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Great talk from Mario Klingemann on fun with Image Processing

I always appreciate people who can make math fun, especially image processing math. Tools like Pixel Bender or Processing are too intimidating for folks because of the “scary math.”

Andrew Glassner had a great talk at Siggraph a few years ago where he went through some of the material from his column in Computer Graphics. It not only made the math less intimidating, it was also inspiring! I saw Mario Klingemann give a great talk at Adobe MAX this year that also made math fun and inspiring. Luckily Adobe has been posting the talks from MAX on adobe.tv, so you can see it.

AdobeTV – Here Be Pixels by Mario Klingemann

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Nice visualization from the NYT

New York Times Movie Graphic

Conveying data that spans more than 2 dimensions is classically difficult. In fact, successful representations like the map of Napoleon’s march from CJ Minard are celebrated. I saw this Flash thing from the New York Times representing box office returns from Hollywood films and I was really impressed how nice a job it did showing some disparate things in a cohesive way. Worth taking a look at if you think about this kind of stuff.

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Flash Player 10 Astro Sneak Peek at MAX Chicago 2007 Keynote

Jumpcut – Flash Player 10 Astro Sneak Peek at MAX Chicago 2007 Keynote

The last part is my favorite part of course!

via Aral Balkan

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Flektor demo from salon.com

Flektor: RULE YOUR MEDIA

What I like about these new web-based media tools isn’t just that they make it easier for normal people to do media editing, but they really show the power of Flash/Flex in a mind-blowing way.

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Creating a paypal button for Flex 2

I may post my source of this eventually, but for now I’m just wondering if there is a better way to do this. I spent a long time searching, but had zero luck. The existing mechanisms to integrate a paypal button into a flash site require the URLLoader class which doesn’t exist in AS3.

After spending a bunch of time searching the flex and paypal sites, I was getting really discouraged.

Finally, I came up with this hack:

I use the ExternalInterface to “shell out” to javascript where I create the form that paypal needs dynamically in Javascript and then submit it (also dynamically). It works, but it really seems like a hack to me.

Is there a better way to do this?

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icons icons icons!

wow, this is a great resource

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some more thoughts on web 2.0 DIY business

This article about moms growing their own businesses as photographers thanks to the new generation of inexpensive high-end digital SLRs got me thinking again about the opportunities. Not just the ones for the moms, but also the businesses mentioned in the article, BluDomain and BigBlackBag who are small start-ups catering to the DIY-folks and have their own interesting (and inexpensive to start) business models.

Finally, this article on advertainment (also from NYT) reminded me how the driving force financially behind most creative businesses is the advertising agency. This is a bit of a tougher market to get into for individuals, but little studios can get attention for themselves, starting small, and get into this business eventually.

Then again, why do work for hire if you don’t have to?

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Some flexy goodness for your Monday night

Free vector web page elements [part 1, part 2, part 3]

Scale Nine: Articles, Samples and How-Tos

Designing Flex2 Skins

Ted on Flex: Component Resources

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two different approaches to using motion graphics to aid in storytelling

Lawrence Lessig – Copyright Policy: Orphaned Works Reform
Master Plan – About the power of Google

Both of these pieces are doing something similar. They are using motion graphics and typeography to help illustrate and enliven spoken word material. I think that the Master Plan piece is better visually (which is admittedly much easier at 3:15 instead of 36:00. However, the content of Lawrence Lessig’s piece is far more effective if only because he is much more experienced at speaking and he is much more knowledgeable about his topic. It definitely shows how substance can beat out style, but it also shows how compelling voices and messages are really the most important part of a informational, educational or political piece.

The Lawrence Lessig film is below:

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Another Flex photo-editing app

picnik test imagePicnik – “edit photos the easy way, online in your browser”

This is cute. Not insanely featured, but a nice proof of concept for Flex. Maybe ’cause I write image processing code for a living, these things are really interesting to me. This would be a great Apollo shareware app. I also like that they are in Seattle. Maybe the local startup market is improving.

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