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!

Technorati Profile

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!