Them’s a lot. Here’s a few beauties from browsing just a few minutes….
…is how I feel right now. Just got done cramming tweets into Flash for an upcoming tutorial on, duh, Twitter and Flash. It wasn’t the hardest thing in the world, since it mostly involves parsing XML, but then ya gotta spice it up and make links clickable, show user images, make them clickable. And the latest stumbling block was parsing the feeds for searching Twitter. Which was a little different then just bringing in a single user’s feed (wanna see the XML for mine, click here) or the public timeline (also XML ). Those were easy to deal with. It was this .atom file type that was a problemo. If you want to search Twitter and bring those tweets in you use this…
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=flash
See that .atom. Grrrrrrr. But see that q=flash part above. Thats the search term. And you can combine terms, or narrow them down. Heck, before I lose this open browser window, here’s a whole page of Twitter search operators.
So if you’re looking for an exact phrase like ”happy hour” sent within 15 miles of “NYC”. It should look like…
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=”happy hour”&near:NYC&within:15mi
See how useful that might be in a swf, where you can customize exactly how it looks, etc, etc. Well, I’ll have a tutorial sooooooon!!!
I hope I get a response (big image below)… Continue Reading
… this article has it all! And between all those brandnames & techno-droppings, the people at Crave, a gadget blog, have had their Silverlight spell wear off a little bit. So says their recent article titled, Adobe: We can conquer the world with Flash . Amazing what one technical evangelist can do.
I’ve been hearing for years that Silverlight will kill Flash, and I guess that has a nice ring to it (boys love the sound of utter destruction), but if anything these two platforms will co-exist for a decade or so. Snubbing each other in the hallways at worst. Here’s two big reasons why:
God I love bullet points. Even just two. Anyway, Crave should have titled their article: Adobe: We already conquered, now we send out people to talk about it.
…Nissan Cube that is. This isn’t a car blog, but it is a design blog. And there’s something very off about these cars. Since you’re usually looking at the ass-end of cars, lets take a look at a couple examples from that perspective. This first pic is straight from Nissan’s Cube site . This is probably the best it will ever look. Nice , glossy, and cleaned up for the site. Does the license read “ASHTRAY”?… Oh no, “ASYMTRY”.
Next up, the street example. This looks more like the car I saw. Not in a showroom or website, its just an odd car on the road. Kinda like a Cylon’s head. See what I mean…
I’m definitely not against playing around a little conceptually but even without the asymmetrical back, this car is just too boxy. So its a fail for me, but Nissan at least tried something new. It does make me wonder when asymmetry works. And as a designer you might want to consider the same. I did see some concept car pics a few weeks ago that looked awesome, and were very uneven. But maybe the concept part, of a non-driveable car, is artificially hyping the design for me. Click the pics below for article…
Check out this great animation called the Astronomer’s Dream. Its a really wonderful piece, but seriously, it is making me hungry. You’ll see/ hear why. This astronomer just can’t get a decent bite.
Since I figured out how to embed Vimeo’s directly on the blog, here’s a pasting the official description by the creator…
When a hungry astronomer falls asleep while working on a problem, he discovers a solution not in outer space, but in the surreal food-chain of his subconscious mind.
An animated film by Malcolm Sutherland, with sound by Leon Lo. Made in 2009.
For more information or DVD purchases please visit animalcolm.com/theastronomersdream
Here’s an interesting little micro-site that Adobe created in the hopes of converting non-believers in legal software. Its kind of a NES-era Zelda-ish RPG. Well done, and the sounds in it are 50% of the fun (like all good animation/games!)
Annnnd here comes my editorial: I’m obviously a big proponent of legally owning your software. Just like owning up to paying your energy bill, a cup of coffee, your car. Even illegal things should be paid for properly. Which most people know!! Once a week someone will email me asking to hook them up with Adobe software for free. The most recent exchange went exactly like this…
Some dude: “Yo, hook me up wit CS4 for freeee. I rally need it. lol”
Me: ”You’re asking someone that sells e-products to distribute someone else’s stuff for free. Are you high?”
Some dude’s reply: “lol, yeah”
Me: “Well did you steal your pot from your dealer or pay for it”
Some dude’s other reply: “lol. I see”
Through all that laughing-out-loud, this guy understood my point (maybe). In the “real” world, very few people would dare steal from someone else stealing or engaging in illegal behavior. A guy steals a car and wants to sell it to you. Is it okay to rob him? It would be karmic, but it would probably get you shot if you tried. But for some reason, people get in a huff, when it comes to their “right” to steal share stuff digitally. I understand being broke, and not wanting to pay for something, and unfortunately nothing will change that. Not anything I can see, or Adobe’s clever little site above. So really the point is… uh, screw it, there is no point. Play with that website. Its cool. =)
Cool right! Nuff said.
Thats all I can say here. Check your email for the code!
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…I’m leaning toward awesome. Maybe. Test it out at Thumbizy.com, ( just don’t use a Flash site ) enter the site address and BLAMO!! you get a thumbnail. Actually “Blamo!” is an exaggeration, its not that fast, but after a few seconds you do get a thumbnail.
I know this site isn’t the coolest thing in the world, but I do like these kind of “one function” sites. TinyURL.com is another one. Simple site, no other garbage, just does what it says. Comment below if you know of any other good ones like this.
Click to visit the site
