Adobe AIR and Flash CS3: Demo with source

Here is an AIR demo that encapsulates some neat AIR and AS3 tricks.
It is called the Kevin Bacon Drag and Drop.
You have to drag an image file (jpg, png or gif) to the top of the screen.
When you drop the file it will fall down.
Make sure it lands on Kevin's camera and your picture will appear on the screen behind Kevin.

This a summary of all the features implemented in this demo:
1. compiled and written within Flash CS3 (not Flexbuilder)
2. the Adobe AIR drag and drop API
3. pixel perfect collision detection in AS3
4. the use of custom events and event bubbling
5. Ratio scaling for images

Thanks to Grant Skinner you can now compile AIR files from within Flash CS3.
Download and read the instructions here:
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2007/07/creating_air_pr.html

The Adobe AIR API documentation is build in the Flex3 Language reference (look for the classes with a blue dot next to them)
http://livedocs.adobe.com/labs/flex/3/langref/

Download the installer file here:
http://cases.boulevart.be/blogs/DragandDropGame.zip

Download the source files here:
http://cases.boulevart.be/blogs/DragandDropGame_source.zip

Here's a few mac and windows screenshots:

crossposted at labs.boulevart.be

Look who's a web 2.0 expert...

pointed out to me by this fine dude: aboutnico

Check this out boys and girls:
http://techcrunch20.com/panel-of-experts/

Click the link and search for Mr MC Hammer!

Career change anyone?

Propod: Is Flash a tool for blogging?

With the release of FI's blog done in Flash, I started a post out at labs.boulevart.be to discuss if Flash is a suitable tool for blogging?

Join the discussion here:
http://labs.boulevart.be/index.php/2007/06/05/fi-propod-is-flash-a-tool-for-blogging/

Word!

gemaaktwatmee.be: Campaign for Jupiler

Commisioned by TheseDays, we worked at flash development for the campaign gemaaktwatmee.be for Belgian beer Jupiler.

Our developer Maarten worked together with the Thesedays developer team mostly at database communication using Json and Monorail.

There is an article at www.marketinginteractive.be too (in dutch).

Thanks to TheseDays.

Build and compile AS3, Flex2 and Apollo applications in Eclipse on Mac OS X

Tested Unit, the blog of Mister Sven Dens is online.

Sven is sitting right next to me here at the office and his first post is a litle jewel for all Flash/Flex developers.

He created a template that contains everything you need to build and run Flash/Flex/Apollo apps from ActionScript source files or MXML (Flex2) source files.

Donload the template here or visit Sven's blog for the source and more details.

Good work Sven!
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Silverlight for Flash Developers: Demo with source code

With Silverlight being the talk of the town, especially amongst Flash developers, what is the best way to get your head around it? Right... Get your hands dirty. There ain't much to gain from talking about stuff you never tried :-)

The best way to get started was to go out and try some very basic stuff for game development. So I started out with basic character controlling.

Download the silverlight plug-in, if you don't allready have it, and check out the result:
http://www.seeingisbelieving.be/blog/silverlight/ladybug/fullscreen/default.html


I am on a Mac so I did not use any IDE for the creation of this demo.
Windows users can use Visual Studio or Expression.
I only used TextEdit (Notepad) for Windows users. So you could say that Silverlight is platform independent. This demo was created on a Mac. Maybe some IDE for Mac will arise in the open source community one day. You could use Eclipse for your javascript development for now. Documentation that comes with the SDK is pretty good, so you should have a 'Hello World' pretty quick.

What you need:
1. html file
2. a xaml file (pronounce as "zammel")
3. min. 2 javascript files
4. the Silverlight plug-in
5. TextEdit or Notepad

Download the SDK here.

Developing Silverlight vs Flash:
It's not all that difficult to get it working, but it can be pretty confusing if you are a Flash developer. Because I didn't use any IDE it was very hard to debug and I am not a javascript master so I had to 'cheat' sometimes.

