Google Announces the OpenSocial API

Great articles from ER:

OReilly: Google Announces the OpenSocial API

TechCrunch: Details Revealed: Google OpenSocial to Launch Thursday

NYT: Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook

The WSJ was in the fray, too.

Google Phone

From the WSJ:

Google Inc. is close to unveiling its long-planned strategy to shake up the wireless market, people familiar with the matter say. The Web giant's ambitious goal: to make applications and services as accessible on cellphones as they are on the Internet.

In a move likely to kick off an intense debate about the future shape of the cellphone industry, Google wants to make it easier for cellphone customers to get a variety of extra services on their phones -- from maps to social-networking features to video-sharing. To get its way, however, the search giant will have to overcome resistance from wireless carriers and deal with potentially thorny security and privacy issues.

 

Meebo Opens Site to Developers

From the WSJ:

Two years ago, Meebo began offering technology that enables instant messaging through a Web site without the user downloading software from other companies. Now, in a bid to become a broader "destination" site and cash in on the online-ad market, the Mountain View, Calif., company will allow outside software developers to build programs and applications around its instant-messaging technology

.

.

.

The company's transformation shows how hot the trend of social networking and Web-based "communities" has become, and how eager venture capitalists are to fund such ventures, despite questions about their profit potential. Meebo started collecting revenue only two months ago, from ads sold inside its chat rooms. The company, with its focus on live activities, "has the potential to be a fabulous business" and earn money, said Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia.

 

Tourist Remover

Remove moving objects such as tourists or passing cars from your photos. Take multiple photos from the same scene and the Tourist Remover blends them into a composite photo without any interfering elements.
more...

Copy Motion as ActionScript 3.0

This is my FAVORITE feature so far in Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3!

“The Copy Motion as ActionScript 3.0 command generates an XML definition of the selected tween and sets up the classes necessary to recreate the animation in ActionScript. The possibilities for creating and re-applying animations and effects using this feature are endless.”

Modifying Styles via JavaScript

A neat script found on Apple’s Developer site.

The script contains several functions, discussed in detail below. The first three functions set styles, allowing you to discriminate between elements based on their ID, their CLASS, or their tag name. The second set of functions simply allows you to get the current style settings for each element.

The simplest of these is setStyleById(), which takes an element ID, a CSS property, and a value, and sets that element’s property to that value.

 

Developing with the Display List in ActionScript 3

Josh Tynjala, Flash Platform Engineer wrote this article. He also had an earlier blog entry here.

“ActionScript 3 has a new way of working with MovieClips. It can be confusing for ActionScript 3 beginners and even experts coming from ActionScript 2. A quick introduction will get you up to speed with the basics of the display list, and an in-depth look at more complex scenarios will help you understand the changes from AS2 to AS3 more deeply.”

Flash - URL Encoding: Reading special characters from a text file

“One common technique used to load variables in Macromedia Flash is reading the data from a text file on the server or CD. This works well in most situations. However, there are certain characters that cannot be read directly from text.”

The Great Detachable-Head Website Showdown!

Silly, but fun.

 

IBM Details 'World's Fastest' Optical Chipset

Um…wow. (This is actually “old” news, announced in March.)

“IBM  researchers announced Monday an optical chipset that could allow you to download a complete high-definition movie in one second, rather than the 30 minutes or more that today's fastest chips allow.”

 

Yahoo! Developer Network - Flash Developer Center - Articles - Developing with the Display List in ActionScript 3

Developing with the Display List in ActionScript 3

by Josh Tynjala, Flash Platform Engineer

ActionScript 3 has a new way of working with MovieClips. It can be confusing for ActionScript 3 beginners and even experts coming from ActionScript 2. A quick introduction will get you up to speed with the basics of the display list, and an in-depth look at more complex scenarios will help you understand the changes from AS2 to AS3 more deeply.

Navigation

1. Introduction to the Display List
2. Changes to root and parent
3. Display List Best Practices

 

ActionScript Quick Reference

I was just perusing ActionScriptCheatSheet.com, and they have added several ActionScript 3 quick references. For example:

·         ActionScript 2.0 to 3.0 Migration Cheatsheets, (Multi-Page PDF)

·         ActionScript 3.0: Top Level Cheatsheets, (Multi-Page PDF)

Etcetera., Etcetera. J

Also, of special interest to B:

·         Papervision 3D Cheatsheet!

