Critter in the header
It started with a play on a word invented at STG Interactive by Laura Whiteman, which is froganize. According to froganslore (a word that I just now invented for the purpose of getting through this paragraph), you can froganize your Web site by integrating it with one or many frogans. For instance, you might include a link to a frogans on your page, or inversely, link from a frogans to your site. Anyway, as catchy a word as froganize is, froganeyes seemed to say much the same thing, but with an added visual aspect.
Before long I tumbled on this photo by Jan Pietruszka on iStockphoto of this Agalychnis callidryas (or Red-eyed Tree Frog) sat atop a halved kiwi, which I integrated into the head area of this blog site. As it turns out, the Red-eyed Tree Frog, if we are to trust what’s said about it in Wikipedia, lends itself to comparisons with frogans.
For instance, the Red-eyed Tree Frog is native to the rainforests of Costa Rica and Central America, and stays near the water so that it can reproduce. Frogans technology was conceived in France, but makes its habitat on the Internet, and a frogans will reproduce anywhere where there’s an Internet connection.
The Red-eyed Tree Frog is nocturnal. Frogans are 24/7.
The Red-eyed Tree Frog relies heavily on it vision. A frogans is visual, and if you want to make a frogans, it’s always a good idea to do it with vision.
The Red-eyed Tree Frog is also visual. As a tadpole it can change color like a chameleon. As an adult it closes its big red eyes and covers up the blue regions on its sides when it wants to blend in with the green foliage and hide from a predator. Then, if it senses that it’s under attack, it might open its eyes and show its full color range to throw its attacker off guard while it hops to safety. A frogans can catch your eye with its capacity to have different visual aspects, including its shape and colors, but can also blend in with your desktop environment thanks to its zooming ability.
The Red-eyed Tree Frog can pull its big red eyes through the roof of its mouth to help push down food… Okay, okay, we’d all like to see a frogans do that, wouldn’t we?