Tools and Toys
The tools range from fun toys to powerful, professional tools, and most of them are free! Many integrate with Google so you may want to create a Google account just for this project - it's up to you. Most, but not all of these tools are web-based.
You should be able to open this up, figure out how it works and have fun with this. There are lots of online "toys" that are actually worth playing with just for the experience, they'll give you ideas.
This category is for things that may take a little learning but don't need lots of effort.
These items will require some studying but are worth the time. You can watch a few YouTube videos to get to grips with it, right?
These are complex tools for those who are more technically minded, or researchers or professionals. But hey, don't let that stop you.
Zine Maker
Zine are small and often handmade, self-published magazines.
This tool is something I made so that you can draw all the pages and then download it and print on one A4 or A3 sheet. You can then fold it into an 8 page zine and colour it in.
The source code is here.
WebModular
Old skool synthesis, pulling out and plugging in wires. Interesting because you can type notes using strange notation.
Renderforest
Create animated explainer videos, animations and more easily. I made this movie ident in a few seconds.
Meaning Generator
Random concepts to help with creativity. Amazing what you can make with just three words
Collection of ML Tools for Art
Great collection of Machine Learning for Art projects, all with code samples.
Webpage Screenshot Free
An handy extension for the Chrome browser that lets you screenshot the page and save it with cropping or full page.
Canva Comic Maker
Canva's Comic tool, with loads of great templates is fantastic. Start from a layout and you can drag in your graphics.
Teleprompter
Lovely free, web-based tele-prompter, or autocue. Really helpful if you're recording a voice track.
It even has mirroring so you can hold a sheet of glass, and reflect onto it, looking straight at the camera. Nice.
Web Audio Sequencer
Another strange tool. Search for sounds, add them, and then draw on the timeline grid to play them to create unusual beats and soundtracks.
Rasturbator
Rasturbator is fabulous tool. It chops up your image so that you can print it on twenty or thirty pages, glue them together to fill an entire wall.
Your World Of Text
Create your own URL - I made myworldofnonsense, and you have a "live" editable grid you can share with collaborators.
Charticulator
Fantastic data-driven drawing and visualisation tool. For when you want to extract data from unstructured text.
Tonespace
Tonespace lets you play one note and intelligently augments what you’re playing with chords and arpeggios.
It connects via Midi (so to a synth or Garageband) and plays musically similar notes. Because it generates midi, you can “record” it and then use it in whatever DAW you are using.
InkleWriter
A lovely tool for creating "unfolding stories" that get longer, interactive narrative style, but different. You can add paragraphs, choices and add image URLs (which is interesting, because that means you *could* use almost any image out there on the web.
For developers, stories can be output in .json format, meaning *real writers* could use this tool to "tell a story" and developers might incorporate it into a game easily. Interesting.
Freesound Timeline
Strange tool that takes the popular sounds from Freesound and turns them into an automatic soundscape.
Talk To Transformer
See how a modern neural network completes your text. Type a custom snippet and see what is generated
Pixlr Express
A more "Instagram-like" version of this fanstastic image editor with some funky effects
ChordChord
This wonderful tune creates interesting chord progressions for you. I tend to choose piano, turn off drums and set the bpm to around 80.
You have to pay to download the midi, but there are ways around this, using tools that turn recorded audio into midi. Although this may introduce errors or inaccuracies, we will live with these happy accidents.
CalmlyWriter
Minimalist distraction-free text editor. For when you just need to get on with it.
This tool also lets you save to Google Drive or to your desktop.
Colour Collage Maker
Upload an image and this will create you multiple colour schemes based on the colours in the image.
Play Sound
Interesting tool that searches Freesound, and lets you create soundscapes by clicking samples repeatedly, or letting them loop.
Random Animal Generator
Generates a number of random animals for you. If you dig around, it can also generate places, flags, food and lots more.
MIT App Inventor
MIT App Inventor is a block-coding tool with which you can create downloadable Android applications as .apk files, FOR FREE!
Molecular Music Generator
Give this app a short piece of midi and it will generate a repeating generative version of it, Philip Glass style.
Autochords
Select your mood and key, and Autochords does the rest.
p.s You may need Soundflower to record your chords...
Morph Thing
Designed to blend, or morph, faces together, I added an elephant's eye and got this strange output.
Ampermusic
Not free, by any means (about $29 per 5 minute track), but an interesting music generation tool.
Taguette
If you need to tag, or codify some text, looking for themes in transcripts, this free web-based tool is great.
