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Introducing: OmniDazzle

by Linda Sharps on June 2, 2006

Well, I told you it was coming soon, and for once I wasn't proven a snake-oil-shilling-LIAR. Yay! The OmniProduct is now available as a public beta, and we can all stop calling it “OmniProduct” and start calling it “OmniDazzle”.

No, really. That's the name. Shut up, we like it.

So, OmniDazzle. What is it? Why, you may as well ask what it isn't. I mean, it isn't…well, it isn't a meatball maker, I can tell you THAT much.

Basically, it's a set of plug-ins designed to highlight certain areas of your screen and your mouse pointer. Clear as mud? When OmniDazzle is open, various plug-ins can be activated to professionally emphasize a section of your screen, or turn your mouse movement into an area of focus that trails visual effects across your desktop.

Visual effects range from pixie dust to spotlights to dog footprints. What can I say, the engineers are completely nuts creative.

I believe OmniDazzle began as a fun project several months ago when all of Omni started using 30” Cinema Displays. People were occasionally losing their cursors in the giant eyeball-straining expanse of screen, which is truly a bizarre phenomenon and one you can't really complain about without sounding obnoxious (“Oh dear, my massive diamond ring makes my hand too heavy!”).

OmniDazzle first only offered silly ways to locate your cursor, and then we started adding some effects that are actually really useful for doing demos, or taking screenshots, or calling attention to specific parts of your screen.

Now? It's, as our own Joel says, “a playfully practical pixel–pointer program offering mesmerizing mouse movements”.

Please take a look! We're hoping to only have it in beta for a couple weeks. The beta will be unlicensed, but you can grab an expiring license here; the final release will have a demo mode (an hour, I believe, before you have to buy a license or restart the app) and will cost $14.95.

All right. Go forth and enjoy!

 

Comments

Utilitainmentivity!

Joel

06.02.06 10:39 AM

It's like… it's like… flying toasters, but *useful*!

johnny0

06.02.06 11:23 AM

It also crashes on first launch for me. I've sent in the crash report.

Lucien

06.02.06 11:27 AM

Oh my god! It's like my mouse cursor is having sex with the universe - but better!

Leon Spencer

06.02.06 11:35 AM

There seems to be some issue with a certain class of Intel hardware—the app crashes deep in Apple's CoreImage code on these machines.  It runs fine here on several MacBook Pros, Intel iMacs, Intel Mac minis, MacBooks and such.  We've not received any reports of crashes on PPC machines.


We're trying to track this problem down and squish it, so any extra bug reports we can get would be helpful(particularly with Apple System Profiler reports).


Thanks for helping out with the beta!

Tim

06.02.06 11:37 AM

Update!


Lizard managed to get Dazzle to asplode on our Intel iMac.  Yay!  (I guess :)

Tim

06.02.06 11:38 AM

Should be easier to debug now, for sure. :-)

Lucien

06.02.06 11:42 AM

Pluses: It's cool. It's creative. It's purdy.


Minuses: Not incredibly useful for what I do. Could be more useful with some minor tweaks, IMHO.

Forrest

06.02.06 11:43 AM

By all means, log feature requests :)

Tim

06.02.06 11:51 AM

An update on this…


So, recently I made a change to the Glass border type used by our Cutout plugin.  This was to avoid a crasher in Apple's CoreImage framework on the Intel GMA 950.  Along the way, this ended up making the glass border type prettier and faster, so it became the default border type for Cutout.


... but, it turns out this exposed a crasher bug in the ATI version of the CoreImage framework.  So, for in the now-building beta 2, Intel machines will use a slightly different version of the CoreImage filter than ATI/NVIDIA cards.

Tim

06.02.06 1:24 PM

If it had an “only show in the menubar, don't show in the dock at all” option, that'd be nice—my dock space is more precious than my menubar space, so I'm more likely to leave something like this running if it remains completely unobtrusive.


Apart from that, it's great—I end up losing my cursor a lot on the dual 23” screens at work, and this ought to help.

Nat

06.02.06 1:59 PM

[...] Just the other day I was wishing there was an easy way to see where my mouse is when it gets lost on my dual headed set up. Now this comes along… OmniDazzle. Nice. [...]

Psludge » Blog Archive » Nifty tool.

06.02.06 1:59 PM

Cool!  New OmniStuff!


Like Spongebob, I'm ready!  I'm ready!  I'm re…whatdoyoumeanmyvideocardisn'tsupported?!?!


Bummer.


