MAX 2008: round up. The one with the hair & Catalyst

Sorry for this late update, but it's been busy since I got back from Milan but I have to say this year MAX was a very special one!

I lost my hair, for real.

With Boulevart we won a MAX award with our 'Rock Werchter' mobile guide and the Iphone port we did.

I made a bet with my colleagues and I lost.
You can see the result here.

It's been great and I had a lot of fun meeting up with all of the guys from The Netherlands and Belgium.

I went to a very inspiring 'agency summit meeting' we're I met up with Rick Williams from AKQA and I had a good chat with Branimir Angelov from Gugga. 

There was so much going on but what you need to remember is that Adobe is working on all different fronts (horizontal and vertical) for all web builders out there:

multi-service + multi-screen + multi-user
design + development + deployment

A new product Catalyst, previously known as Thermo, will become a key factor for developers and designers creating rich media.

Adobe is putting up a lot of effort in trying to figure out how to make everybody understand each other. The coming of Flex and Actionscript 2/3 created some confusion as in how to put up a good workflow from design over development to deployment.
Catalyst is Adobe's answer.

It is not yet fully in bloom and Adobe still has a lot of work to do before this product will be the robust tool everybody is looking for.

Production company's will have to start thinking of how the are going to organize the production process in terms of designing experience websites, rich internet applications or a combination.

Catalyst will bring developers and designers closer together but I won't work without the necessary effort of everybody involved.

For developers my guess is that within the coming years every swf out there will rely on the Flex framework. Flash CS4 is back in the game for motion designers and design in general, there is Catalyst now and Flexbuilder (Gumbo) will even be more mature than ever.

Now let's go and kick some!

Adobe MAX Milan 2008: NERDS UNITE

An overview of the main hall... No matter how hard we try, we will always be nerds...

Adobe MAX 2008 Milan has started:Prologue

Adobe MAX 2008 started!

Thomas, Wannes, Dimitri and myself arrived yesterday. 

It was good seeing some of the friends back. 

We had the real pizza only 2 hours after our arrival, not bad :-)

During the evening there was a gathering of the Dutch and Belgian User Group with a short session on Catalyst (formely known as Thermo). Afterwards we had some drinks and food, always good!

Thomas, Dimitri, Wannes

No comment...

First Pizza! Wannes & Thomas!

The guys from the Dutch Adobe User Group

Flash art: We Are The World projection in the center of Brussels

Tomorrow is kick off day for the Cimatics festival in Brussel. This is an international audio visual festival held at different locations in Brussels spread over 3 days.

I am proud to share the line up with people like Casey Reas, Byetone, RYbN, Antoine Schmitt and many more.
There will also be work from the people from LabAU and screenings from Transmediale.

Friday evening my work 'We Are The World', will be projected on the side of the Crowne Plaza hotel at Place Rogier in Brussels.
I'm talking a HUGE projection here. Tonight we ran some tests and the results are wonderful.

Check out the pictures from the testing session.

I love these machines

My Banksy image desktop 20/25 meters

The crew

From a distance

Flash on the wall

Boulevart's Thomas Joos Finalist @ MAX Milan

My colleague Thomas Joos at Boulevart has done it once again!

His Rock Werchter Mobile Guide was selected as an Award Finalist entry for the Adobe Max Milan 2008 Awards in the ”Develop” category.

Vote for Thomas here:
http://max.adobe.com/eu/experience/#?s=5&p=3

This is über cool and we at Boulevart are very proud to be one of the finalists.
Nice job Thomas!

Heading for Adobe MAX 2008: Milan -- Session list

I am glad to be attending the Adobe MAX conference held in Milan this year.
I'd like to thank the people from Adobe for their support and I hope to see some old and new friends there.

We're gonna have fun for sure!

Last year I did a session with Nicolas Lierman.
This time I'm off the hook, so I can go on and enjoy all the seasons without having to worry if my computer will work, will the projector not fail, will my hair be ok, etc...

On the wishlist:

Sessions:
Definitely have to check the keynotes.
There are so many good sessions planned.
I guess I will have to try to find the right balance between technical and inspirational sessions.

