waving strokes in PV3D

Some examples of sinus waves on the vertices of a plane..

simple sinus wave... - as
random random waves - as
sound waves - as

COME 2 ME - ALGEMEEN

1. The online user is spoiled

He decides where, when and at what time he looks and interacts with online media. When he is bored he will just move on to the next online experience. We will take a closer look at some successful online campaigns and show you how to get the attention of the consumer and how to keep it

2.
VROEGER - WEB 1.0

•Statisch
•Geisoleerde informatie
•Eenzijdige communicatie
§ afzender communiceert, toeschouwer ontvangt
§ weinig interactiviteit

3.
WEB 2.0
•De verschuiving van websites als geïsoleerde informatie eilanden naar open bronnen van informatie en functionaliteit.
•User generated content


4.
VOORBEELDEN
•Linked in – zakelijk
•Hyves – jongeren/ plezier
•Musiqlub – video - online mtv/ tmf
•Flickr
•The PICNIC network now has close to 7000 profiles, and allows you to search for like-minded delegates. Don’t forget to update your own profile. You can choose yourself if you want your contact details to be available to others. Vertel eens welke jullie gebruiken


SOCIAL NETWORKS & NICHES

•Automatisch ontstaan van network & niches door hyperlinking ..
•Nieuwe blogs lezen, naar linken van eigen blogs en reageren op..
•Ontstaan niches.


BROADCASTING VS NARROWCASTING

•Traditionele reclame Broadcast naar iedereeneenzijdingbanners ??
•Nieuwe reclame In de niche – interactief - betrokkenheid


VORMEN PROMOTIE ONLINE

§Redactioneel : persberichten naar offline/ online media
§Commercieel : non spot (alsof redactioneel) , bannering
§Viraal : seeding.. (secret agent)


CONTENT MARKETING

•de content heeft zowel redactionele (editorial) als reclame (advertising) kenmerken heeft.
•De content gaat werken als reclame, het is de content zelf die waarde toevoegt voor de eindgebruiker.




GELOOFWAARDIGHEID

•In de niches heeft de blogger bepaalde geloofwaardigheid bij zijn lezers.
•Lokale krant
•Radiostations met uitzendingen


ONLINE ACTIES - BOOM
•Belangrijk om in het begin meteen een boom te hebben. En die mensen vast te houden, een actie draait maar 10 dagen. Dus in het begin meteen heel veel mensen.
•Goed inplannen promotie, alles in een keer. Vooral crossmediaal offline en online media versterken elkaar
•Dan krijg je als het goed is het Vliegwiel/ sneeuwbal effect

Severe memory issues in flash with JPG sequences

So when doing a new (first) project for Heineken (for my company QI) we run in a big issue with flash and the carbage collector. It seems when you have a JPG sequence on stage the JPG's stays in memory even when attached and removed out of the library. We used a jpeg sequence instead of fullscreen video because JPEG tends to have smoother playback for our 3D animations.

But think 100 jpeg images of 1014 x 690 resolution. Flash needs 3MB to show one frame. So after about 100 jpeg's flash needed 300MB virtual memory, this memory never got freed by the carbage collector .. So the slower computer with not that much RAM would suffocate.

After doing some tests, it seems when loading an external SWF in a mc (with a linked sequence in library). And after loading, attaching the linked sequence in that mc. The MC can be removed and memory gets freed.

For now we have cutted the sequence in different parts, so after playing a part it can unloaded.

• We have for example 3 sequences in library in a single SWF called sequence.swf.
• we create 3 container MC's where we load in the same SWF (cache :>)
• we start the seqeunce and attach in container1 > sequence1 after playing the first sequence we remove container1 and attach sequence2 in container 2.
• and so on..

This heavely relies on cache and is a not so nice solution so ANYONE got a better one I would love to hear it.

NYLS

flashy sites

Some 'flashy' sites I have found/ seen recently..

http://roxik.com
- checkout pictaps, digital toys 1 ( really amazing stuff)

http://www.wddg.com/

http://www.gringo.nu/v2/
- mac GUI ??

