Emak Mafu Labs Blog

Hey

Since the release of firefox 3, some of our sites have been a little temperamental as we use swfaddress heavily in our production. This blog seems to be the place to solve this problem, but i had to fafe about getting the uncompressed version in order to add the code - thought i would post the amended code: swfaddressFF3_fix

i haven’t had time to compress it again - definitely needed as without javascript compression it doubles in size

Hey,

Here at emakmafu we abuse google apps to the max - they are an integral part of our administration. One thing I have been longing for for ages is a way to have my mobile hook up with google calendar and do a two way sync. I had a look about a year ago when i got my nokia n95, and the only solution was to sysnc with ical, then ical to google, (ball-ache!) so i dropped that, as that’s just adding a whole new calendar to the problem… I just checked again, and discovered www.goosync.com. Its a two tier service, basic calendar syncing is free, with the option to upgrade to take care of syncing contact and tasks, autosync + loads more.

I was up and running within 5 minutes! well chuffed! (iphone compatible too!)

Couldn’t believe my eyes today when i found this little nugget, as a mac only company, this is a huge help! now that rusty unmanned PC will have to work twice as hard for its place in the office!!

check it our: www.charlesproxy.com/

Wordpress have just launched an iPhone app that I’m testing right here, right now! I think I could get used to this. Go to the App Store and do a search for Wordpress to find it.

Hey,

Having just completed a project using vector vision, i cant wait to use it again! We have had a lot of positive feedback for the way it looks. I would recommend to anyone wanting to use fonts in 3D that this is the way forward.

I still cant get over the way mathieu-badimon over at five3d creates fonts to be rendered by the engine. You have to download a flash panel from his site which you pass in the font you want a 3d version of, and it creates a class with all the typographical meta data about each glyph needed to allow flash to draw with the standard ‘lineTo’ function each letter with the correct letter spacing: check out this class: HouschkaLight.as tis pretty amazing stuff!

Check out the photography agency site that we just did that I used this in trayler.co.uk

You wake up on Sunday morning, reach for the newspaper beside your bed, press the update button, and the latest news streams in. It looks like a newspaper, feels like a newspaper, but hidden within the paper is digital ink and a wi-fi connection.

Digital ink has always fascinated me, and I think we are 5 to 10 years away from seeing it go mainstream. The obvious companies to push it to market will be Amazon, a publisher, or a newspaper. The business model could be that you subscribe to the service and get the hardware for free.

An outfit called plastic logic has some cool working prototypes that you can see here. Classic case of great technology presented really badly. Back to the future.

As the power requirements for such a device would be relatively low it could be powered by movement. The amount of paper saved by these devices would be huge, as well as the energy saved in hauling printed material around the world.

The first phase would be a monochrome image, but eventually these devices will be full colour with video and audio. The latter could be a disturbance on the tube so you can listen to stories on your wi-fi headphones.

And the reason for such a device? As our lives become more and more intertwined with technology we will inevitably yearn for the lo-fi days. The only problem is that the world will be moving too fast for that. A newspaper will be out of date before it gets tot the news stand. So we will start to disguise technology. Flashy, chrome gadgets will be replaced by devices that blend into our surroundings.

I love this type of pointless interaction that is so engaging and can keep you entertained for ages; I spent at least 10 mins drawing lines with this app.

Basically Yellowtail by Golan Levin is a program that animates and repeats backwards whatever you draw with your mouse, the site describes it as:

Yellowtail is an interactive software system for the gestural creation and performance of real-time abstract animation. Yellowtail repeats a user’s strokes end-over-end, enabling simultaneous specification of a line’s shape and quality of movement. Each line repeats according to its own period, producing an ever-changing and responsive display of lively, worm-like textures.

If you like this type of thing have a look at some of the other interactive applets on the site and spend even more time moving your mouse around the screen for your own enjoyment.

I’ve been using Google Analytics for a while now and it’s really useful, I have used a dashboard widget to view some small amount of stats but it doesn’t have much functionality.

But now there is the Google Analytics AIR application built by Nicolas Lierman at Boulevart using Flex.

This 8min video I found via Serge Jespers blog has an interview with the team behind the application and it has some amazing features for the new version being released in March 2008, if you’re interested in Google Analytics it’s worth a watch or if your interested in a nicely skinned Flex application

Watch the video here: http://kitchencast.blip.tv/#606590

I have been using quicksilver on my mac now for over 4 months, and everybody i speak to raves about it just as much as i do. For those of you who dont know what it is, its a lightweight application that when in focus (usually through a simple keyboard shortcut), you can start typing a name of an application or file, and within the first few letters - its found it! press enter and it opens, just like that! it almost makes finder redundant!

Just thought i’d share my love for it - download it here blacktree.com/?quicksilver

So we got sent some t-shirts from Adobe last week, which was really exciting, apart from the fact that out of 15 there were 2 medium, 10 large, and 3 “goliath XXXXXL with extra cream please”. Me and Hugh are modeling the mens in the latter size…