Face Morph 2
A brilliant tool to morph between two images. You plot the points, it generates a gif file.
Study Crafter
An amazing tool to create interactive games with a flow-coding interface, but equally could be used to make training materials. The primary use for this tool is to collect research data about what choices people made.
Free.
Computoser
Change some parameters and let Computoser generate you a music track, downloadable as midi or mp3.
Thing Translator
Works on a laptop or mobile. Point your camera at something and AI tell you what it is (hopefully) AND translates it for you.
Cables
Shaders are the code that runs complex computer graphics. Cables is a visual language to create shaders.
oTranscribe
This tool doesn't do it for you, but helps you make it easier to transcribe a video by hand.
Wikitude
Not free, but you can use it developer mode to create compelling image-based Augmented Reality experiences. Great tool
WayScript
WayScript lets you create webhook functions, like APIs, or workflows using a visual workflow editor.
You can use Python, Javascript and SQL.
Textable
Textable is an Add-on to a really interesting visual tool call Orange3. With them together you can do textual or data analysis and shaping, and filtering, WITHOUT coding.
mscompose95
Scribble on this strange Mondrian-like grid, click the samples below, and instant funky rhythms.
List of Idioms
A brilliant list of idioms. For fun, pick one at random and "bend" it slightly to give it a different meaning.
Electric Zine Maker
Pay your own price for this great downloadable zine-making app. This has to be the winner of THE CRAZIEST APP ever. It's really good fun.
These Lyrics Do Not Exist
Warning: Profanity! But, based on a training catalogue of lots of lyrics, this Machine Learning tool will take any subject and generate lyrics for you.
Hydra
Crazy livecoding tool for visual effects. Learn a few functions, chain them together, and boom! Crazy!
MuseNet
Musenet takes an "intro" and then "evolves" it with AI in different styles such as Beatles, Mozart or Bluegrass. Interestingly you can upload your own custom midi track and let it evolve that too.
I tried adding a file created by Computoser as a starting point, and I think it made it more Beatles-y but it's hard to tell. Doesn't have a download option.
Wrong Covid (Timegraphics)
This particular timeline has a collection of disgraceful peoples' pronouncements surrounding Covid, from Toby Young to Julia Hartley-Brewer.
But the tool itself, is a pretty amazing tool for creating timelines, with features such as being able to import from Google Calendar.
Weird Text Generator
Enter some text, and it gives you your text in lots of weird fonts and characters.
AIVA - AI Music Generation
This tool generates music (based on parameters) in lots of different genres and you get three free downloads. You can get a mixed .mp3 or midi file. Very impressive.
UVI Workstation
This free desktop app can make some interesting noises, and if you use the arpeggiator (ARP) then you can create almost ambient loops.
Faust Playground
Start audio processing with a flow diagram like language in the browser. OMG! Amazing!
In-G
Interesting sonification example that takes Github upload data and turns it into "music". See this article.
Google Sites
Create a web site for free, that integrates with other Google content like Google Drive folders for example.
UltraOutliner
Unusual Russian tool for designing interactive narratives or story plots. You enter characters, and locations and plot points, linking them together.
At the end, you can export as a .csv file.
Acoustic Atlas
Do you want to hear what your voice would sound like in the Temple of Love in the Taj Mahal? Of course you do. You'll need headphones for this.
Design for Inclusivity Cards
The Cards for Humanity team have created this fabulous deck of cards to help you think about inclusive design.
Flag Maker
This wonderful flag making tool lets you start from all the world's flags, or add Wikimedia commons graphics.
See also, this catalogue of imaginary flags.
Monster Mash
A really easy and fun 3D animation tool. Draw a character, inflate it, then animate it by moving the points.
Google Colab
Google Colab Notebooks are documents where you can mix notes and Python code.
They are brilliant for creating teaching resources, or, working on a project where you are figuring it out as you go, because you can create little fragments of code, and run them one at a time.
Little Sis
Brilliant site that is a mixture of a database of people and corporations and governments etc. and tools to "connect the dots" between them.
For example, take a look at How Fracking Special Interests Infiltrate the UK Parliament
See also: My Little Crony
Geo Poetry Generator
Find the latitude and longitude coordinates of a place here: https://www.latlong.net/ then have it make a poem about that place for you. Or just go to the site and see what it makes.
Godot Engine
Free, open source games development environment. One day, I'll get round to having a go with Godot.