1. Scripting and manipulating objects is done in separate files. You define your UI elements in the XAML file and you manipulate them in another file with javascript. Or at least most of the time. Not so for animations. Pretty confusing indeed...

2. I made quit a mess trying to get simultanious keyboard input, but it works. I got frustrated over booleans not working (no debugging tools) so I faked them with strings, sorry...

3. There is no 'onEnterFrame' boys and girls. There is however a work around. You create an animation with duration zero, you set a callback handler where you restart the animation and where you can put your code to be executed.

4. Prototyping is back. You will be seeing a lot of these things: myobject.prototype.mymethod = function doThis() . I've only got rid of this 2 years ago and I feel that it's not doing any good for the OO approach.

5. No support for creating custom events if your are not working with C# or Visual Basic.

6. No collision detection for images. There is a HitTest method but you can't use that on images. Only on the Stroke object.

7. Bitmap manipulation in Flash (the bitmap API) is much much more mature.

8. The switch from Actionscript to Javascript is not that hard.

9. Embedding in an html page is a complete drag. I tried to embed my application in this blog but it doesn't work at all. Microsoft provided a service called Silverlight streaming. Here you can upload your application as a zip file where you add a manifest.xml file from where it can be streamed. They provide you with some extra code and code to embed your app on an html page but I can't get it to work. It is pretty easy if you have full control over the server where you host your pages but embedding a Flash app is much more straightforward.

10. Working with animations is completely different in Silverlight than in Flash. It is done in the XAML file where you work with storyboards. An animation is an object, you can target and manipulate your animations in the according *.js file.

I feel Silverlight has a long way to go, but .NET developers should be able to get a grip of it fast. It is still in Beta so I guess stuff like bitmap manipulation, cleaner embedding, collision detection, event handling,... are allready on the table over at Microsoft. Or they should be...

Download the source code here:
http://www.seeingisbelieving.be/blog/silverlight/ladybug/silverlight_ladybug_source.zip

Word!
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Work, work, work

To all my dear readers,

I know it has been a while but it's been very very busy the last two weeks. I know you've heard it before but it's true! Really.
Check it out:

Game development:
I have been doing a game for a recruitment campaign for Microsoft Dynamics, commissioned by the nice folks over at McCann:
http://www.lanceerjezelf.be/game.aspx


The game was done in the Asap framework and I must say it works very good. Development speed has gone up and everybody is working according one system which is a good thing. It's good, believe me! We did coding, design and photography for the game from zero to completion within 6 days.

Game development 2:
I haven been doing an offline installation for Suzuki. This jackpot installation was used at a 4x4 event in Brecht. Check out my test environment:

My collegue Bart doing a stresstest (look at him all stressed out...)


Second Life:
We have opened our own island, commissioned by our mother company Cronos, at Second Life and had a first event there with Radio1 and Boek.be:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cronos/152/157/34
Go there and watch streaming video's of presentations of books presented in a special package for 'De literaire lente'. I am very proud of our island and what we achieved there so far.





Silverlight:
I got my hands dirty on Silverlight

Internal stuff:
I've been working on our Subversion setup or at least I was mostly anoying my collegue Sven who actually did the setup. But we are on a roll now. I am so glad everything works fine now.

Yes, all of this in merely 13-15 days my friends...

More on all these things in following posts.

Respect!

Microsoft Silverlight and JavaFX: What about the flash developer?

Silverlight: Beta release.

JavaFX: Alpha release

Silverlight:

"Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web."

This sounds very much like the Flash player plug-in doesn't it?

It indeed is Microsoft's answer to Adobe's wellknown Flash player. But remember, it is still in Beta so changes will be made along the way.

