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Category: Toonlet

Toonlet enables creation of Becker Street, the Kindle comic book

Rick Turoczy on June 2, 2009

It’s no secret that part of the magic of this generation of Web startups is the whole social aspect of what’s happening. And while, no doubt, that’s a big component of what we see occurring, there’s something more important that’s often overlooked: enabling.

Web 2.0 is all about enabling. Enabling you to do things that would be practically impossible without the technology. Things like enabling you to find what you want when you want it. Enabling you to broadcast your opinion to the world, quickly and easily. And enabling you to do things like build comics and release Kindle books. Read More

Toonlet captures your Twitter comedic genius for posterity

Rick Turoczy on April 16, 2009

ToonletThere are some pretty witty folks on Twitter. I, for the record, do not happen to be one of them. But they are there. I’m talking about people like former Portlander Simon “@pagecrusher” Goetz. That kind of witty.

And sometimes, magic happens. Tweets—that don’t seem so humorous when taken out of context—combine into a string of entertaining @s of back-and-forth dialogue. The result? Pure comedy gold, my friend.

Unfortunately, those fleeting moments of jocularity used to simply disappear into the ether. Forever lost.

Until now.

Enter the latest feature from our cartoon-errific friends over at Portland-based Toonlet, the Twitter Toonletifier. (In their defense, that’s not actually what they call it. They call it “Twitter Comic.” But I’m calling it the Toonletifier.)

See a Dorthy-Parker-esque series of rapier retorts or a layer-tennis-like volley of banter? Capture it for historical reference.

Simply head over to Toonlet and search for keywords or users. Select the tweets you want to add to your toonlet. Do a little editing magic on the characters. And voila! Instant hilarity.

[HTML1]

The feature is still in its early stages, but it’s absolutely stable enough for you to begin banging on it. So give Toonlet Twitter Comic a try.

What’s that? You don’t even have to have anything witty to say. You can still use the Toonletifier. That’s how cool it is. I mean, seriously. It never stops me.

[HTML2]

toonlet phones it in

Rick Turoczy on April 21, 2008

Portland-based toonlet, the only Silicon Forest based service I’ve found that holds the promise of turning you into the next Jim Davis Scott Adams Matt Groening, has released a couple of recent updates that have made the joy of creating toonlets more, well, joyful.

Much like Bruce Banner gaining superpowers after being accidentally irradiated, the toonlet team has discovered that a series of recent Safari-focused improvements have imbued toonlet with superpowers of its own. And you reap the benefit.

So—wait—maybe it’s you that has the superpowers and toonlet is more like the radiation giving you those powers?

I don’t know. My analogy kind of fell apart there.

Anyway. Suffice it to say that, thanks to these Safari improvements on toonlet, you gain the ability to create, compose, and edit toonlets from your Apple iPhone (or someone else’s iPhone if you wish).

In fact, I created the toonlet below from my iPhone. (Yes, I agree. It’s unfortunate that they have yet to fix the “lacking humor” problem. Baby steps.)
http://toonlet.com/embed/strip?i=9156

Second, and easily more important, toonlet has added an “edit” feature for its strips. So now, when you make typos, pick the wrong character, or write something unfunny… Not that that happens to you. I mean, you’re always funny. But if someone less talented than you were to make that sort of mistake, now they can go back and make the toonlet better.

As always, toonlet remains the conversational comic strip service, allowing you to comment on other’s toonlets with toonlets of your own. So please, by all means, head on over and tell me how unfunny that strip above is by creating your own toonlet.

Toonlet releases embed code

Rick Turoczy on February 11, 2008

Portland-based Toonlet, the tool that will not only have you writing your own comic strips in a matter of seconds but will also have you using ‘toons as a social networking function, has released an embed code for Toonlets you create.

Okay, geek-talk, what exactly does that “embed code” mumbo jumbo mean?

It means that you can now create strips and then easily insert them into Web pages and blog posts.

This will definitely help folks spread the word about the Toonlet service and will likely increase the adoption. Not to mention increase the value of the social networking features built into the tool.

I’m so excited about it, I’m thinking about making Toonlet a regular part of the Silicon Florist. (It’s a little wide, but this is the first release. Relax.)

http://toonlet.com/embed/strip?i=4989

For more, visit Toonlet.

Stripping in Portland

Rick Turoczy on January 18, 2008

Portland-based Toonlet is a fun little Web-based Flash application that lets anyone create comic strips.

And while there are a wide variety of illustrations at your disposal, unfortunately there is no “make this funny” button—as is made excruciatingly obvious by the comic I created below.

Toonlet

Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read/Write Web (the blue panel above) also covered Toonlet today, citing:

There’s lots of sites on the web where you can create your own comic strips but few of them let you build your own characters…. Each character you build can have multiple versions, depending on the mood they are in in a particular panel. The variation of characters and moods makes the site a lot of fun to click through.

For more information or to create a comic strip of your own, visit Toonlet. And feel free to share what you create, either by replying to the comic or replying to this post.

[Update] Be forewarned. The traffic from Marshall’s post already took down the server once. And now his story is climbing Digg. So, response times may be a bit erratic. Stick with it. It’s worth it.

(Hat tip Raven Zachary)