Considering that I shelled out some extra cash to upgrade my original 16MB ATI Rage Pro video card to a 128MB ATI 9000, it would have been nice to have received some extra benefits of the power.  But I guess it isn't to be.  I'll go and sulk now. :s

Chad

06.02.06 2:08 PM

Beta 2 works great for me! Thanks for such an quick turn around! You guys rock!

Lucien

06.02.06 3:00 PM

Yeah, OmniDazzle is giving me yet another reminder I need to upgrade my lovely machine. ATI Radeon 9000 Pro just doesn't cut it anymore. Where are you, MacPro's?!

Paul

06.02.06 5:45 PM

It's fun

It works (iMac, G4 with 768MB of RAM)

It will ruin my productivity ... “I'm just watching the pretty sparkly things!”

$15? As I have just bought OmniG and OmniO (pro of each) I think OmniD will wait for a while

Mark

06.02.06 6:30 PM

Help me… I can't stop playing with OmniDazzle, I must get my life back.

Don Perreault

06.03.06 4:32 AM

This is stupid-fun! Nice work!

Michael Sica

06.03.06 6:30 AM

[...] So the new and mysterious Omni product is a toy. I’m underwhelmed. It might be useful if you have a 30′’ monitor. Or not. [...]

Bloody Fingers » Omnidazzle

06.03.06 6:58 AM

Omnidazzle…


So the new and mysterious Omni product is a toy. I’m underwhelmed.

It might be useful if you have a 30′’ monitor. Or not.

(in all fairness, Omni actually said that it would a toy, so…)


......

Bloody Fingers

06.03.06 6:58 AM

Great work, guys!  See you at WWDC.


-jcr

John C. Randolph

06.03.06 11:07 PM

This shows how creative Omni people are. I think a product like this was needed as an extra incentive to show the omni people that they can make outstanding (unique) software when they set their minds to it. Congratulations!

enitupsaR

06.03.06 11:24 PM

Funny is, at least one machine at Omni Group must install Application Enhancer and Mighty Mouse. ;)


Beside jokes, I think this utility will be successful and as they both “play” in same area, you must buy Mighty Mouse and test with it.

Ilgaz

06.03.06 11:27 PM

Weird. Maybe the OTHER product is the OmniWeebleWobble. Needed to feed and pet the OmniGiraffe, of course.


(I tried to post this idea to the last entry, but it seems to have vanished. So it must be true.)

artifex

06.03.06 11:46 PM

Hmmm, Ma Mini G4 with his ATI Radeon 9200 isn't supported. Thats not funny.

I like youre products but when you in future ignored, that are some people have a system who is only 1 year old…

Robin

06.04.06 1:06 AM

Cool apptility. I lose my mouse all-too-often on my screens. The configuration screen needs some optimizing though. It ran up my machine to 1.5 load and I'm running a dual G5. Admittedly, I'm using a slow ATI9600 graphics card.


my favorite effects: flashlight and comic book. Which, incidentally doesn't seem to like having long, Don Martinesque sound effects entered into it. (E.g., “Mapapow!” and “Rabbabizzleboom!”)

boolean

06.04.06 2:28 AM

Sadly I'm between the ones left out of the party: my humble iBook G4 uses an unsupported ATI Mobility Radeon 9200. :(

Have fun guys while I dream on the new MacBook. :)

Carlos Alberto Pinto Peixoto Bastos Santos

06.05.06 7:55 PM

would like this to run as a systempreference pane, not as an app in the dock. maybe a contextual menu plugin to switch between plugin styles would be helpful too…


some sorts of useful combos for the draw/scribble/zoom tools would be to save the screen/screen area to a pdf or to the clipboard.


here i am killing all the fun and trying to turn it into a tool. ;-)

chad

06.06.06 6:46 AM

beta 3 is now up.

Tim

06.06.06 8:07 AM

Forget my earlier comments ... I am becoming addicted. When work gets too much I try to cover my screen with “dust”... I have a short attention span! I would also like a quick way of changing fx, a menulet (although I'm going to need a bigger screen to fit them all on - 18 at present, and I've turned some off!), a pref pane and a preference that would allow the pixie dust to collect at the bottom, like snow!


Do I get a reduction for the plug on my blog????

:)

Mark

06.07.06 6:10 AM

$15.00 for a mouse locator.  You're kidding right (looking around).  Please tell me your kidding.

Tony Frey

06.07.06 8:34 AM

Tony: I guess you think we should charge more, right?


(Ha, ha.)

Linda

06.07.06 8:40 AM

I'd buy it for half the price, really I would! o/wise I agree it should have garb to clipbaird or save image at least. well I need to get to 10.4 first, dang!

seetee

09.29.06 7:49 AM
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