GUYA.NET

A new application from Aviary, Dodo, the web-based time machine:

Then you might wanna check this.

I should have know by now that the Then in the previous sentence is implicit

I just got my own time-zone, look at the photo below:

My time zone is GMT-1 when most of my co-workers are GMT+2. Actually this started as some kind of a joke on my expense but I like it a lot, it clears things up to others. Don’t ask if I’ve arrived yet just look at the clocks, it’s not even morning in my region

You always hear about these stuff, a website has been hacked and its landing page has been changed by the hacker. But, what are the chances you'll get to see that, as it happens, on a large website.
It was 48 hours ago. I went to checkout weeworld.com, a cool avatars creators which recently released a nice new feature for theire avatars called weeRooms.

To my surprise this is the page that was loaded:

After rechecking that I got the URL right, I opened the website in IE as well and got the valid weeworld website. This likely happened, and I'm only guessing here, cause their load-balancer served me with a different weeworld server, one that hasn't been hacked yet. When I refreshed a minute later, this server gave me the hacker page as well. It gave the feeling that this is a hack in progress and the hacker is going through all of their servers and changing the landing pages (index.aspx).

IT try to fight back:

Server is down:

Website is down:

It took another few minutes and the website was completely down (probably by weeworld IT). It took a few more hours and the weeworld website was up and running again. Congrats to the IT for getting a hold of this hack and fixing it in a short time which probably felt like eternity.

I guess it's satisfactory for the hacker to hack a relatively large website like weeworld. But, what with these 1990's styled hacker landing pages?! Don't they want to update it to something more contemporary? Something more Web2.0'ish with gradients and reflections and a little bit of Ajax, or better yet write it all in Flex. A guy who can baffle the minds of full security crews can't come out with an appropriate web page? The same way developers became design / usability aware interactive developers, I think we should have also usability aware hackers.

The hacker landing page also included two prank scripts that i don't think even work since windows 98.

This VB script is supposed to open your CD drive. VS script?! What is the computability of VB script?!

This Javascript is suppose to shake your browser:

Both scripts look like they were created by some program.

I'm glad that weeworld.com is up and running again and probably in a more secure way, check them out they have some cool stuff.

Apparently iskorpitx is a famous Turkish hacker who's been doing this for a long time, he even got a promo video in youtube. Is that a Web2.0 hacker or what?!

There is a claim that there isn't enough serious Flex applications out there. I've recently had the honor to preview an impressive one, and also to conduct a short interview with Dima Gutzeit the Project Manager of this app, named Mailvision Hostlynx 2.0.
This is another one for you to showoff when arguing for the right technology for your next application, currently there are only some information and screenshots, but, I'll let you know when a full demo is publicly available.

Q: What is Hostlynx 2.0?

A: Hostlynx 2 is the next generation of MailVision Class 5 SoftSwitch for VOIP telephony (SIP protocol). The product allows a system provider to setup a telephony network and offer advanced telephony services to its subscribers (IPCentrex). System management of the solution is based on Flex+Webservices.

Q: Who is the audience of this application?

A: Service providers and corporates who wishes to enter the fast evolving VOIP market.

Q: Why do you think Flash is the right technology for this project?

A: During the research for the project we have considered several technologies, including various AJAX toolkits, JSF and etc. The following convinced us to go with Flash/Flex: Flash player is installed on 98% of desktop computers so in majority of cases it will not require any client side installations. We wanted to deliver the best user experience we could and flash allowed us to do that.

Q: Generally, how is this app structured, client, backend, architecture etc'?

A: Our application uses webservices to communicate between client and server, where Flex application is used as a webservices client and JAXWS on the server side. When we started working with Flex (2.0) its webservices implementation was very weak and basic, so we had to create many workarounds on the server side to compensate. Flex 2.0.1 Hotfix 2 changed that, since we were part of the beta program for Hotfix2 and Adobe staff were kind enough to listen to our requests and enhance the webservices implementation.

Q: Have you used Cairngorm?

A: Yes, we do. Our application uses MVC, and this is done by using Cairngorm (2.0). ServiceLocator is responsible for all the webservices related stuff - sending requests and etc.

Q: How many people worked on the project?

A: Project development involved 2-3 developers and one designer. Project duration was around one year.

Q: Did any of the developers had previous experience with Flash or Flex?

A: That was one the "negative" factors when we decided on technology, since none of our developers had any previous experience not with Flash nor ActionScript. The learning curve was not a short one, since all the developers were from Java/JSP world.

