As you might have noticed, perlerpal.com is no more.  I recently got contacted by some lawyers that stated that I was infringing on the Perler® trademark by using that within the website name.  I was a little shocked, but knowing what I do about trademark laws, I know that you have to fight for them to keep them.  I wasn’t too bent out of shape about it, as it’s not like I make any money from the site.   The odd thing is, when I created the tool (way before transferring it to it’s own domain), I didn’t even think about the infringement.  I thought that it sounded good, and just went with it.  I had created it for me, my kids, and the rest of the internets to be able to make “Melty bead creations” easier.

After a couple of days of noodling, I my wife came up with MyPixelPal.com.  I moved everything over and changed links wherever I could find them to the new location.  In a way, this was a good change.  Since the tool can be used for other crafts (cross-stitch, LEGO® bricks, other melty-beads), it makes sense for it to have a more generic name.  The new site doesn’t have any of the new features I’m planning, but at least it’s now no longer infringing.   Please let me know if you find anything broken with the new site.

To my perler people — I’m working on designing a new version of the perlerpal mypixelpal site, and will hopefully be including things that people are interested in.  If you have something you’d like to see in the new version, please let me know, so I can accommodate you if possible.  Here’s some of the features I’m looking at having:

• User logins with Facebook login support
• Everyone having their own area for reference images that won’t go away periodically (unlike today)
• Your own palettes (instead of sharing with everyone)
• Generating an image instead of using tables (which should fix some browser printing issues as well as have a more finite spacing ability)
• A resizing option / cropping
• A forum to discuss the site vs. my blog
• A gallery where people can upload photos of their finished creations
• Rating and comment system for the gallery
• The ability for users to flag inappropriate gallery images

That’s what I have so far.   If you have any ideas on what would be good to include, please let me know!

I just finished updating PerlerPal to 1.4 – here’s the new features!

• Added a load option to the palette editor
• Added the ability to turn off and on the grid
• Fixed an issue with palettes being able to save invalid entries (which made some palettes not render correctly)
• Added a palette display for the loaded palette
• Added an option to show color numbers (good for printouts/colorblindness)
• Added the ability to create new palettes

Thanks to all that have commented – these changes were made because the users requested them. I’m happy that people enjoy using the utility – please keep the comments coming! It’s what makes me happy to keep improving the tool! Go to the new tool here!