 

Spell Check Engine for AS3, Flash, Flex, AIR

Unfortunately this component isn’t free, but it’s pretty cool!

“Spelling Plus Library (SPL) is a full featured client-side spell checking engine, designed to be used in Flash, Flex and AIR; by both developers and designers. It was built as a best of breed library, with careful attention to architecture, optimization, and extensibility.”

http://www.gskinner.com/products/spl/about.php

From Grant Skinner’s blog:

“If you've seen any recent demos of Buzzword, you've already seen SPL in action. Virtual Ubiquity implemented Spelling Plus Library in their awesome word processing application, and has provided invaluable feedback that we have used to enhance the API.”

 

More on fluid layouts in Flash

This article is great as it includes AS3 code as well…

ActionScript - Gradients and Filters

Flash PowerTools Exploring Gradients

and

Applying Filters Programmatically in Flash 8

Creating Fluid Layouts in Flash - Part 1: The Basics

A neat article by  Joseph Balderson at Communitymx.com. Is this the approach Flex uses for liquid layouts?

Highslide JS

R found this fun JavaScript utility:

“Highslide JS is an open source JavaScript software, offering a Web 2.0 approach to popup windows. It streamlines the use of thumbnail images and HTML popups on web pages.”

JavaScript: access global variables between window and opener

A nice hint (for me, the novice) at this site.

One way to access global variables between window and opener is to

centralize the location of the global variables and access them

appropriately.

Example:

doc1:

var v1 = 1, v2 = 2;

var w = window.open('doc2.htm', 'doc2');

doc2:

To access v1 and v2 global variables, you have to reach doc1's window

appropriately, and in that case, from doc2:

alert(window.opener.window.v1);

 

HTML Coolness: a true 100% height layout

Great code from MB!

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

<title>Untitled Document</title>

<style type="text/css">

html, body {

margin:0;

padding:0;

height:100%;

}

.container {

width:800px;

min-height:100%;

margin:auto;

background-color:#CCCCCC;

position:relative;

}

.footer {

position:absolute;

bottom:0px;

width:100%;

height:100px;

background-color:#666666;

}

/* Since the footer is absolutely positioned, resizing the page would cause the footer to cover up any other content you have.  The following clearfooter div sits behind the footer and prevents the content from being hidden.  The height can be adjusted to provide more or less padding between the bottom of your content and the top of the footer. */

.clearfooter {

height:110px;

}

/* And finally, a little CSS hack to get this to work on IE6 */

* html .container {height:100%;}

</style>

</head>

<body>

<div class="container">

<!--I've purposely left out the <p> tag here as it was causing some unwanted padding/margin problems in Firefox and Safari.  You can always specify these properties in the styles above, but I left them out to keep the focus on the CSS for the layout. -->

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.

<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.</p>

<div class="clearfooter"></div>

<div class="footer">Footer contents here</div>

</div>

</body>

</html>

Simple JavaScript: window.location

Basic stuff, but mighty useful for a novice such as myself. window.location is an object containing:

 

Properties

hash

host

hostname

href

pathname (relative to the host)

port

protocol

search

 

Methods

assign(url)

reload(forceget)

replace(url)

toString()

 

Example:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">

<!--

      {

document.write(location.href);

document.write(location.hostname);

      }

      // -->

</SCRIPT>

Google's Ajax Search API

Have you seen Google’s Ajax Search API? Cool stuff.

“The Google AJAX Search API lets you put Google Search in your web pages with JavaScript. You can embed a simple, dynamic search box and display search results in your own web pages or use the results in innovative, programmatic ways.”

 

Monitor Calibration

Seems interesting. I wonder if it actually works?

Spyder2express™
Quick, Easy, and Accurate Monitor Calibration
Calibrate your display - just like professionals. Spyder2express™ calibrates monitors in three easy steps - simply plug it in, specify your display type, and it does the rest, automatically calibrating your monitor or laptop. Check the before-and-after. You'll see the improvement!

