“Photograph” literally means “light drawing”, and that’s never been clearer than with our new favorite boredom-buster, Glow Doodle.

It lets you take long exposures so you can paint with light in real time using your webcam.

Try different lights for different effects: write your name with with a mini-flashlight, fire your camera’s flash, or play with the metamorphic effect of moving while the webcam is exposing.

If you’ve never played with lightpainting before, this is an easy way to try it without setting up the tripod.

And now, what to doodle?
Noodles? Poodles? Oodles of strudels?!
Gotta draw something: resistance is futile.

Glow Doodle: Paint with Light in Real Time!

p.s. Browse through the Glow Doodle favorites set to see the dreamy, arty, surreal and downright creepy images other folks have made.

Those people who think photographs can steal your soul — absolutely right.

We’ve got proof: a site that turns perfectly pleasant people into soulless automatons, ready to eat your brains. If only they weren’t trapped in your computer.

Create your very own zombie: Upload a photo, tweak the expression for maxi-creepiness, and add your voice.

(We tend toward the traditional… “I will eat your soul”, “Braaaiiins!” etc.)

Finally, send your undead self out to terrorize your friends by email!

Just pray that your evil minion never escapes the confines of the computer.

Behold the Evilizer (a.k.a Oddcast PhotoFace)

p.s. We made this one and we may not sleep for weeks.

Ever picked up the SkyMall catalog on a long flight and been struck dumb by the motivational posters?

Now really, who (besides Angela) ever got motivated by a picture of a kitten and a pithy slogan?

You’re better off making your own motivational posters. And with these two tools, it’s easy — upload your photo, slap on a caption, and skip the corporate dreck.

Pro tip: If your office actually has motivational posters, replace ‘em with your versions and see how long it takes for your boss to notice. Heh heh heh.

Make Your Own (De)Motivational Posters at Big Huge Labs

…Or at Despair, Inc.

p.s. What’s the difference? Well, both of ‘em are free, and both of ‘em let you buy prints. But if you use the code JOJO25, our pals at Big Huge Labs will give you 25% off!

p.p.s. We heart iHeartFaces. Check out their latest giveaway featuring yours truly.

Photo credit: sirgabe

On twitter? Scroll down for something awesome!

~ Have a cool photo product or site? Reach 260,000 photo fans

You know that new movie where the little girl gets trapped by creepy imposter parents with buttons for eyes? Scary, right?

And right up our alley! Reader Henrique Ferreira let us know of a new site where you can make your own self-portraits with baleful button eyes.

Upload a photo (or use your built-in webcam) to start, then drag on your choice of shiny, soulless buttons. We like to think it shows the depraved villainy lurking just beneath your cuddly exterior.

Come, join us in our spooky parallel world. You can trust us. Mwa ha ha ha HA!!!

Button Your Eyes: Creepy Self-Portraits

p.s. It’s our first ever Photojojo Tweet Week-end and Photojojo is here to guide you into the micro-blogging light! Here’s the deal:

He was Man of the Year. He had a school named after him before he even got sworn in. And the country of Antigua is renaming their highest mountain after the guy.

People just love Barry.

But how do you prove that he loves YOU? With cold hard photographic evidence, that’s how.

Send the nice folks at ScanCafe a photo of yourself, and they’ll concoct a photo of you and the Big O on a date. It’s realistic! Convincing! Not creepy at all! (:-/)

Next up: Convince your friends that Barack’s leaving Michelle and his adorable kiddies for you, because you’re just that hot.

Obamafy Your Valentine’s Day

p.s. Thanks to reader/secret agent Molly for sending this our way!

p.p.s. Holy smokes! Reader/secret agent Damien Murphy entered a National Geographic contest on our advice, and he won! Go congratulate him!

Due to sporadic distractions this year (sailing the world in our pedal-powered yacht, abduction by hyper-intelligent lemurs, a case of the hantavirus) we missed out on some of 2008’s major headlines.

Luckily, the end of December is our chance to catch up on the news we missed this year.

But which “2008 in Review” article is best? Is it the New York Times? The Economist? The East Weedpatch Herald Tribune?

We just pick the one with the best pictures.

We scored big this year when we found 120 huge photos of practically everything that happened in 2008.

