The app is certainly a relic, from a time when the casual computer user couldnt crack open Photoshop or Skitch or Pixelmator or thousands of web apps. MS Paint cant save image components as layers or vectors its for making flat static images only. It doesnt smooth lines or guess at your best intentions. It does what you tell it and nothing more, faithfully representing the herky jerky motion of drawing freehand with a computer mouse. Its from a time before touch, a time before trackpads. Legendary toy warehouse sale,Discount and Clearance Toys, Discount Games, Discount Toys and More. If you have a physical house, you can also use it to control smart home gadgets like lights or a garage door opener. The whole experience transforms a dumb car. As more sophisticated options appeared, Paints janky aesthetic became a conscious choice. Samsung S5282 Full Flash File on this page. Paint became the metonym for that aesthetic, even if an image was actually created in another app. TV Tropes lists major limitations that came to define a certain look the wobbly freehand lines, awkward color handling, and inappropriate export settings that give Paint its distinctive look. In 2. 01. 4, Gawkers Sam Biddle noted Paints influence on conspiracy theory images, calling the form Chart Brut. In amateur detectives attempts at identifying the Boston Marathon bombers, the simplicity and jaggedness of Paint evokes the crazy wall aesthetic of red string and scribbled notes, apparently without irony. The same year, internet historian Patrick Davison explored Paints influence on the last decade of meme culture, particularly Rage Comics. The outsider art aesthetic feels appropriate to the relatable everyday content, and makes the art form unthreatening. Of course, Paint offered a few features to smooth things out, like the circle and line tools and the fill tool, all used in the stoner comics of the early 1. Crucially, those circles still had jagged curves. The bright colors of stoner comics are flat, as MS Paint didnt support gradients without an elaborate hack. Contrast those pixellated lines with the slick, stylish face from this art tutorial This slickness is built into Paints successor, Paint 3. D. From the moment you start sketching, Paint 3. D smooths out your art. It also supports automatic selection tools and content aware fill to rival Photoshops. By automatically improving art, Paint 3. D hides the process behind the image. Paints sloppiness is probably why rage comics got so popular. Looking at a rage comic, you can tell exactly how it was drawn, and how you might draw one yourself. By delivering exactly what the artist draws, MS Paint forms an image that the viewer can mentally reverse engineer and imitate. Unless you go absolutely nuts with it. Reddit user Toweringhorizon painstakingly assembled the drawing To a Little Radio using MS Paint tools like the oil brush, stretching the medium while maintaining a pixelated look. Its one of the top submissions to MS Paint subreddit, a beautiful collaborative art gallery. Scrolling through this art feels like flipping through the sketchbook of the most artistic kid in high school. Theres an accepted roughness, a desired minimalism. For example, the exquisite raindrops in the work above are reflected in a flat, featureless tabletop. Like a transistor radio, Paint might be showing its age, but this tenacious little gadget should not be underestimated. To a Little Radio doesnt even come close to testing Paints limits. As we say goodbye to the app that shaped an era, let us watch this bizarrely soundtracked time lapse of drawing Santa Claus in MS Paint on Windows 7 over the course of 5. We can only believe this is real because faking it would be even harder. Amazons Alexa Works Great in Your Car. This week Amazon had its biggest shopping day ever, with the Dot, the pint sized version of the companys Echo, being the best seller of the day. While the device is most commonly used in homes I have mine sitting in my living room so it can hear me around the apartment a Business Insider reporter wrote about setting his up in a little bit of a different spot his car. Ive actually been using Alexa on the road for roughly the past six months, and have found it really useful, arguably more so than in my home. While there absolutely are cars out there with voice control, they arent the ones Im driving. Its nice to be able to do things like make music requests, ask for the days headlines, or add things to your to do list hands free because apparently driving on the freeway is a great way for me to remember things Ive forgotten. Rather than swapping connected phones to get to my friends perfect playlist, everyone can make music requests from their seats. For long road trips, trivia and games with Alexa can also help break up the monotony, and Ive definitely used Alexa to order things I remember I need and know I can get from Amazon while Im behind the wheel. If you have a physical house, you can also use it to control smart home gadgets like lights or a garage door opener. The whole experience transforms a dumb car into one that feels like a car from the future, even if the actual car is barely functional at this point. You can check out how that reporter set things up with the Dot here. While I love the idea of Alexa while Im driving, I think doing it with a Dot is a little overkill. Ford and Volkswagen have announced plans to bring Alexa to future vehicles, but Ive been using Logitechs 3. Zero. Touch smartphone dock and my phone to get pretty much the same effect. Hardware wise its just a car mount for your phone. Theres a dashboard mount and can air vent mount. I have the vent one, mostly because I dont own my own car and like using in rentals. Its small enough to throw in a pocket or purse, and easily movable between different cars. The vent version is cheaper than buying the most discounted Dot and comes with a handful of other really useful hands free features too. For instance, you can also ask for driving directions or where the closest gas station is, send and receive texts or Facebook and Whats. App messages, call friends, or dig through your inbox. It comes with a small metal sticker you put on the back of your phone, which attaches to the mount in the car when youre ready to use it. Attaching and detaching the phone when youre driving is as simple as just placing your phone on the mount which honestly impresses people all on its own. Once connected, Logitechs hands free app will auto launch and youre good to go. Do you need Alexa in your carOf course not. But theres something totally satisfying about ordering groceries at 7.