Have you ever wanted to know how you can create your own video hosting site allowing users to upload video, automatically convert it to FLV, and display it for the world to see? A recent post at Daniel's Random Mutterings (DRM - how clever) explains exactly how to do this with open source tools. Using a Djano CMS system, FFMpeg for the FLV encoding, FLVtools2 for writing meta information, and FlowPlayer for embedding the SWF file you'll have everything you need to get started. The code is pretty straight forward and a great starting point. Now go forth and create your new video distribution empire.

MDM Multimedia is celebrating its fourth birthday by hosting a Flash contest...actually TWO contests. They've set it up as a Designer Vs. Developer contest, but that's really not the case. It's really two different contests: one for designers and one for developers (a distinction that I've never really liked...I know that there has to be some division of duties in a business workflow, but the implication that a designer is the "creative" person and the developer is the "technical" person just doesn't sit right with me, nor has it ever been that clean-cut in my experience...end rant...).

The designer contest is for a marketing campaign and the developer contest is more application oriented. The new version of MDM's Zinc supports Flash Player 9, AS3 and Flex 2, so the idea that you didn't use for the Flex Derby would be a great fit here.

The prize packages top out around $1,000 worth of goodies, so take a look-see and show 'em your stuff!

This wickely-twisted Flash design will leave your skin tingling. The navigation can be a bit confusing but it is still fun to explore the site. I'm not quite sure what the site is about, but it is very imaginative, to say the least. My favorite part is the twisty music position bar at the lower right. What do you think? Post a comment in the section below.

P.S. What is up with this creepy girl?

Is this my latest piece of Apple hardware? Nope, it's iFizzle.com which has done an impressive job re-creating the OS X interface in Flash. His site features the standard dock, a working iPhoto app for his pictures, text edit for his blog, and even iTunes playing music where you can change the song. To top it off, you can change the frame from a Mac Book Pro, cinema display, Mac Book (black or white), and an iMac. Really creative use for Flash. Go check it out.

3D Stereogram is a neat little app that lets you make your own magic eye pictures. You start off at a blank canvas with various different pen tools. I don't know if there are any tricks to creating a good one so I just scribbled around. Next hit done and it will generate your magic eye with the necessary code to embed it elsewhere on the web. Not knowing how to exactly see the magic, I can't tell you if it works or not. Have a look at what I did and give it a try yourself.

Hoss Gifford has figured out a way to dynamically resize a Flash movie embedded in an HTML page. The practical application of this is now you can have your movie resize based on how much content there is to display. Being able to scroll with the browsers scroll bar instead of creating a separate flash scrollbar is the chief benefit to this technique. To accomplish this Gifford uses the swfObject by Geoff Stearns. Hoss has kindly made available the source code for this project under a creative commons license in hopes that someone can improve it. Check out the demo to see the resizer in action and download all the necessary files in one convenient zip.

After my post last week on the Pollack piece, I was thinking about the whole copyright issue again. As a budding web designer, I learned a lot from viewing the source code on sites that I liked, and I hope that others have viewed my code and learned from things I've done. Once I got into ColdFusion, the learning curve followed a slightly more esoteric bent. You can't view the compiled HTML source of a ColdFusion page and see the code under the hood. so you have to seek out tutorials, books, or kind developers who are willing to share their secrets. Flash is even more of a black box as far as the browser is concerned. All you get when viewing HTML source is the name of the movie. We all know there are decompilers out there, but you're never going to get the experience of seeing the original code even with those.

Coming from a background in education, I have a lot of unresolved issues here. For me, knowledge is a precious thing and it should be shared. This is the basis of the education itself. As a designer and developer though, I need to earn a living from my work. A delicate balancing act to say the least. I've always tried to follow a principle which in college I dubbed "beer karma." You let your friends drink your beer now because it will always come back to you later when you don't have any.

Recently, Microsoft released an Add-in for Office that allows you to embed Creative Commons licenses into your Office documents. Adobe supports Creative Commons through the XMP standard. Last summer, Mike Chambers posted a View Source for Flash Resources extension. These may not be the answers, but they at least start to address some of the questions we face when dealing with these issues.

Even if you aren't quite ready to share your source code with anyone who looks at your movies, share your knowledge and experience. Join one of the many Flash bulletin boards (the Adobe Flash Forums or FlashKit for example) and give to the community. You might be surprised at what you get back in return.

Miltos Manetas has put together a nice time waster for your Monday afternoon. Create your own Jackson Pollock drip painting without all the mess at JacksonPollack.org. Great use of the Drawing API! I can't wait to show this to my 7-year-old...but I get to play with it for a while first...

Note: Click to change paint colors.

[via Jack Nack]

Added Note (7.6.06): Seems the authorship of JacksonPollock.org is questionable. See the comment below for some background and Stamen's site for the original.

Apollo, the code-name for Adobe's Universal Client, is stating to pick-up steam it seems. I'm sure that the folks over at Adobe have been working their butts off on it, but few details have been forthcoming. In the last month though, that's beginning to change. A big article on c|net, "Flash to jump beyond the browser," in early May really gave the best overview so far. More recently, John Dowdell pointed out an article from PDFZone on a preso at PDF2006 that speaks to the document community's thoughts on such a client. And just yesterday, I saw that Mike Chambers will be offering a workshop at September's Flashforward conference called, "Building Your First Apollo Application."

