I just got my beta invitation and spent about an hour playing around this morning. The site looks INCREDIBLE. Here's where to sign up: early bird invite.

Don't be intimidated. Aviary was designed to accomodate hobbiests to professionals. It is a "suite of rich internet applications (RIAs) geared for artists of all genres. From image editing to typography to music to 3D to video, they have a tool for everything. Their goal is to create a complex ecosystem for artists and provide the world with free, capable collaborative tools and an approach to collaboration and rights management that will turn the marketplace for online art on its head."

Right now the only tools open for testing are the image editor (the Phoenix) and the Peacock, a "computer algorithm-based pattern generator", which totally confused me because I've no clue what I'm supposed to do with the tool. But it looks cool. Here's what's coming (see screen shot below for pretty version—PS ... all the tools are named after bird species):

Phoenix | image editor

Toucan | color swatches and palettes creator

Peacock | computer algorithm-based pattern generator

Raven | vector editor

Hummingbird | 3-D modeller and skinner

Myna | audio editor

Roc | music generator

Starling | video editor

Owl | desktop publishing layout editor

Penguin | word-processing software geared towards creative writers

Pigeon | painting simulator

Tern | terrain generator

Horus | font editor

Woodpecker | smart image resizer using seam carving

Rookery | free, unlimited distributed file system network that anyone can connect to and store data in ... it also powers their file search engine

Hawk | digital content marketplace

Crane | custom image product creator

Eagle | smart online application that can identify complex data about an image based on the pixel patterns (i.e. which specific camera an image originally came from)