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May 31, 2005

Macrochat - Advanced Flash Video

If you're online in roughly two hours, don't miss Kevin Towes' Flash Video Macrochat (registration required) at 4pm PST/7pm EST. Learn all about building custom video progress/seek bars, transitions, masking and effects, synchronizing cue points with Flash events), creating a thumbnail viewer, and tips on converting, scaling and optimizing your video for various target bandwidths. Looks like some good stuff- bang that link and register! Did I mention that it's free? ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 01:54 PM | Comments (2)

Flickr

This is a test post from Flickr. Just setting the new weblog up a bit for future abuses. ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

Weblog Updates

My 'blog got converted over to the swanky-fresh weblogs.macromedia.com server this past holiday weekend (thanks, Christian!), so expect to see updates/tweaks/inconsistencies over the next week as I customize things a bit. I'd always meant to go back and add categories to this 'blog, and have both done that as well as started recategorizing all my historical posts- so please let me know (comments are fine) if you see any broken links/etc. in the meantime. Thx!

Posted by sfegette at 01:00 PM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2005

Recorded Macrochat Archive

If you've been interested in, but had to miss a recent Macrochat, you'll want to bookmark the brand-new Macrochat Archive ASAP. Great way to Breeze thru all the prior sessions we've held (no pun intended) and mine some good technical tidbits from all the great speakers who've hosted sessions. And if you're not familiar with Macrochats, make sure to check out the upcoming schedule, there are some great sessions coming up over the next week.
(thanks go to our hard-working forums admin Jason Eberwein for pulling this archive together!)

Posted by sfegette at 12:13 PM | Comments (1)

May 26, 2005

Dreamweaver Reference Panel

I've been doing a lot of CSS/ColdFusion development on my laptop lately, and find myself using Dreamweaver's built-in reference panel far more than I had previously. A question for the blogosphere- are you using this feature in Dreamweaver on a day-to-day basis? If so, what are your impressions? Please leave a comment if so, I'm interested to hear what your experiences have been. I can definitely say that I do love not having to tote my O'Reilly books around as much... ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 01:25 PM | Comments (11)

May 25, 2005

Flash Lite Macrochat tomorrow

Great Macrochat tomorrow on the fundamentals of Flash Lite development by Giorgio Natili, manager of the Actionscript.it Macromedia User Group. The session starts at 1pm EST/10am PST, just bang the link to pre-register in advance (limit is 200 attendees, however). The focus of Giorgio's Macrochat will be around FL development fundamentals and mobile application usability issues, more specifics to be found at the registration link of course. Enjoy!

Posted by sfegette at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)

Alan Musselman hits the blogosphere

Our resident Fireworks guru Alan Musselman just got his official weblog up and running- definitely one to watch if you're a Studio developer (although he may not be in the aggregators just yet). Alan's a veritable wellspring of tips/tricks/hints/techniques for Fireworks- so if you're a hardcore FW user this is definitely one to add to your blogroll, and if FW mostly sits dormant on your hard drive- well... bookmark his 'blog anyway, as he'll provide plenty 'o reasons to put those idle bits to use. ;)

Welcome , Alan!

Posted by sfegette at 01:03 PM | Comments (2)

May 20, 2005

FlashLite 1.1 Reference Sheet

Nice freebie for mobile Flash developers by Scott Janousek- the unofficial FlashLite 1.1 Reference Sheet. A handy PDF-based aggregation of syntax reference, best practices, links of worth, tips and tricks, et al for the FlashLite developer- it prints out into a handy 'onesheet' format for keeping alongside your workstation. Nice!

Posted by sfegette at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2005

My turn with the meme baton...

You've probably seen the 'blog meme going around lately- the 'Musical Baton'. Well, although I stayed clear for a while, I just got the baton passed to me by Stephanie Sullivan. And so... here's my answers:

Total Volume (of my MP3 library): 42.7 GB

Last CD Bought: Death Cab for Cutie - "We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes"
(had to complete my collection!)

Song Playing Right Now:
"The Grouch" - Green Day

Five Songs I Listen To a Lot:
(representative of today's mood, this list changes daily and I usually listen to random selections...)