Pandia's Top 10 Useful Web Tools

Pandia Search Engine News, posted a list of their “Top 10 Useful Web Tools” for blogging, exploring and information management. I’ve included their list here, but for the rationale behind the choices the full article can be found here.

1. Yahoo! Bookmarks

2. Google Reader or Rojo

3. Stumbleupon

4.Vox

5. Netvibes

6. Yahoo Mail

7. Facebook

8. Feedburner

9. Google Docs

10. Flickr

MyxerTones

BH was just telling me about this fun site:

MyxerTones is the best way to make and share ringtones and wallpapers.

With MyxerTones, you can:

• Get thousands of ringtones and wallpapers, most at no charge, from our vast catalog
• Make your own ringtones and wallpapers from files on your computer
• Share and sell your own original content as ringtones
• Deliver mobile content directly from your website or MySpace page
• ...and tons more!

Myxer fills that mysterious void that has existed between the world of the web and the mobile phone for too long. And Myxer accounts are free, so there's no excuse not to have one!

 

A Work in Progress: Buying Art on the Web

From the WSJ:

Saatchi Online Offers a View

Of Nascent Internet Market;

Seeing 500 Artists in a Night

 

Creating movie clips with reflections in ActionScript 3.0

A fun tutorial on Adobe.com.

This tutorial steps you through the creation of the Reflect class, a custom ActionScript 3.0 class that you can apply to reflections on movie clips (and use to modify them) in your Flash CS3 Professional projects.

Newsweek: Campaign 2008: The Stumper Stickers

I thought you might enjoy this intersection of politics and design. The article critiques the logos of the 2008 front runners.

“Election season is taking over the front page, the evening news, and—sticker by sticker—the nation's bumpers. Like any ad, the logos of the '08 contenders are designed to sell a brand and subliminally play up a candidate's winning image. PERISCOPE sat with Michael Bierut, a partner at design firm Pentagram, to parse the good, the bad and the sans serifs.”

 

MyLifeBits

MyLifeBits is a Microsoft Research project to create a "lifetime store of everything.” I learned about “MyLifeBits” from an interesting New Yorker article about Gordon Bell. This article says Bell been described as “the Frank Lloyd Wright of computers.”

An excerpt from the New Yorker article:

The project is called MyLifeBits, and its purpose is to find uses for the material that Bell is storing and that he and Gemmell believe everyone will eventually store on their computers. (By 2010, a typical life, they feel sure, will fit on a cell phone.) Bell’s archive has two sections: a historical part and a contemporary part. Aware that they could add to the archive anything they wanted to, Bell and Gemmell began wondering what else they could collect. “We started thinking about Gordon’s whole life,” Gemmell says. “We started going into ‘What if I stored everything, what would it mean, what are the implications? We don’t know.’”

From Microsoft:

The experiment: Gordon Bell has captured a lifetime's worth of articles, books, cards, CDs, letters, memos, papers, photos, pictures, presentations, home movies, videotaped lectures, and voice recordings and stored them digitally. He is now paperless, and is beginning to capture phone calls, IM transcripts, television, and radio.

The software research: Jim Gemmell and Roger Lueder have developed the MyLifeBits software, which leverages SQL server to support: hyperlinks, annotations, reports, saved queries, pivoting, clustering, and fast search. MyLifeBits is designed to make annotation easy, including  gang annotation on right click, voice annotation, and web browser integration. It includes tools to record web pages, IM transcripts, radio and television. The MyLifeBits screensaver supports annotation and rating. We are beginning to explore features such as document similarity ranking and faceted classification. We have collaborated with the WWMX team to get a mapped UI, and with the SenseCam team to digest and display SenseCam output.

WSJ Article: Voice Mail Gets A Lot More Fun With Free Services

Both of the services described in the article seem like fun.

The days of "leave a message after the beep" could soon be a thing of the past. New Web services are giving cellphone voice mail a fresh sound with features that let users personalize outgoing messages for individual callers and eschew unwanted calls. I've been testing two such free services, YouMail and GrandCentral, that let you customize phone-mail features through wireless Internet communication. They're like your voice-mail service on steroids.

More…

Twelve Essential Photographic Rules

Sadly, I don’t think I’m advanced enough to follow the rules! J For some of you camera enthusiasts, though, here are a few tips from Popular Photography.

