January 2005 Archives

While on the subject of cool Flash Video sites, have you visited auto manufacturer Audi's official US site lately? Great example of integrated Flash video in action... check it out.

I somehow missed this in my daily blog trolls recently- Virtual Stan is a hilarious application of Flash video in the vein of the Subservient Chicken, by Rob Weychert and friends. (the face of 'Stan' being web design/standards powerhouse Jason Santa Maria, of course.). Funny diversion for a overloaded work Friday, should you require one... ;-)

Flash Detection. Simple phrase, complex subject- and the Flash Detection kit offers an easy way to solve the problem of serving up the right content to your site visitors based on their browser's capabilities. Macromedia's Jason Wylie will be holding a free Macrochat on the Flash Detection Kit tomorrow- Friday, 1/28- from 1-2pm EST. The preso's expected to cover building detection from scratch, and leveraging the functionality of the Flash Detection Kit to make this process smooth as silk for your next deployment. You can preregister at the link above, just hit the 'more' link below for the full session details as well. Should be a great Breezo!

Just got my travel budget approved (phew!), and will indeed be headed to the MXDU conference in Sydney next month, February 17-18th. If you're going to attend, I'm looking forward to meeting you there! The speakers look very strong this year, so I'm sure I'll be sponging up information in many of their sessions as well.

Fresh off the bit-presses from DW extension and CSS gurus Project Seven, PVII Pop Menu Magic- a commercial Dreamweaver extension that simplifies the creation of horizontal/vertical pop-up menus on your web sites. Some cool features include unlimited submenus, standard list-based markup, automatic window edge detection, submenu animation and 26 visual styles to choose from- a rather sweet commercial package that automates an otherwise tedious process. And as with PVII's popular design packs and prior extensions- generated code degrades gracefully in older browsers (should that still be a point of contention with your own website and/or clients). You can also check out a demo of the end result here. Nice. :)

Recently released from the folks who brought you Style Master's podGuide, podSites.com. What's a podSite, you ask? Simply a collection of related text files, links to other text files and/or related sound and image assets, all accessible from your iPod. Check out the link for more information, an online 'emulator' (to test your podSite content) and most importantly (as text notes are not necessarily a new concept on iPods), a well-formed style guide containing best practices for creating 'podSites'. Great concept, and an excellent free resource for those interested in publishing similar content to iPods... check it out!

Have you ever had issues with Dreamweaver's FTP and site management features? Or perhaps some burning questions about best practices for using the Site features in general? Then be certain to register for the Dreamweaver Macrochat on 1/18/2005, a free Breeze session focused on troubleshooting FTP connectivity, hosted by Macromedia's own David Alcala. You can read more details on this and other upcoming Macrochat sessions at the link above, or register for the Dreamweaver Macrochat directly here. See you there!

I've been getting IM'ed a lot last day or two about all the new Apple announcements during Steve Jobs' MacWorld SF Keynote yesterday.
(although I'm completely cross-platform at work, I prefer Macs at home where I do more audio/video work). That being said- here's my post-keynote braindump from yesterday (edited down significantly)...

The @Media 2005 conference will be held in London June 9-10, a con of serious interest to those following web standards and accessibility. The speaker list looks very strong- featuring Jeffrey Zeldman, Joe Clark, Andy Budd and many other key figures in the standards movement.

If you're in town for MacWorld and so inclined, Macromedia will be hosting two seminars tomorrow (Wednesday, 1/12/05) at the San Francisco Apple Store, just a few scant blocks from the Moscone Center. The focus of these seminars is around Dreamweaver (noon - 1pm) and Flash Professional (3-4pm)- and you can find full specifics and session details at the prior links in this posting. Enjoy!

The Washington Post (among others) are reporting that IBM intends to announce today it's release of 500 patents to the open-source community.

By way of the USC Interactive Media Division's weblog, I discovered the Node Explorer v2, a location-aware, embedded-Linux handheld device that provides contextual information (maps, audio annotations, etc.) based on your current location. The twist? As opposed to consumer-based urban references such as restaurants, wifi hotspots, etc.- the waterproof, wireless, touchscreen enabled, card-sized Node Explorer is geared more for assisting site and visitor management at parks/national monuments/etc.- basically wide-open spaces that would normally require guided tours. The entire solution includes the Explorer, the Node Dock (for updating devices with new contextual info and recording back a visitors' trip data for analysis, as well as the obvious closed-loop monitoring of visitor admission/registration that becomes possible with such microdevices) and the Node Engine- a software platform for both monitoring visitor behavior as well as updating and managing the content that's provided to the handheld devices.

Considering the crappy (but oh-so-promising) experiences I've had with CD and RF-based physical tour guides, I'd like to try wandering around Yosemite with one of these little devices! Has anyone actually tried one of these out in meatspace?

Yesterday the much-anticipated TiVoToGo transfer service was launched by the wildly-popular DVR manufacturer. Alas, it's only available on PCs (of which I've but one), although eventual Macintosh support is hinted at in their press release, which gives me hope as a new
DVR owner and home Mac user myself.

The skinny? If your TiVo DVR is connected to your home network and you have the TiVo Desktop 2.0 software installed on your desktop/laptop machines (which enabled viewing of Mac/Windows-based MP3 and image files on your networked TiVo box in v1), you can transfer shows recorded on your DVR directly to your computer(s) for remote viewing. Once transferred, you can also burn shows to DVD (using Sonic's MyDVD software- sold separately for Windows)- which to be honest, is the feature I'm after personally. Given TiVo's excellent support of Apple's iApps (iPhoto, iTunes) so far, I'd hazard a guess that iDVD/DVD Studio Pro integration is the Mac path they'll pursue for the same. There appears to be very specific, limited codecs supported by the service, as it reportedly also disables the transferring/burning of Macrovision-encoded streams such as Pay-Per-View or commercial content, for obvious reasons.

I'll be watching the connected devices space a lot more in the coming year, so if you have any great links/references/suggestions/etc. for new TiVo owners who aren't afraid to hack (of which I'm now one), please post a comment! In particular, if there's any way to get a bash prompt across the network (my limited attempts have only worked by using the serial port on the back of the DVR itself, not the network), I'm all ears.

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you had a good holiday season and spent some time away from the keys.
A few developments of note this morning- first, NetNewsWire's new beta adds podcasting support, so users of this Mac-based feedreader can get their podcasting jones on in a common environment with their RSS feeds. Nice update and I'll check it out for a while, although personally I've settled down on Sage again after brief trips thru NetNewsWire, PulpFiction, FeedDemon (which I still do use from time to time) the combination of Sage and Firefox Bookmarks Synchronizer keep all my machines in synch rather nicely. Since I'm an audiobook junkie, I don't listen to podcasts *that* often anyway. Check it out ASAP if you're a NetNewsWire junkie, tho- although I had a few little bugs here and there it seems to be shaping up nicely. If you're not RSS-wired, you may note that recent surveys show the mainstream web world is becoming much more interested in exploring the 'blogosphere in recent months. Great time to engage!