; in fact, our job is to separate clients with creative problems from their money. We’re no different than plumbers when it comes right down to it. A master plumber sees a lot of tricky problems, and he gets paid to solve them. The more different types of plumbing problems he’s solved in his career, the better he can solve the one that’s right in front of him. Learning how to shoot well across a variety of photographic markets doesn’t make you a jack of all trades, it makes you a master of one: photography.

Reinvent Yourself Whenever Possible

You think the changes brought on by today’s technology developments are challenging? Ptooey. You should have been around 25 years ago when I was freelancing in a corporate design department. You should have seen the looks of horror on the faces of the most seriously talented people I’ve ever worked with as our parallel rules, X-acto knives, blue pencils and proportion wheels got shoved aside to make room for those weird little beige Mac SE30’s. You should have heard the trash talk that came out of our mouths as we tried to wrap the right side of our brains around Aldus Pagemaker and Illustrator 88!

The fact that I was even part of that freaked out creative crew, working as a low-level design grunt, was the result of my own reinvention. I had walked away from a full-time job shooting weddings and portraits a couple of years earlier, and was attempting to enter the more creatively challenging and competitive field of general commercial photography. I figured it would be in my best interest to learn as much as I could about what made graphic designers and art directors tick.

Oh, and I was broke: my very young photography business hadn’t gotten off the ground yet, but I refused to give up on my dream of shooting for a living.

Just a little side note here. Not long after the dust settled and the Macs weren’t quite so threatening, I was handed a blank check and the keys to a company van and asked to go buy whatever I needed to set up an in-house studio to handle the company’s substantial catalog and advertising photography needs. I ran that studio for almost 5 years. They had the connections and the budget to hand that check to photographers far more talented and experienced than me. They gave it to me, I think, because they knew me. And they liked me. That’s where I learned how to be a commercial photographer.

A few years later, when my business was doing significantly better, I reinvented myself all over again, this time as a digital photographer. I had been freelancing on and off for the better part of a year shooting catalog and advertising projects for a big department store in Boston.

One day the studio manager offered to create a brand-new, full-time job for me. He didn’t want to interview anybody else — the job was mine if I wanted it. He said he liked me, and liked the fact that I could “shoot everything”. The studio was beta-testing Phase One 4×5 scan backs for some of their Sinar P2‘s, and was about to convert to all digital all the time.

I took the job, thinking I’d stick around for a few years to learn the new technology. But, over a decade later, I was the last one out the door when a mega-merger with Macy’s shut off our hot lights for the last time and left those same Phase One backs, still workable but long obsolete, tossed in a pile on the floor. That’s where I learned how to be a digital photographer.

Stay Inspired

Do you remember the picture that made you want to become a professional photographer? I do. It was a record album cover that I saw in 1974, Al Stewart’s folk-rock masterpiece Past, Present and Future. “That’s what I want to do”, I said to my 17 year old self. “I want to be a photographer who takes pictures for album covers just like this”.

I went on to do the most logical thing I could think of to get such a career moving down the right track: I skipped college, taught myself photography during the day and got a job driving a subway train at night. I read every book about photography I could get my hands on (including all 17 volumes of the Time Life Library of Photography), went to every gallery, museum show, lecture or workshop I could find — I even took a correspondence course offered by the School of Modern Photography in Little Falls, New Jersey.

I discovered the amazing images that had been made over so many years by so many artists, and the work that moved me the most, stuff from folks like Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Duane Michals and too many others to mention here, it all became part of my visual DNA . It provided the complex, twisting spiral of concept and content that I’m still trying to decode today.

None of it has anything to do with making a living (at least not for me, at least not yet) but all of it has everything to do with being a photographer. And all of it makes it easier for me to do whatever I have to do to keep the lights on.