It’s not all fires, floods and wars either: it’s everything from hundreds of performers beating gold drums at the Beijing Olympics to a solar eclipse darkening the afternoon sky into night.

Sure, we may miss some news in 2009 (the old yacht’s a-callin’ and the lemurs are nigh), but at least we’re caught up on 2008.

2008 in Pictures, Part I

2008 in Pictures, Part II

2008 in Pictures, Part III

p.s. Seen it all before? Try the Odd News Review for the news you’ll wish you hadn’t seen.

Photo credits: NASA, Carlos Gutierrez, John Kirk-Anderson, Alex Brandon

Listen up, young whippersnappers: when we were your age, we had to trudge fifteen miles to work every day. Barefoot. With wild raccoons biting our ankles the whole time.

And if we wanted to have photos on our fabric, we had two options: glue and thumbtacks.

But all you young punks have to do is choose a photo and have Spoonflower print it on cloth for you. Your very own photo-print fabric: yards and yards of it.

And we suppose you rapscallions will make clever things with your fancy photo fabric:

• Wrap skirts with photos of grass on ‘em (Get it? Grass skirt?)
• Custom-made camera cases.
• Camera straps that actually look good around your neck.
• Aprons with photos of food all over them.
• Or even a whole quilt!

Young people these days with their shoes and photo cloth and raccoon-free commutes.

What’s the world coming to, dagnabit?

Spoonflower Custom-Printed Fabric

Why do we like Phoenix?

1. It’s an image editor that works just like Photoshop. It’s got magic wands, layers, masks, blend modes: the whole enchilada.
2. It’s web-based, so you don’t have to download any software or use up space on your hard drive. You can use photos already on the web, too: Flickr, Facebook and Picasa all work.
3. There are 40+ free tutorials that range from beginner to advanced, so you can learn how to use all them fancy tools.
4. There’s a very good free version, as well as a souped-up hotrod version that’s actually worth paying for.

And, after months of invitation-only anticipation, Phoenix launches tomorrow to the general public!

But you, dear chums, you are not the general public. Far from it. You are the faithful cadre of the Photojojo elite. Which is why we wrangled, bargained, and mud-wrestled a live alligator to obtain (just for you) special passes!

The first 2000 Photojojo readers to sign up will get $55 off a year’s subscription to the premium version. Fly quick, chickadees!

Phoenix Web-based Image Editor

p.s. While you’re there, be sure to check out Aviary’s other tools (they work together like Adobe’s Creative Suite). Toucan creates color swatches and palettes, Peacock generates patterns and terrain, and Raven (the newest hatchling) is a vector editor similar to Illustrator.

Flickr, Facebook, your blog… so many wonderful places to share your pictures.

And yet, such a giant pain in the butt to tag and organize and upload photos separately to every single site. Sometimes it’s almost not worth the effort.

Until now! (Cue burst of golden light and singing choir!)

Pixelpipe’s a new service that uploads all your pictures to all your favorite sites at once. Here’s how it works:

• Choose all the destinations you usually send photos to (like Blogger, Picasa, YouTube and nearly 50 other sites).
• Add titles, tags, and captions to your chosen photos or videos.
• Click upload, and relax while Pixelpipe send all of your photos to their various destinations.

Easy, right? Also, did we mention that it’s free? And there are free software add-ons that let you upload straight from Picasa, and your mobile phone, and stuff like that.

So there you go: more sharing your photos, less pain in the keister.

Simplify Your Life at Pixelpipe.com

Remember the first time you made a mixtape? Up all night, headphones on, slaving over a hot stereo until you got it exactly right?

Making your own postcard at Postcard.fm feels like that. Except it’s practically instant, so you can skip the up-all-night part!

All you have to do is choose your greatest photo, upload a song that captures the moment, and send it off with a message to your favorite person. Here’s one we made.

You can make a musical postcard for any occasion, but if you’re looking for some ideas try these on for size:

Best Valentines Ever: Send a foxy photo of you along with your intended’s favorite sappy love song. Hot-cha!

Party Invites: Send a festive postcard with all the party info to yourself, then forward the link to all your friends.

Sorry I Broke Into Your Apartment and Stole All Your Socks: OK, fine, maybe we’re the only ones that need to send those on a regular basis.

Now get out there and start mixing it up!

Make Your Own Postcard at Postcard.fm