Here's my (first) list:

Building High-Performance Applications for Adobe AIR by Mihai Corlan.
Community and Flash Player by Justin Everett-Church.
Revolutionizing Behavioral Analytics with Adobe AIR by Nicolas Lierman (go Nico go!).
Hands-on with Thermo: Creating Interactive Designs by Serge Jespers and Andrew Spaulding.
Here Be Pixels by Mario Klingeman.
Flash Player Internals by Jim Corbett.
Breathe AIR into Your Brand by Tom Krcha.
Creating Marketing Platforms Using the Adobe Flash Platform and Flex 3 by Branimir Angelov.
Society of Digital Agencies (SODA) on the integrated customer experience by Michael Lebowitz (Big Spaceship) and Richard Lent (Agencynet).
Makin money with Adobe AIR by Grant Skinner.
Developing exceptional brand experiences by Ivan Todorov (Blitz).

All of these guys have done some very very cool stuff. 

You probably experienced this too,...  Attending sessions like these give you the feeling you don't know anything anymore, but at the same time they are the perfect energy boost. Love it!

Technologies: (thx Serge)
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/alchemy/
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/textlayout/
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/durango/
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/pixelbender/

I can't wait now, sleeping bad, sore throath, you know,... ah. It's gonna be a blast!

See you there!

Flash Art: Opening We Are The World

Last week-end my first solo exhibtion openend at the Actionfields gallery in Brussels.

All my work is done in Flash and Java.

For more information please check my website:

http://www.wimvanhenden.be

(please consider some of the images on the site are nsfw)

It's been a lot of work. Not only the last minute programming, as usual, but arranging everything, getting the stuff up etc... But I am glad it all turned out well.

If you have the time, drop by.

Here's an impression:

Actionfields exhibtion rescheduled to October

My exhibition at Actionfields gallery in Brussels will start October 10th!

So here's the repost from August.

Many fine artist like Ben Kruisdijk & Conny Kuilboer, Stefan Annerel, Thomas Huyghe, Greet Van Autgaerden and many others have exhibited there.

For more info please visit www.actionfields.be

I would like to thank Vincent Verbiest for believing and having me in his gallery. Vincent is a cool guy who cares for art and the artists he works with. Thanks Vincent.

I also would like to thank Carl Jacops for believing in me, listening to me, giving me good advise and mentoring me. Thanks Carl.

Selected works:

We Are The World

The Interpreter

The Participator

If you wanna know more about my art, please drop me a line or just stop by and stay tuned on my blog and website.

Did I mention all of my work is done in Flash?

Well it's all done in Flash :-)

Flash 3D engines: clipping benchmark test

Whenever working in Flash and 3d I always start out with the same setup.
One plane and on that plane a cube. I think that's a nice setup to get your environment ready, setting up the camera and stuff.

While using Papervision, I noticed when moving the cube some clipping occurred. The cube was disappearing under some of the plane's faces.

So I did a little test with 4 of the most used 3d packages around.
1. Papervision
2. Away3D
3. Sandy
4. Alternativa

The setup is always the same.
The regular plane object of the package with a regular colormaterial applied and a regular cube object with a bitmap material applied to it.
The tweens are done with Tweener. All the settings are default except for camera y and z positions in order to get the same cameraview, well sort of, for all the tests.

Download the sources here.








As you can see Sandy and Alternativa produce the best results.

Note that is is no speed test or a full comparison. Some of these engines have great features the other ones are lacking of and vica versa.
It also may be possible by using more advanced features of Papervision or Away3D the clipping problem could be solved, but that is out of the scope of my test. 

If anyone knows how to improve the clipping, please let me know!

Chuck Norris and Flash!

Dude, if flash is good enough for Chuck Norris’s website then it’s good enough for everyone else. If Chuck finds out your bashing his preferred web technology, then he might stopAndUnload(you).

That says it all. Great comment on a guy not liking Flash by Wes Rice in a post done by Lee Brimelow over at the FlashBlog. Read it here.

http://www.chucknorris.com

Don't forget to check out the Christian Area...

