CU3ER v1 is released

What’s New?

Transitions Step away from common, boring & flat 2D experience and dive into endless possibilities of adding the third dimension to your slideshow with grid slicing, simple fade or slide, full or half-flip transitions, transition order, direction and much more. cManager Forget about XML! Let’s talk about the real joy – cManager! Create and manage your CU3ER like a PRO with our awesome, robust yet easy to use online application. Interactive workflow, rich GUI, timeline, live preview – set, create & export CU3ER within minutes. Shadows You are now able to simulate more natural environment for your 3D slideshow by deploying one of two available shadow types: static (image) or dynamic (live). Either way it’s an awesome practice to enhance CU3ER slideshow. Camera Push your CU3ER 3D look even further by setting 3D position and rotation of your slides. Additional gem is ‘lens’ option where you can simulate camera lens distortion like ‘fish-eye’. Thumbnails We like to call it ‘Advanced Thumbnails’. And they are indeed. Grid distribution, horizontal scrolling, vertical scrolling, custom scroll bar, thumb image, captions, numbering, round corners… Projects Considering yourself serious about your web design profession? We have provided you extensive control panel for creating, modifying and managing CU3ER projects across assigned domains. API Now you can sync or communicate with CU3ER and rest of your page elements with easy and simple functions. Play or pause slideshow, navigate trough slides or listen to CU3ER events. Playback Control Manage and control CU3ER playback with auto-play, slide duration, looping, starting slide, randomize and other options. Awesome for creating timely controlled animations like web banners. Layout You are allowed to configure almost every aspect of your slideshow layout. It’s so easy to manage perfect blend between CU3ER and your web page – is that what is this all about? Branding Management Custom positioning of CU3ER logo is available trough branding options. You can even turn off CU3ER branding if your boss finds us boring! Support Stack with something or looking for particular solution for your CU3ER problem? We have enabled you a couple of support channels you can use in order to solve your CU3ER problem.

and much, much more …

New CU3ER coming out soon!

You might know already that Stefan Kovac and me formed new company called MADEBYPLAY. We are very excited to work on new release of CU3ER with great new features and slicker look, please follow the updates at getcu3er.com.

You can also take a look at first screencast we’ve made for CU3ER v1

Thanks!

unConference Singapore 2009 – startups and platforms

Yesterday I’ve attended unConference Singapore, one of the biggest events I’ve seen here. It’s all about startups, mostly focused on social component of the web. I’ve attended 2 session and one startup show off in what host called American Idol style.

The day started pretty late for me so I’ve picked up first session after lunch. My friend Arul presented an interesting product which is already in focus – Crunchpad, an internet browsing device created by TechCrunch. Fusion Garage, a Singapore based company and Arul’s workplace is a creator of the software that runs Crunchpad. Software is a Linux that boots directly into a browser and let’s you do all you need only through browser. Looking at availability of software and media over internet that seems like an idea without drawbacks.

After that, we’ve attended Startup Pitch session where about a dozen startups showed off what they’ve into. All of them had about 6 minutes to present and then few minutes for panel of judges to give their opinion. It was interesting, and startups were in many ways inspiring. Let me go through all of them briefly.

eJamming – online collaboration tool for musicians, they can just plug in on net and play together like they are in the same room. Presented live and it worked well. This helps a lot people who are traveling or just wants to meet new people. Later on, same company will be releasing a site that will enable bands broadcast their performance live and get some money from selling it to audience.

CountSpin – auction website, simple idea. Site really needs redesign, and like one of the judges said, offering more products at same time or extending possibilities in other directions would be a win for them. Compare function is not working nicely too.

Frenzoo – nice 3D teen website where you can dress your 3D characters buying clothes or designing your own. Great presentation, very clean and clear on their key points. Congratulations, hope they will be big.

Genkii – no doubt Genkii is composed of talented individuals who will try to bridge art and social components into 3D world in order to create something interesting with their product. 3D world that they are bringing soon to iPhone was impressive, especially seeing it live on iPhone of Ken. Gankii is Tokyo based and they will release Sparkle, 3D virtual world probably during a summer of this year. Good luck!

