lunedì, aprile 28, 2008

Pulse Particles

Rogue Development offers free ActionScript code or a Flash component to generate particle effects.

Pulse Particles is a general purpose AS3 particle system.

Features

  • Configurable rule based particle behavior.
  • Easily extensible
  • Both a full featured object orientated syntax, and a simplified quick object syntax.
  • Flash .mxp extension for easy integration for designers.
  • Interactive particle explorer to create effects

You can even use this Flex application to preview the various effects you might want to generate.

5 Gum

I bought a package of “5” gum purely because I like the package design and graphics. (It turns out to be tasty as well.) ER had this funny addendum:

The marketing plug for 5 gum is pretty funny: “Advertisements for the gum suggest it stimulates all five of the human senses. The brand features three flavors, each suggesting a unique effect on the chewer: the cinnamon flavor (Flare) is said to heat up as it is chewed, the spearmint flavor (Rain) "tingles," and the peppermint flavor (Cobalt) is said to cool down as it is chewed. Despite these bold claims, none of the flavors heat up, "tingle" or cool down at any point while chewing.”

Businessweek picks Dries Buytaert (DRUPAL) as a 2008 top innovator

Thanks to ER for pointing this out:

The Business of Startups Is Business

Funding: $7 million from North Bridge Venture Partners, Sigma Partners, and O'Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures
While he was still a computer science student in college, Buytaert developed Drupal, a system designed to make it easier to publish,

manage, and organize content on a Web site. He opened the source code, attracting a community of developers whose contributions

made Drupal into software that now powers more than 250,000 Web sites, including those of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner

Brothers Records (TWX), and Amnesty International. Acquia, co-founded by Buytaert, will distribute a version of Drupal that has been

tested for quality and security and will charge fees for providing support and other services.
Advice: "Make sure you have a solid business plan and you've done your homework and are passionate about what you are doing, and

people will recognize your potential," says Buytaert, also Acquia's chief technology officer.

Read Story

Use Google Spreadsheets to Create Web Forms/Surveys

This is a pretty neat feature! Now, I just have to figure out what I want to survey…

“ Create a form in a Google Docs spreadsheet and send it out to anyone with an email address. They won't need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page. Creating the form is easy: start with a spreadsheet to get the form, or start by creating the form and you'll get the spreadsheet automatically. Responses are automatically added to your spreadsheet.”

Google Docs: Bringing the Cloud With You

It looks like Google is now unveiling offline access to Google Docs for Google Apps users (enabled by also downloading Google Gears).

“The Google Docs team recently began launching offline access to English interface users with personal Google Docs accounts. With Google Gears

(http://gears.google.com/) working behind the scenes, users are able to view their docs lists and view and edit documents, all without an Internet connection. The feature will eventually roll out to all Google Apps domains, but if you're eager to have your Apps users try it out as early as possible, you can opt-in your domain via the admin control panel.”

venerdì, aprile 25, 2008

Evernote

Wow, if this lives up to the hype it’s a really innovative approach to capturing data. If the demo is any indication they have some really amazing OCR capabilities.

We are all constantly bombarded by information, much more than our brains can handle. So, we end up forgetting all sorts of things. With Evernote, you can start capturing all of those experiences, ideas, and memories, from both your real and digital life that would otherwise slip away.”

http://evernote.com/about/what_is_en/tour/

Brightcove

I was just noticing how several of the popular FLV players these days include a button to link or embed Multimedia content. In particular, I was just looking at the “Brightcove” player that the Wall Street Journal and large companies use. They’re actually pretty impressive in general.

giovedì, aprile 24, 2008

okaydave.com

Particle Effects! http://www.okaydave.com/

A Visual Search Engine: SearchMe Beta

Courtesy of ER:

SearchMe beta -- a new visual search engine, built with Flex 3, using cover-flow for browsing website. It’s a pretty nice interface!

mercoledì, aprile 23, 2008

iPaper

It sounds like FlashPaper doesn’t it? J Ah well, I guess Adobe won’t be following that path…

“iPaper is a document viewer built for the modern web. It's the first full-featured viewer that runs in a web page with no additional software.”

http://www.scribd.com/ipaper

martedì, aprile 22, 2008

ActionScript 3.0 onEnterFrame

A nice explanation of how to accomplish the same functionality the old AS2 “onEnterFrame” event in ActionScript 3.