API's to powerfull to be free

Discussing the dapper API ( see my previous post) with some colleague's at work we are wondering if we can use this in real live commercial projects, even if we can use any API in real live projects. This question became even more clear when GOOGLE changed it’s API ‘s from SOAP to Ajax.

When you don’t have to pay for an API or it is from a small company, the life-span can be insecure. Can you build you own commercial service on that kind of base, I think not. So in this light I would rather buy an API from a well-established company then from a small startup. API’s are to power full to be free.

That's why I like Mashery . Their service is designed to provide an out-the-box hosted solution provisioning and managing API's. This includes a lot of the often under-appreciated details that make providing an API actually deliver results such as developer community tools — forums, dev blog and news, wikis, documentation, etc — as well as infrastructure tools for API metering, developer key management, and metrics.

http://blog.programmableweb.com/2006/11/08/api-outsourcing-via-mashery/

DAPPER API ,create any datasource from any HTML page

Dapper is a company that’s either glorifying screen scraping or leading the charge towards data portability, depending on your perspective. I like it a lot. While the interface is a little bit clunky, the idea of overlaying HTML pages and grabbing data is fairly powerful ...

http://www.dappit.com/

dapper - amsterdam news

JOOST, from the founders of KAZAA and SKYPE

Joost™ is a new way of watching TV on the internet, which uses new and established technologies to provide the best of both the internet and TV worlds. We're in the process of making it as TV-like as we can, with programmes, channels and adverts. You can also see some things that we think will enhance the TV experience: searching for programmes and channels, for example, as well as social features like chat. There are many more new features to come!

http://www.joost.com

State Designpattern in games, what else do we have for games ..

So I have come over this great post at http://www.bigroom.co.uk/blog/finite-state-machines-for-ai-in-actionscript/ about states in games. I did know the state pattern from the GOF book and an Adobe tutorial ( http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/video_state_machine_as3.html )
But have never used it in real live world stuff I am working on.. And design patterns come flying by a lot .. Also never thought of implementing it in video games, thinking of the great OS libraries which are surfacing know along with these kind of patterns, building a video game in flash is getting more in my reach ,Yeah, I like building with existing blocks to form new stuff :> . So what building blocks do we have, and how am i going to fill my weekend..

3D
Sandy AS2 http://www.flashsandy.org/
Papervision AS3 http://www.osflash.org/papervision3d

physix engines
AS2
http://www.cove.org/flade/
AS3
http://www.fisixengine.com/
http://www.cove.org/ape/

Library for Scrolling games..
http://www.osflash.org/gamescroll

Very good/ long tutorial over tile based games
http://www.tonypa.pri.ee/tbw/

Anybody know more good resources or even better games libraries for flash please share them :>

The Multi-Touch Interface for iPhone pioneerred bij Jeff Han

When I saw the Quicktime demo's of the iPhone on the Apple website it reminded me of a demo I saw from Jeff Kan about 'Multi-Touch Interaction Research. '

http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/index.html
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=j_han

The demo really blowed me away and it is a really cool thing seeing that new ways of interacting with machines :> are emerging in commercial products. (Wii, iPhone )

I am really curious about other commercial examples.. So if you got them, please leave them

Sandy 3D fly through application

This is the first try-out of building a 3D fly through application.... You can set up a bezier-path in a 2D space, add some blocks and fly through it in 3D space.

For now you just can add bezier curves and blocks, the goal is to draw any camera path you want , let the camera rotate while moving over the path, add planes with pictures on it.. and fly through your 3D slideshow :>

http://www.dekeizer.net/nyls/3d/

ATT: a little bug you have to drag the grey points to see the camera path

quicky post ... new book/ new job/ new house ..

So coming months are going to be some hectich months for me, just signed for a job as flash developer at the media company Qi. They do great work for heineken, philips, amstel, etc, etc ..