In fact the only technology capable of delivering fast packed media experiences at this moment is Flash. Or would you prefer to give Ajax a try to create something like this:
http://www.gettheglass.com/

So you can state that Adobe has a monopoly within this niche of the internet business.
So now Microsoft claims to be ready, or almost ready because Silverlight is in beta, to take a piece of the market. Will they succeed? As we all know, they have done it before.

Flash has been MY tool, it really feels like it is mine, for years now. I can do almost anything with it: skateboarding, riding horses, swimming,... So yes I must admit, some say that is not professional behavior, my knees weakened a bit when I heard the news. Where would this leave me, what should I do, will Microsoft crush my beloved Flash or will Flash be like the I-pod? Just the most popular one out of many alternatives?

Flash has grown to become a steady environment with a huge and strong community. I don't see this crumbling down so fast. So don't panic but I agree with Steven from Minorissues that Silverlight should be taken serious:
http://www.minorissues.be/blog/index.php?itemid=189

JavaFX:

"The demand continues to grow for secure, interactive content, applications, and services that run on a variety of clients. To simplify and speed the creation and deployment of high-impact content for a wide range of devices, Sun is introducing JavaFX, a new family of products based on Java technology designed to enable consistent user experiences, from desktop to mobile device to set-top box to Blu-ray Disc."

It seems that Sun is mostly aiming at Ajax with this one.
Their focus is mainly on multi platform development. Sun completely missed the interactive webcontent boat. Their applet hasn't really changed since 1996 or so, while Macromedia's Flash platform seemed to be versatile enough to grow and become market leader for interactive web content.

Again we'll have to see what happens.

Conclusion:

A lot of things are happening for multimedia developers these days. What technolgy should one choose, which 'side' should one choose?

For me, it is not about choosing sides. As a multimedia developer you should always embrace new things. You should by some new books and study.
The boys and girls at marketing departments, the deals within the industry and the user will guide us...

A true Nerd is never scared... Never!

Word!

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More impressive work: Red Interactive

I read about this nice site over at boomblogue:

http://ff0000.com/universe/

The site is in beta and for you to test.

Impressive and very well done!

Royal Boulevart Football Club

Yes,

Alive and kicking the Royal Boulevart Football Club!

Talented as we are, we will rule the universe!

Our first game will be the 11th of April against the These Days Football Allstars

Thanks to the believer and chairman Claudio

Eye Project: impressive work from Yugop

Brought to me by Zuppaman and brought to you by Yugop and Takayuki Fukatsu:

Eye project

A video posting site for the Japanese telecom company KDDI. One of the first AS3 commercial projects with some impressive scripting including papervision running in the background.

enjoy!

Fonky Flash is online!

Yes, Mr. D Jannes has got his first post up!

Fonky Flash

Read about what he did with L-Systems in Flash.

He is sooo nice, he even shares his code with us.

Nice work dude.
Catch you on the flipside!

Adobe releases Apollo alpha on Adobe labs

Yes it's here!

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/apollo/

Download, play and have fun!

It also seems that the product managers from Adobe are thinking about changing the name for the official release.

I feel, and many developers with me, the name should stay.
You can take the poll here:
http://blog.everythingflex.com/2007/03/15/apollo-the-great-debate/

Big cheerio to the Apollo team!

The Apple Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS) to Flash

Not only the keyboard of my MacBook lits up in the dark, it seems to be equiped with a Sudden Motion Sensor or SMS.
This motion sensor is designed to protect your hard disk when the computer is dropped or undergoes severe vibration.

The Sudden Motion Sensor is designed to detect unusually strong vibrations, sudden changes in position or accelerated movement. If the computer is dropped, the Sudden Motion Sensor instantly parks the hard drive heads to help reduce the risk of damage to the hard drive on impact.

Ofcourse the sensor can be used for more vital applications as well. How about a game of Pong anyone? It has been done in Processing, so why not give it a try in Flash. Just for the sake of it!

