I have heard a lot of people say the only thing missing from iTunes is a Wish List. You know – somewhere where you can drag songs from the ITMS (iTunes Music Store) and have them all in a nice location. I know I wanted this functionality! I was dragging the songs into a folder on my computer which would result in .url shortcuts. I actually started writing an app that would allow you to drag a song from the ITMS and save the url, artist, etc for looking up at a later time. This way when you decide to buy or get an ITMS card you don’t need to try to remember all the songs you wanted to buy.

So after getting half way through the app I tried something. I went into iTunes and created a new playlist. I called it ::WishList::. I went to the ITMS and drug a song into that play list and bam!

There it was – still had the option to buy too. It works just like any playlist too! You can even export it to XML (if you wanted to publish your wishlist on your blog). This is something I overlooked because there is no pretty icon that has “Wish List” next to it. Now I can keep track of my wants! Thought I would share in case anyone else was interested in this functionality and has been overlooking this like I had been.

** UPDATE **
Wow – the power of Google – http://www.newmediamanuals.com/podcast/OMT-iTunes_Wishlist_075.mp3 – I have not taught anything new it seems

The Max 2005 Videos have been posted – check them out! Hey an After Effects Demo!

On2 has provided the zombie classic Night of the Living Dead as the first full-length movie presented in Flash 8 video. If you get a chance check it out. It uses the Flix-Pro IDE for the On2 encoding. You Sorenson users can always just buy the plugin too.

Watch NOTLD

Ok – you have probably seen the link to Comcastic.com already today. I did. I went – checked out the puppets – loved the physics and the style. Beautiful site and great Flash work. I then left. So later I get an IM from my buddy asking if I’d been there yet. I said yea. SO he starts going off about the “phone” and stuff and I’m like “What?”. I missed the coolest and best feature – I think they buried it and a lot of people can miss it. So here is my guide to the coolest thing you will see today and maybe for a good while.

Go to the site and click on the On Demand button.

Pick a puppet – it will load – play with it drag it around – sweet huh? Now click close on the little directions window.

You will now see this in the menu. Click that phone.

You get a phone number and a key code. Go ahead call it! Watch the screen when you type the key code in!

You are connected via the phone in realtime!

Follow the on phone directions.

Once its all done – and it is FAST. Click that red circle. Watch the puppets mouth and listen…

This is one of the best melding of technologies I have seen in a long time. Amazing, so fast… Thought I’d share. If anyone knows the developers responsible – please let me know.
-Sarge

All I can say is that I am really excited about this post. A little while back myself (Ben Pritchard) and a fellow Flasher named Wayne Lincoln applied to start an official Macromedia Flash Users Group in Pittsburgh. We were approved! So starting in November there will be a Flash Users Group meeting in Pittsburgh. We have an initial site set up over at http://pittmfug.blogspot.com/. If any of you are in the Pittsburgh area and are interested in getting the infant User Group off the ground – shoot on over to the site and let us know. The User Group will be managed by myself and Wayne (wLinkin). Wish us luck!
-Sarge

If people thought things changed with AS2… This is exciting stuff…
http://livedocs.macromedia.com/labs/1/flex/langref/migration.html

You may have seen people using the Bitmap Class to reflect items in Flash 8. Awhile back I released my Bitmap Reflect class that would take a static mc and reflect it. Here is an update. This now supports updating. This means when the clip changes the reflection will too. Following is the class and a way to get it to work using an embedded video within a movie clip using a NetStream. This class still supports static objects as well. The above picture shows you an example of what the following code produced for me (using my external FLV).

How to Use:
//create a Net Connection and Stream
var connection_nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
connection_nc.connect(null);
var stream_ns:NetStream = new NetStream(connection_nc);
myVideo_mc.myVideo_video.attachVideo(stream_ns);

//select an external FLV to play
stream_ns.play(“nutrigrain.flv”);

//create an instance of the class
//pass the mc to reflect, the opacity of the reflection, the ratio of the gradient mask, and how often to update (milliseconds)
reflect = new Reflect(myVideo_mc, 50, 255, 5);

The Class:

import flash.display.BitmapData;

class Reflect {

//Ben Pritchard 2005

//Pixelfumes.com

private var version:String = “2.0″;

private var mcBMP:BitmapData;

private var reflectionBMP:BitmapData;

private var updateInt:Number;

function Reflect(mc:MovieClip, alpha:Number, ratio:Number, updateTime:Number) {

//create a bmp obj out of it

mcBMP = new BitmapData(mc._width, mc._height, true, 0xFFFFFF);

mcBMP.draw(mc);

reflectionBMP = new BitmapData(mc._width, mc._height, true, 0xFFFFFF);

reflectionBMP.draw(mc);

mc.createEmptyMovieClip(“reflection_mc”, mc.getNextHighestDepth());

mc.reflection_mc.attachBitmap(mcBMP, 1);

mc.reflection_mc._yscale = -100;

mc.reflection_mc._y = mc._height;

//create the gradient mask

mc.createEmptyMovieClip(“gradientMask_mc”, mc.getNextHighestDepth());

var fillType:String = “linear”;

var colors:Array = [0xFFFFFF, 0xFFFFFF];

var alphas:Array = [alpha, 0];

var ratios:Array = [0, ratio];

var matrix = {matrixType:”box”, x:0, y:0, w:mc._width, h:mc._height/4, r:(90/180)*Math.PI};

var spreadMethod:String = “pad”;

mc.gradientMask_mc.beginGradientFill(fillType, colors, alphas, ratios, matrix, spreadMethod);

mc.gradientMask_mc.moveTo(0, 0);

mc.gradientMask_mc.lineTo(0, mc._height/2);

mc.gradientMask_mc.lineTo(mc._width, mc._height/2);

mc.gradientMask_mc.lineTo(mc._width, 0);

mc.gradientMask_mc.lineTo(0, 0);

mc.gradientMask_mc.endFill();

mc.gradientMask_mc._y = mc._height/2;

mc.reflection_mc.cacheAsBitmap = true;

mc.gradientMask_mc.cacheAsBitmap = true;

mc.reflection_mc.setMask(mc.gradientMask_mc);

updateInt = setInterval(this, “update”, updateTime, mc);

}

private function update(mc):Void{

mcBMP.draw(mc);

reflectionBMP.draw(mc);

mc.reflection_mc.attachBitmap(mcBMP, 1);

}

}

I was expanding an install for Toast 6 today on Tiger and got a pretty humorous expansion box. Check it out. I had heard about this bug before but I took a quick snapshot to document finding it. It made me chuckle – good thing it didn’t really take that long.

I am in the process of developing a CD. It uses the ScrollPane V2 Component. I skinned the scrollPane and got everything all pretty. Now the scrollPane is in an external swf so I load it into my “main” movie and start using the scrollPane and that nice big halo rectangle appears on it. I needed to get rid of that and couldn’t for the life of me remember how. I stumbled upon a forum where I learned about the following:

myComponent.drawFocus=”";

Works like a charm. Just thought I’d share in case anyone had been looking on how to get rid of the “focusRect” on version 2 components. The comboBox uses the following additional line btw:

myComboBox.drawFocus = “”;
myComboBox.dropdown.drawFocus=”";

One other note while I’m on the scrollPane – need to get rid of the border?

content_sp.setStyle(“borderStyle”, “none”);

Hope this is useful for someone – it was for me.

Over on Grant’s blog there is a contest to “Gooify” Mike Chambers for a chance to win a free copy of gProject. I thought I’d give it a shot and post my picture. Here you go. I call it “Giraffe Mike”.