A total tweet of an experiment...

http://blog.learningmate.com/wordpress/?p=21

I started a total tweet of an experiment at work.

lotsa people show lotsa interest. Key is keeping it alive. I hope it all works out.

big thanks to Atul for making it possible.


if(makes_a_difference("it") == true)
{ I->love("it");}
else
{throw not_interested_exception(null);}



:) :) :)

CS4 ships...finally!

It turns out that the last time I saw CS4 it was not shipping. Only buzz-buzz-ing that it is about to ship. So finally on October 15th Adobe put up prices and all... so looks like CS4 is finally shipping...

• Adobe CS4 Launch Broadcast: http://tv.adobe.com/#vi+f1556v1715
• Creative Suite 4 : Suite Selector : http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/suiteselector/
  

...CS4!!!

On September 23, Adobe released the long-awaited Creative Suite 4, this also included Flash CS4 and Photoshop CS4.

Check out the wicked new features in Flash CS4 here. Although it looks like Flash CS4 uses Flash Player 9 update 3(press release). Meaning there should be a Flash CS4 update for Flash Player 10 sometime soon.
Niiiice :)

And they have just added more bang to 3D in Photoshop CS4!!! The top new features here. Hey if you were wondering about the sexy resize... it's there in all it's glory... YAY!!!

to re-iterate...

NNIIIIIIICEEE!!!

Interaction Design Patterns

I have been trying to start a Interaction Design/HCI blog for some time now, but time has not really been permitting... :)

So till the time I get time's permission, I'll post my interaction interests here...

This one is about Interaction Design Patterns.
Now, even though the world is divided on the pros and cons of Design Patterns, I like them a lot cause they help me communicate complex ideas simply, and that traslates to production lubrication in more ways than one.

Design patterns when we consider them in the context of IxD/HCI become "Interaction Design Patterns"
User Interface components, layouts, tasks, goals all can be classified into these, and at the end of it all, defining your strategy in terms of these patterns makes for a far more comprehensive approach, than actually drilling down to UI specifics from the start.

Here are a few resources.

• Interaction Design Patterns on Wikipedia.
• Pattern Catalogue on Welie.
• On Interaction-Design.org
• Tom Erickson's Interaction Design Patterns Page.
• Interaction Design Pattern Library for Games.
• Visualization Design Patterns.
• Yahoo! Design Pattern Library on the Yahoo Developer Network.

More pattern goodness coming up!...

Cheers

:) :) :)

Nice Design Process Article.

http://www.stopdesign.com/articles/design_process/

Color Schemes

Seen http://www.colr.org/

Pretty wild stuff...

create color schemes based on images that you upload, or those that appear at random.
Download .ACO files for sharing the scheme.

What I like here is the ability to select many many colors, unlike Adobe's Kuler, where you can select at most 5.

Looks like this was done in Python. One of my favorite languages.

:) :) :)

Image searches on the web.

1. picishare : a flickr search engine.
2. flickr search on rollyo.
   
3. CompFight.
4. flickrleech : one that I frequently use.
   
5. labs.ideeinc.com : Idée Inc is doing some pretty wild stuff in image search...
6. PictureSandbox : search across multiple stock photo collections at the same time.
7. Multi Colr Search Lab : Search Images from Flickr based on Color!!! from Idée Inc
8. Visual Search Lab : Search Images based on the visual content of other images!!! from Idée Inc
9. BYO Image Search Lab : : Search Images based on the visual content of other images!!! from Idée Inc

Flash Player 10 on Flex 4? ummm.... yea.... maybe... probably...could be...true?

This is what Matt Chotin wrote on one of the forum posts on Adobe:

"I'm going to try to have a presentation in a few weeks that goes into a lot of our plans in more detail, but yes, it's looking like given the timeframe of Flex 4 and the timeframe of when Player 10 comes out that we will be able to target Player 10 due to it having high enough penetration. "

This could be good!

The post is dated Jun 1, let's find out what happened next...

:)

Suggested Projects (Open Source on Adobe)

Suggested Projects

Kevin Goldsmith on Pixel Bender

Kevin Goldsmith's Blog

open source Flex project list

open source Flex project list

ActionScript 3:resources:apis:libraries

More for my reference than yours... :)

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/ActionScript_3:resources:apis:libraries

PaperVision 3D resources

Here are a bunch of code/experiment resources on Papervision3D

• UNITZEROONE: http://www.unitzeroone.com/blog/
• mr. doob's blog: http://mrdoob.com/blog/
• Papervision 2 : http://papervision2.com/
• ActionScript Architect: http://www.actionscriptarchitect.com/
• Zupko.info : http://blog.zupko.info/

posting here more for my reference than yours hehe...


:) :) :)

Singularity

I think I am getting excited about it too... especially after looking at their list of speakers.

http://singularity08.com/1


Here is a verbatim from the Singularity home page...

Singularity is the first large-scale online web conference in the world.

On October 24-26, join 100 of the world’s top web visionaries, developers, designers, thought leaders, and celebrities for three days of talks at this seminal web event.