Here is an example I've build using Java and Flash.
I know the ball is going at 'loser' speed, but hey it's MY party and I cry if I want to!
Download the source code here:

http://www.seeingisbelieving.be/blog/AppleSMS2Flash.zip

Included are the Unimotion library and the Java API to work with it, the Flash files and the Java socket server.
The big picture is you use the Unimotion library in Java for detecting the motion and then send it to the Flash through a Java socket server.

Related links:
Lincoln Ramsey (created Unimotion library)
Daniel Shiffman (created the Java API for Unimotion)
Grant Skinner (for the Flash collision detection)
Info about the SMS

Mr Tom Anthoni is alive!

May I introduce you:

Drowning in a sea of Flash

The blog of the talented and handsome Mr. Tom Anthoni!

He will blog of all things flash and other cool stuff. He is a cool guy and I hope he will have a long and prosperous life in the virtual world!

Cheers dude!

Mike Downey demonstrates Apollo

Mr Mike Downey, who looks a bit like Quentin Tarantino if you ask me, from Adobe demonstrates an eBay-branded application created with Apollo.



Apollo is a cross-operating system runtime that allows you to install desktop applications that are built using web technologies like HTML, JavaScript, and Flash.

Although Zinc has been around for some time now doing a good job, this promises to be very cool and give us Flash developers a new point of view for creating rich applications.

Here's the link:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/videos/apollo_demo07/index.html

Word!

Google is in my house!

The wall!

Zuppaman told me they removed the These Days wall with one giant Val Kilmer poster.

So this link is a tribute in honor of the old These Days wall...

http://blog.thesedays.com/thewall/

For the insiders: 'De Wim kan het niet aan' is still there.
Sweet guys, really sweet... :-)

BoulevArt impressum: A day at the office...

BoulevArt, a day at the office...

1. One of the finalist of World Press Photo is right behind me...


2. This is DJ Dirk Bielen, also known as the AD who loves obscure eastern german techno...


3. Join us!! Your desk is waiting :-)


4. We needed a wall just like the developers at These Days. Love you guys :-)


5. This is the stuff our project managers do... hmmm

Herman Asselberghs wins at Transmediale

Belgian artist Herman Asselberghs won the Transmediale festival this year with his film 'Proof of Life'

The work 'Proof of Life' by Herman Asselberghs is testament to the power of art to bring its audience into the present. Its layering of meaning and the interplay between different times and spaces, mirrors current multiple realities saturated in images of terror,the viewe) is impotent and in a perpetual state of emergency. 'Proof of Live' is an artwork which first and foremost speaks to a universal and splintered human condition through both the description and metaphor of incarceration.
Consistent with a long history of text based interventions, Asselberghs plays with a space denoting an, 'absence of presence and presence of absence' with strong resonances, reminiscent of the film essay by Alain Resnais, 'Night and Fog'. Sitting between audio performance and site specific installation, this work demonstrates the power of the text. Contemporaneous in form and content, referencing and further propagating mediated witness and solace, ‘Proof of Live’ invites us into a space in order to question the degree of our own comfort and the abstraction of the world around us. (transmediale.07 jury statement)

I submited my project Beautiful Mess, but there were 1030 submissions so I won't take it personal they didn't select me :-)

Congratulations Herman Asselberghs.

Live in Second Life

Yesterday evening at 11.00 pm CET Windows Vista was launched in Brussels with a concert from Praga Khan.
One Agency took care of the event in Second Life.

I was there and here are some screenshots:

Compile AS3 on OSX without FlexBuilder

A glorieus moment in time...

After 10 years it finally happend, I got myself a Mac.

I have always been very happy with my pc and spreaded the message that Mac's were used by girls or the more girlie type kinda guys...

Well now I have one myself. So yeah I am in touch with my feminin side!



I have to say that I enjoy working on this machine more and more. The keyboard lights up in the dark! How funky is that? That is actually the main reason why I got it really.

So one of the first things I had to do was setting up my development environment.
That includes playing around with AS3 yeah!