Macromedia Central was a really interesting move outside the browser, but Apollo is shaping up to be in a totally different sphere, not just outside of the browser, but across devices. I just hope that Adobe keeps it svelte so that it moves seamlessly across those devices and isn't so bloated that its actual uses are limited.

If you missed the MAX 2005 presentation about the potentials of Apollo, check it out here (Day 1, "Experience Vision" segment).

If you missed Flashforward 2006 Seattle and you can't wait till September's Flashforward 2006 Austin, get your Flash fix listening to Flashforward podcasts! A lot of great interviews with some really talented Flash folks: Jonathan Blank of Wildform, Andrew Wright of Smilebox, James Paterson of Presstube, Branden Hall of Automata Studios...just to name a few. So tune in, and get ready for Flashforward 2006 Austin!

[via Mike Chambers]

Regular readers know that I live in New Orleans. It's been nine months since Hurricane Katrina and the failings of our levee system laid waste to my home town. Even now, we're still dealing with the after effects. At least I'm one of the lucky ones. I get to live in my own house. Too many of my fellow citizens can't say the same.

The online version of the New Orleans Times-Picayune published an animated Flash map this week that show how the city was flooded during the course of August 29th. Now, this animation won't blow your socks off for its aesthetics (I could have done without the sound effects, especially in the continuous animation version) or its interactivity, but it might blow your mind when you see just how much of New Orleans took on water. Staff artist, Dan Swenson, did a great job using Flash to show the tragedy of events unfold over time. Sometimes I think we...I know I do personally...get caught up in the coolness factor of Flash. Swenson reminds us that you don't have to be flashy to use Flash as a great communication tool.

I've been thinking about the brouhaha a couple of weeks ago concerning Adobe's moves to protect their trademark of the Flash name. Geoff Stearns had to rename his FlashObject among other changes around. Maybe minor. After all, a rose by any other name...you get the point...but I'm wondering exactly where the dilution of Adobe trademarks really plays out? Is it with the developers that use the authoring tools and the technology? or is it with the client that we build things for? or is it with the end consumer of the things we all build?

I think we developers are fairly savvy about the tools we use. So I'm not worried to much about us. The biggest problem here is that the word "flash" is so generic that without qualification (e.g. "Macromedia Flash"), you're just as likely to get an exhibitionist site in a web search as a useful development site!

Sean Moore over at the eponymously named ActionScriptCheatSheet.com has put together some great single page cheat sheets for ActionScript. Currently, he's posting sheets for AS3 (so far, he's posted sheets for Top Level Classes, Packages and the Display Package), but there's an older AS2 sheet as well if you're still not on the beta bandwagon.

Download 'em and print 'em! And keep 'em close by! And don't forget to send a note to Sean and tell him thanks!

[via Mike Chambers]

Last week, Robert Cringely posted an interesting story (one that I will emphasize right here and now is complete an utter speculation: nothing, I repeat, nothing you read here is grounded in fact, so don't go throwing yourself out a window or buying Adobe/Apple stock by the handfuls based on this...depending on how you feel about it...) suggesting Apple's near-future business strategy. With release of the Boot Camp Public Beta, you can now run Windows on an Intel-based Macintosh.

Cringely analyzes how this positions Apple to confront Microsoft in a much bigger way than it has in years. Mostly, he spends the article discussing how Apple can compete with MS Office (pointing out Apple's support of Open XML as a document standard as a savvy move in the right direction), but toward the bottom of the page, he also points out Apple's reliance on Adobe as a major developer of applications for their OS. To alleviate this dependence and ensure continued dominance (though I think I would question the dominance at this point in time myself) in the graphics market, Cringely suggests that Apple just buy Adobe!

I wonder why Cringely didn't make a little more out of Adobe's document business as a potential competitor for Office in and of itself. It seems like the whole Acrobat side of things might get Apple a fairly large step of the way toward competing with Microsoft.

Crazier things have happened (who would have thought 18 months ago that Adobe would now own Macromedia?!), I guess. For the conspiracy theorists out there, Rigel has just enough to get the saliva glands going (the entire Aperture team laid off?!), but I'm not going to hold my breath here...just keep my eyes open and always look over my shoulder...

Friday You Tube released a new player face for its video. They are incouraging users to check out the new player and tell them what they think. I like the player more than the older one, but its not as 'pretty.' You Tube added needed features including a scroller that can be easily selected and moved to jump through the playing video, a volume control, and a time stamp. Improvements I would like to see include the release of an API so developers can embed You videos in their projects and even adjust the player to add of remove functionality. Plus I would like to skin the player with various colors and designs. They could even use an API to promote the site to content providers for targetted use on sites. Maybe E! could start embedding E! content with custom skins and active dynamic Flash content.

The video played at the link below is from Bruce Springsteen's set at Jazz Fest in New Orleans this past weekend.