Q: Will there be an online demo of the app?

A: We are on Beta 2 release, and a full featured demo will be available as soon as the application is stable enough.

Q: Do you have plans for creating similar apps?

A: I believe that the majority of future web/desktop projects of Mailvision will use Flex/AIR.

Q: What do you think is the future of the Flash platform and RIA in general?

A: Flex rocks :-).

See a bunch of crowded geeks these days?! There is a good chance that Apple's Iphone is involved. And the first thing that geeks with blogs do is to check theirs on it. I'm proud to announce that my blog is almost completely compatible with the Iphone. But, seriously, while the web experience with the Iphone is the best I've seen from such a small device, I don't understand how can apple call it a not "watered down" version of the Internet without Flash support and not a full Javascript support. There is a fairly good JS support on this scaled, proclaimed to be full, Safari, but, not like what we already used to get from latest generation of browsers. Hopefully these issues will be fixed with the first update.

Screenshots:

No, not another conspiracy theory about Microsoft, and not another rant about Silverlight, just my latest, somewhat delirious, job search. Few months back I've sent my resume to only one HR company. In my resume I've clearly stated Flash as my top skill, and oddly enough my first call was from Microsoft. It's not exactly Redmond but Microsoft Israel also has it's standards, I guess. I surprisedly asked the person on the other side. - Microsoft is interested in Flash ?! - You'll be surprised... he replayed. Microsoft, as expected looks like a very nice place to work in, with extremely nice people, there were also some open XBox and joystick boxes that were probably being plugged somewhere. Though there were many motivations, I had to move on, since this was my first offer I had to check some others.

I was overwhelmed by the amount of offers I got, but really got surprised when I've asked for a salary which wasn't that modest at all and got offered more then I've asked for. After that I've continued to raise the numbers with every job interview and was still getting the flattering OK. It reached to the point when I was uncomfortable to name a figure and felt the need to deeply apologize before doing so.

Another interesting aspect is that even if the company currently isn't using Flash at all, they seem interested in this "new" cool technology that no "serious" developer seem to know much about. It goes something like "we're also interested in doing some stuff in flash" or "do you know, what is it called, Flex... ?" and then I start babbling about Flex 2 and Flash 9. Just give me a chance and I wont stop :D.

Obviously it seems like the most interesting places to work in are these risky startups. You can sometimes get to these by using something like jobs@companyname.com. At the young companies there is probably no HR department and this email address is routed to the CTO or even the founders. See an interesting startup on techcrunch in your area? just send 'em your resume to the jobs address.

At the end it become too stressful to handle, with too many good options and my ex-employer pushing all of my sentimental buttons in order for me to stay. I'm glad I've made the right decision and signed up with JAJAH, an exciting Austrian-Israeli-American VOIP 2.0 / Web 2.0 startup. While my original role is an AJAX developer, we're already looking at ways we can leverage the Flash technology to our needs.

You may call this Bubble 2.0 and you'll be somewhat right, but theres a big difference this time it is much more realistic. For once, we now have a deadpool.

Designed like a game website, this new Microsoft website shows a nice use of the Flash technology. It got it all, from Flash Video to scripted animation, sound and transitions.
check it out...

You might call it Pimp if you want it to sound cooler, but all in all pikipimp.com will help you make fun of people by uglying their images. Check out how I've uglified this beautiful model. You won't see too many masterpieces coming from there, maybe also because it isn't meant for creating works of art. The "Pimping" is easily done and is accessible for everyone. You simply upload your photo and immediately you can start to drag elements like beards and glasses on it.

I think, that not so long ago, maybe a year ago, it was unlikely that such a website will emerge. Before the Javascript-goldenage no one would have dare to use such a complex Javascript which now looks very natural to use. Also the hype around such a site wouldn't be as massive, these days it is mentioned in many of the leading Web 2.0 / technical blogs like Techcrunch and Go2Web2.

While it was neatly done with javascript, and I've read the author mentioned Ruby, some apps are just ment to be flashed. For example, rotating the elements is done by the server and suffer from a long unintuitive delay, Flash could easily handle these rotations on the client. Also, the stacking of the elements is done by setting the HTML div's position to absolute, that's the only way z-index can be applied in HTML, on the other hand, your image is embeded along with the relative site structure, so, if you resize your page your creation get scrambled. There are many more improvements that Flash could have handled, I won't have to tell you everything, when every stupid innovation is worth millions of dollars and can be called a Start-Up these days lol.

