New Molehill demo video by Flare3D
Flash is great for social gaming. We all know that. But Flare3D is showing off the “next generation of social gaming” using the upcoming Molehill APIs. Molehill is going to bring Flash (and the web) to a whole new level!
Flash on!
(Hat tip @JosephLabrecque)
MTV launches personalized video application
If you’ve been following me for a long time you know that I absolutely love personalized video applications. The one that MTV just launched is just one of the best I’ve ever seen. After you’ve picked your favorite music style you can upload or take a photo of yourself. After a few easy steps the application will map your photo on to a 3D character… You know what… You just have to see it for yourself! Here’s me having a party ;-)
Hat tip Rob Ford @FWA
Flash gives supercomputer a face
Joshua Davis and Branden Hall were asked to create the “visual identity” or “Avatar” for IBM’s supercomputer Watson. On February 14th, 15th, and 16th 2011, Watson will play Jeopardy against two former Grand Champions. Joshua and Branden were asked to created “the face” for this supercomputer using Flash and their own HYPE Framework.
The competition will be taped today but yesterday was one of the rehearsals. Engadget has a video of that rehearsal.
Wilderness Downtown wins FWA Site of the Year Award and why it was my nr1
This year I was honored to be a judge for the FWA Site of the Year Award. It was a really difficult task to pick a winner out of the many amazing and very creative entries. Wilderness Downtown was a bit of an odd duck in the list. It was the only finalist created with HTML5. But you know what? It doesn’t matter! Wilderness Downtown wasn’t about one technology killing the other. It was about being creative and creating an interesting and unique experience. I think that’s exactly what The FWA SOTY award is all about and that is also the reason why it was number one on my list.
My number 2 won the People’s Choice Award. I really should say that it was a shared number 1 position because I couldn’t really pick one over the other. They’re both amazing pieces. The Lexus Dark Ride is a beautifully built interactive film that looks and feels like a Hollywood blockbuster.
The FWA has reactions from both winners and judges and a behind the scenes video from the makers of The Wilderness Downtown. Go check it out! Judging for this award was a lot of fun and it was great to get reminded about how much cool stuff is being done on the web these days. Regardless of which technology you choose… just keep making cool and creative experiences!
flKinect: Socket server + AS3 library for Microsoft Kinect
Well… Now I may just have to get myself a Microsoft Kinect! I saw on Saqoosha’s blog that he was playing around with this and thought I would post this here. Koji Kimura wrote a Cocoa application to allow communication between the Microsoft Kinect and Flash. It looks amazing and opens up a whole new world of possibilities and it looks like the AS3 API is also very easy to use!
More info and downloads on Koji’s site.
As you may have guessed it is Mac only. If you know of any similar projects for Windows or Linux don’t hesitate to leave a comment below!
Update: Here’s another AS3 library + socket server app for Mac.
Update 2: Also check out as3kinect.org.
Multi-screen excellence: Giroflex
This has to be the one of the best multi-screen apps I’ve seen to date. It is absolutely gorgeous and the story behind it is even more impressive. Thanks to the Flash Platform they were able to build an application that runs on multiple devices in record time.
Giroflex is a leading manufacturer of ergonomically designed office furniture. They asked Publicis Modem to create an application for the Orgatec trade fair taking place in Cologne next week. The application needed to be built for multi-screen purposes. The client wanted a microsite, a multitouch application to run on the HP TouchSmart 600, and the application needed to run on the Samsung Tab. In their booth visitors can experience the new chair in a dynamic modern way on the TouchSmart PCs, representing the company’s spirit. The Giroflex sales executives will all have a Samsung Galaxy Tab at hand to show the same app to their customers. The choice for the Flash Platform was an obvious one.
Thanks to the Flash Platform the team at Publicis Modem led by Marcel Vogt and Tiago Dias was able to produce an application that runs as a microsite in the browser and as a standalone application on the TouchSmart PCs, the Samsung Galaxy Tab’s, and even any other Android device. In just 2.5 weeks they created a multi-language, rich, easy to use and intuitive application with AS3 and utilizing AIR’s local SQLite database and multi-touch features.
They started out with the microsite which is built based on their own AS3 framework. The entire UI is customizable via XML files. They finished the microsite in just 1.5 weeks. When the microsite was done they only needed to add multi-touch capabilities and update the graphics and layout so it would fit on the Galaxy Tab and the TouchSmart PCs. It only took them an additional 6 days to “port” the app to the Galaxy Tab and the TouchSmart PCs. As a little extra they also wanted to see how long it would take them to port this app to an HTC Desire. It only took 2 hours!
I’m also really happy that I was able to help them a bit. They used my Package Assistant application to create the APKs ;-)
This is a great example of the power of the Flash Platform and how easy it is to build multi-screen applications using it!
Here’s application running on a Samsung Galaxy Tab:
The application running on the HP TouchSmart PC:
And on the HTC Desire:
Marcel and Tiago will be at MAX next week so if you see them around make sure you ask for a demo! Great work guys!
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