Searching Custom Column Values in MOSS 2007

An interesting article!

“An issue that came up on a recent project was how can we search custom meta-data on document libraries in MOSS 2007? So for instance, let’s say that in a set of document libraries in a site or across a number of sites each will have a custom column named “Department” that is of a data type “Choice” and the possible values are each department in an organization. Now let’s say that end-users would like to use advanced search to use the Department field as search criteria.”

 

ActionScript 3: Scale and Alpha Ranges

This was driving me crazy until I stumbled upon this tip from Senocular.

One thing to be wary of, especially when trying to port older code to ActionScript 3, is that the ranges for many popular properties have changed. A few properties that, before, may have had ranges of 0 to 100 are now 0 to 1. Here is a couple of properties that changed; be on a lookout for others:

Code:

ActionScript 2.0  | ActionScript 3.0

_xscale: 0 - 100  | scaleX: 0 - 1

_yscale: 0 - 100  | scaleY: 0 - 1

_alpha:  0 - 100  | alpha:  0 - 1

 

SharePoint 2007: Using Javascript to Manipulate a List Form Field

A useful article from the Microsoft SharePoint Designer Team Blog . 

Drag and Drop in ActionScript 3.0

A very informative tutorial on drag and drop functionality on monkeyflash.com.

“Creating drag and drop functionality in Flash CS3 is quite different than in older versions if you're using the new ActionScript 3.0. While still relatively straightforward, the code can be a little more intimidating to users who are less familiar with ActionScript programming. “

Pandora

MC was just pointing this out. Interesting competition for AIR?

“Pandora is not a Runtime, unlike AIR, but is heavily focused on the development of Flash Applications for the Desktop. Pandora will offer advantages over AIR for Desktop Flash Application Development, just as Zinc does currently.”

 

Flash Tab Component

Grant Skinner, one of those Flash gurus who never disappoints, developed a component that allows for easy tab creation! Unfortunately, it’s geared for ActionScript 2, but we can’t have everything. J

“The SimpleTabBox is an AS2 component we built a while ….this is one of the components that I have always felt should have been part of the V2 component set, but for some reason, the closest Macromedia came was the release of the TabBar in one of the Devnet CDs (which was not very useful as all).”

 

The Future Of Creative Media Applications

I was just reading an intresting blog entry by Grant Skinner. It fits right in with what E has been saying for years about  mass customization.

The next steps for companies like Adobe are to standardize their APIs (not necessarily inter-company, but within their own suite), expand the extensibility and communication models fully, and most importantly to eliminate the deep rooted conception that the interface is a sacrosanct part of the application, and begin looking at it as a component (a very important component, mind) that sits on top of the core application. With these things in place, suddenly there will be a third party market for developing application surfaces on top of these functional cores. It will be possible to build a view for Photoshop that is specifically optimized for the workflow of one market segment, or even a specific company or task. Creative professionals (including programmers), will suddenly be able to build or purchase customized interfaces that better reflect the way they work. Likewise, it will be possible to create "macros" that automate, optimize or enhance workflows within an application or across a variety of tools.

This is the concept of user generated content applied to applications. No longer would these companies be limited to providing just the features that they can build, test, surface in the UI and test within a version cycle. They can focus on what they do best: creating amazing technology, and leave some of the burden of feature development to third party developers. They then have the option to select the cream of the crop and integrate it into the next version of the "default view" for the application. This will provide a more rapid, and semi-democratic feature development process, which seems like a logical extension to the "public beta" model that's arisen in the past few years. Of course, licensing details will be critical, but that's a topic for another post.

 

 

Sandy - your personal e-mail assistant

Iwantsandy.com claims to  “ help you use email more productively to keep track of life's daily details.”
For example, sending email to an e-mail address it creates for you, Sandy can perform a variety of tasks:
I understand a simple shorthand that feels natural to read and write. To have me remember something for you, start a sentence with "remember" or "remind" like this:
> Remember that I lent our Pride and Prejudice DVD to Mike
Mention a date or time and I will put it on the calendar and email you a reminder (and/or send a text message to your cellphone) when the time comes. I understand a number of date and time notations, for example:
> Remind me about yoga class on Friday at 8am
> Remember to pick up dry cleaning in 3 days

Crowdsourcing

E was just sent out a great e-mail about Satisfaction a “People-Powered Customer Service” site.

I learned about Satisfaction today while reading a post on the Oreilly Radar –and then came across an article (you may have seen it) from Newsweek (Crowdsourcing Customer Service) on crowdsourcing, another form of collective intelligence activity.

At this time, I find this part of the technology most interesting:

“When you start a topic Satisfaction feeds up similar conversations and answers. Eliminating redundant
 emails to the company frees up resources to better handle your unique issue.”

Outlook 2007 Signature Files

Here is the path the Signature files used by Outlook 2007. (Note: they are set to “read only” by default, but changing that property allows you to edit them as before.)