In ActionScript 3.0, the frame event model has been changed from the ActionScript 2.0 version quite a bit. In ActionScript 2.0, if you wanted to perform a task every time you entered a frame, you would type:

onEnterFrame = function(){
trace("Do Something");
}

In ActionScript 3.0, you must use an event listener format to perform a frame event. For example…

addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,myFunction);
function myFunction(event:Event) {
trace("Do Something");
}

TrapsterR - Speed Trap Sharing System

I’m sure the highway patrol is “thrilled” that this application exists!

Trapster® is a speed trap sharing application for mobile phones, PDAs and other types of devices. It can be used with any kind of phone, but works even better if you have a phone that supports GPS or WiFi.”

Performance Comparison of Looping Methods in AS3

Homer "Untuned"



This is kinda freaky! Someone took the time to create an “untuned” Homer. Jessica Rabbit, too. Thanks to CC for the link.

mercoledì, aprile 16, 2008

Flash Player 9.0.124.0

FYI, today there is a new release of the Flash Player (9.0.124.0) that is primarily a security update. I don’t think it will impact any of our applications, but I thought it worth mentioning in case you notice any of our more sophisticated applications acting strangely. If this were to have any impact at all, it would be the changes to the cross-domain policy file change.

One of my favorite Flash gurus, “Senocular,” summarizes the changes this way:

  • The HTML parameter allowScriptAccess now defaults to sameDomain for ALL SWFs, not just SWFs published to version 8 and above (ho-hum)
  • Custom headers provided by ActionScript now require explicit permission from a cross-domain policy file in order for the request to be sent to another domain (yikes)
  • ALL socket connections (even same-domain) require socket-based policy files to successfully maintain a connection (yowza!)

For detailed information, check out Adobe’s article “Understanding Flash Player 9 April 2008 Security Update compatibility.”

martedì, aprile 15, 2008

Asciify

Pretty fun. I just stumbled across a class on Oaxoa Blog that allows you to use Actionscript 3 to create ASCII art from an image or movie (or anything in the display list).

lunedì, aprile 14, 2008

Great Classic ASP Recaptcha Example

venerdì, aprile 11, 2008

Deals, deals, deals!

Matt F. was pointing out some great deal sites recently:
http://www.woot.com/
http://www.dealsucker.com/
http://www.dealcatcher.com/
Ah, more excuses from the Internet for me to buy!

mercoledì, aprile 09, 2008

Firebug: a Firefox Web Development Tool

MC was just telling me about Firebug. Firebug is to Firefox as Debug Bar /IE Dev Toolbar is to IE. Seems very powerful!

“Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.”

http://www.getfirebug.com/

On a slightly related note, there are some interesting things going on at http://labs.mozilla.com/, too.

martedì, aprile 08, 2008

Cue Points in ActionScript 3

A a few nice examples of using cue points in ActionScript 3!

Flep Studios has a neat tutorial.

David Stiller’s blog has an excellent description of cue points in both AS2 and AS3. Here is an excerpt using ActionScript 3.0:

import fl.video.MetadataEvent;
videoPlayer.addEventListener(
MetadataEvent.CUE_POINT,
function(evt:MetadataEvent):void {
// instructions here
}
);

evt.target points to the FLVPlayback instance
evt.info.name points to the cue point’s name
evt.info.time points to the cue point’s time
evt.info.parameters points to the cue point’s optional parameters

Free 411 Service With Google

Google’s 411 service is free and offers many of the same features as the regular phone company 411.

1-800-466-4411

More information:

http://www.google.com/goog411/

venerdì, aprile 04, 2008

VideoLAN - VLC media player

Matt F. pointed out this is a cool (and free) way to stream media.

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

It doesn't need any external codec or program to work.

giovedì, aprile 03, 2008

Sync, Access and Backup Your Files and Media Across Computers

SugarSync is the only all-in-one synchronization service that offers real-time sync, automatic backup and mobile access for your files, photos and media. SugarSync enables you to access your files anytime, from any web browser or phone, even if your computer is offline.”

For an in-depth review, the Walt Mosberg article I learned about SugarSync from can be viewed here.

mercoledì, aprile 02, 2008

Electric Rain Harmony : SWF > XAML

This looks like an interesting bit of software. I’ll bet converters (in either direction) will be a hot topic this summer. J

http://www.erain.com/Products/harmony/

Announcing Electric Rain Harmony - Coming Summer 2007
A New Flash SWF to XAML-markup Converter Tool for Microsoft WPF and Silverlight Application Development
Electric Rain Harmony provides designers and developers with a fast and easy way to convert existing Flash SWF files (graphics and simple animations*) into Microsoft-based XAML mark-up for immediate use in the Microsoft WFP and Silverlight (formally WPF/E) platforms.