One Thousand Drags and Drops with AJAX

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Thursday, April 20, 2006; 02:30 AM

A new Web2.0 application, located at TheBroth.com, applies AJAX technology to indulge your innner artist in a novel and funny way.  After a free registration with the site, everyone can create a uniqe "room" - a blank 730x450px screen area, filled with a random selection of 1,000 mosaic pieces.  The fun starts there - dedicated dragging and dropping can create complex colorful images.

Users can take snapshots of mosaics, invite friends to participate or themselves collaborate on projects. An important feature is the ability to customize a room with user-uploaded banners, new links, and content.  The "room settings" option allows for changing the look of the room at any time.

Mosaic tiles can be moved freely or snapped to aligned positions.  Everyone sees the moves of others in real time. When participating in a group mosaic, skills and behaviour can be rated using simple + and - buttons next to each user.  With the press of a button you can order a CafePress T-shirt with a selected mosaic design on it.

On the downside, it seems that opening your own room requires two registrations, when one would have been perfectly enough. 

The Broth is an interesting attempt to use AJAX to create a visual collaborative medium.  The mosaics consist of a fairly large number of pieces; a persistent person can create a complex image (although not of truly Bysantine complexity), or invite friends over the net to participate in a relaxing session of tile-arranging.

The Broth was launched yesterday, and it still has to attract a faithfull community.

 Users can upload their own banners.