Attend from home or from a real-world local conference hub near you. Catch up with old friends (you can find them from your existing social networks) and meet new ones. And you don’t even have to take time off work.

To find out more about the conference, read the About page.

To see how you can help, take a look at the Badges and Sponsors pages.

To get updates, subscribe to the Singularity RSS feed.

discussing open source licences.

another important discussion on open source licenses.

another kickass presentation from gskinner

50 reasons why AS3 ROCKS!!!

take a look at:

http://gskinner.com/talks/50reasonsAS3/

gskinner also posted other presentations here

neat!!!

:) :) :)

hot grunt grudge innovate sweat smile repeat :)

DOOD! WIP-iy POST THIS IS... NO LOOKY TIL THIS DONE.

Adobe Advances Rich Media Search on the Web

The press release.

Flash is going to be more searchable...

Intro to AS3, from gskinner.

This is a little out of date, but again, it's nice to have it around.

Grant Skinner gives the coolest introductory notes to AS3.

Very comprehensive and 167 slides long!!!

enjoy!.

the FWA Theater

Take a look at the FWA Theater!

The latest and greatest in motion graphics....

very very cool stuff here!

http://www.fwatheater.com/


:) :) :)

nice blog... look it up!

http://interactivehug.com/

got it from Lee Brimelow's blog

I think sometimes, if I should put up my IxD stuff on CodeScape too, and then I think It's not the right sort of place for that sort of nice.
Maybe another blog for IxD/HCI ? watsay?


:) :) :)

Sexy Resize in PS CS4?

Hey!

Heard about Seam carving?

It's a totally new way of resizing images, here is a SIGGRAPH 2007 video introducing this technology...It's looks really cool! to me...nah! make that sexy! looks really really sexy to me :)



Here is the original paper written by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir, the inventors of this technology.

And now, I hear some buzz that this might be a part of Adobe PhotoShop CS4!!!
btw, Adobe Photoshop CS4 is codenamed Stonehenge 11.0.

Even wikipedia has a rumour type thingy on it!

Some Images of early release PS CS4 that I found on the web:





WOW! HUH?


:) :) :)

Flash Player 10 Beta 2 release

I think most ppl would already know this by now...

While I was able to inform all my colleagues about the Flash Player 10 release on May 15th, I am bit late on putting this one up, primarily, because I am a little lazy... hehe... but anyways, here goes...

On July 02, 2008, Adobe released the beta 2 of Flash player 10.

It looks like they have added:

1. Loader.unloadAndStop method: to allow for unloading swf and other assets thru code. Resource management became a little painful with AS3/display list (see Grant Skinner's articles on this here and here and here). So this method here can take care of removal of related code with the removal of relevant movieclips. Simpler. :)
2. Enhanced Sound APIs: There is the flash.media.Sound and the flash.media.SoundCodec (the one that allows you to choose between nellymoser and the new speex sound compression codec). Some more classes may be there, I am still not clear what additions are there... I need to look at the older flash 10 documentation that I have and figure this one out.
3. Additional Linux support. ummm... I don't know much about this either.
4. FullScreen keyboard Access: Make fullscreen games... :)

1. is the one that excites me the most in the beta 2 additions.
The release notes still say that components don't work well with 3d. I hope they do in the final release...

check the following out:

1. Adobe Flash Player 10 on Adobe Labs
2. Adobe Flash Player 10 Beta Release Notes
3. Lee Brimelow's Blog
4. Flash CS4 (codenamed "Diesel") news.

:) :) :)

Adobe Connect : for e-learning!?!?!

Adobe re branded Macromedia's Breeze to Adobe Acrobat Connect.
But that is not all...
Adobe® Connect™ LMS Integration Solutions offer SSL and connectivity to BlackBoard and SAKAI! (Though support for WebCT is still not availabe...)
hmmm...

Take a look at:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Acrobat_Connect
• http://www.adobe.com/resources/elearning/
• http://www.adobe.com/resources/elearning/lms_integration.html
• http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnectpro/elearning/
• http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnectpro/pdfs/eLearningSolutionBrief.pdf
• http://www.adobe.com/education/solutions/hed/elearning/
• http://www.adobe.com/education/elearning/pdfs/connect_lms_intgrtn_sb_ue.pdf

interesting?

:) :) :)

Image Analysis in Flex!

Check out Piknik!

http://www.picnik.com/

Very cool image analysis done in flex.
The trippy banner you see on this blog was created using piknik, from a rendering I did years ago in 3dsmax. Also look at the banner on this blog. Am very happy with the results. The interface is so much nicer compared to other photoshop clones on the web.

More such sites:
Lazy lazy, All I did to find these was to browse thru the showcase on flex.org

• http://www.friendlytek.com/upload/
• http://www.flauntr.com/
• http://www.splashup.com/

mebbe there are more around... lemme look up.