In 1991, I finally decided to ask for what I said I wanted to do all those years earlier. I called Al Stewart’s business manager in LA and asked if I could shoot something for him. He said yes, and that’s how I got my first album cover, and my second and my third and my fourth. It’s how I closed the circle, how I connected the dots between what I dreamed about doing and what I actually did. It’s also how my partner Jenny and I wound up at Al’s home not long ago to claim a very special bottle of wine he had been promising me for years.

That album cover photo inspired me to be a professional photographer, and I kept it in my head through thick and thin. There have been many dark days when I needed something tangible to remind myself why I had climbed aboard such a crazy roller coaster in the first place. You should keep your inspiration in your head for exactly the same reason — you’re going to need it.

So, for what it’s worth, that’s my advice — be nice, shoot everything well, reinvent yourself whenever possible, and stay inspired. Just don’t expect any of this to make you the next overnight workshop superstar or Internet guru. If that’s your goal, make some how-to videos, convince a nice guy like Scott Kelby to link to one of them, and you should be all set.

But if you’re like those of us who are in it for the long haul, if you’re committed to both making a living and a life in photography and can roll with the inevitable challenges and changes that come with it, then I hope something you’ve read here might inspire you to make that happen.


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About the author: Randall Armor is the Director of the Professional Photography Certificate Program at Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts. For more information, visit his website at armorfoto.com.

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Image credits: Leaky Boat #2 by BraNewbs, one-man band 5 by randychiu, Canon Expo 2010: Day 2 by nasmac

Check out this colorful photo mosaic created by photographer Bela Borsodi for the cover of the album “Terrain” by VLP (you can find a larger version here). Would you believe us if we told you that it’s actually a single photograph?

Well it is.

Borsodi, a New York-based advertising and editorial photographer who specializes in still lifes, created the image by carefully arranging items in the scene through the viewfinder of his camera (you can do this by fixing your camera in one location and then displaying the camera’s view on an external screen).

Through the careful positioning of objects and their edges, Borsodi was able to make a single static scene look like four separate photographs that were placed side-by-side.

Don’t believe the explanation we just gave? Check out this “behind-the-scenes” photograph captured from a slightly different angle:

Now compare this second photo with the first one. See how everything is in exactly the same location?

Creating the photograph was a long and tedious process that involved a lot of trial and error. Here’s a video Borsodi created showing how the scene was put together from the very beginning (notice how he tries out many different objects in many different locations before finally settling on the arrangement seen above):

This actually isn’t the first time we’ve featured Borsodi’s creative perspective photographs. Back in 2011, we shared a project of his that involved creating various letters in the alphabet using carefully placed objects in a room.

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Image credits: Photographs and video by Bela Borsodi and used with permission

Brian Morell of Quirk Books has assembled his very own literary baseball team.

The team ranges from classic to contemporary writers who have written in all genres, with Morell eloquently justifying the positions he’s placed them in.

Shakespeare is given the position of pitcher since writers refer to his work every time they pitch a story, while Stephen King is on first base as his novels could possibly knock balls out of the park.

Who would be in your ideal literary baseball team?

Scroll down to view the rest of Brian Morell’s line-up.



















[via Quirk Books]

I’m Fine


Singapore-based suicide prevention organization Samaritans of Singapore recently ran a series of ads which cleverly uses ambigrams to highlight the difficulty in understanding and identifying depression.

The print ads feature images showing a positive message. However, when the ad is inverted, a sadder, more depressing message is revealed.

The advertisement’s tagline “The signs are there if you read them” is printed upside-down so that readers will know to flip the ads over. It also reinforces the message that it is easy to miss the warning signs of depression.

Save Me


Life Is Great


I Hate Myself


I Feel Fantastic


I’m Falling Apart


[22 Words]

[Click here to view the video in this article]



To attract more customers from bigger, more established coffee chains, Taiwanese coffee chain Let’s Café decided to print its customers’ faces on their lattes.

Using a special coffee printer, customers could upload their photos to the machine, and the printer will instantly reproduce their image using cocoa powder.

Are latte portraits the future of coffee?