Also bought a new place in Amsterdam, and both start 1 februari.. yeehaaa.. ok further more books I need reading before starting see below


the flex cookbook.. online a simple Problem/Solution/Explanation format
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/communityengine/index.cfm?event=homepage&productId=2

books AS3

Essential Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source
Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns
Essential Actionscript 3.0: Rough Cuts Version
Actionscript 3.0 Pocket Reference
Programming Flex 2: Rough Cuts Version
The Complete Guide to Flex 2 with ActionScript 3.0
Foundation Actionscript 3.0 Animation: Making Things Move
Foundation Actionscript 3.0 With Flash X and Flex 2
Professional Flex 2
Developing Rich Clients with Macromedia Flex?

Real live user interaction, physics engines for flash ..

Well just to add some more really interesting developments for Flash and gaming/ 3D environments.. the physics engine.. let objects react to each other like in the real world.

Even for better user experience we can use these kinds of engine for snap to grid functionality, more elastic dragging / sliding .. well the possibilities are enormous . Thanks to Ralph for the fisix link

AS2

http://www.cove.org/flade/

AS3

http://www.fisixengine.com/

http://www.cove.org/ape/

Camera Fly through with Sandy

So after playing with sandy some more, I had this idea of a camera flythrough .. In sandy it's rather simple..

• make a bezier path
• use an pathInterpolator
• hang the path interpolator on the camera
  
  view
  source

Only run into a sandy bug that when 1. the camera moves over 0,0,0 // or 2. past some objects which scale to large .. the objects come back in reverse :<

Posted a question on the tech forum and got a reaction the same day about the bug being fixed in the next days. Talk about quick response :>

Wouldn't it be grate to have an app which puts objects (foto's ??) in space and makes camera path's, where the camera moves over the path and looks at things along the path .. mmmm, maybe i will give this a try :>

Keep you posted ...

3D in flash, Sandy AS2 VS Papervision AS3

Just read a post by Ralph Hauwert about the new papervision 3D engine and Flex. While I am waiting for the papervision BETA version, I thought why not start some 3D work with an existing engine : Sandy for AS2.

Offcourse the sandy site is a good starting point , also found a really nice tutorial by petit labs

So here is my first go: a box with an Texture skin that I copied, rotated, translated ..
view
source

Wait and see what's next :>

Flex Cairngorm:filtering data with the comparator class..

I have always been fascinated by large amount of data and filtering this data. Put all data in a big box and use filters to shape, structure and visualize that data. When browsing through the Cairgcorm shop example I found the comparator-class which filters produkts based on price or/and categorie.

I took this class and implemented it with a (simple) extension in my Flickr/Flex playground app (FlickrFolio) .

view application
view source

It consist roughly of 2 parts:

1. registering the items which you want to filter
2. registering the filters which you want to use.

Most important Classes:

// used to acces the comparator class
nl.nyls.flickrFolio.model.ModelLocator;

// the comparator class and the interface
nl.nyls.flickrFolio.util.Comparator.as;
nl.nyls.flickrFolio.util.Comparable.as;

// VIEW :: the product to filter..
nl.nyls.flickrFolio.view.thumbnail.mxml

// the filter-view
nl.nyls.flickrFolio.view.filtertPhotos.mxml

// the command which executes the filtering
nl.nyls.flickrFolio.command.FilterPhotosCommand;

1. registering the items which you want to filter

My FlickrFolio request the most recent photos and fills an ItemList. The itemlist displays the thumbnails with a custom ItemRenderer called Thumbnail.mxml.

So FLickr returns for every photo a valueobject (called Photo) which is binded to the Thumbnail.mxml. In every Thumbnail the actual thumbnail-image is loaded. WHen the image is loaded, the thumbnail registers it's data (id, title) and image to the comparator- class.

(ATT: better to cast the flickr Photo value-object to my PhotoVO value-object but could not get that to work, YET)

You register the data so you can filter on properties of that data. The data (or ValueObject) needs to implement the comparable interface, this interface has only one method, (get identifier) which the comparator class needs to get a unique identifier.

Registering the image (or sprite) let's you perform actions (showing/ hiding/ moving etc). on that image after a filter action.

2. registering the filters which you want to use.

