Miltos Manetas has put together a nice time waster for your Monday afternoon. Create your own Jackson Pollock drip painting without all the mess at JacksonPollack.org. Great use of the Drawing API! I can't wait to show this to my 7-year-old...but I get to play with it for a while first...
Added Note (7.6.06): Seems the authorship of JacksonPollock.org is questionable. See the comment below for some background and Stamen's site for the original.
Our sister site, Ad-Jab, blogged about this site yesterday. Brawney Academy is an advertising site for Georgia Pacific's Brawney Paper Towels. Under the auspices of a reality show, our host, "Brawney Man," leads eight manly men through some sort of outdoor sensitivity training. Only the first of what looks to be eight video episodes has been posted so far, but lots of other stuff to do on the site including your own training in manly sensitivity. If you work at it, you too could attain the Brawney Academy goal by becoming "[d]ependable and strong, but caring"...and thus, like the Brawney Man himself, "a literal human representation of the paper towel's qualities."
Not too sure about the whole reality series concept, but I like the site design. The combination of photo-realistic elements and retro graphics is worthy of a Disney Imagineer.
Apollo, the code-name for Adobe's Universal Client, is stating to pick-up steam it seems. I'm sure that the folks over at Adobe have been working their butts off on it, but few details have been forthcoming. In the last month though, that's beginning to change. A big article on c|net, "Flash to jump beyond the browser," in early May really gave the best overview so far. More recently, John Dowdell pointed out an article from PDFZone on a preso at PDF2006 that speaks to the document community's thoughts on such a client. And just yesterday, I saw that Mike Chambers will be offering a workshop at September's Flashforward conference called, "Building Your First Apollo Application."
Macromedia Central was a really interesting move outside the browser, but Apollo is shaping up to be in a totally different sphere, not just outside of the browser, but across devices. I just hope that Adobe keeps it svelte so that it moves seamlessly across those devices and isn't so bloated that its actual uses are limited.
If you missed the MAX 2005 presentation about the potentials of Apollo, check it out here (Day 1, "Experience Vision" segment).
If you missed Flashforward 2006 Seattle and you can't wait till September's Flashforward 2006 Austin, get your Flash fix listening to Flashforward podcasts! A lot of great interviews with some really talented Flash folks: Jonathan Blank of Wildform, Andrew Wright of Smilebox, James Paterson of Presstube, Branden Hall of Automata Studios...just to name a few. So tune in, and get ready for Flashforward 2006 Austin!
Adobe is sponsoring a Developer Week (12-16 June). This is a free series of online presos aimed at developers. Lots of Flex stuff, an overview of the Adobe Engagement Platform, and AS 3.0 for Flash developers (in case you haven't started exploring AS3 in Flex). If you haven't had a chance to play around with Flex, this would be a good place to get an introduction so you know what's coming on deck.
Looks like there's some good information to be had here...and its FREE! So go sign up today.
Regular readers know that I live in New Orleans. It's been nine months since Hurricane Katrina and the failings of our levee system laid waste to my home town. Even now, we're still dealing with the after effects. At least I'm one of the lucky ones. I get to live in my own house. Too many of my fellow citizens can't say the same.
The online version of the New Orleans Times-Picayune published an animated Flash map this week that show how the city was flooded during the course of August 29th. Now, this animation won't blow your socks off for its aesthetics (I could have done without the sound effects, especially in the continuous animation version) or its interactivity, but it might blow your mind when you see just how much of New Orleans took on water. Staff artist, Dan Swenson, did a great job using Flash to show the tragedy of events unfold over time. Sometimes I think we...I know I do personally...get caught up in the coolness factor of Flash. Swenson reminds us that you don't have to be flashy to use Flash as a great communication tool.
Jay Dyke over at CartoonSmart.com has posted a free video tutorial on how to use Geoff Sterns' SWFObject, a Javascript solution to the recent unpleasantness
regarding Flash running in IE 6 on Windows. If you're a real visual learner and you need to see how it all works, this
is the place for you. Jay rambles a bit, but he gets the point across eventually. And the SWFObject is an elegant
solution once you're all set up.
I'll warn you that this is a ~20MB ZIP file download. Jay is offering
tutorial files as well as the Quicktime movie of the tutorial which is almost 50 MBs (somebody get that guy a copy of
Captivate!), so...