Click to watch the video below:


















[via YouTube]

Designed by advertising agency BBDO Dusseldorf, this new German campaign for Pepsi cleverly hides the familiar logo amid a web of blood vessels.

The advertisement eschews text and huge logos to sell the product, instead relying on Pepsi’s brand colors and the beautiful art to catch one’s attention.





[via I Believe In Advertising]

Photographer Jane Thomas takes macro shots of bubbles.

Each photograph reveals the intricacy of a bubble as well as its psychedelic colors.

Scroll down to view the rest of these photos.























[via Inspiration Grid]

Check out this cool map, produced by The Atlantic in partnership with the Martin Prosperity Institute, which shows where venture capital dollars flowed in 2012.

As one would expect, the East and West Coasts have the biggest pockets, led, of course, by San Francisco/Oakland (No. 1) and San Jose (No. 2).

Based on the 2012 data, Seattle ranked 7th, with 3.3 percent of all venture capital dollars. (Seattle attracted $886 million in 2012, compared to more than $10 billion for Silicon Valley/San Francisco; $3.1 billion for Boston; and $2.2 billion for New York).

In fact, Seattle ranks between San Diego and Austin in terms of dollars invested. (Portland does not crack the top 20).

The chart comes out an interesting time, as we continue to debate whether there’s enough capital available for entrepreneurs in the Seattle region and whether the entrepreneurs here are going after enough home run opportunities. I’ve personally expressed concerns about the dwindling ranks of venture capital firms in the region, not to mention some dips in money, especially compared to New York and, at least during the first quarter, Portland.

Others have argued that there’s plenty of money at the ready for smart and talented entrepreneurs.

“There is an infinite amount of capital available for great ideas backed by great people. It is not true that there is not capital available,” argued Nick Hanauer, a partner at Second Avenue Partners, in Seattle on the GeekWire podcast this past weekend.

Zillow co-founder Rich Barton, an investor in companies such as Glassdoor, RealSelf and Avvo, agreed with Hanauer on the show. And he said stressed the big ideas emerging in Seattle, countering that with what he dubbed a “sell-out culture” in New York.

“I would way rather be investing here in Seattle and in Silicon Valley than in New York,” said Barton.

If you ever wanted to get paid for writing fan fiction based on The Mongoliad, now’s your chance.

It’s all a part of an expansion of Amazon’s Kindle Worlds service, which will offer fan fiction authors a chance to get paid a royalty for their work. Amazon announced today that it has obtained licenses for a number of comic books from Valiant Entertainment, as well as Barry Eisler’s John Rain novels, Hugh Howey’s Silo Saga, Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines series, and the Foreworld Saga.

Those licenses will join Gossip Girls, The Vampire Diaries and Pretty Little Liars as worlds available for authors to jump into when the service launches.

The one thing all of the new licenses have in common are individual restrictions on what can be done within each world, something that the first three licenses didn’t have. That would seem to imply that being able to place additional restrictions on work was a key to obtaining these new licenses.

It’s not possible to submit work to Kindle Worlds just yet, but if you want to get a head start on a work or two, the restrictions on each license are available from Amazon.

Amazon said that more licenses for Kindle Worlds should be coming in the future. Is there a franchise that would get you to become a Kindle Worlds author?

Previously on GeekWire: Amazon to pay royalties for fan fiction in new ‘Kindle Worlds’ program

Blair Hanley Frank is a technology journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has also worked for Macworld, PCWorld and TechHive. He can be found on Twitter @belril.

Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal is one of the most terrifying and yet fondly remembered films from the ’80s. It created an entire world from Henson’s imagination, but that world has gone largely untouched for more than twenty years. The Jim Henson Company wants to change that. The JHC wants to start creating novels set in the Dark Crystal world, and you can compete to write one.

