PCTips Box

Here’s a brilliant time-waster. It’s called Pictaps, simply pop along to the website, wait for it to load and click the Paint button. You can now use the simple drawing tools to design a character, based on the outline template; add colours and features. When you are happy with it click the OK button, give it a name and your character is transported into a 3D landscape, and starts dancing, along with countless copies and clones of itself.

It’s mesmerising, and highly addictive and when you get a moment have a look at some of the characters created by other visitors to the site. You can share your efforts with others with a link address, or download it to your blog or website, you can see the results of my pathetic drawing skills, called ‘Nukeman’ here, and yes, the resemblance is uncanny…

We’ve been hearing rumours of super secret project by Google to create a virtual world based on Google Earth. Presumably it will be along the lines of Second Life, the phenomenally successful online world where between 1 and 3 million (depending who you talk to) players or residents meet and interact with other – well, it keeps them off the streets. Anyway, Google’s interest in this area is not as far-fetched as it sounds, Google Earth has been steadily evolving and recent additions to version 4, like Sketchup 3D graphics, which can be used to create buildings, makes it all sound quite plausible. It would certainly be a very attractive proposition for the search giant and the potential for advertising and cross-linking with its other services must be enormous. Of course, it’s still only a rumour but in the past they’ve had a habit of coming true, we shall see…