Oscar Trelles

This is old news, but for some reason my account in Macromedia’s Affiliate Program was activated just yesterday. So, there you have one of the little banners… it isn’t there? well, I’m sharing the space with the ads from BlogAdNet, so one of the Macromedia banners should appear the next time.

So, if you happen to have a blog or a site somewhat related to Macromedia products, and you maybe are already linking to Macromedia for free, this is your opportunity for a chance to make a couple of bucks. You can earn up to 10% from sales originated on your website if you join the program. Apply here.

(hmmmm… why are those pages .asp?)

While having a little chat this morning with Geoff Bowers (the Googmaster) he pointed out that the blog he maintains with Andrew Muller and other people from Daemon, has been revamped.

Deamonite is best known by all the ColdFusion junkies out there. I understand that the changes are not just in the surface, alhtough I specially dig those ‘earthy’ colors.

I couldn’t resist, I had to have her…. I only met her yesterday, but I fell in love instantly… let me introduce you to Rebecca. Isn’t she gorgeus…

I have this thing for naming the ‘objects’ I care the most about

Rebecca is a late birthday present from my wife, an Ovation Celebrity guitar. Music is very important in my life, that’s why I’m very sensitive about this particular guitar, it has great sound and looks magnificent. I just hope Claudia (my older guitar…) doesn’t get jealous… hehe.

Just a couple of days ago I signed the open petition that Amir Dotan (UK), Mushon Zer-Aviv (Israel) and Naim Kamel (Palestinian National Authority) have started. You might remember a discussion over at Mario Klingemann’s blog a while ago, about how right-to-left languages are supported in Flash. Well, that’s what this petition is all about:

“We, Flash users from the Middle East, were very disappointed to find that despite numerous complaints, Macromedia has failed to offer any support for RTL (Right To Left) languages and by doing so continue to exclude an entire community of developers from using its product successfully. While Flash MX revolutionizes the Web, the Middle East is left behind due to Flash’s fundamental defects.”

Please, support and sign this petition, even if you write from left to right.

If you have been trying to download the ISOs from Red Hat’s website, you have been probably unsuccesful. If you are not willing to pay for the CDs, I understand… So, although I already ordered the box from Red Hat, I couldn’t wait until its arrival when I found that they have it at BitTorrent’s site.

What do you need to download the ISOs from there:
1- Download the Bit Torrent P2P client.
2- Go to BitTorrent’s site anf click on the Red Hat 9 Binary ISOs link.
3- Be patient and try to leave the window open as long as you can, so others can benefit from you too

Enjoy!

Installing Red Hat 9 was the sweetest thing, given that the last time I personally installed a Linux box from scratch, the process wasn’t visual at all (we are talking 1999 here). Still, I almost instantly remembered the many times my buddies and I installed different distributions of Linux, just for fun (nerdy, eh?) during my second year of college… just before I left school to sing in a rock band!

Anyways, I was so excited fine tunning my little server that I didn’t read carefully the systems requirements to install Flash Communication Server MX in a Linux server. Now I know that FlashComm 1.5 is not meant for version 9 of Red Hat, it only works with versions 7 and 8. I thought about forcing installation by eliminating the distribution detection subroutines in the installer, but I read somewhere that it wouldn’t work anyway… So, right now I’m trying to figure out a solution to issue: either I install version 8 of Red Hat, or I’d have to wait for a release of FlashComm compatible with Red Hat 9

What do you think?

The other important news related to the release of the second version of Contribute, is that Macromedia included in it its new Product Activation engine. If you are a Microsoft XP products user, you must be familiar with the concept of product activation (provided that you bought the product by yourself or it came bundled with your new PC). Anyway, product activation provides the means to take control over the copies of software distributed, reducing the space for pirate copies. To learn how it works, take the tour over at the Product Activation Center.

I understand that Macromedia is also offering multiple (2?) installations of the product, for not concurrent use. This is very positive, and makes sense. That means that when I can afford to have an office outside my floor, I would be able to install a product at the 2 locations, without sin. I think more companies should take this approach to better serve their customers and increase their sales. As a matter of fact, Corel has been providing similar lincensing terms for some time now.

Maybe the coolest thing about Contribute 2 is the introduction of a new technology: Flash Paper. Basically, Flash Paper is to Flash, as Acrobat PDFWriter is to Acrobat Reader. It transforms any printable document into the Flash format.

This is really a great idea. Now (virtually) anything that can be printed in paper, can also be shared as an embedded flash object in a web document. Unfortunately, this technology is only available for Windows 2000/XP users, at least for the moment.

Don’t miss the example on this page, I almost did

This has been also all over the place during the last 2 or 3 days. Macromedia has launched Contribute 2, after a few months of beta testing. If you are not familiar with the product, Contribute allows non-developers to easily edit web content, without having to know anything about HTML.

It is a cheap alternative to tailor-made content management systems (CMS). Since, most of my work is data-driven dynamic sites, frequently with complicated CMSs, I haven’t found any use for Contribute as of yet, but will definitely take a look at this new version.

This has been an exciting week. I’ve been a little busy with work and setting everything up in my new studio. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, from now I can tell that I actually have a real design studio. A third of my floor is now exclusively dedicated to all my work-related stuff. We have been shopping for cameras, monitors, and other items needed to run a real home-office (can you believe I didn’t have a fax machine?)

Now, this has been all over the place but it is worth mentioning again. Studiowhiz has been relaunched, and looks like Pnuts is putting together a whole marketing campaign to make this not just another site face-lift. Check it out.

The ones that have been also making a lot of promotion for their site relaunch are the people from 2advanced. Disappointing? well, that’s what happens when you oversale your products. Don’t take me wrong, the site is good (very good), but is not what one would expect after all the noise everybody was doing… nothing new to see there.