So here's a litle 'howto' on compiling AS3 on the Mac. Flexbuilder is a much more complete solution (codehinting, debugging, ...) but is not free and Flashdevelop which is great does not support Mac.

So I am using Eclipse, Ant and the Flex2 SDK.

You can download the tutorial and project files here: (project files are included)
www.seeingisbelieving.be/blog/as3onosx.zip

Thanks to Steve Nelson from BFPUG for setting up the project templates.

Yves Pauwels won an FWA (another one)!

I don't know Yves personally, but he has done some great stuff.

Today he won an FWA for this one:

http://www.pedro-verhue.be/

Very well done and congrats dude!

An old interview with Yves (2003) on the FWA:
http://www.thefwa.com/interviews/int85.html

Sticks ans stones

My good friend Steven passed me through 5 sticks. This means I have to reveal 5 things about myself most people don't know about me.

I know it's been a while since he asked me. Steven my deepest apologies for being so late but here they are.

* From the age of 10 till about 17 I played handball. I played with a club called Ajax in first division (at that time). I even got a national selection when I was 16. It seems they are in big trouble at the moment if you read the news at their website (dutch).

* I got my first computer at the age of 9. It was a Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer model II. I sometimes cry in bed at night because I sold it...

* I played guitar for several years in a band called Janez Detd.

* I am more a Pearl Jam than a Nirvana kinda person.

* I care a lot about good hair...

Papervision3D: another flash 3D engine

Thanks to self proclaimed flash evangelist Nicolas who pushed me into the flash 3D engines I started playing around with Sandy (see previous post) and Papervision3D.

Papervision is an engine written for AS2 as well as AS3.
It is still in private beta but the results are stunning. I have been goofing around with the AS3 engine and it's really performing well.

You will need flash player 9 to view this:
Check it out in a new browser window :
http://www.seeingisbelieving.be/papervision/PaperTest.html

Download the source here:
http://www.seeingisbelieving.be/papervision/PaperVisionTest.as

This demo features around 300 objects on stage with 2 sided bitmap material and a moving camera. I have never seen 3D performing like this in Flash.

Sandy is performing slower and you need the pixlib framework too.
I know it is not really fair comparing an AS2 to AS3 application when it comes to performance.
But the AS2 version of Papervision seems to be performing better than Sandy as well. Feel free to comment :-)

Sandy however supports much more primitives and methods than Papervision3d. Papervision only has mesh, plane and point while Sandy implements box, hedra, plane, sphere, cylinder, line, etc..

Anyway all the guys and girls (it seems there are too few girls doing stuff like this) who are putting things like this online deserve a big cheerio!

CHEERIO!!! and thanks to the open source flash community!

Sandy: a flash AS2 3D engine

Here's a little test I did with the Sandy 3D engine.

You can find it here:
http://osflash.org/sandy

In the video you see Helena, my 2 year old daughter cheering 'pianisimokey'. She rules!

We are hiring senior flash developers!

Join us now or weep forever baby!

These Days and Nokia

We just finished 3 projects for Nokia, check 'em out:

http://indewolken.cnmoves.com/

http://www.nokia.be/beeldigewensen

http://www.cnmoves.com/local/index_vl.html (dutch)
http://www.cnmoves.com/local/index_fr.html (french)

If I say so myself, some pretty nifty work from our crew.
Very well done everybody!

Cheers

Underdog.be brings you Santa!

Mr. Wim Wauters and the underdog crew released a nice 3D Santa Claus game.

http://www.underdog.be/games/santas-surprise/

Very well done guys!
Check out some other fine work done by the crew:
www.underdog.be

I just need to mention here that I had the pleasure of working with Wim and I hope we can do it more in the feauture.

A floating island anyone?

The last couple of months I started noticing a lot of floating islands in webdesign.

You see, I allready told everybody this 4 years ago: "Someday floating islands will be hot!"
Some made fun of me, some of my best friends abandoned me, some tried to put me in a mental institution.

