VoiceCentral Black Swan Google Voice Client for the iPhone

SG pointed out a cool Google Voice Client for the iPhone called “Black Swan.”

A List Apart: Flash and Standards The Cold War of the Web

An awesome article!

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/flashstandards/

“We should be getting to the point where people can’t tell how a site was built. I love coming across a site where how it was made is not immediately apparent to me. That’s how it should be: Create something excellent where the technology is transparent, and allow only the curious to look under the hood to actually see what’s going on. JavaScript, Flash, HTML5, tables, Shockwave, Unity—no one cares when people using it can do what they’re supposed to. When something is broken—whether it’s functionality or the user experience—that’s when you’ll hear whining about platforms. Create a great experience for people and you’ll receive due praise, regardless of the technology.”

 

ActionScript 3: Restricting the Characters That Can be Entered in a Text Field

Apparently this ability has existed forever, but since it is incredibly handy I am making a note of it. It is possible to restrict the set of characters that can be typed into a text field in Flash. This Adobe example allows only uppercase characters, spaces, and numbers to be entered into a text field:

my_txt.restrict = "A-Z 0-9";

 

 

Where can I watch whole movies online for free?

Wendy Boswell about.com has a nice article on sites where whole movies can be viewed online for free.

Firefox and Local File Hyperlinks

I didn’t realize this: Firefox blocks links to local files (file:///c:/temp/foo.txt). It’s probably a good  idea for added security, but it does take away a handy shortcut. A workaround: Alt-click the hyperlink and the Word file will appear in the download menu.

Pwn2Own

Pretty wild. From C|Net:

“Researchers on Wednesday demonstrated that they could hack a non-jailbroken iPhone, Safari running on Snow Leopard and Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox on Windows 7 as part of the annual Pwn2Own contest at the CanSecWest security show.”

 

iRip

Just glanced at an article by iPhone.AppStorm for getting media off the iPhone/iPod. I haven’t tried it, but it seems like a cool utility? Making a note here to check it out when I have time.

HTML5 Video Played in any Browser?

Kaltura, Inc. has developed a way for HTML5 video to be played in any browser. This seems like a pretty big development. Here’s a quote from their press release on corp.kaltura.com:

"Open video, and specifically HTML5 video, continue to gain traction in the market - we are extremely proud to be among the organizations leading the charge with this important industry development," said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura Chairman & CEO.  "Kaltura's HTML5 video solution, which is already in beta testing on Wikipedia, allows publishers to use HTML5 video today without having to worry about specific browser, format and codec support - our unique fallback mechanism ensures that all viewers can see and interact with videos regardless of their browser and format of the video.  Kaltura's open source HTML5 video player will soon support all advanced video management capabilities, including analytics and monetization, making it commercially viable on devices, such as the Apple iPhone, that do not support Flash.  We invite the community to learn more and get involved at www.html5video.org."

http://www.html5video.org/

Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office

Could be fun? From the “Gray Matter” blog:

“After four successful Technology Previews, today we are releasing the 2.0 version of the Open XML SDK for Microsoft Office. Among its benefits, this release of the Open XML SDK is a significant step forward because of the amount and quality of functionality it provides to developers seeking to build document processing solutions without the use of Microsoft Office applications.”

Microsoft MIX10 Videos

MIX10 session recordings are available to download and watch on-demand.

http://live.visitmix.com/videos

Why HTML5 is Worth Your Time

ER pointed out this great article on O'Reilly Radar: “Why HTML5 is worth your time.”

 

 

SharePoint 2007 CSS

An awesome breakdown of the styles used in SharePoint 2007 is available on HeatherSolomon.com.

Using the Date Class in AS3

The “Republic of Code” has some great examples of how to use the date class in ActionScript 3.

Windows XP Mode on Windows 7

A great way to run older applications that may not run on Windows 7.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/default.aspx

Documentation:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/support/default.aspx

 

Guiding Principles for UX Designers

UX Magazine has a nice article from Whitney Hess about principles UX Designers should follow.

Send Parameters to an AIR Application

I have an AIR application that I start up from the command line. A nifty article at The SpreadingFunkyness.com blog points out that it is possible, when using this approach, to send the application parameters! Here’s the example (slightly modified) they provide:

NativeApplication.nativeApplication.addEventListener(InvokeEvent.INVOKE, onInvokeEvent);
function onInvokeEvent(event:InvokeEvent):void {
trace("arguments: "+ event.arguments.toString());
}

Other similar and instructive articles:

·         DavidTucker.net

·         Stackoverflow.com

And Adobe’s mildly instructive syntax example.

Mapping the Growth of the Internet

BBC News has a cool interactive chart that allows you to visualize the  growth of the internet from 1998 to 2008.

Microsoft Outlook: Autoaccept Meeting Requests

This is a fun bit of code. It turns out that using Rules (in Outlook 2007+) and a little bit of VBA script you can automatically accept all meetings. I’ve only slightly changed the example script below , but the full directions and original script by blah are available on outlook-tips.net.

Sub AutoAcceptMeetings(oRequest As MeetingItem)

 

If oRequest.MessageClass <> "IPM.Schedule.Meeting.Request" Then Exit Sub

 

Dim oAppt As AppointmentItem

Set oAppt = oRequest.GetAssociatedAppointment(True)

 

Dim oResponse

Set oResponse = oAppt.Respond(olMeetingAccepted, True)

'oResponse.Display

 

oResponse.Send

'oRequest.Delete

 

End Sub

 

The “Coding for Fun and Profit” blog has a terrific (and funny) post on how to decline meetings that don’t meet certain criteria.

Linking to a Specific Section of a YouTube Video

Matt Cutt’s blog has a nice tip: you can link to a specific part of a YouTube video. Here are a few excerpts from his two posts.

To link to a specific part of a YouTube video, add the time parameter. This example goes 31 minutes and 8 seconds into the presentation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDw3azfZWI#t=31m08s

You can also start an embedded YouTube video at a certain timestamp. This method uses the “start” parameter.

“ Note that start takes seconds as a parameter, not minutes and seconds. For example, to start an embedded video 31 minutes and 8 seconds into a video, 31*60+8 = 1868 seconds.”

<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/PjDw3azfZWI&hl=en_US&start=1868"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/PjDw3azfZWI&hl=en_US&start=1868" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>

Code Organ

Too fun. Chris C. pointed out this website that converts web code into music:

http://www.codeorgan.com/