Remeber: If Flash is good enough for Chuck Norris, it is good enough for everybody!

Cuil: The new hype can't handle me...

I tried a search on myself at Cuil, the new self proclaimed hype that will make Google look like a litle choir boy (sic..). It turns out they can't handle me...

It must be that millions of people are looking for me, or they have a server problem. It must the first option for sure.

Click the picture and see for yourself...

It's good to be famous... Feel like Frank Ze now :-)

Session video's from Adobe User Group Netherlands

Although I couldn't be present at the latest Adobe User Group meeting in the Netherlands, it was great!

How do I know? They've got it all on tape.

Check it out the sessions here:

http://www.adobeusergroup.nl/2008/06/26/videos-meeting-7-flash-aus-deutschland

Great speakers like André Michelle, Mario Klingemann and Carlo Blatz.

Just on the side, Mario is always, and I mean always, good. 

He says his new title is: 'Lead Computational Artisen' (or something) which in my opinion is just the same as NERD... But that's no problem, because we all are.

The streams are really great and the people from the dutch user group are doing some nice work.

Thanks to the dutch Adobe User Group!

Adobe AIR Photobooth: Crazy Cam

Yes, now Windows users can use Photobooth as well. 

Thanks to my collegue Maarten Cox who released this AIR app called CrazyCam. 

Read more or download at Maarten's blog or at Boulevart Labs

Nice work dude!

btw, the robot in the picture is mine. I have it since I was like 6 years old. It really feels nice to have this guy in this app now. 

Exhibition: Wim Vanhenden @ Actionfields Brussels - art with flash

I am proud to inform you that coming august I will be exhibiting at the Actionfields gallery in Brussels.

Many fine artist like Ben Kruisdijk & Conny Kuilboer, Stefan Annerel, Thomas Huyghe, Greet Van Autgaerden and many others have exhibited there.

For more info please visit www.actionfields.be

I would like to thank Vincent Verbiest for believing and having me in his gallery. Vincent is a cool guy who cares for art and the artists he works with. Thanks Vincent. 

I also would like to thank Carl Jacops for believing in me, listening to me, giving me good advise and mentoring me. Thanks Carl.

Selected works:

We Are The World

The Interpreter

 

The Participator

If you wanna know more about my art, please drop me a line or just stop by in august and stay tuned on my blog and website.

Did I mention all of my work is done in Flash?

Well it's all done in Flash :-)

FLex/Flash developers playing in a band...

Just a quick note after being back from Romania which was really cool. Nicolas Lierman and myself worked there with the guys from www.ddnet.ro

Thanks to the guys from DDNet (Gabi, Marius, Chris, Bogdan and all the others) you made us feel welcome! I'll hope to find the time soon to post some pictures later.

Today I found out that my new colleague and founder of the Prana framework, Mister Christophe Herreman played guitar in a band called Liar.

I was in in a band called Janez Detd once and our bands were on the same label and I am sure I must have seen Christophe playing but I never realized it till now.

Rock on Christophe!

Live from Romania

Capture and write an audio stream with Adobe AIR

A small demo, including source files, in how to capture and record an audio stream in AIR.

You can listen to the audio stream and write it as an mp3 to your desktop.

I got the idea to try from my colleague Wannes Coolen. Thx dude!

In the example I use the internet radio audio stream from Studio Brussel.
This is the biggest alternative radio station in Belgium.

In general it works like this:
1. Use URLStream class to access the stream
2. Transfer the stream into a bytearray like this:
        var bArray : ByteArray = new ByteArray();
        stream.readBytes(bArray);

3. Write the bytearray to the desktop with FileStream

4. You are done.

Please never mind the looks of this application, it's about what's inside :-)

Download demo AIR app here

Download source files here

Enjoy!

Neopets on AIR coming to you!

People over at http://www.neopets.com, owned by MTV/Nickelodeon, are doing a port of their platform to Adobe AIR.