See who's laughing now!

BeastAnimation does Lotto

Beastanimation, co-founded by my good friend Steven De Beul, created a new commercial for Lotto.

You can view the commercial and read about it here:

http://www.lotto.be/pages/show.aspx?Culture=nl&pageid=magazine/pub/spot%20superlotto&cache=33919f2a0

Nice work Steven and Ben!

Digital wind... Better than the real thing

Check out the campaign for Lynxblow:

http://www.lynxblow.com/

Blow into the microphone or speakers and the girl will react on it.

Great video integration and very well done.
The 'I am lazy' button is a very cool feature. You don't have to set up your speakers and in return you get a nice preview of what to expect when you do find the time to set up everything.

It reminded me of this nice piece of art:
http://tampopo.kentaroyamada.com/

Cheers!

Beautiful Mess_v1

A personal project.

check it out:

www.beautifulmess.org

It's a real live search engine keyword scraper with text to speech.

It's for sale: 25.000$ for a lifetime license(projector included)

Hell Yeah!

Contact me
wim.vanhenden@telenet.be

This clip is taken from the dutch show Willy's en Marjetten.

This is a fantastic one!

'Nu weten we meteen waar die syfilis van nonkel Armand vandaan komt: In Zaire'

I think that's funny!

Adobe, Mozilla, and Tamarin

Adobe's contribution to the Mozilla project of open source code for their ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2).

This sounds really interesting.

Check it out:

http://www.hecker.org/mozilla/adobe-mozilla-and-tamarin

Thanks to Nicolas for sending this to me

MIT OpencourseWare

The massachusetts institute of technology better know as the MIT now has OpenCourseWare.

MIT OCW is a large-scale, Web-based electronic publishing initiative funded jointly by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation , MIT, and generous support of the Ab Initio software company.
MIT OCW's goals are to:
Provide free, searchable, access to MIT's course materials for educators, students, and self-learners around the world.
Extend the reach and impact of MIT OCW and the "opencourseware" concept.

I am now watching a video about the analysis of Algorithms.
The OCW initiative is very interesting for people like me to get an inside look of what those great minds like John Maeda are teaching the lucky ones.

Animating with code

A very fine open source project for animating everything in Flash, including the new filters:

http://www.mosessupposes.com/Fuse/

Check it out yeah!

The greatest website ever created

Indeed this is the best website ever created
http://www.tenaciousdmovie.com/

It allready starts with the intro:

Quote:

Ok dude grey won't cut it, this website gotta be black. Paint it black. Black is the color of rock, because black is the absence of light.

Besides the fact this site is hilarious, tongue in cheeck it is well build and packed with cool stuff.

One of the best features i have ever seen is the rock the internet feature.
An extreme makeover for any site you suggest but in their own unique way. This is very very well done!
The best part is you don't have to fill in huge forms, leave your email address etc,...
This is how it should be.
Be funny and don't try to sell anything.

Look what they did to this blog:

http://www.tenaciousdmovie.com/rocktheinternet/?id=2485

Hail hail hail!

Movie websites: The past, the present

This is how movie websites looked like about 10 years ago:
http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/city/

This is what they look like now:
http://www.eragonmovie.com/main.html?cid=us

If you are somewhere around 30 you will remember the times you were waiting 7 minutes to view a 30 second trailer in a format of 160/120 pixels. And at that time it felt like you were the premier witness of something magical.

Now we allmost have it all. Sound, effects, animation,...
But still the average medium resolution of a trailer is somewhere between 320/160 and 480/260. This means we've added about 200 pixels in 10 years.
Maybe not that much? But then again, it shouldn't really matter.

I was as excited back then, as I am now and will be in the future.
It's like with television. Nobody missed it back in the days it didn't exist.
15 years ago we didn't care for broadband technologie or Flash or Ajax, because it was just not there.
We'll see what the future brings.