OK, so now it's time to do some filtering, the filterView has now one simple filter. A textinput which you can use to filter on the title of a photo. The original Cairngorm shop example used a slider to filter between max - min prices and filter on different categories.

WHen you type in a letter the filterPhotoEvent gets fired which gets caught bij the FilterPhotoCommand this is where the real stuff happens. Here you first register what type of filter you want to use so:

addFilterTextProperty( filterOn, value )
here we want to filter on a String property named filterOn (=title) which has a value of (-value)

other filter properties are:
addFilterRangeProperty ( filterProperty : String, min : Number, max : Number) here you can filter on a range, so for example 'property-name:price' between min:1 and max :5

addFilterSelectionProperty( filterProperty : String, selections : Array )
here you filter on multible selections, you have selected in the group 'category' the selections ['large',' small'] . This can be used if you use checkboxes to filter on.

model.photoComparator.filter();
Here you do the filter action, it loops to the registered items and tags filtered or not..

model.photoComparator.applyAlphaEffect();
perform an action on all the items which are tagged filtered .. So show the filtered and hide the not filtered.

------------------

It is really easy to extend the filters and I like to explore filtering on color or shapes :> Anyone has some experience in that field??

How about some Flex remoting (AMF 3) - Flex, ARP, Cairgcorm

The boys at WebOrb have been very busy working away on getting Remoting for flex in .NET very solid. Today they release the Release candidate 1, Which means its almost 100?So now its probably time to download the RC1 and have a play. I love open API's like webservices and rpc calls for open [...]
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create new modules from any data source for placement in the popular start page

Mashup creation tool Dapper announced today that its users can now easily create new modules from any data source for placement in the popular start page Netvibes. Dapper is a company that’s either glorifying screen scraping or leading the charge towards data portability, depending on your perspective. I like it a lot. Working with Dapper to enable fast user creation of new modules is a nice competitive advantage for Netvibes. Our previous coverage of Netvibes is here and of Dapper here.

http://www.dappit.com/

Amsterdam actueel nieuws
http://www.dappit.com/RunDapp?dappName=Amsterdamactueelnieuws&v=1

FLASH :: Adobe Open Sources ActionScript Media Gallery Code

The ActionScript code that is used by Photoshop Lightroom and Photoshop Elements to create beautiful slideshows is now completely open source. You can download the ActionScript source code from the Adobe Media Gallery website. There are also sample galleries, a getting started guide, documentation, mailing lists, forums and instructions on how to contribute to the project. This work continues Adobe extensive involvement in open source technologies. I can't remember a company changing so quickly so fast. A few months ago we had very little in the way of open source software, today we're working hard on things like Tamarin, part
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna/controller.cfm?handler=PostHandler&action=click&postId=138472&nextPage=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs%2Eadobe%2Ecom%2Fmikepotter%2F2006%2F11%2Fadobe%5Fopen%5Fsour%2Ehtml

Actionscript 3 - FZip

“You can stuff all the files inside just one zip file, stick it on the server and load that into your application, then unpack it on the fly and access the files inside.” FZip Via http://www.flashguru.co.uk/actionscript-3-fzip

http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna/controller.cfm?handler=PostHandler&action=click&postId=137431&nextPage=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebeedigital%2Enet%2Fblog%2F%3Fp%3D741

FLASH:: SEO for SWFAddress

I would like to introduce you to the most interesting feature of the upcoming SWFAddress 1.0. It enables generation of real links that expose the appropriate content to search engines. The magic happens with some interesting URL rewriting and some trivial serverside code. Here is an example how it works for a website located at http://www.domain.com that contains a portfolio section: SWFAddress uses http://www.domain.com/#/portfolio/. The URL that can get indexed is http://www.domain.com/portfolio/ and therefore it should exist as a link in the HTML code of the page. When someone visits the indexed address the rewriting functionality makes a redirect to

http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna/controller.cfm?handler=PostHandler&action=click&postId=137404&nextPage=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Easual%2Ecom%2Fblog%2Fswfaddress%2F%3Fpermalink%3Dseo%2Dfor%2Dswfaddress%2Ehtml