Tony MacDonell - Teknision

Apollo Camp : Teknision + Finetune

2007-02-26T12:00:00.000-08:00

Everyone is talking about the upcoming ApolloCamp event in San Fransisco. Over at Actionscript Cheat Sheet, there is a good overview of the event.Well, Teknision is going to be attending, and we are going to be doing a little presentation. We will be showing the Apollo application we have developed for Finetune.com.Instead of going into detail about it here, I'll point you to a write up Ryan

FOWA in London!

2007-02-20T18:08:00.000-08:00

So what a few days it has been,I think I am just adjusting to the time difference here in London. Me and Paolo from Teknision are here attending the Future of Web Apps conference.Lots to talk about,First off, as my good comrade Stace(BitchWhoCodes) has announced, we have a new Teknision site up. The case study videos for Finetune and PermissionTV are pretty awesome, so if you have a chance check

Springbox Widget : Finetune

2007-02-08T14:30:00.000-08:00

Guess what! another Finetune player!This one is pretty cool though, it is a SpringBox Widget:Get this widget!We have been toiling away with the different widget environments, and our absolute fave is this one. A few months ago, I wrote about some initial playing we did with it, after deploying something on Springbox I feel much more positive about it.The really cool thing about this release is

Finetune : Apollo Sneak Peek

2007-02-05T10:04:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to echo this post made by Ryan Stewart on ZDNet, regarding a little sneak peek of a new offering from Finetune coming in the future. Ryan has a great write up on the Finetune service in general, but the focus here is a peek at the Finetune Desktop Player that runs in Apollo. He has added some screenshots in the gallery as well!

Backyard Jams

2007-02-01T06:28:00.000-08:00

Here's a little Music 2.0 for you.Backyard Jams is a business that was founded by Matt Kaplan. It is all about setting up "Rock and Roll Parties", and whether it be a kid's birthday, or a corporate team building event, he gets people up and rocking for a day.Matt Kaplan is a very good friend of ours. We have worked with him while he was at Comet Learning and now PermissionTV.Backyard Jams Website

Finetune Wii : Take me to your playlist!

2007-01-25T07:10:00.000-08:00

Today Finetune updated the service yet again with some great new goodies, as well as little bug fixes that some people have been coming across.We managed to get some cool new stuff into the players for people to take advantage of. The coolest of the features revolves around the Finetune Wii Player.People have been quite pleased with the Finetune Embedded Players, and everyday I come across more

Wii-kly Review Podcast: Finetune

2007-01-17T07:05:00.000-08:00

Mykel Ruvola from Finetune appeared this week on the Wii-kly Review Podcast. It is a podcast focused on the Wii game system, and Mykel drops in to talk about the Finetune Wii interface that we developed with them.Wii-kly Review Show #2

A Wild Wii ride for Finetune

2007-01-04T14:31:00.000-08:00

Geeze,My blog is turning into a Finetune blog these days. Anyways, what a day it has been for this service:As I have mentioned many times already, the Wii player for Finetune launched officially yesterday. It has been extremely well received, to the point that it has generated an astronomical jump in usage of the service. Our good friends over there have been working hard to keep it preforming

Finetune for the Wii : Down temporarily

2007-01-04T07:44:00.000-08:00

Wow,The guys at Finetune have had to temporarily take the Wii player offline to make some changes. It is generating much more traffic than expected, and adjustments have to be made to keep it going. This is a bummer right now, but an incredible sign illustrating how big of a demand there is for great experiences on the television.Finetune Wii Player

Finetune for the Wii : Official

2007-01-03T08:02:00.000-08:00

http://www.finetune.com/ http://www.finetune.com/wii The Wii player for the Finetune service is now official, and is available from the main site.

Booya! : Finetune for the Wii!