Past:


Present:

Projects, projects

Yes we are doing projects too people!

This is the latest one in production. Doing stuff with vectors, zooming in and out.
Pretty cool actually.

Drawings done by Bert:

http://www.duasa.be

Check out some screenshots:

Flash:


Browser:

Serge is out there!

Check out Serge Jespers own podcast:

http://kitchencast.podshow.com/

Serge dude, thanks for doing this. I'm a fan.

Motion tracking in Flash 8

I have made a screen capture of some of my motion tracking tests in Flash 8.
I also created a recording function as you can see in the movie below.

The left screen is the captured data, the right screen is the original incoming data.
I was using the flashlight on my cell phone as the light source, which was not very reliable.
But it's working.

The data is captured at a rate of 1 millisecond at 800/600 resolution. That is not bad, not bad at all.



Here's a view of my very professional setup :-)

Behind the scens of a website part II

The fine folks from http://www.agencynet.com/ have put the making of ownyourownC online.

Some shots:



Check out all the pictures here:
http://flickr.com/photos/agencynet/sets/72157594302132588/

It's like I said before, read this article, the days one could do with some Photoshop and some Flash are way behind us now.

Nice work and thanks to agencynet for putting this making of online.

It really is time I start working with the fine people at:
www.beastanimation.be

2 wise men...

Frank Zappa on the Arsenio Hall show february 1989.

Flash Player on Linux

Yup, this is what we nerds do in our spare time.

Me and my buddy Peter, got the standalone flash player 6 working on Linux distr. Fedora Core 5. It didn't work the first time offcourse (it's always like that). Problems with missing libraries and stuff. We had to install some libraries from the Fedora 4 core and suddenly it worked.

We all know the feeling when stuff like this suddenly works. For about 7.3 seconds you really think you are the smartest one on the planet.

It's a pitty that Adobe doesn't support newer standalone versions than version 6.

Muchas gracias to Mr. Peter Galle, for setting up the Linux and walking me through it!

1. Encountering problems...


2. We made it!


3. SWF with animations and scripting

The Lemonheads, new album out now!

Haaaaa... sweet teenage memories coming back and so are The Lemonheads.

This great band (which is actually Evan Dando) released a new record!

Evan Dando worked together with Bill Stevenson and Karl Alvarez from punkrock pioneers Descendents.
You can defenitly recognise my guitar hero J Mascis in some songs. Oh man, I'm so excited!
Even Dinosaur Jr. is touring again!! Oh why am I in Europe...

It looks like most of the bands and people I grew up with listening too are getting back together.
Come on Bob Mould, let's get Sugar back together will ya!

FACT: I have met Bill Stevenson somewhere in the year 1999 when he was drumming with Bad Religion. I played in a band that was the warming up act for Bad Religion. I only remember thinking:"That guy is a really good drummer". Which he is... Just listen to the DESCENDENTS albums.

The bands official site:
http://www.thelemonheads.net/

Listen to the sweet melodies here:
http://www.myspace.com/thelemonheads

Rush out to the store and buy this one.
Don't download it, Evan had enough trouble for the past years. Give him a break...

Missing the point in viral marketing?

A couple of months back, someone asked me why I'm such an extremist. Surely, everything traditional marketing can't be bad. Why not be a big more moderate.

Read on here:

http://www.horsepigcow.com/2006/08/missing-point.html

Some interesting thoughts about online marketing...
My point is that some of the arguments stated are open for discussion. But as the writer states, she is merely looking at this from an extremist point of view.

Happy reading!

Big Spaceship Labs!

Big Spaceship have put their code on how the did the movenement in the Nike Air site online.
You can find here:
http://labs.bigspaceship.com/blog/

Dear people, this is really something.

Let me refraise again:
One of the market industry leaders who are shaping the sites as we like them are putting the source code of one of their newest engines online. We are not talking about some bouncing ball they have developped 2 years ago. This engine is brand new and used in their latest work.