Get piki-pimping...

PikiPimp Interface

Every element has it's own controls

Original photo

Pimped (uglified) photo

Mr Paul Neave is not the next trash-TV host, he is a "serial Flash fettler and interactive designer", or at least thats what he calls himself. He is a Flash experimentalist who creates fun and usefull Flash experiences. Few years back it was some high quality open source flash games, an improved version can be found here, sadly the source is not availble anymore. Then came the flash planetarium a cool and accurate way to examine the stars from within the browser. Last year it was flashearth which need no introduction.
And now, his latest experiment is neave.tv a cool replacement for your television. Based on video services like youtube and google video, the improvment is that you can lean back and enjoy the show in full sceen and without the need for you to do anything. Which mean you can be a couch potato again, only this time the shows are in much higher quality
check it out, neave.tv

If you go to download Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer beta (shorten that name plz !), you will probably stumble at the "MSDN Flash" banner. Actually the full banner text is "Register for MSDN Flash eNewsletter.

So, did MS also discovered the Flash platform, and she is so excited, that she's publishing an electronic-newsletter about it ? Or maybe it's an upcoming merger between MS and Adobe ?! Or maybe a world peace ?. After clicking on the banner it all become clear "All of Microsoft's Developer News in One E-mail". Oh, so you meant News-Flash, you funny little Microsoft ;), are you tring to fool us there, you crazy you.

IMHO this is no coincidence. I'm not sure what's MS want to achieve here, might be just to irritate Adobe or may be she wants that people that will search for "the new Flash" will find her Sparkle, hence also the url is - msdn.microsoft.com/flash. Well your Sparkle is very nice but it isn't Flash.

I remember about 13 years ago I've told a friend of mine, who is an airbrush artist and a photographer, that untill 2005 all photos will be digital. He didn't belive it. Today, even Canon stoped manufacturing film cameras. And how I told everybody that the y2k bug will be, much ado about nothing, they didn't belive me, and spent billions on fixing this ghosty bug (ok, ok, you knew it too..). Now, why can't my superiors understand when I tell 'em that it'll take some time, few years IMHO, untill we can develop in WPF/E and get reasonable compatibility ?. They, my superiors, don't even want to upgrade to Flash 8 cuz they think they gonna jump straight to Microsoft Expression. That's just aint gonna heppen that instantly if at all it will. Even if you'll decide on totally switching to Microsoft WPF/E over Adobe Flash it'll be a gradational process. Some of our clients will still demand that we'll use the Flash platform. Either because of compatibility or due to a design issue. Designers will be the last to make the switch. No matter what I say, they can't understand it, with their zombie hollow eyes they persist to recite "Mmmiiiicccroossoofftt...."

Don’t get me wrong - being a geek I’m excited by any new technology, all the more so about something as cool as the Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer (that's a long name :)). However we've got to be patient and not jump to any fanatical conclusions.

It's slightly beyond my grasp to predict the far future of what I call the "RIA Wars". But, I'm pretty sure about the near future or round-one as we might call it. After round-one Macromedia, hmm.., Adobe will retain it's web dominance with it's Flash platform. But, Microsoft will make wonders for Windows Desktop Application with it's WPF where Adobe Apollo will hardly touch it.

And don't give me that Microsoft number 3 bs (pro-Microsoftians says it always strike gold on the third version). Thats just your human nature, the need to format everything into a similar patterns. Lots of things can happen until MS ver 3, Flash-12 for instance. You know Adobe always strike gold with version 12 :D.

That's mostly my opinion, you should have your own opinion, Just don't numbly recite one or the other.

Haha...
Just before I went to change this post status from Draft to Published, Lately, another one of my Flash related prediction to my direct superior/boss came out true. :D. Which gave me that annoying, I told you so.., smile:
We use an Active-x on most of our websites. One purpose of this Active-x is to save photos on the user's local machine and then integrate it into the Flash gui. When the new Flash 8 security model showed up, the option of loading local files (image, text, xml, etc) into a Flash file running from a server, was removed completely. That caused portions of our websites to not function properly. The idea we came up with was to load these local images into html divs, and to integrate it seamlessly into the whole website. While it was tiresome work, the result is good, the user won't notice the fancy Flash gui he's using is partially html. The new Flash 8 security caused some serious debate between me and my boss. He said that this Flash technology is not stable and we can't trust macromedia for not making such future changes and break our code again. I, for my part, said that: While this update might be annoying, it was a necessary update, Macromedia have reached a satisfactory level of security and that kind of updates won't be repeated. The whole idea of integrating with user local photos that way is problematic. And also, it's reasonable to belive that Microsoft will implement some similar securities into their next Internet Explorer 7.
Indeed, in the latest IE7 release the same security of, no access to local files from a server page, new sandboxes and cross-domain, and much more, has arrived to IE7. So we gonna have to put all of the user's photos on the server from now. But we're aint the only ones who gonna suffer, tones of websites will resist to function properly. Now, who can you trust ?!