You'll also note that Jay is using the older "FlashObject" which Stearns has
renamed the "SWFObject" for reasons explained here.
Well...how
fortuitous! The day that the Flash player hits PSPs, we get a tip to our inbox about ARComics.com. These guys are preparing to push animated comics to your PSP. "Preparing"
is an operative word here though. Not a lot of content at the site yet, and the newest press release is dated 2001.
Seems like these guys are preparing to inject some new life into their company. Glad to see someone jumping on the
chance to use the PSP as a Flash distribution channel though, so I'll keep an eye on them and hopefully, some cool
content will come out of it.
Please don't shoot this puppy... Please... ugh. Well here's a quick and very dirty Flash game for your late night fun.
The simple game is much like the Don't Click site but is way more annoying. Yes, I know I'm not really convincing you to
check out the game... once you click over you may want to come back here and let me know what you really think. Feel
free to drop me a tip to better game on the tips page.
The latest Japanese PSP firmware
adds Flash Player to the PlayStation Portable and Flaunt It's Alexander McCabe is testing the Player with various Flash
games and posting his impressions. He says its slow, has no streaming content, and has only limited Keypad interaction.
Also there seems to be an obvious limit on the amouth of memory the content can use. Jump on over to his site to see
full impressions and learn more about possible content. We have covered Flash on PSP here before and I still think this is going to be
limited to the possible accessories for the system and a possible API release from Sony. We should look forward to a
lack of user created content though, considering Sony's lack of hack support for the firmware already. The real concern
here is weather game developers with take advantage or the player to add content that takes the user out of the box via
the camera object that first appeared in Flash Player 6. In the mean time take some of your old projects modifiy them
for PSP displays and maybe add some sound fun just to mess with your users.
Jen deHaan just posted a "Site of the
Week" (don't know how Jen sticks to just one...there are so many...and so little time!) called "Denimbirds." Yes, they are a jeans company. They seem to be
Swedish. The site is very nice. Like, Jen, I like the transitions between sections. Nice use of masking. And while the
"Fit Guide" is more so you can see how their different cuts sit on a body (rather than what size will fit
your body), the turning of the models is a nice effect.
If you're a fashion hound, then you
definitely need to check this site out. Or if you just want to see more good-looking Flash, take a look as well!
OK, that
subject line was just too easy, but I couldn't resist. It doesn't do justice to this site though. I don't know anything
about the band Less, but their site is really well-designed. I love the combination of the
2-D Flash animation with the stop-motion origami stuff (I have a soft spot in my heart for stop-motion animation...from
Rankin-Bass to Brothers Quay). Might have to listen the music
now...
Following off of my post yesterday about Jumpcut, I'll throw this one out there too. Chevrolet has a Flash site in support of the new Chevy Tahoe where
you can make your own commercial and save it on their site. Similar idea to Jumpcut if not as full-featured...and of
course, Chevy is supplying most of the content... You can start to see a convergence of ideas around how Flash can be
used on the web. I think the word about the "Flash Platform" is starting to sink in...
It's
interesting how folks are already subverting the Chevy application. Check out the videos: C.I.C.L.E.'s here
and Rocketboom's here.
Fresh out of the oven! Bill Perry just posted a link on
his blog for the new Flash Player 7
for Pocket PC. Windows Mobile 5 and PPC 2003 compatible (remember last fall when Macromedia removed the FP6 for PPC
because of stability issues?). Bill lays out the key features as:
Last week, we all heard of the security risk posed by the current Flash player and I'm sure
you all already updated your web players. Mike Downey points out
that there are also updates for
the Flash 8 and Flash MX 2004 Test Movie players as well. So start your morning off right by patching away!
Miltos Manetas has put together a nice time waster for your Monday afternoon. Create your own Jackson Pollock drip painting without all the mess at JacksonPollack.org. Great use of the Drawing API! I can't wait to show this to my 7-year-old...but I get to play with it for a while first...
Please don't shoot this puppy... Please... ugh. Well here's a quick and very dirty Flash game for your late night fun.
The simple game is much like the Don't Click site but is way more annoying. Yes, I know I'm not really convincing you to
check out the game... once you click over you may want to come back here and let me know what you really think. Feel
free to drop me a tip to better game on the 
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