If more agencys use this code and, more important, share their own, the evolution of multimedia websites will be much faster than it is today.

So it's not all about the code itself actually. The initiative is even as much as important.
I hear you saying: "Open source is widespread allready and many fine people have put some great code online allready. So why are you so excited?"
Well because Big Spaceship is one the few market leaders doing it. Not too many agencys like BS are doing this.

In the end (does it end really?), we will all benefit from this and especially agencys who were there first :-)

Thank you Big Spaceship!

check out the Big Spacehip video presentation from the latest Flash In The Can festival:
http://www.fitc.ca/2006/presentations/big_spaceship.cfm

10 years of Flash Party

Because I was in Crete, I missed the 10 years of Flash party hosted by the belgian MMUG.
Looks like everybody had a lot of fun. Everybody was there
(hi Peter, Serge, Gert, Christel, Wim, ...)

I will defenitly be there at the 20 year party :-)

Check out the pics here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/webkitchen/sets/72157594274586420/

Thanks to the fine people who have put this together!

Sunset in Crete

I'm back from a fantastic holiday on the beautiful isle of Crete, in a small town called Makrigialos, with these beautiful ladies:



And this every evening:



And this book was there too:



It's been great. Hope we can go back soon...

Most influential Flash site of the decade is...

2advanced studio's v3.

Applause and a big cheerio to Eric Jordan and the 2advanced team!

Playdojam.com

Very well done

www.playdojam.com

A webcam driven game in Flash. It runs very smoothly.
Nice and clean coding.

You can even play it with your tongue. (yup it's me)

Winning a pitch?

Check out how agency.com works at a pitch for Subway.

The movie is the pitch. I think this is a very nice idea.
You can only make progress by pushing the boundenaries people!

Not today man, I'm feeling saucy!

Oh yeah! This is the stuff I grew up with!

'The may I help you riff'. Hilarious!
Everybody who plays the guitar and has been into a guitar shop knows what this means.



Off course I was a big fan of Captain Beefheart, John Zorn, Sonic Youth and all movies by Emil Kusturica and Fellini too... Off course...

Superman loves Supergirl

Snapshots @ work

Doing fun stuff for a fun campaign for a school in Leuven:

Kelly, Kelly Clarkson, ...

Really,... Kelly is my kind of girl!



Kelly, if you read this, you can always mail me at:
kevin.bacon@seeingisbelieving.be

Good times for interactive developpers?

Maybe we will be rich someday, although that money doensn't matter offcourse...

http://www.emerce.nl/nieuws.jsp?id=1676484&WT.mc_id=rss

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=111374

Now don't be too greedy boys and girls, we don't want to collapse the internet bubble again now do we?

10 years of Flash: Belgium represents!

After Peter won the election for most influential flash site of the decade in 1998 with his classic NRG , we now have a nomination for group94 for their work on the Carl De Keyzer website in 2004.

Congratulations!

Check out the contest by The FWA and vote here

/* signing off */

Flash penetration: New statistics and why you should learn to interpret them

http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html

This is how they do it:
http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/methodology/

and this is how a survey looks like:
http://previewb.mbiq.com/scripts/MRWEBPL.DLL?ACTION

I have to read all of this more in detail, but i think it's worth knowing how these statistics are put together. Almost daily I still encounter people who think Flash is the devil itself, complete IT departments banning flash on their employees computers for God knows what reason...
Knowing how to argument these statistics can help you getting your flash projects up.

Hi-Res! does it again...

What can I say...

http://www.diesel.com/campaigns/aw06/

So sweet...

Rock on!

New generation of car configurators has arrived

I am very impressed with the new generation of car configurators for Volkswagen:
http://www.vwfeatures.com/

Trendsetters:
Crispin Porter + Bogusky
http://www.cpbgroup.com/