Microsoft boys have done something pretty amazing. The worldwide telescope project! It even made Mr. Scoble cry! If you haven't seen this I would suggest you see it now. Well, that is if our outer space mystifies you like it does me! The best video I found is from the TED conference. Much better than what MS put out. Which isn't surprising.
I cried because I realized just how much work, money, and all that went into making these images. I never had access to them before. Certainly not in this way so I could compare them by clicking a button. As a taxpayer who’s helped pay for some of these telescopes it’s the first time I’ve seen the results of my and your, investments in our scientific research.
This morning I was doing my usual browsing of thefwa.com checking in to see what new exciting work our flash world was putting out. And I see a little banner in the upper right that says SoDA... SoDA? What's this? So obviously I have to click. So it opens up and I am presented with some logos of a few of the top agencies in our interactive world. Companies like agencynet, Big Spaceship, Juxt Interactive, first born and many more. Once it lands on its final screen it gives a bit of info about SoDA saying...
"The Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) is being established as the voice of the interactive industry worldwide, with a mission to advance to profession through knowledge sharing, education and advocacy." Learn More.
What? How cool does this sound? This is exactly what our young under estimated group of interactive developers needs! A collaborative group set out to share and educate others about what the interactive world is doing! You can signup for more info via the banner ad.
But if you or anyone you know is apart of this and/or has some insider info they would like to share. I would love to know more to help out the community! It would be neat to have blog badges to help spread the word. Or even a way to signup for more info other than the banner on the FWA site banner. Well I can't wait to find out more about the organization! Thanks to all those involved. We will be anxiously awaiting more news!
Update: I went to the URL - http://www.societyofdigitalagencies.com/ and its being parked by godaddy.com. Although I'm not sure if this will be an official site its still very interesting. Keep your eyes peeled!
Update 2: As many of you know they announced SoDA at SXSW in Austin, TX this past weekend. You can sign up to receive more info at http://www.societyofdigitalagencies.org/. Enjoy!
Today is a big day for the guys at Adobe. AIR 1.0 and Flex 3 have hit the streets and will set them in position to own the RIA marketplace for a long time coming. With the rich history behind Flex and now AIR, Adobe's latest product that allows developers from all types of backgrounds to develop RIA's. Its a sure win for Adobe and for anyone using the internet today.
AIR gives developers from Flash, AJAX and Flex backgrounds the ability to develop desktop applications that are immediately usable and cross platform compatible. Something no one can argue is a wonderful step forward for the next generation of the web (3.0?). And what's neat about the cross platform is that it works not only on Windows and Apple machines but also on Linux boxes (Coming soon!). This means developing apps for the One Laptop Per Child project is now easy for us all. This also means your product can now stretch across the world like never before.
Flex Builder 3 is pretty cheap and will only run you$249. Which is a steal for anyone wanting to start learning and building RIA's especially for students. But for those of us that already own Flash CS3 the upgrade to AIR is $0! So if you already coding MXML or AS3 you are already to go and begin coding your own desktop applications! During the AIR beta 3 I put together a super simple FLV and H.264 player that now anyone can download and use on any system they choose! I will update it later today so its compliant with the latest release of AIR 1.0! Very exciting!
I am anxiously waiting to see what AIR and all the developers world wide will be developing this year and the years to come! Great work Adobe! We can't wait to see where this product takes us in the years to come!
Update: I just found a rockin' poster done by eboy for the AIR and Flex3 product launch! Download and print it on some 11x17 paper to spice up your office, its pretty sweet! Great work eboy!
