journal

Here’s an official press release regarding our move into Sapient.

Sapient Expands Its Interactive Practice With Strategic Group Hire

“We are thrilled to be adding this phenomenally talented and creative group of people to our Interactive team,” said Sapient Chief Creative Officer Gaston Legorburu.  “Client demand is accelerating the need to grow, but it’s absolutely essential that we do so with people who share our passion for revolutionizing the dialog between a brand and its consumers.  These are some of the most sought-after specialists in the industry—and by bringing them into Sapient, we are increasing our ability to continue to deliver rich interactive experiences for our clients.”

The group hire comprises primarily producers, art directors, Flash developers, sound designers and video editors from iChameleon, which is renowned for providing custom interactive development and execution for some of the largest and best recognized brands in the world.

About Sapient
Sapient, a global services firm, operates two groups—Sapient Interactive and Sapient Consulting—that help clients compete, evolve and grow in an increasingly complex marketplace.  Sapient Interactive provides brand and marketing strategy, award-winning creative work, web design and development and emerging media expertise.  Sapient Consulting provides business and IT strategy, process and systems design, package implementation and custom development, as well as outsourcing services such as testing, maintenance and support.

Sapient’s passion for client success—evidenced by its ability to foster collaboration, drive innovation and solve challenging problems—is the subject of case studies on leadership and organizational behavior used by MBA students at both Harvard and Yale.  Leading clients, including BP, Essent Energie, Hilton International, Janus, Sony Electronics and Verizon, rely on the company’s unique approach to drive growth and market momentum.  Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sapient operates across North America, Europe and India.  For more information, please visit www.sapient.com.

[source: Sapient PR, May 19, 2008]

This Technology Will Blow Your Mind.. – Celebrity bloopers here

What sucks is that I was building this and was possibly going to release it this weekend.  Then all of the sudden Google beats me to the punch.  Figures.  But of course they own the technology so better them than me.  http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/flash/

bummer.

Well not exactly in Flex Builder but in Aptana.  If you download and install the latest release of Aptana, it features two panels that you can use with your Flex and Actionscript projects.  One is called the snippet panel which can provide you with code snippets.  One of the snippets I use frequently is ASdoc class header comments.  To test it out go to Window > Other Views > Aptana Standard Views and select Snippets.  Then in the root of your project folder add a directory called snippets.  Create a new regular file in there and name it Asdoc_class.as.  Its important to name your file with the actionscript extension.  If you’re making a snippet for html name it with the .html file extension.  Now open up the file and copy and paste this code in…

/*
 category: Actionscript
 name: Asdoc Class Header
 toolTip: Asdoc Class Header
 toolbar: true
 language: text/actionscript
 icon: com.aptana.ide.snippets/icons/wrap_js_function.png
 prompt(description): Description of the class
 prompt(author): Name of the author
 prompt(date): Date 
 
*/
 
/**
 * ${description}
 *
 * @langversion ActionScript 3
 *
 * @author ${author}
 * @since  ${date}
 */

Alright so you’ll notice that there is a custom comment at the top, the category assigns it to whatever category you want in the snippets panel. If you save the file you can look in the snippets panel and you’ll notice an Actionscript folder. The name, which we named “Asdoc class header” should be referenced in that Actionscript snippet folder. Language is of course whatever language you’re creating the snippet for. The tooltip, toolbar, and icon params I’m figuring are involved with getting it to display a button on the toolbar but I haven’t gotten that to work yet. If anyone can fill in here and help me out with that. And last but not least are the prompts. Each prompt has a parameter and a description. The parameter in the prompt function references the variable in the found in the actual code so when the prompt displays for the description, it gets filled out at the ${description} variable.

As far as ideas go, I’ve created one for getters and setters and for singleton code.

Now one thing to note. Snippets are fairly cool, but that’s all they do. Seriously that’s it. I even wanted to make the description field a little higher in the prompt but no go. But if you want to get really crazy I’d check out the scripts panel. Scripts are way more robust and you can even call snippets through a script, aka calling a snippet through a keyboard command. One of the scripts I created was a simple thing to open a new panel for actionscript help based on the keyword selection in your editor panel.

/*
 * Menu: Actionscript > Actionscript Help
 * Toolbar: Header
 * Key: M3+1
 * Kudos: Jody Brewster
 * OnLoad: main()
 * DOM: http://download.eclipse.org/technology/dash/update/org.eclipse.eclipsemonkey.lang.javascript
 */
function main() {
		var sourceEditor = editors.activeEditor;
 
        var range = sourceEditor.selectionRange;
        var deleteLength = range.endingOffset - range.startingOffset;
        var selection = sourceEditor.source.substring(range.startingOffset,range.endingOffset);
 
        webView = views.getView("AS3RefWebView");
        webView.showView(true);
        webView.setTitle("Actionscript Reference");
        webView.url = "http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&rls=en-us&q=site%3Alivedocs.adobe.com%2Fflash%2F9.0%2FActionScriptLangRefV3%2F++" + selection + "&btnG=Search";
 
}

So there you go, some new little features that hopefully have opened up some possibilities to you. If you have any snippets or scripts, post a link to them in the comments field so we can all take a look.

Well its been awhile since I’ve seen a really great Silverlight demo.  But this is definitely an incredible demo that everyone has got to see that’s interested in the future of presentation technologies.  Just remember that this is a demo of Silverlight applied to the medical field and the top black bar is a guide to the different screens of each section of the system and there are three main sections of the system.

http://www.mscui.net/PatientJourneyDemonstrator/

I was checking out the new Opera browser and they’ve added some awesome web developer tools code named Dragonfly.  One of the main things I saw just from my quick run through is the javascript debugger is outstanding.  Probably one of the best I’ve seen built into a web browser.  They’re saying there is going to be alot more features coming, this is just an alpha release, so we’ll see in the coming months.  Here’s a snippet from Ajaxian…

Features

• Reach breaking point step by step: Opera Dragonfly’s fully featured JavaScript debugger makes building sophisticated Ajax applications easier than ever. Step through your code line by line, setting break points along the way. This allows you to make sure your application and scripts are acting as you designed them.
• Redefine your style: Its not just the DOM you can inspect. Check out what CSS rules apply to which element, and what rules are inherited or set by browser defaults. Overridden rules are highlighted so you can see what styles are or aren’t applied. Support for editing CSS rules will be added in an upcoming version.
• Spot your errors: An improved error console allows you to see, filter and log any errors in your scripts, pointing to the exact position the error occurred. Use this in combination with the other tools to hunt down and fix your site’s bugs.
• Debug the DOM: View source isn’t much use if you use DOM Scripting to alter the DOM. Opera Dragonfly allows you to inspect the updated DOM and all it’s properties. Support for editing the DOM will be added in an upcoming version.

The features that are not there yet, but are upcoming, include support for editing of CSS, JavaScript and the DOM, a single window mode, improved JavaScript thread handling, XHR and HTTP monitoring, improved keyboard navigation, and translation into a number of languages.

Found this great new resource listing out all of the public AIR apps out there.  If you have an app out there, add it to their list.

http://www.freshairapps.com/