C:\Documents and Settings\cbramblett\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures

Setting a Flash data grid's background color based on a row's data

From Peter deHaan’s blog: Setting a Flash data grid's background color based on a row's data (ActionScript 3.0 edition)

Flash 7, 8, 9 and Bitmap Smoothing

I ran across an obscure (to me) graphics error in Flash and thought I’d share. I was loading dynamic images in a Flash 7 file. When I upgraded it to Flash 8 or 9, my images were suddenly pixelating!

Reason: I was reading the kaourantin.net blog, and he states: “When you dynamically load a bitmap in a Flash 8 file, smoothing is always turned off and rotating or scaling an image will yield ugly artifacts.”  (He includes a workaround, but it requires more effort in this case than simply reverting to Flash Player 7.)

Further in the blog he mentions that this issue is fixed in ActionScript 3. There is now a fix: imgname.smooth=true. However, Grant Skinner identified yet another possible bug with image smoothing!

“The Bitmap object in ActionScript 3 reverts its .smoothing property to false whenever you change it's .bitmapData property. Because we were setting up our Bitmap objects in advance, then assigning BitmapData objects to them when they were created, it simply appeared as though smoothing just didn't work in our project.”

Meanwhile, if you’re not dynamically loading images (i.e. they are in your library), but you need to scale or rotate them, there is an easy solution: right mouse click and select properties. From there select “Allow Smoothing.”

Phew.

 

AS3 - Full browser background with smoothing

Full browser background with smoothing

Search Engine Wiki

“Our aim is to be your online public library for Search Engine Marketing (SEM) resources.”

Why You Need to Make a Facebook Fan Page for Your Website

Heh,  sounds like a good idea.

Google blocks Yahoo's Pipes

Yahoo's Pipes requests for Google News URLs are being forwarded to Google's blocking page. Google is treating Pipes as a virus or other unwanted computer request.

High-quality YouTube videos coming soon

From C|Net:

YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, speaking at the NewTeeVee Live conference today, confirmed that high-quality YouTube video streams are coming soon. Although YouTube's goal, he said, is to make the site's vast library of content available to everyone, and that requires a fairly low-bitrate stream, the service is testing a player that detects the speed of the viewer's Net connection and serves up higher-quality video if viewers want it.

Cool icons!

Icons from the Crystal Clear icon set by Everaldo Coelho. – The icons are licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

 

SharePoint 2007 CSS Reference Chart

A handy CSS chart for MOSS2007 from HeatherSolomon.com.

Tips to locating your feed at some popular hosting services

Handy notes courtesy of publisher.yahoo.com.

*

Here are some tips to locating your feed at some popular hosting services:

Yahoo! 360°

• Once you make your blog public, a feed automatically appears at the bottom of your blog, which you can see by looking at the public view of your 360° page.
• For more information: Yahoo! 360° Help

Blogger "Blogspot"

• If your blog URL is:
  http://[USERNAME].blogspot.com
  Then your feed URL is:
  http://[USERNAME].blogspot.com/atom.xml
• For more information: Syndication FAQ for Blogger

MSN Spaces

• If your blog URL is:
  http://spaces.msn.com/members/[USERNAME]
  Then your feed URL is:
  http://spaces.msn.com/members/[USERNAME]/feed.rss

Typepad

• If your blog URL is:
  http://[USERNAME].typepad.com
  Or:
  http://[USERNAME].blogs.com
  Then your feed URL is one of the following:
  http://[USERNAME].typepad.com/[TITLE]/index.rdf
  Or:
  http://[USERNAME].blogs.com/[TITLE]/index.rdf
• For more information: Syndication FAQ for Typepad

 

SWFBridge

I have a feeling I’ll be looking for this again…

From Grant Skinner’s blog: SWFBridge: Easier AS3 to AS2 Communication

 

 

Consumer 'Email Insecurity' Documented

I was just perusing the EmailLabs “Intevation Report” and the "email insecurity factor" survey was interesting. Particularly, the statistic of 64% of respondents claiming that their permission/personal email often gets blocked or sent to their spam folder.

More than half of consumer email users use at least two email addresses, apparently to protect themselves from spam and cybercrime, according to an October 2007 survey by email reputation service Habeas and market research firm Ipsos that found what it called a high "email insecurity factor" among regular email users.

Among the findings:

·         73%: Survey participants who use email daily

·         62%: Concerned about becoming victims of fraud or cybercrime

·         60%: Say spam is becoming worse

·         83%: Say their email client's user interface has a spam button

·         23%: Say their email service has fraud detection

·         64%: Say permission/personal email regularly get routed to the spam folder or blocked

"Despite the popularity, ubiquity, cost-effectiveness and targeted nature of email, online relationships and the interactions that enable them are very fragile," said Habeas CEO Des Cahill. "If individuals, marketers, businesses and Web 2.0 communities cannot place their trust in email, the Internet's premier 'killer app' will not reach its full potential as these groups could refrain from using it for higher value interactions."

 

Visual Studio Express - Free

Looks like Microsoft is getting into giving away “light” versions of their Visual Studio products.

Windows Development

Learn how the Visual Studio Express Editions can help you create fun, cool projects that run on your Windows desktop client.

Web Development

Want to create interactive web sites, blogs and online portals to share with friends and family? Visual Web Developer Express Edition makes it easy.