If you watch the video, you will see this will become one of the coolest apps out there. It may remind you a bit of one of the first God games out there called Populous.

It's not released yet, but keep an eye out:



The people over at MTV seem to recognize the potential Adobe AIR has to offer their business. An application for Nickelodeon is already released at this moment.

"With Adobe AIR, we can deliver highly interactive, easy-to-use applications that Nickelodeon fans can enjoy right away. It lets us take our services and brand from the web to the desktop, keeping viewers engaged whether they are online or offline."

- Jason Root, Senior Vice President, Nick.com

I strongly believe in the power of Adobe AIR not only for business applications but also for applications in the entertainment , community & social industry's with apps directly focused on consumers.

And yes, as developer it's just fun to do :-)

A small reminder: a few screenshots of the Tamagotchi test 'Stinky Panda' and off course the Google Analytics Desktop Suite we did at Boulevart

also posted at labs.boulevart.be

Multi Mania 2008: be there or be square!

I will be doing a session at the upcoming Multi Mania conference the 23th of May.
I will be talking about Flash and Air, and how you can do some really cool stuff when you combine them. I am not talking you're average mp3 player or standard business application here people!

Multi Mania is one of the biggest multimedia events in Europe. 

With more than 30 international speakers and +800 attendees this is one not to miss! And most of all, it's free of charge!

I will be in the good company of guys and girls like: Peter Elst, Ralph Hauwert, Aral Balkan, Mario Klingemann, Stephanie Sullivan, Hoss Gifford, Bart Chanet, Seven Productions, Group94, Serge Jespers and so on...

The atmposhere will be good, there are great speakers, there is free luch and there will be a great party afterwards, so I'll see you there!

A word of thanks to everybody involved in organizing this FREE event is in place here.

Muchas gracias Multi Mania team!

Register here

Don't forget to stay in touch for the great mobile app for Multi Mania my collegue Mr. Thomas Joos is developing. Check it out here:

http://vilebody.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/multi-mania-mobile-conference-guide/

Working at Qi-ideas

Like I said before it's been very busy. I've been working on a very big project and when the time is right, read when the client say's it's ok :-), more on that. 

But in the meantime I've been in the Netherlands for some work.

2 weeks ago me and 2 of my collegue's: Raf, Indra, joined the lovely people at Qi-Ideas in Amsterdam.
We did a 'Flash rush': five days, three flash developers and lots of coffee on a project for Nivea called My Silhouette!

It's been intense but we had a great time. Everybody at Qi made us feel welcome and we were well taken care of!

Holland rules!

Thanks to everybody at Qi-Ideas and special thanks to Sander, Emily, Django and Niels.

Niels, thanks for taking us out into town. We had a great time man!

Check out:
http://www.qi-ideas.com
http://labs.qi-ideas.com/
http://nyls.blogspot.com/

1. First minute of arrival. Raf checking the WiFi...

2. Indra & Raf  and the Qi-building in the background... Impressive

3. As a Belgian, I say to you, Jean Marie Pfaff is everywhere.

Raf doing his thing...

Party at Qi (Niels on the left)

Flash @ Bozar: Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels

Hello my dear fellow readers,
It's been very busy past few weeks, and I will get back on more stuff I have been working on, but I am proud to inform you that one of my works has been selected for the Canvas Collectie.
4700 artists with a total of 14.000 works registerd for this competition. In total 250 artist were chosen and their work will be exhibited at the prestigious Museum of Fine Arts Bozar in Brussels.

No need to say I feel honored with this accomplishment.

The work that has been chosen is called WeAreTheWorld and is a real time search engine scraper, completely written in Flash.
I think this is the first piece of art done in Flash that will be displayed at Bozar.

A premiere for me and Adobe as well I should say!

Read more here:
http://www.wimvanhenden.be
http://multiblog.vrt.be/canvascollectie/
http://labo.canvas.be/content/we-are-world-v1

Screenshot @ Culture Club Gent

Prints @ The Guesthouse Antwerp

Prints @ The Guesthouse Antwerp

Testing @ my livingroom

Testing @ my livingroom