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.

We have all been using for them for ages, but Adobe has finally released Flex 3 and Air. This is a huge release for the company, and solidifies their position at the forefront of the ever changing RIA landscape. Get them now!!!

Soon there will be no need for developers in the world of multimedia content for the web as Sprout Builder is soon to be released some time (the home age doesn’t give a date but I’m sure its some time in the future)

The site says that the builder allows novice and advanced users the “quick and easy creation of sophisticated multimedia content” there is also a video giving a quick overview of it’s features, it looks like there are some nice sharing and managing features.

I think it’s either created in flash or more likely Flex but the site doesn’t say.

On the other side I don’t think this will replace developers for of multimedia content for the web completely as I’m sure it’s limited and will provide a tool for people with very little knowledge to produce absolute rubbish, designers might be able to make some decent content or just prototypes.

Long live developers!

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

Involved in my work of Mafunet (a generic cms done in Flex), I found a big problem: when a user uploads an image to a website and this image has to have standard size, he needs to crop the image before uploading it with Photoshop or Gimp, or we have to automate the scaling of the image, losing some details and functionality. I have developed this component, that allows the user to load an image on the server, crop it on the client side, and save it again on the server with the name that I choose.

For the masking, I have changed the blend mode of the different layers. But I’m still having problems when you drag the image, it takes a little bit of time to understand the layout.

The steps…

1. I crop the image with the function of BitMapData copyPixels(bitmap data, rectangle, point).
2. Then, I encode the crop image with JPEGEncoder.
3. Once I have encoded the image, I create a post call, with the file and the name of the file that I want.
4. Once done, I download the file to see how it looks.

The example, here.

And that’s all, if someone needs source code, e-mail us.

Ok, so we had some complaints from people about version one. They couldn’t really see what it could be used for, so we strapped it to the excelent component from Quietly Scheming and hey presto! Check it out here…

p.s. you need a webcam to make it work!!! Failing that, just plug in a camcorder to your computer, and change your webcam settings within flash. For macs with built in isight, right click on flash, go to settings, select the camera settings and select USB.