Cinema 4D Exchange For After Effects CS3 Now Available

MAXON reinforces its commitment to Motion Graphics Artists with Unrivaled Support for Adobe After Effects

Hot on the heels of Adobe's release of After Effects CS3, MAXON makes its free file exchange plugin available for seamless connectivity to After Effects CS3, for both Windows and Macintosh systems.

More videos from MAX

Thanks Peter!

 

Adobe Media Player

Also from E today:

Adobe Media Player: A new way to deliver high-quality content

 

Adobe Thermo - Video!

E just forwarded this awesome video from Ajaxian

I remember sitting in a Microsoft presentation that first showed off Expression Web, and the promise of finally moving past the current way of working with designers:

• Designer: “Here mate, enjoy this jpg”
• Developer: “Ok, I cut it up and made it into a web page, but now I need to tweak this area, can you send me a new one?”
• Designer: “Here mate, enjoy this jpg”
• … repeat …

Now it is Adobe’s turn to have a swipe at the problem, and they have released Adobe Thermo to help you design RIAs and really use artifacts.

Peter Elst has got the first video of the demo:

 

OReilly Article: Adobe Thermo: Building Flex's RIAs Gets Easy

E forwarded this. So neat!

Adobe Thermo: Building Flex's RIAs Gets Easy
Adobe gave a preview of their new RIA-Builder, Thermo, today at MAX. The live, onstage demo showed how to take a Photoshop-generated screenshot and transform it into an interactive Flex UI that can be edited in FlexBuilder. This new tool is aimed at designers and will be out in 2008.

There is no official page up, but there is a single page detailing Thermo on the Adobe Labs Wiki. They provide the following details:

• Use drawing tools to create original graphics, wireframe an application design, or manipulate artwork imported from Adobe Creative Suite tools.
• Turn artwork from Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fireworks directly into functional components that use the original artwork as a “skin”.
• Define and wire up interactive behavior, such as what to do when a user clicks on something, without having to write code.
• Easily design UIs that work with dynamic data, such as a list of contacts or product information, without having access to the actual data source. Design-time sample data can be used as a realistic placeholder when laying out an application, testing interactivity, and choreographing motion.

Applications created in Thermo are Flex applications that can be loaded directly into Flex Builder, providing a great roundtrip workflow for designers collaborating with developers. The designer's work can be incorporated directly into the production application with no loss of fidelity, and designers can continue to refine the design throughout the iterative development process.

I've been at MAX since Sunday when I did an Ignite. I've been impressed at all the excitement from the developers and designers in attendance. The new tools that are being previewed and released seem to be living up to their expectations. After the jump I've included some screenshots from the wiki. Also see WebWare and ReadWriteWeb for more coverage.

[found the thermo link via Ryan Stewart's Twitter]

Rsizr - Free seam-carving image resizing on the web

E sent out a video explanation of  “seam carving” last week (awesome):

"At the SIGGRAPH 2007 conference in San Diego, two Israeli professors,
Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir, have demonstrated a new method to shrink images.
The method is called 'Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing'
(PDF paper here) and it figures out which parts of an image are less significant.
 This makes it possible to change the aspect ratio of an image without making
the content look skewed or stretched out. There is a video demonstration up on YouTube."

So, thanks to E, the following caught my eye in the “Photo JoJo” e-newsletter:

Rsizr — Free seam-carving image resizing on the web

See also…
Picutel Smart Resize
$95 Seam Carving Photoshop plugin (PC-only)

Liquid Resize for GIMP
Free Seam Carving plugin for GIMP

Actionscript sourcecode and examples
For you Flash cowboys and cowgirls who want to build this yourself.

Seam Carving academic paper (PDF)
Dr. Ariel Shamir and Dr. Shai Avidan describe their technique in detail. (Fun fact, Dr. Avidan was hired by Adobe shortly after this hit the web… look for seam carving to pop up in a future version of Photoshop!)

YouconvertIt.com

A great utility from MC:

YouconvertIt.com is “the world's first and most complete conversion website allowing internet users to convert audio video images and documents into an array of formats. YouconvertIt.com’s service is free, instant, and does not require any tedious download and software installations.”