Running a site where I syndicate content using the Flash player, I’ve often thought about how one could harness the computing power of all of the computers viewing the content. Obviously there are ethical issues, but putting those aside for a second, it’s fun to consider the possibilities. Especially with the new Flash Player 9 and increased performance, it’s possible to concieve of a project like BOINC (see also Seti@Home) using Flash as an alternate platform. They could even have an API and a library of user-submitted alternative visualizations.
read more »
It always takes me a while to wrangle up enough energy to try out a new IDE. There’s a lot of inertia there… I build up habits, and muscle memory as it were, as I get used to a certain way of doing things. So, following the recommendations of my respected colleagues, I decided to give FlashDevelop a spin.
read more »
I’ve been wanting to be able to create slideshows in Quicktime format on Slideroll for a long time. It isn’t easy because it would involve creating Quicktime files dynamically with a server-side script. I was looking around for a human-readable format that Quicktime understands when I encountered SMIL.
read more »
I have a bad feeling about this Javascript workaround for the IE Eolas Patch. This is only my opinion, but hey, I have a blog, so therefore I write. I don’t think it’s kosher for a couple of reasons. The first, and major one, is that using document.write to display primary content on a page is bad form.
read more »
I just added interactive timelines to my NPR news aggregator site. Now, when you browse to a tag page, you can see a timeline of stories related to that subject. It’s neat to see how an event’s coverage evolves over time. It’s a little rough, but pretty cool to see.
