Harvard, Yale? I don’t really have a preference but this is a great Tuesday morning video to watch… (Too bad it’s not an FLV). A friend sent this my way. This should give you a laugh.

Harvard Sucks

This rules! I mean, I can’t justify buying an iPod because I’d never use it. I’m a web developer for crying out loud — I have all my MP3s on my hard drive. But now I too can be a tech-elitist and so can you!

Paper iPods

This is more of an industry topic than a hard-core Flash topic so bear with me. Awhile back while creating a label design for a company’s CD-ROM application I developed (in Flash of course). I used a badly burned CD-R to test the look of the label. Being the conservative person I am I used both sides of the CD for different label tests. I then went around acting like I thought it was sweet how there were two labels instead of just one and oh wouldn’t the client be excited! Obviously I couldn’t keep the straight face for long – I mean how could it be used right? Well, seems like I may have been ahead of the game. Check it out:

“Until recently, it was impossible to add text or graphics to the outside of dual-sided discs due to the fact that it contains optical data on both sides. Aside from the inner ring of the disc, there was no other space available for customizing the look of the disc itself… until now.”

From:

http://neowin.net/comments.php?id=25938&category=main

Story:

Yahoo

I spent some lunch time today tracking down information on Gmail’s disappearing Atom feed. I did learn that you can access it via a URL 2 different ways:

https://[username]:[password]@gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom

(IE w/ SP2 did not seem to like this – though Firefox will allow it with a prompt)

or

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom (prompts for username and password)

The original button that was on the Gmail interface is gone at this time but the atom feed is still there. Supposedly there were rumors of an RSS feed to come.

So a clever person could create their own new mail notifier (that’s all this returns at this time – no listing of read mail ).

I’ve been looking for a list like this for awhile. Found this post over at Digital Media Minute.

Most of the CD-ROM development I have been doing uses Flash MX 2004 embedded into Director MX 2004. I use the Buddy API for File I/O stuff via Director and use Flash as the presentation and workhorse layer. In my development I found a seemingly popular and little worked around bug. “How can I get Director to recognize when it is over a Flash button and show the hand cursor”. Macromedia’s technote states that you should put logic on the buttons that passes logic to Director. Now if you need to go back into the project and add that to every button it can really suck. I tried to write some logic to parse the entire movie and add the events dynamically to the buttons but that option wasn’t giving me what I needed.

Short story long… I ran upon some code that works absolute wonders. Create a new behavior in your Director file, add the code below and drag that puppy onto your embedded flash movie. That’s it. Instant hand cursors.

property pSprite

on beginSprite me

pSprite = sprite(me.spriteNum)

end

on exitFrame me

if pSprite.mouseOverButton = TRUE then

pSprite.cursor = 280

else

pSprite.cursor = -1

end if

end

I also wrote a nice API that handles calls b/w embedded Flash and Director and strongly leverages the Buddy API but I think I’ll save that for another post down the road. In the meantime please shoot any suggestions/ideas my way.

Nothing extra special if you’ve watched the MAX coverage or Moock’s and Dura’s video. But some more “official” stuff from the boys at Macromedia.

DevNet Maelstrom Page

Flash Team Blog Flash 8 Info

Just thought I’d let anyone who is into sports and who is in the Pittsburgh area know about some cool stuff going on at the Heinz History Center in the Strip District. A friend of mine whom I work with did all UI/Flash side of the interactive kiosks in the Sports History section. It’s a large database that allows you to look up Pittsburghers who have been inducted into various Halls of Fame. Also you can check out some great video work done as well by the company for which I work (New Perspective).

I know there are plenty of lists for Flash 8 wants but I came up with one that at least havn’t seen myself. I would like to be able to export a projector from flash with a custom icon (‘ala Director) w/o a 3rd party tool. I figure the only way now is to buy an application or use ResHacker to hack the icon out of the exe and replace it with my own. Is there any other way (free) to do this easily? So that’s my rant and want of 1 additional feature I need added.

I know that there have been many links floating around to many of the same resources but as I am just getting this blog going I thought that it would be a good topic to start off with. If you have any additional elusive links please feel free to add them in the comments section. With that said here are my links to video/pictures of Flash 8 (Maelstrom) in action:

Josh Dura:

http://www.joshdura.com/archives/flash/sneak_peeks_video…

Colin Moock:

http://www.moock.org/blog/archives/000146.html

Macromedia:

http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/events/max/video/2004/

(Go to Day One and then Click on the Maelstrom Block , the 2nd from the right)