Jim Henson’s daughter Cheryl Henson, who sits on the board at the Jim Henson Company, has launched DarkCrystal.com. In a post on the site, Henson writes:

At The Jim Henson Company, we continue to be enthralled with the possibilities of this world and invite you to join us in our obsession. We have set up a portal to share what we know, a new website with all of the information about this place and these creatures: DarkCrystal.com. We invite you to use the resources, character descriptions, locations, and history on this site to join us in imagining the next Dark Crystal story.

Part of that “obsession” is going to be young adult novels set in the world of The Dark Crystal, and to find an author for one of them the Henson Company has teamed up with Grosset & Dunlap, or the Penguin Young Readers Group, for a contest known as Author Quest. Starting on October 1st of this year, they will be accepting submissions for Dark Crystal stories until December 31st. The submissions will be reviewed and winnowed down to five finalists.

The submissions are expected to be between 7,500 and 10,000 words, and can serve as an outline, sample chapters, or even a more succinct version of the story. Each of the five finalists will receive feedback on their submission and will be expected to make revisions and write a detailed outline of their full 50,000 word novel. The revised submissions will be posted to the Dark Crystal website.

To help authors with their submissions, the Dark Crystal site includes extended details into the world. There are descriptions of Gelfling clans, the Skeksis, and the different locations in the world. Even if you don’t plan to write a submission, it’s probably worth checking out for fans of the movie.

On a related note, The Dark Crystal is tragically absent from Netflix instant streaming. Someone please fix that.

(via The Dark Crystal Author Quest)

Meanwhile in related links

• Ben Folds Five teamed up with The Fraggles to make my daughter’s favorite song
• This real-time animation software was spotted at SXSW this year
• The puppet episode of Community was almost as scary as The Dark Crystal

You’ve probably had this problem before: you try to take a photo, but it’s too dark to get a shot without the flash—but then when you turn on the flash it washes everything out or you get unwanted glares. And you can’t always fine-tune your lighting options on your smartphone camera (though that’s improving). Here are two little gadgets from Photojojo to help you out.

First up is the Pocket Spotlight. This little gizmo is tiny but has 32 powerful LED bulbs, and can use either a hot shoe mount or a headphone mount (if you’re plugging it into your smartphone, for instance). I got a sample to try out, and it’s been handy for taking pictures in low light when I don’t want a harsh flash (especially when I’m pretty close to the subject).

The other benefit to using the spotlight over a built-in flash, of course, is that you can move it around. You can cast shadows from different angles for different effects.

For those of you wanting something with a little more oomph, the Kick might be a better fit. I haven’t tried one of these out myself, but you can see from the photo below that it’s a good deal bigger: about the size of the iPhone itself and a bit thicker.

What sets the Kick apart is that it’s fully customizable. The LEDs on this one can be adjusted, so you pick the color, shade, and intensity. There’s a free app that lets you control it. You can even sample a photo or video to replicate colors. It has a standard tripod mount, and you can slide it onto your iPhone.

The Pocket Spotlight is $30 (or $40 with the color filters) and the Kick is $179. Both are available from Photojojo.

Disclosure: GeekDad received a sample of the Pocket Spotlight for review.

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Smartphone photography has almost made cameras obsolete, and the Yozora Oekaki Art Penlight for iPhone and iPad takes another step in helping you decide to stuff your ‘old’ SLR camera back in a dark corner within your closet. People used to get artistic and creative by using flashlights and penlights to add wacky and wild [...]

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If you’re just interested in getting the best food for your money, it helps to think about the economics of the restaurant biz from the owners’ perspective.

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Stephen Colbert returned to "The Colbert Report" last night after a one-week hiatus and delivered a heartfelt eulogy to his late mother, Lorna Colbert, who died last week at the age of 92.

"When you watch the show, if you also like me, that's because of my mom," Colbert said.

He told the audience a little bit about his mother, revealing how much he tried to imitate her while growing up.

"Hugs never needed a reason in her house. Singing and dancing were encouraged except for at the dinner table," Colbert said. "She had trained to be an actress when she was younger, and she would teach us how to do stage falls by pretending to faint on the kitchen floor. She was fun."

Watch the clip below.

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