- "Hokkaido"- Amon Tobin
- "Wake Up"- The Arcade Fire
- "Black Market"- Weather Report
- "Los Vargos"- Green Apple Quickstep
- "Urban Struggle"- The Vandals

Five People to Whom I�m Passing the Baton:
(sorry, folks!)

- Ian Gilman
- Christian Cantrell
- Wendy Guthrie
- Dominic Sagolla
- Sean Corfield

Posted by sfegette at 03:56 PM | Comments (4)

May 16, 2005

IBM Gets Transparent...

... according to this post by IBM blogger/technologist James Snell, they're officially encouraging their 320k+ worldwide employees to both get a blog - and use it regularly. Check out James' post for more details, as well as a link (PDF) to their corporate blogging policy. Good stuff, I'm always interested in seeing policies of transparent communication supported by larger companies, and how well these efforts are received by their customers. Call it personal interest or strategic curiosity, either point is valid... ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)

NYT on RIAs

The New York Times' James Fallow ran a piece yesterday on Rich Internet Apps, which I found good as a market summary but somewhat uneven on the specifics. Although he claimed Adaptive Path's Jesse James Garret coined the term 'AJAX' for the combination of client-side javascript and XML for asynchronous page updates, Fallow also associates the term 'AJAX' rather erroneously with the larger, technology-agnostic 'Rich Internet Applications' label and discussion- which does not necessarily suggest a method of delivery, outside of shucking the traditional request/response cycle of old-school web applications. I personally feel it's dangerous to be equating AJAX (or Flash/Flex, for that matter) as a definitive technology for enabling said 'Rich Experiences' online- but outside of that nitpicking, a good read nonetheless for all the high-level points (thanks to Simon Horwith's blog for the pointer).

Posted by sfegette at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2005

Contribute + Blogs?

Just heard from Deeje Cooley over on the Contribute team that they're putting together a Blog Authoring Advisory Council to candidly discuss potential directions for Contribute with blogging applications and/or frameworks. Interested or just plain curious? If so, please follow the link and let Deeje know directly!

Posted by sfegette at 01:02 PM

May 09, 2005

Fontographer News

A bit of breaking news for old-school Fontographer users: Fontlab, LTD is now the exclusive distributor of Macromedia Fontographer. You can read more details on this directly from Fontlab at the link below, including a statement on their plans for future Fontographer development on XP/OSX platforms (yes, you heard right!!):

Fontlab, LTD- http://www.fontlab.com/

Typography and font freaks, you may commence rejoicing now. :)

Posted by sfegette at 04:06 PM | Comments (3)

May 03, 2005

I've been Flicked...

... in this week's edition of CMX Suite (courtesy of illustrator-extraordinaire Chris Flick, of course). Classic! For the record, there's only one subject I've got lockjaw over these days, on just about every other topic I'll talk your ear off, given the chance. (and my regular perma-grin is both an unfortunate genetic defect I've learned to live with, and fair commentary to my recent state of mind...) ;-)

That being said, I really did have a blast at TODCon last week, my sincerest thanks to both the Community MX crew (a specific tip of the hat to Ray West and his impeccable skills as master-of-ceremonies/host), and the countless other attendees, hosts and presenters that made it such a smash. I can only hope all the after-hours pictures taken in Vegas don't incriminate me as accurately as Chris's poison pen already has... looking forward to next year's event!

Posted by sfegette at 09:52 AM | Comments (5)

May 01, 2005

PSP Accessories

I've had a PSP for a week or so now, and am somewhat surprised at how quickly it integrated into my synching/media workflows- especially on the Mac platform (which hasn't always benefitted from Sony's proprietary media handling and PC bias). However, it certainly wasn't turnkey out of the box. Although I do love the PSP games (Lumines, Untold Legends and Wipeout:Pure being my faves), the media capabilities of the PSP are what I really get excited about. I do lots of side work on video clips (compositing/fx/motion graphics) and being able to tote around proofs/comps of work in progress is priceless. Christian Cantrell had asked me what accessories I'd consider must-haves, so here's a rundown of what I'd recommend for first-time PSP users (bias towards Macs as that's what I use the most, of course):

Hope these recommendations help if you're just thinking about diving into the wonderful world of PSPs afresh. My gamertag/nick on both XLink KAI and XBox Live is 'ihatei', so drop me a note if/when you're online and wanna play...

Posted by sfegette at 11:56 AM | Comments (23)