Archive for November, 2006
Full Sail – A factory for professional talent
Nov 17th
I spent the majority of last week in Orlando evaluating 2 different Bachelor of Science degree program offerings from an interesting school named Full Sail. At present, Full Sail has degrees in Computer Animation, Digital Media, Entertainment Business, Film, Game Design, Recording Arts, and Show Production & Touring. I was invited to evaluate the new degree pertaining to Web Engineering, but also participated in the Digital Arts and Design curriculum evaluation as well.
I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by and entirely impressed with Full Sail. They are working hard to create a unique, energetic environment that supports creativity and encourages participation. The staff, equipment, and curriculum are personalized and professional, with a substantial amount of focus placed on independent development and self-determination. The school has a very distinct mandate, graduating professionals who are capable of hitting the ground running and positively influencing whatever company has the wherewithall to offer them industry positions. Perhaps most impressive is their job placement rate, which amazingly is above 80%!
Full Sail is definitely a viable option for someone looking to learn cutting edge, well rounded skills for today’s media industry … and no, I was not paid to say any of this 
Just AS3 & MXML
Nov 15th
Ted Patrick has done it again. The creator of ifbin.com has delivered JAM (Just AS3 & XML) a promising new code repository for Adobe Flash/Flex code.
Go ahead and check it out, and if you happen to possess some code worth contributing, by all means do share!
Thanks (again) Ted 
Flash Video gets an Emmy
Nov 7th
Macworld has reported that Adobe will receive a technical Emmy for their development of Flash Video:
Adobe Systems noted that it has won a Technical and Engineering Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for the development of Flash Video.
The award for Streaming Media Architecture & Components was announced this week, but it will be formally delivered to the company during a ceremony planned for January’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Flash Video enables users of different computer platforms, including Mac OS X, to view streaming video over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player software, which the company claims is installed on more than 700 million Internet-connected computers and handhelds.
Flash Video is used by Web sites like YouTube and MySpace, and is also utilized by companies including ABC and NBC to deliver video via the Web, according to Adobe President and COO Shantanu Narayen.
“Flash Video is fundamentally changing the role of video on the Internet, and this prestigious award is further proof of this technology’s profound impact on how broadcasters deliver their content,†said Narayen.
Thanks to Jeffery Bennett for the link
Yahoo! APIs now on yahooapis.com – Flash developers: Immediate action required
Nov 6th
Dan Theurer, one of the technical Yahoos who runs the Yahoo Developer Center recently released the following info:
When we launched our first APIs for Search, they were all located on api.search.yahoo.com. With an API offer that is growing every month, we have to separate APIs and our consumer offerings to make both easier to manage. All services that we offered on api.-property-.yahoo.com are now available at .yahooapis.com as well. Please refer to the documentation for details. Starting today, new APIs, updates and bug fixes will only be available on the yahooapis.com and in the mid-term we are planning to turn off the old endpoints so please update your applications as soon as possible.
Important for Flash developers: You need to update your applications with the new endpoints by December 11th because api.-property-.yahoo.com will no longer support Flash calls after that date.
We know that this will have a big impact for some of you and we apologize for that. Yahoo APIs infrastructure is still fairly new and we want to optimize the set-up now so that we don’t have to make those changes in the future.
Dan Theurer
FLV Video Remixer – by Yahoo! Research Berkeley
Nov 6th
Yahoo! Research Berkeley recently released an FLV Video Remixer in conjunction with the San Francisco Film Festival.
You can check it out here:
http://mac1.research.mud.yahoo.com/remix/
Also, if you haven’t seen Yahoo! Video (http://video.yahoo.com/) you should check it out, it’s powered by FLV too
See … Yahoo! does Flash 
More Yahoo! Search ActionScript Examples
Nov 5th
Firdosh, a developer from the ydn-flash group put together a Yahoo! search demo using the YahooAPI classes I authored, you can check out his example here: http://seas.mgmt.purdue.edu/~firdosh/YahooAPI/bin/CustomItemRendererExample.html
His app totally reminds me of an AS2 Yahoo! Search example i put together a while back when YDN was still forming, you can check it out here: http://caleb.org/yahoosearch-as2.php
Firdosh also created a YahooImageSearchResult class that extends YahooSearchResult and provides access to the thumbnail and filesize properties of the result. Thanks Firdosh! I’ve updated the YahooAPI code available here and your class is included.
It reminds me of a conversation Ted Patrick and I had a Yahoo! hackday. Ted mentioned how easy it would be to make ActionScript abstraction layers for all of our web services, and trust me … if it was my job, it would be done by now. However, it is not my job (i work on the Media Innovation Group for Yahoo!, all of the YDN stuff i do is done on my own time, under my own accord).
The YahooAPI code was originally checked in to sourceforge, under the project name ‘actionscript’. I also have SVN available on caleb.org, but I haven’t checked any code in as of yet. If anyone is interested in collaborating and making this code stronger, please let me know and i will set up the repositories. I would just do it now, but i’m moving this weekend, thus i’m too busy packing and whatnot to nerd out too hard.
At any rate, thanks for the contribution Firdosh … holla if you’re looking for a job
Updated AS3 Yahoo! Search API library and CoilGallery Search Mashup premiere
Nov 3rd
The latest flash Beta bits, and a programmer named firdosh both illustrate the fact that my YahooAPI classes had a few problems.
I have addressed those issues, and everything works fine now.
In order to exemplify this, i actually decided to mashup the CoilGallery code senocular released.
The app is definitely a prototype, and there are at least 3 known issues w/ the search implementation:
- i am not properly handling image load failures, so in the event of an image load failure, the app basically stops loading images
- there is some debug output, but ignore that for now
- the search term (“jamaica”) is hard coded
I will address all of these issues when i have time .. for now, just consider it a proof-of-concept.
http://caleb.org/coilgallerysearch.html
The source for the above code may be found here:
Thanks Senocular, your code whips the llama’s ass
As always, any additional feedback is appreciated