Orsiso – ORganize SImplify SOcialize is  AIR application which connects your multiple accountsand friends  on social networks. Definetely great potential for wide-spread usage. As a judge said they need to easier clarify what is a benefit of their product. Their aim is to help you easier organize your social friend data by improtance to you, grouping your friends in circles. Glad to see some of the improvement from previous versions includes some of the things I was thinking it’s good. UI needs to get better still because having so many things out there first time user needs to be able to adopt it in a minute.

2359 Media – presented app called Singapore Malls. It’s now available on iPhone. They should put more info on website, together with links to app store. Basically app servers information about malls in Singapore, very detailed ones like stores, floor plans, search for discounts and much more. They’ve also created an ad network to leverage their application potential and making it also possible for other developers to use it in their applications.

iTwin – iTwin is a USB plug & play device that will enable you to connect two computers in peer-to-peer network without setting up any software or passwords. Simple and easy solution for variety of reasons. Judges nicely stated that they need more to point this use cases. Nice product.

Human Network Labs – one of the most interesting products at unConference. I’ve already heard about it before and I was glad I can see a presentation. HNL created a PixieEngine platform which is based on RFID  chips that can be stick to any object. Once you have it in your surrounding using an application on phone or other device you are becoming aware of other objects and people who are using it. Connection between objects is transmitted over 1.5Mbps which is enough even for streaming a video. There is a lot of possible use cases for this product and it’s definitely on it’s way to become a huge success.

SocialWok – they defined it as Facebook + Twitter for Business. It’s a social network made private so it’s suits organizations and businesses. Clean interface is a copy of Facebook, more cleaner and has all the features of sharing statuses,  links and media files. There is an interest for this in organizations I am sure, only thing as one of the judges noticed is, when you say employees to start using something they might not use it, so how you get companies to adopt it is going to be a big challenge. They have iPhone and BlackBerry client so that’s a big plus for adoption.

I hope I haven’t left out anyone, if I did it wasn’t intentional.

I’ve attended one more session after startups, about Django and Plone by Kenny Shen. Interesting introduction what Plone is, why it works and who uses it. Thanks on this to Kenny.

After that we went for a dinner, meeting more interesting people, having some problems with pub people but at the end great conference and very interesting day. I am glad I’ve met people I know and a lot of new people.

Thanks to e27 Singapore for organising this event and check out their website, there is a bunch of useful stuff, like interviews with people who were speaking at the conference.
Good luck with unConference 2010.

The Upper Storey – Senior Flash Developer wanted!

Company I am currently working at is on a lookout for serious Flash coder. We are having a nice stream of interesting projects and I am sure you would like the environment. Please read the job description and apply if you’re interested. Hope we find somebody interesting and eager to move forward with us.

Company: The Upper Storey

Location: Singapore

Position: Senior Flash Developer

Information:

The Upper Storey is not your typical interactive agency, nor your typical creative department. We are known for our innovative concepts, our endless supply of creativity, our tight-knit work family. We take great pride in our team and we live and breathe our work.

Job Summary:

You will develop interactive elements, including web pages, flash objects, or any rich media content for various touchpoints. Additionally, you will provide leadership in the use of Flash technology and mentor junior developers on the team.. Projects range from Rich Media and Game Programming to flash websites and banners with dynamic content. You work closely with creative team to deliver cutting edge rich media solutions for our clients.

Responsibilities:

• Ability to mentor junior team members
• Apply your visual design skills to create dynamic and complex Flash Designs.
• Involvement in the conceptual phase of projects. Work closely with creative lead, IA, Content Strategist and front-end developer to deliver-media rich client solutions.
• Understanding of Video codec’s and advanced video encoding options in Flash.
• Understanding of 3rd party implementations and extensions
• Active Flash, Flex, Developer Community involvement.
• Constant R&D on new technologies that will help The Upper Storey push the boundaries

Job Requirements:

• 5+ years of industry experience in ActionScript 2.0 or 3.0 for Flash applications integrated with server-side web applications and CMS
• ServerSide Scripting such as PHP, JavaScript and Flex
• Experience implementing OOP concepts with ActionScript
• XHTML / CSS (validating), DHTML (JQuery), AJAX
• Building integrated data-driven applications and sites that link to other third part apis such as facebook and open social
• Optimization of creative elements for varying bandwidth and platform requirements
• Strong written and oral communication skills

To Apply:

Please send email to coder@upperstorey.com

Flash Supersites : IKEA | PS

I am so glad to add one site to the Flash Supersites links – again there  is a great experience of discovering IKEAs ideas nad products.