Game Development

Gaming doesn't have to be a player-only experience. Find out how you can create your own games or mod your favorite game using the Visual Studio Express Editions and XNA Game Studio Express.

Database Development

Data storage and persistence is a must-have capability whether you're building a Windows application or a dynamic Website. SQL Server Express Edition is a powerful and easy-to-use database to complement each Visual Studio Express Edition.

Article: Portals Think Small for the Latest News

From the WSJ:

Portals Think Small for the Latest News

Niche Sites Offer Access To Content as Gateways Battle Traffic Slippage

“Six months ago, Minyanville.com was an obscure provider of financial news that, among other things, featured an animated bull and bear named Hoofy and Boo that bantered about the day's headlines…. Today, Minyanville Publishing & Multimedia is in a much different position. The company provides content to major financial sites, from Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Finance to Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Money and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Money and Finance. It also supplies video clips of its animated characters to News Corp.'s Fox Business News.”

 

VectorMagic - Convert Photographs to Vector Images Automatically

 

Here’s an interesting excerpt from the “PhotoJojo” newsletter. Looks like it was done in Flex, too.

“A free website from the folks down at Stanford, VectorMagic takes your raster images and turns them into smooth vector drawings…other programs will do this, but VectorMagic is web-based and will run on most computers. Plus, its algorithms do an impressive job of translating photographs into realistic vectors — something others choke on.”

The article also references:
Rsizr — Free seam-carving image resizing on the web
A magically intelligent seam-carving, image-resizing tool

The Rasterbator – Huge, Wall-sized Prints Using Your Inkjet or Laser
Turn any photo into a wall-sized poster using the printer in your home or office

BlockPosters – Turn Photos Into Posters With Block Posters
An alternative take on the giant-photo-poster-making hipness

DeepFish

Interesting…I wonder how it compares to the iPhone’s zoom?

http://labs.live.com/deepfish/

“The Deepfish Technology Preview enhances existing mobile browsing technologies by displaying content in a view that is closer to the desktop experience. Our zoom-able interface and cue map allow you to quickly access the information you care about over the web without ever losing track of where you are.”

Cover Flow

A cool article courtesy of ER:

Think of the way you can flip thru your music and video and add that to searchmash –Google’s current experiment.

Google labs beta

http://www.searchmash.com/flash/search/#home

From Wikipedia:

Cover Flow is a three-dimensional graphical user interface included with iTunes, the Macintosh Finder, and other Apple Inc. products for visually rummaging through files and digital media libraries via cover artwork.

CoverFlow was invented by artist Andrew Coulter Enright^[1] and originally implemented by an independent Macintosh developer, Jonathan del Strother.

CoverFlow was purchased by Apple Inc. in 2006, and its technology was integrated into its flagship jukebox application, iTunes 7.0, which was released on September 12, 2006.^[2]. The name was also changed to “Cover Flow”. The last release of Steel Skies’ stand-alone application, version RC1.2, was released the day prior, September 11, 2006. It was freely distributed for that day only, but remains available for download from MacUpdate. On January 9, 2007, Apple announced that the iPhone would incorporate Cover Flow technology. During the WWDC Keynote on June 11, 2007, Steve Jobs announced that Cover Flow would be added as a view option in Leopard’s Finder. On September 5, 2007 Apple announced that Cover Flow would be utilized in the third generation iPod nano as well as the new iPod classic and iPod touch models.

The Cover Flow interface has also been implemented on other operating systems (when using the X Window System) in the form of the Cover mode of the Shift Switcher plugin of Compiz-Fusion^[3]. It allows the user to use a Cover-Flow-like animation to switch between open applications.

 

 

More Flash Liquid GUIs

Adobe - Developer Center  Creating liquid GUIs with Flash, Flex Builder, and ActionScript 3.0

 

ActionScript 3.0 Tutorials

A few tutorials on ActionScript 3 in Flash CS3:

·         Tips for migrating your Flash applications to ActionScript 3.0

A nice Adobe.com article.

·         Getting Started with ActionScript 3.0 in Adobe Flash CS3

A tutorial by Senocular (a work in progress, but still very detailed)

 

RSS to GeoRSS Converter.

An interesting mashup that converts RSS to GeoRSS: RSS to GeoRSS Converter.

 

Guides to the 2007 Office system user interface

Guides to the 2007 Office system user interface

 

swftools.com

Seems like a nice listing of Flash tools and utlilities.

http://www.swftools.com/

 

Six Free Online Storage Services

This is the article I was thinking of regarding  free online storage services.

“Don't want to spend money and installation hassles on new storage hardware for your precious media? Whether it's for sharing memories in the form of digital photos and videos over the web—or just practical documents you want to protect against that all-too-common hard disk crash, these six services offer secure, and often free, ways to back up your files and get access to them anywhere. The services also provide a way to share your data with others without sending huge email attachments or FTPing or hosting them yourself. Most of them offer drag-and-drop for easy uploading. Though there are scores of online storage services, we focused on ones with free plans and interesting features.”

box.net

DropBoks

eSnips

MediaMax

OmniDrive

openomy