Yesterday when I was looking at the new panels Lee Brimelow released it got me thinking about his tutorials on AIR and video. So I was like, hey, it would be cool to have a super simple AIR app that played my FLV's I've been compressing. It seemed like every player I tried was just a bit much. Soooo... here is my first AIR app. Its really nothing so don't expect anything. Currently, as it is, it has no controls or REAL features for that matter. I just put it together so I could play some FLV's I've been compressing. Really just to view them quickly and see how they looked in a player. Anyway its really just for quick testing tool for developers like me. So don't hold your breath for your new end all FLV player! It does the trick and has some scaling feature when you drag the video onto it, it will resize to the size the video has in its META data. Oh and enjoy my amazing graphics I made for it!
px4 flvPlayer 0.6.3
(0.6.3 cause I always wanted to have some weird beta number on something.)
Features - if that's what you want to call them
- drag FLV's onto it to start playing
- scales to the movies correct dimensions
To be added later:
- full play/pause/seek/volume controls
- ability to check META data
- screen shot video and save to PNG
- custom chrome
I will most likely open source the entire project so you guys can see my AS3 mess and help out or maybe learn a little. Either way it will be worth it to someone!
Update: I added H.264 support. And it was incredibly easy. Really as easy as a simple 'if' statement. Thanks for the idea Freddy! If you do place an MOV on it that isn't H.264 format it just won't play or will stop the video that was playing and wait for a new video to be loaded. I will do some error handling to this at a later date. Enjoy for now!
So... have any of you guys downloaded the two panels Lee Brimelow released recently? If not I would suggest doing so. They are killer time savers!
The snippets panel lets you store your code or get code from others that you reuse often and you don't want to have to constantly setup. Almost like knowing OOP but "not" and its reusable. Really it could be any code you want! Its easy to add your own through an XML doc that Lee gives you access to edit and add to the panel. If you want to add some code to the panel just navigate to the XML doc and start pasting. Below is one I made really quick for setting up a simple Fuse function:
I would love to see some of us share our favorite snippets to use in our own panels! I'm trying to get a little list together of mine and I will be sure to share it with all of you guys. But anyway Lee gives you all a nice list to start with. Some good AS3 code snippets for Tweener, some AIR stuff and more! I already started a little project just from the AS3 things these two little guys taught me. Its a pretty simple AIR app I plan to share very soon! But don't stress you don't have to use AS3 for your snippets AS2 code snippets will work fine too!
Also the Event panel is great to. Its like a snippets panel but it creates events for your AS3 project. Its really worth looking at since events are the basis of any project or site you are creating. Just make a movieclip choose a few events its going to have and viola, its auto creates the actionscript for you!
Well don't just sit there go download the Code Snippet and Event panels now!
This afternoon Steven Sacks announced the Gaia 2.0 Panel for Flash CS3. So for those of you guys interested jump over a read his official release post. I am hoping to review it myself this week and see what I can find. But I'd love to hear what you guys think when you try it out!
Wow this is great! So I might be behind in knowing about this but, Adobe and some friends have been making some Why Flash?Why Flex?Why AIR? videos and posting them on youtube.com. They are pretty amazing I must say! So if you got a minute and want to do some laughing at nerds being nerds jump on over to youtube and watch a few videos. Below is one of our good buddy Lee Brimelow of theflashblog.com. Also don't miss out on the Why AJAX? spoof by Phillip Kerman. Enjoy!
If you guys are interested last week in Geneva, Switzerland our web world had a conference called LIFT. They have posted some videos and interviews for you all to take a peak at what all went on. Looks like some really great stuff. Take a look around. You can also see what Aral Balkan had to say about his trip to LIFT over at his blog too!
Ok not really on shelves per say put on a web site near you! I know some of you guys are really excited about this release and can't wait for Steven to release the final version. But for those of you already creating AS3 sites why not help out in testing! This way you can be sure its the product it can be! For you, and for everyone else out here on the inner webs. Well thats, that. Its a quick post, I know, but I wanted to make sure you all knew in case you hadn't been reading Steven's blog also! Enjoy! And please comment and lets us all know what you think about it and let Steven know too!
that allows developers from all types of backgrounds to develop RIA's. Its a sure win for Adobe and for anyone using the internet today.
