Google to the rescue–simple flash to HTML5 conversion

OK OK that might have been a not quite true statement (yet), but the google labs have a little tool called swiffy that converts Flash SWF files to HTML5, allowing you to reuse Flash content on devices without a Flash player (such as iPhones and iPads).

Swiffy currently supports a subset of SWF 8 and ActionScript 2.0, and the output works in all Webkit browsers such as Chrome and Mobile Safari. If possible, exporting your Flash animation as a SWF 5 file might give better results.

check out the 2 different animations here:

SWF

HTML5

Still in the early stages, but definitely promising. Hopefully soon it will support Actionscript 3, slice scaling, Scenes, Filters and advanced text rendering.

@maniac13

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Legally stream (almost) all the music you want in Australia – for free.

We all like music, right? I mean, some of us profess to enjoy it more properly, appropriately or adequately than others – this here Superior Hipster for example:

…but when you get down to it, pretty much everybody likes it.

So, we all want more of it, right? Thus the dawn and success of the iPod, and various other MP3 players. We could carry our thousands of tunes with us everywhere we went, beautiful.

Read on through my rambles to find out what I think the best music streaming service available to Australians is (so far).

PETA helps promote Super Meat Boy?

Team Meat, the team behind the brutally unforgiving platform game Super Meat Boy got some unexpected free publicity this week when they became the latest target of animal rights group PETA.

PETA, apparantly objecting to Super Meat Boy’s meat-themes launched it’s own ironically-bland parody game called Super Tofu Boy. Made in Flash, the game attempts to duplicate the gameplay of Super Meat Boy, but instead it’s the Meaty guy that’s the bad guy this time as he exacts bloody, vengeance because his girlfriend has decided that she prefers tofu. Or something.

More after the wall-jump.

The Machinarium Pirate Amnesty

Amanita Design, the independent Czech game developers behind the fantastic little point-and-click adventure game Machinarium are offering pirates a chance to redeem themselves if they didn’t pay for the game the first time around as they hold a “pirate amnesty sale” offering the game for just $US5.

Machinarium was released in October 2009 with critical acclaim but without any form of DRM – something that many seem to have taken advantage of. Amanita claim that from feedback they have gathered, they believe that only 5-15% of people playing the game actually paid for it. A crying shame, too as it really is a funny, endearing and puzzling little game. $20 is totally worth it and $5 is a steal.

Amanita are quick to add, on their site, that they don’t think that people buying it now necessarily pirated it, so don’t feel like you’re being judged.

It’s an awesome little game that you really should check out if you still have room in your heart for whimsy. The promo image on the site is also fantastic. I hear it’s a bit familiar to some people but I wouldn’t know anything about that.

Super Mario Crossover – Your Friday Afternoon Fun

First off, you’re going to need to look at this picture, and think about how awesome it is. If only for having one of the best old school Nintendo super teams ever formed, lined up there at the bottom.

Now consider this, you’re about to play through some good ol’ Super Mario Bros – which of those characters would you choose to play through with? Honestly, I need look no further than Mega Man (or Rockman for you purists) – but you might have a different opinion.

The final step here, is to find Super Mario Crossover (which I have helpfully provided a link to) and then go fulfil your nerdy dreams.

The developer has done a really fantastic job here, with Mushrooms and Fireflowers providing perfectly adapted powers for each character. Can’t recommend this enough as a nostalgic, Friday afternoon time waster.

@tali3sin

[Source: Buzzfeed]

Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash. Boom.

Today, in an open letter published on Apple’s website, Steve Jobs shared his thought on Adobe Flash and its place (or lack thereof) on Apple devices such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Steve’s “Thoughts on Flash” can be found here. I break down his points after the jump.

Thoughts on Silverlight

Great article and helpful insight about Big Spaceship’s experience working with Silverlight.

“I had the pleasure of diving headfirst into Silverlight in building the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. I walked in with the same sort of attitude that I believe is prevelant across the industry at the moment — Silverlight is an inferior platform, that we were working with a Flash wananbe and that this would be to the project’s detriment. Why use Silverlight when I can already know Flash so well? It does the same things as Flash anyway, right?…”

Read the full article…

via Big Spaceship

@dankrause

Awesome addictive game

The purpose of the game is to escape on rooftops – running along and jumping over crates, chairs and robots.

All you need is 2 keys on your keyboard and no you don’t need a mouse.

Good luck – my record so far is 2295 meters.

here is the game: http://adamatomic.com/canabalt/

Virtual Graffiti with WiiSpray

An experiment in using the Wii to spray on virtual graffiti, hence the WiiSpray. Nice idea and great exploration of the use of this kind of interaction with the projector.

It’s still an experiment, but may provide an alternative to trains, buses and seats hopefully.

And the techie bit: It uses a Wii but the actually graphics are built using Adobe Flash. Seems flash is becoming a great tool for experimenting with ideas and interfaces.

More information can be found at WiiSpray.

Taking pictures with an invisible flash

2 guys at the New York University created a camera that takes photos with an invisible flash of infrared and ultraviolet light.

The results have an odd colour balance that looks like a view through a night-vision scope.

 

So the camera takes a flash-free photograph of the same scene quickly after the dark flash image.

and software is used to combine the sharp detail from the first image with the natural colours from the second image

There are still some issues with materials that absorb UV or IR light, but I think it is a great first step and I can see this technology integrated in loads of different ways.

Pringles Gold Cyber Lion winner: "Can Hands"

Liking this odd take on a banner concept from Bridge Worldwide. Happy to see something like this win a big award.

Check it out…

(Interesting to note you never actually click away from the banner!)

