I came across this great article that shows alot of new techniques being used to analyze and display data. And what’s great is that they’re all listed with an image and explanation for each. I mean like everything from the past couple of years. And what’s great is that alot of these examples were built with Flash and Java.
Finally me and good ‘ol Scobe can agree on something. It seems like Apple is caught in a real pickle. They don’t want 3rd party apps being installed on the iPhone. Probably so it doesn’t degrade the quality of the product for the first couple of years. But the public in general has circumvented the protections and hacked the phone any way possible. So as this has become extremely popular, Apple has created a little group of Frankenstein iPhones running around that may break when Apple updates their own iPhone software. And after this first major update, it looks like alot of phones are breaking. So Apple better get on the schtick and release som kind of way of modding the iPhone and installing third party apps cause they’re really going to start indirectly creating alot of disappointed customers.
BTW, did anyone notice Apple is using Dojo now on Apple.com? Are they crazy? I hope someone told them that the latest version breaks on Safari 3. Good thing they’re using .4
So I’m sitting here trying to download the latest Flash player and its not there. Then I came across this Reddit post and it all made sense. Looks like someone used the download.cgi program that Adobe has had for a long ass time to read anything on the server. Including ssl keys and password files. Nice.
I remember the first time I saw Google. It was unbelieveably simple, a textbox and a button. Even today, the interface has changed very little. But behind its pretty fa-sad is a super powerful system that makes Google well, Google. Well today I ran across a little site called jottit.com. On the front page, it has a single textbox. But behind the site is a wiki engine and the ability to make your own little wiki site. But it got me thinking… this could be sooooo much more.
“To represent this rich family of products, Adobe is introducing the Photoshop visual logo. This logo will soon appear in all Photoshop-related marketing, so keep an eye out for it. The Photoshop logo on a product, service, or technology, represents the rich legacy, technical quality, and attention to detail that has made Photoshop the gold standard in digital imaging. “
A very cool XBAP written by Eric Sink. Eric wrote this pretty cool application using WPF 3D support, and recommends people pickup 3D Programming for Windows by Charles Petzold.
I just got a copy of 3D programming and I’m dying to read it.
jQuery UI is a set of themable widgets and interactions, built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library, that you can use to build highly interactive web applications.
The core of the library revolves around different mouse interactions, namely drag and dropping, sorting, selecting, and resizing.
On top of the core interactions are built a number of reusable widgets, including accordions, date pickers, dialogs, sliders, table sorters, and tabs.
Finally, the library is finished off with a few effects that you can use to liven up your site, specifically magnifier and shadow.
Flash and HD (H.264) Video
Just recently Adobe made the announcement that they would be supporting the HD (H.264) video format in their latest Flash Player. Little did anyone know though, that it was already in there. It looks like they just didn’t tell anyone. But the latest Flash player has been getting some serious video playback enhancements. According to Adobe, Flash Player 9, Codenamed “Moviestar”, is “hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced full screen video playback”. In short, Adobe has added H.264 support which is being used in both Blu-Ray discs and Quicktime. Adobe has also added (HE-AAC) or High Efficiency Advanced Audio Codec for audio playback.
A great example of the latest HD format can be found here, don’t forget to right click and select “Full Screen” on the flyout menu.
For alot more info on the new format, here’s a great resource…
Silverlight and VC-1
Silverlight on the other hand supports the HD format through VC-1. Silverlight also supports WMA, WMV7-9 and MP3 formats. WMV9 is the Microsoft implementation of the VC-1 standard which ships in all HD-DVD and Blu-ray based hardware. A good example of the HD playback is on this page, don’t forget to click the fullscreen button!
The HD wars have begun!
So both formats are competing for dominance which is great for competition. Personally, I’m really glad to see Microsoft showing some initiative in the web space. I’ve always believed that Flash and now Silverlight have really bright futures on the web and now we have a great way to watch movies too!