Hey! here is an idea! Can we use these to cut our licensing/production budgets? I mean it looks like you don't need PhotoShop any longer for most of such work anyways... :)

in the meantime, lets start looking at convolution matrices closely... add more goodness to image analysis. BTW, anyone ever tried the old filterfactory plugin in photoshop 5/6/7? Lemme look up some of my code from it and post it here...


:) :) :)

Adobe's Open Screen Project

Finally!

Adobe is making an effort to bring consistency to the "Flash Player" across PCs and Devices, including mobile devices and set-top-boxes (those cable TV thingies)

Sounds really good to me!

So, apparently now I do not have to worry too much about thinking how my application/content would be deployed on a mobile.

Many things come to light:

• Apparently Adobe Flash Player was licensed to be used on devices. This now goes free. More devices adapt the Flash Player.
  
• Bits of Flash Player were not opensource. This is now open source (see the Tamarin Project on Mozilla). More people are involved, community collaboration goodness.
  
• The ability to publish in the .swf format was licensed. Again this is no longer so, Adobe makes it free... so you and me can create programs that output .swf files, no hassles.
• Adobe now opens up more, publishes AMF protocol and The Flash Cast protocol. Looks like as of May 1, 2008, Adobe has lifted the restrictions on SWF and FLV/F4V specifications.
• Adobe developers will write porting APIs (they call it "the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player" more wordy and probably more accurate) for developers to make their applications work on different devices.

Cool! I'd say.

Take a look at the following:

• Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch Discusses this.
• Adobe's Press release on this.
• An Interview with Adobe's James Ward on this.
• Here is a lot of big boss companies talking about this, like CEO/Marketing types mouthing noises if they know a lot, when they know nothing... hehe.
• SWF File Format Specification (Version 9).
• Video File Format Specification (FLV/F4V video file format, Version 9).
• The AMF specification.
  
• James Ward's Blog.

I still have a few apprehensions.
Although I do hear it in whispers, I so wish someone would come out loud and say:
AND YES Flash Player will have better support on the iPhone!!!
but, whispers are all I hear... and that is what I have to do with right now...
But good! I am hopeful! and excited!

:) :) :)

on Change... on Eckel's site

Here is a quote on change that I really liked on Bruce Eckel's site:

You do not have to spend a lot of time and effort on those who strongly resist change. You only have to help and protect those who want to change, so that they are able to succeed. Put another way, your job is not to plant the entire forest, row by row -- it is to plant clumps of seedlings in hospitable places and to nurture them. As they mature, these trees will spread their seeds, and the forest will eventually cover the fertile land. The rocks, will, of course, remain barren regardless. ... once you have figured out who cannot be converted, you should not waste more time trying to persuade them.
-- David Hutton, The Change Agents' Handbook


Well said.
Apt.


For more Eckel goodness visit: http://www.mindviewinc.com/

Eckel Talks ActionScript!

One of my favorite authors, Bruce Eckel now writes on ActionScript!!!
(He :

1. is the reason, I feel confident on Java and C++,
   
2. gives amazing insights on programming in his books, check them out!
3. simply the coolest, because he gave out his books for free! )

AS - language I spend most of my time with.

Wow!

Take a look at:

1. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/creating_components.html
2. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/as_collections.html
   

I am going to look for more articles he may have written on AS, see if I can come up with anything, Welcome to ActionScript Bruce!

There is another important point to note here...
If Bruce Eckel is writing on AS... it means that:

1. either AS is really good, worth writing about
2. or it has now become 1
3. or there are a lot of business opportunities in AS
4. or Adobe hired him and asked him to write something on AS.
5. all of the above
6. none of the above.

Another point to note... though it could be a little far fetched.
ECMAScript 4 (and probable AS4 ) proposes Iterators, and Bruce takes the same topic as an example to explain functional programming. Coincidence?

Anyway, I find that I get into the "hero-worship" mode really quickly, and that mode switch is happening again....

Bruce Eckel writes on AS3 and Flex... cool!

Other References...

• Bruce Eckel's Website: http://www.mindviewinc.com/
• Artima Developer, where the article first appeared: http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=230610
• What's new in ECMAScript 4 that is not already in AS3: http://moock.org/lectures/newInECMAScript4/
• Overview of ECMAScript4: http://www.ecmascript.org/es4/spec/overview.pdf
• ECMAScript 4 - Progress: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pFIHldY_CkszsFxMkQOReAQ&gid=2

:)

S.

about flash performance

Hey People!
In doing SRM06 we faced a major hurdle about flash performance – flash kept crashing
In investigating all that we got to learn a lot of under the hood stuff about the flash player and the flash compiler.Much of it would require a lot of space to share…But, there was one very interesting resource that I dug up, rummaging thru my favs. Folder… hehe .
http://oddhammer.com/actionscriptperformance/
The site is very informative about flash performance issues, has some tests calibrating various operations to milliseconds too!Also there is a wealth of other stuff here – including tutorials on Unicode characters in flash.
It’s a bit old and caters to flash 6, 7, and 8, but the info it gives is still relevant and useful
Enjoy!
:-) :-) :-)
Shaurya