A long over due mention to a series of Cryptography Classes for ActionScript 2.0 developed by Mika Palmu, over at Meychi.com. Based on analogous tools built using JavaScript, Mika developed these classes out of necessity, much like any of us when looking for something that is not available yet. Well, now we have these.
Check them out here if you arwe in need of a quick solution.
Thanks to Mika for the information.
My aussie friends Andrew Muller and Matt Voerman, and another well-known aussie developer Robin Hilliard, have united forces and created RocketBoots, a new company devoted to the development of commercial applications, using Macromedia technologies. They have also opened a new blog, which is already packed with interesting posts.
From what I’m told, the company is already engaged in important projects, which are keeping the guys quite busy. That’s the reason they have taken their time to put their website together, which is very nice by the way, especially those little clocks in the Australian map 
From here, our congratulations and best wishes on the new venture!
SitePoint has just released a new Flash book: “Flash Anthology: Cool Effects & Practical ActionScript”, which I had the pleasure to contribute to as an expert reviewer. Throughout the book, author Steve Grosvenor shares his personal approach to Flash design in a series of practical examples and solutions to common Flash development tasks.
Catering to initiated and intermediate Flash designers and developers, “The Flash Anthology” delivers easy-to-follow and inspirational examples that cover almost every aspect of the Flash technology, with a personal touch often missing in technical books.
For extensive information about the contents of the book, read Steve’s introductory article.
If you haven’t upgraded to Flash MX 2004 yet, now is the time to do it. The new (and last) update to the latest major release of Flash certainly improves the whole experience of working with the IDE, especially in terms of stability and overall performance. I have been using it in a production environment for the last few weeks, and I have to say that Flash has never been better than today.
I was one of the unlucky people that for some reason had Flash crashing, compromising the stability of other applications and the system as a whole, thus causing some obvious inconveniences. I recognize that Macromedia has put a lot of effort to addressing a long list of issues that survived the first dot release of Flash MX 2004.
Among the goodies packed in this release you will find:
A stand-alone Scrollbar component.
The JSFL File API.
The EventDelegate class.
ASO Cache Cleaning Commands (available from the Exchange).
The other great aspect concerning the 7.2 update is a “beefier” documention. Although the Help panel didn’t make it for the makeover, more than 2000 bugs (wrong info, typos, etc.) were fixed and more than 400 new code examples have been included in the documentation body, increasing the percentage of entries with examples from 43% to 98%. Also, the overall amount of ActionScript documentation has been increasedby 85%, and two existing chapters about working with Components have been re-written and two new ones were included, to provide information on styles and skinning. In addition to that, you will find 21 new documentation example FLA files demonstrating common
application functionality.
Jonathan Kaye, author of “Flash MX for Interactive Simulation” has released a new set of components, based on the ones developed for the book, but upgraded to ActionScript 2.0 and tested on both versions 6 and 7 of the Flash Player.
The FXMIS set of components contains a number of interface objects, commonly used to build machine simulations. You will find joysticks, knobs, gauges, lamps, dials, etc., some of them very complex in functionality. However, configuring and changing their look and feel couldn’t be any easier. All you have to do is create the visuals you want the components to use, and then set the appropriate parameters on the properties panel.
Something that good can’t be released for free, but there is a special price for those who have already purchased Jonathan’s book. You can learn more and buy the components here. Also, if you create your own “skins” for the FMXIS components and you share them with other users, you could get the components for free and maybe make a few bucks on the side.
Oh, and if you use the banner on the left to buy the components, Jonathan will make me rich 
Just a short note to let you know that SitePoint has published an article by yours truly, on the subject of error handling and user experience. Nothing to do with Flash, but with Usability, which is one of the other major areas of concentration of my work.
The article is about how we can improve user experience in our site, by providing better resoponses to a common issue: 404 Errors. An excerpt:
There is no greater disappointment than failing to find what you’re looking for. From time to time, surfing the Web will lead us to dead ends that typically sport the titles “Error 404″, “Not Found”, or “The document could not be found”.
The code 404, as you may already know, corresponds to “File Not Found”, and is probably the most famous of all the status codes defined in the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) specification. These codes correspond to different responses users can receive when they request a document from a Web server. In this case, whenever a file can’t be accessed by a user, the Web server will generate a 404 error.
Since the default mechanisms can’t provide any relevant information to our visitors, showing customized error messages is essential.
Find the complete article here.
Here is the list of winners:
Application: Treeplanner
Art: Weapons of Mass Destruction
Cartoon: Rendezvous with Candycracker
Commerce: Dockers Europe
Educational: Truth
Experimental: JungleGym-MDV
Game: Microlife
Motion Graphics: Fishouse
Navigation: Jac Ziesmer Styling
Original Sound: Nike Lab Holiday
Story: Julia 1926
Technical Merit: DENG XML Browser (congratulations Claus!)
3D: Drum Machine
Typography: Fuel Industries
Video: Volvo V50
People’s Choice: Bomb the World
Complete list of Nominees at Flash Forward’s site.
Flash Forward should be starting in about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend the conference as I wanted, since my client and I are very busy working on a super project, and there’s just no time. However, I managed to trade some time off on tomorrow, to be “paid” during the weekend, so I will be giving a hand at the NYMMUG table on Thursday, all day long. So, if you are around, stop by and say hi
One of the thing I like about conferences like Flash Forward is that you never know who will you find wandering about the premises, the opportunity of putting some more faces to names you know, and get know everybody’s takes on what’s going on with Flash lately.
Anyway, I hope everybody have a great time and enjoy the conference. Hope to see you there.
It’s been only 4 days, but this trip to Puerto Rico has injected with lots of new energies my overworked self. Achieving relaxation was a little tricky though, since we didn’t have too much time to plan the trip, and we had to improvise big time… like in the times of uninformed (or misinformed) adventure.
Too much information can take out the taste out of the experience. Too little may just as well keep you from enjoying the best a place has to offer. The main reason for our get away this time was just relaxation, getting some rest, and gather information for a longer future visit. There’s so much to see besides San Juan, so many beautiful places to go, so much to learn about history and life in Puerto Rico. Fortunately the island is not so far away and we can always go back, but never again with American Airlines, they know just how to give you grief…
Still, the balance is very positive. I lost the camera I took to Sydney, so I had to get a new one for the trip. I was reluctant at the beginning, but thinking on the near future I got an Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom, which has a lot of good reviews. I have more than 200 pictures from the trip, and they are BIG (the darn camera takes 8 megapixel pictures!), so I need to edit them. Here are a few samples:
At this point, I assume everybody knows what is Gmail, and probably have an account of their own. I got my Gmail account a couple of weeks ago, thanks to an invitation sent by Jonas Galvez, but haven’t been able to give it a real try. However, I logged in a few minutes ago and found out that I have 6 invitations available. If you want one of them, leave your info in the comments.
Is there anybody using his or her Gmail account formally? I mean, as a primary email account. If you have your own server and/or your own domain, you probably don’t need a Gmail account, although it is kinda cool, as everything that becomes fashionable because seems restricted. It is in human nature to desire what we can’t have
Clearly, this viral marketing technique of giving away invitations through already established users is getting these guys lots of demographic info, and capitalizing on their existing advertising systems. But, it’s that all?
I’ve lost a link to a desktop tool that allowed access to your Gmail account via POP, or at least that’s what I understood it did. I’ll post the link if I can find it later.