Just another "I told you so..." to the fanatic pro-microsoftians.

Macromedia Director has been declared dead and mourned over long before most of us switched to consuming solid food, but he always retained his strength as a fearsome hound. Even today, with the rising of Apollo and WPF this old dog doesn't cease to amaze me. After we saw this amazing photo gallery, it is time to get amazed by this new (at least for me) shockwave 3D website: the Roland Garros PointTracker. This beautiful app let you follow the 2006 French Open in realtime-3D and in real time.

Check it out.

David Matthew, the author behind Informit Flash Reference Guide, has interviewed Aric Cohen from Microsoft. Aric is leading the development team building the WPE...

The Interview

I was surprised to find that http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna/ was blocked from my work computer. After some research I found that my system admin installed a new product from esafe. This product uses a ridiculous dictionary with thousands of words you never even heard of. Any site containing one or more of the words get blocked immediately. After some more research I found that the word getting blocked on the MXNA is 'bitch' , obviously, it's the bitchwhocodes blog. A fine and decent piece of internet ;). After some convincing I got my admin to remove the 'bitch' word from the list. So now I can access the MXNA but still not the bitchwhocodes site. How many more dirt and malicious stuff you got in there girl? ;). Anyhow this is a real pain in the a$$ (hope I won't get blocked for that one) I'm currently thinking of a solution. Surfing through a proxy won't help cause the d@mn thing sits on the winsock and analyze everything that enters the computer. A proxy that encrypts the data won't help either cause any kind of encrypted data get blocked. I came with the idea of useing a proxy that has the same word dictonary and knows to change the words to a non offending kind. I "only" need to find one that do this or install one myself.

Anyhow, what kept me connected to the flash world is this fine tool by flashMattic. named: MXNA posts feeder. This tool uses the MXNA webservice and somehow only the offending posts got blocked as opposed to the browser that was blocked completely.
Check it out (requires latest flash player 8.5 / 9)

If anyone knows how to overcome the esafe problem, please let me know.

If you read my last post you know by now what is the Easiest way to embed Flash inside Wordpress, you do that using the KFE plugin. There's a new version that address the issue described at the end of the last post And more, mainly compatibility with other wp plugins and RSS validity. If you're using Wordpress or Textpattern and you want to embbed flash in your posts you need this plug.

KFE ver 1.1 April 03 2006 

 As a biker I feel obligated to show this video (right click and "Save Target As...").

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is a very welcome initiative from the "Uk Department for Transport". Check out theire site.

I want a blog, but why?
What will I write about?
Macromedia Flash is one of my main interests these days, so should I make another flash blog?! there are already like a billion out there and some of it are unbelievably interesting. These questions and more, I wont tire you with, are flooding my mind as I come to write my first blog post. I thought that the Wordpress installation will take some significant time and so I'll have time to think about what to post, but after a minute I was staring at my fully functional blog. It's still in its default design and that's also an excuse, first I'll finish my original design and then I'll start posting...
Then I came to my sensses and I indulged myself with one of the greatest marketing phrases of all time. Whenever someone come to me and say she whants to do something but she first need to: lose some weight, get an haircut, finish school, finish college, get married, find a job, lose the job, get a cat, just sleep for a while, wait for the kids to leave the house, wait for the born baby, etc. whenever it's obvious there is not a rational reason to not do it beside our hesitant human nature. I tell her to cut the cr*p and "just do it". As you know advices are much easier to give then to take. But this time I managed to take my own advice and I "just did it". So here it is, my first blog post. hopefuly more will come.

I always give credit to Nike for the phrase, like someone don't know it's theirs. These days, thanks to the mighty google I can give credit to the individual who claimed it, his name is Dan Wieden.

I also came across this amazing "Just Do It" commercial it's from last year but I never saw it before.