Adobe Flash vs Microsoft Silverlight

Smashing Magazine has quite the debate going on in their blog about Flash vs Silverlight  – at last count 205 rather lively responses debating the pros and cons of each program. The editors at smashing have made the comparison process rather simple by chunking it down to topics like:
Animation, File Size, Scripting, Audio/Video etc etc.

A good read and food for thought if you use either application for development or design.

View Article

Discuss in the comments: Which do you use and would you consider switching?

Build your flash apps online

Wonderfl (here), a two-pane, all-online system which lets you write or paste code in the left, then is compiled by the server and instantly displayed on the right.

The compiler and libraries are Actionscript3 and you can easily tweak others’ apps and games with a few keystrokes.

It’s not a replacement for your home development station, of course, but it’s an interesting community they’re creating. It’s all about sharing now.

this was found here.

Auditorium. Pretty. Addictive. Pretty addictive.

Tripped over this sweet Flash game this morning. The idea behind Auditorium is to move these things around that… actually, I’m going to let you figure that out yourself. The game encourages jumping in and playing around to see what’s going on.

In the creator’s words:

Auditorium is about the process of discovery and play. There are no right or wrong answers; there are many ways to solve every puzzle. To get started, fill up the first audio level. We hope you enjoy the demo of Auditorium.

Demo? I’ll pay for an iPhone version if there’s one going.

This really is a very cool game. Best played in fullscreen mode which is defaults to. Hit f to force it.

Is the iPhone getting Flash?

That’s the rumor!

Apparantly when the iPhone launched, Mr Jobs wasn’t happy with the performance on the iPhone’s ARM11 processors. Neither was he happy with the feature set of Flash Lite. What he wanted was “something in the middle”.

Adobe listened and this week at the Flash On The Beach conference, Adobe confirmed that an iPhone version of the Flash player is in development.

It’s not known when or even if the application will see the the light of day as Apple most likely in control of the release.

Hopefully Steve will like what he sees and we’ll see something soon.

Read the full story at TechCrunch

Ooyala. Video Killer or just the worst name in web history?

Ooyala. Not the first time we’ve seen a new technology stamped with “built by ex-Google people”, (recently Cuil) but hey we’ll look at anything new when it comes to online video. OK let’s start with the worst bit: What’s with that name? Did they not teach URL strategy at Google? I’ve already forgotten it three times and keep having to look at the top of the page to remind myself. Say it with me… OO YAAAA LA or something like that. Spelling it after a couple of hours at the pub could be very tricky.

Is an adaptive bitrate the golden bullet?

Rant over, is it any good? Now there’s a stack of features on Oothingy’s site to benefit businesses and advertisers. It works with multiple serving platforms and has great analytics. Yes, that will keep a few people pretty happy as we all like more numbers to crunch, but in the recommendation age, the consumer holds a lot more power over the growth of technology platforms.

Let’s face it… every single successful web empire (eg: Facebook, Google, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr) made it there by putting the consumer first. Yes I get that this is more of a B2B offering, but remember that YouTube really killed it by allowing some groundbreaking comsumer features such as easy affiliation which made it the defacto video player for millions. Does Oojimaflip have anything that will significantly benefit the end user or content creator? OK, yes, there is one thing I did really like: the benefit of adaptive bitrate (meaning the video will fine tune itself to the users internet connection) but this is not something average users will notice if they already have a decent connection. The watermarking feature is handy for those wanting to stop their vids being shamelessly ripped. Bottom line, OOjamadoodah’s video player, appears to be a more bandwidth efficient video player with a rather nice analytics engine, but lacking in advanced social media capabilities. Let’s hope they’ll come up with some more front end features soon because the market is probably ready for someone to take the video player experience to another level.

“Help – can someone read what the banner says underneath us? We keep forgetting our own name.”

Ooyala means cradle in Telugu, a Southern Indian language. We like the name because it demonstrates what we are doing — cradling a new form of innovation.

3D stroke system in flash

http://www.airtightinteractive.com/news/?p=98

Handy code for drawing 3D strokes using papervision in flash. I like.

iPhone 3G Camera Sample image Vs Nokia N95. Best Camera?

The images below may be the single reason I don’t buy a 3G iPhone and stick with my Nokia N95 for a little while longer.

Now I should say that I think the N95 and iPhone 3G are both very good phones. Many Amnesia staff have iPhones, but I’m yet to be drawn in despite beeing a total geek and gadget freak. Why? Now, forget the vastly superior iPhone interface and screen for a second, because they both have similar features (3G, GPS, wireless, accelerometer, + tons of apps for both).

The big problem with the iPhone is the camera. It’s a 2 megapixel camera with no flash, compared with the N95 5 megapixel cam with Carl Zeiss lens. These shots below are taken outside the Amnesia office from exactly the same position with good light.

3G iPhone (above)

Nokia 95 – Note the much greater field of view than the iPhone.

Now let’s Zoom in on the detail:

Above is a zoom from the N95 shot. It’s at the point where clearly the compression starts to become noticable, but you can read the street sign. There is detail in the shutters at the side and the red alarm bell on the right is distinguishable. 

 
Above is the iPhone 3G. The detail is completely gone at the same zoom level. Not a single letter can be made out on the signpost.

Finally let’s look at the red car the red BMW. Well on the iPhone you can’t even see what brand of car it is, let alone read the numberplate. Good job this isn’t a crime scene.

iPhone 3G Nokia N95

The iPhone 3G camera in low light is a lot worse – and it’s not an easy camera to hold still whilst you press the button… so pictures in the pub get very smudgy. Admittedly the Nokia N95 flash is pretty ordinary but better than nothing.

So if you want a single device – camera and phone like me, and you want OK shots that you could print later, then the iPhone 3G has a long way to go. The N95 wins by a mile.

[Amnesiablog Review of the Nokia N73 Camera and sample image here]