IKEA | PS is new product line from IKEA, and every product has it’s story, which is nicely presented through Flash website, rich with video and animaton experience.

IKEA | PS

Webware 100 – c|net top 100 webware voting

Say No to boxed software! The future of applications is online delivery and access. Software is passé. Webware is the new way to get things done.

http://www.cnet.com/html/ww/100/2009/categories.html

This voting strikes to a most important thing that is now happening on internet and that’s switching from desktop based to web based enviroment. I really like how powerfull all categories look, with at least two or three strong players and good services to offer, but mostly it’s all offered webwares that are great.

Vote and enjoy the change! Real change!

Insight into OpenScreen project

Thanks to the User Interface Resource Center, we can get an insight in what is happening with OpenScreen project directly from Adobe’s Anup Murarka, Director of Partner Development and Technology Strategy, Platform Business Unit who was interview by EffectiveUI senior developer Doug Schmidt.

Interview can be found here …

Oblong g-speak – The Spatial Operating Environment

Take a look at this interesting technology, mixing futuristic user control, environment awareness and collaboration…

Oblong Industries is the developer of the g-speak spatial operating environment.

The SOE’s combination of gestural i/o, recombinant networking, and real-world pixels brings the first major step in computer interface since 1984; starting today, g-speak will fundamentally change the way people use machines at work, in the living room, in conference rooms, in vehicles. The g-speak platform is a complete application development and execution environment that redresses the dire constriction of human intent imposed by traditional GUIs. Its idiom of spatial immediacy and information responsive to real-world geometry enables a necessary new kind of work: data-intensive, embodied, real-time, predicated on universal human expertise.

videos on vimeo

The Actionscript Conference Overview + slides from presentation

Weeks after The Actionscript Conference in Singapore I  can sum up all good things we’ve got and experienced there. TAC was event organized by Flex User Group Singapore. FUG Singapore is focus on Actionscript, Flex and Flash and other related services and server-side technologies.  This was a first conference I’ve attended and spoke at, so I surely cannot be objective enough, but I think that most of the speakers and attendees would agree TAC was a huge success.

At the start of the conference Hu Shunjie talked about Passion. Nice way to present actionscript community. It really relies on passion and inspiration from the very beginning and it feels strong even 10 years later.

In series of presentations of really great speaker line-up attendees could hear and see a lot of new Flash Player 10 features (Lee Brimelow), API references, Web Services, AIR developement (Marco Casario, Peter Elst).

PowerFlasher team had great presentation about their FDT Actionscript IDE. Micheal Plank demonstrated powerfull FDT features and speedcoding which gives you freedom. Micheal had great workshop also day before conference, demonstrating workflow that FDT makes possible using ANT compiling, SWC and SWF linking and a lot more…

Mohammed Khan had only presentation that was more design oriented. It was very good to hear a little introspective in designer developer workflow in Flex and where it should be in time that comes.

Prayank Swaroop presented BlazeDS, server-based Java remoting and web messaging technology. It is free solution and seems to me more and more used in Flex project because of it.

Most amazing presentation was given by Stefan Wessels, a Flash Lite guru. He presented Flash Lite from the perspective of the Darth Vader and the dark side. Seems like Flash Lite really inspires and through his inspirational talk he invited as to join the dark side, creating Flash Lite content, which is not so widespread…

I gave my presentation at the end of the day. I am not sure how it looked like but from my point of view I would be happy if people could remember few important things that connects Flash Platform and Socialnetworking. Flash is great platform for developing, present at more than 90% of internet enabled devices. It is fairly easy and cost-free platform. It support all socialnetworking interactions but lacks in SEO and semantic web which will mean a lot in future. My slides are available at SlideShare

Pictures from the conference at Flickr
Lee Brimelow video report
Interviews with some of the speakers

Great news is that preparation for next TAC has already started. Organisers should consider 2 days instead of one, so people can talk more, and focus more on speeches. Anyway, this was a boost I hope for Singapore Actionscript community which I am proud to be a part of.

Taito Space Invaders Anime Music Video

source : technabob.com/blog