A Source Of Inspiration

Just two links i ⁽¹⁾ would like to share with you.

The first is a website done by Trevor Harman, and it features a cool concept: What would you do with that extra day every four years.

it’s Project leap year so go out there and say what you’d do with an extra 24 hours.

For the second link i’d advise you to get some 3D glasses and if you are a flash developer with a special taste for Papervision you have the source included.

It’s done by Ben Stucki a Flex Consultant you can read more in his blog and get the source for the project there too .

This is a guest post by Hugo Matinho, our new Flash Developer at Draftfcb Portugal. You can check his blog or follow him on Twitter.

Things have been quite busy lately here at the office (besides the moving and remodeling works). One of the things that lowered my usual rate of shared inspirations is Chevrolet Tattoo, a tactical website developed in the last month.

Last year i spent my reasonable share of time showcasing Papervision. Unfortunately, no suitable project or briefing came that was adequate to apply the framework. As you shouldn’t t use a new technology just because it’s there, the right amount of relevance to use Papervision came with a campaign for Matiz Tattoo.

The main objective was to showcase a catalog of vehicles, with 15 available patterns. With few resources available, the idea came: what if we used Papervision3D and allowed users to customize their own model online?

So, there you have it, my perfect excuse to use the Flash 3d framework on a online campaign (in Portuguese only):

Have fun and create your own Tattoo (Cria a tua Tatoo).

URL: http://www.chevrolettattoo.com/
Client: Chevrolet Portugal (GM)
Agency: Draftfcb Portugal
Interactive Team: Armando Alves, Bruno Duarte, Hugo Cervantes and Luis Castro.

Flugtag Flight Lab is a immersive Papervision experience, developed by LessRain for Red Bull.

You get to hack your plane in a virtual hangar, cutting, painting and applying you own patterns. In the end, you flap your wings to control your creation in a 3D environment.

Red Bull gives you wings!

It’s all over the news:

Microsoft Makes $44.6 Billion Bid for Yahoo

Microsoft said Friday that it would offer $44.6 billion for Yahoo, the ailing search giant. The surprise offer of $31 a share represents a 62 percent premium to Thursday’s clsoing share price. Yahoo shareholders could elect to receive either cash or stock.
(…)

“This proposal represents a compelling value realization event for your shareholders”, Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, said in a letter to Yahoo’s board sent Thursday.

My take? Now there’s no excuse for EU blocking on the Doubleclick acquisition by Google. Tough competition ahead.

Source:Pedro and Hugo

2008 is really shaping up with events in Portugal. After finding out that master designer Paula Scher from Pentagram, is scheduled to speak at ESAD the next 4th of May, today the gang from RIApt announced the first portuguese Flexcamp.

The conference about Adobe Flex and Adobe Air is heading to Portugal (at ISCTE) on the next February 19th, after a full year touring in the US.

Planned speakers:

• Serge Jespers, Adobe Systems
• Enrique Duvos, Adobe Systems
• Carlos Rovira, Flex and Flash integration
• João Fernandes, BlazeDS and LCDS
• João Saleiro, Connecting Flex to LAMP backend using AMFPHP

Register here.

The newest release of Flash Player 9 Update 3 comes with a companion website: Adobe Flash On. To fully experience it, it’s advisable to install the latest plugin version, easily accessible with an upgrade option (or choose the standart mode).

Agency Credits: BigSpaceship

On screen, you can choose amongst a shuffle of video thumbnails, with a HD option delivering a full-screen experience on high resolution, powered by the new H.264 codec.

The Flash Player Update 3brings some impressive features (that i’ve pointed before), such as new H.264/HE-AAC video codecs and a performance boost.

Now all I need is some generous bandwidth and some fiber-optic connection to fire my cable company and store the TV for good. I’ll stick with the projector for series and good movies.

How about a LCD Soundsystem powered lava lamp? Well, that’s exactly what Park Studio did for Nokia Trends Lab.

The site has some groovy music visualizations, using the Actionscript 3 SoundMixer class. And altough i don’t understand a word of Russian, it seems to be a localized version of the global Nokia Trends Lab, “a physical and virtual hub of mobility experiences”.

No, it’s not another Nike campaign. It’s the latest endeavor of Erik Natkze, now a Adobe evangelist for the AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) platform, a cross operating system runtime that allows to build and deploy applications using Flash, HTML and Javascript technologies to the desktop.

The technology is usually associated with Rich Internet Applications, but we now have the chance of seeing Natzke using AIR in the same way Joshua Davis did for the web, and coding beautiful generative art.

Using Flash CS3, PNGEncoder and AIR, Natzke takes photos and transforms them into artwork based on the original photograph.

The technology was showcased in the US, with a onAIR tour, and is probably heading to Europe one of these days, highlighting applications such as Pownce or SalesForce.