2007-01-02T07:05:00.000-08:00

Finetune for the Wii Beta*NOTE*This service is being staged at www.teknision.com/wii right now, but it will move over to Finetune in the next few days.So the gang here at Teknision (including me), slaved over the holidays to make sure this was out for everyone to play with as soon as was humanly possible.It is a listening interface for the Finetune service, that is optimized for use in the Wii

Finetune makes Time Magazine's Top Ten

2007-01-02T06:57:00.000-08:00

Time Magazine's Top Ten Websites Finetune makes # 5! Wow, I guess I disconnected myself a bit too much over the holidays, I didn't even know this went down until this morning!We have been working with Finetune over the last year helping them improve their service, and it looks like it is happening!Timing couldn't be better, as we have some really awesome goodies coming over the next few months!!!

2 More Predictions for Rich Internet Applications

2006-12-21T10:29:00.000-08:00

Echoing Ryan Stewart's great post 10 Predictions for Rich Internet Applications in 2007, I thought I'd add two more that I think deserve to be on the list. Mine are bit less, "technology used to build them" oriented, but still pretty major:1: Cut a Hole In a Boxhaha just joking....11: RIA's in the living roomWith the pending release of the Opera Browser for the Nintendo Wii tomorrow, we may a

More Finetune Update Details

2006-12-21T09:56:00.000-08:00

Mykel from Finetune has just posted on many of the new features added to the service.

Finetune Service Updated

2006-12-20T07:46:00.000-08:00

The Finetune music service has been updated.The service adds a tonne of new things, including:- Embedded Player paramaters (including autoplay)- Embedding Artist Radio- Fingerprints- New commenting and discussion on artists- and much more!Below is a little sample of my Artist Radio embedded:If you look at the player I embedded on the right, you will see that artist radio is

More Free Music Done the Wrong Way.

2006-12-08T12:31:00.000-08:00

I came across this post about another service competing with Finetune:Zero Paid : on Radio Blog ClubI checked out the service, and to my surprise, they are getting away with the same implementation as Pandora!:Here is a previous post I wrote about this regarding PandoraWith Radio Blog Club, you can also use a HTTP sniffer like Tamper Data for Firefox, find the url to the .rbs file, download it

PSFK : Gabor Vida on Branded Applications

2006-12-08T08:33:00.000-08:00

Gabor Vida gets interviewed at PSFK regarding the topic of Branded Applications:http://www.psfk.com/2006/12/branded_utility.htmlGab started coining this term over the last year, as he saw our work on the application development and the marketing sides start merging into the same thing.Branded Utility has been the big topic of discussion on PSFK as of late, and it is awesome to see Gab in there

Get in with the parents!

2006-12-04T15:21:00.000-08:00

It isn't often that I evangelize for something other than the Flash Platform. There is something out there though that I have evangelized, and have built up quite a little following for. The thing in question in the SlingboxBeing a big hockey fan, I always use it to watch games when I am on the road traveling , or if I am at work. Recently, my girlfriend's father was over and I showed it to him.

Free Music - The wrong way!

2006-12-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

So it seems you can actually get full mp3 files for free from Pandora!:Download MP3 files from PandoraI just loaded up a station, and used the Firefox extension called Tamper Data to see the calls out to the files. I was able to just freely download them!This can't be a good thing for one of the market leaders in this space, and this article is on page 2 of Digg right now.

No Hyperlinks on MySpace!!?

2006-11-21T19:46:00.000-08:00

I have been tasked by Finetune to determine how to allow outgoing links from the Finetune Embeddable Player to work on MySpace.When I first looked at this request, I was puzzled. The allowNetworking=internal security changes in the Flash Player 9 totally slipped my radar.I examined this closely, as I couldn't believe that this security feature would actually be this stringent. After realizing

Teknision : Gabor Vida blogging.

2006-11-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

Our president Gabor Vida has begun blogging.Gab's blog explores the 'Branded Application' and 'Branded Utility' space. As a strategist, much of his content is focused on the impact of Rich Internet Applications on the world of marketing as opposed to focusing on technical details.

Finetune Development Blog

2006-11-10T06:46:00.000-08:00

Finetune Dev Blog.We have some pretty awesome new additions to the Finetune service coming in the near future. Mykel from Finetune has launched a blog that will cover updates to the service, and the embeddable player. If you are a fan of the Finetune service, you may want to keep your eyes on it over the next week.

SpringWidgets: Early Review

2006-11-06T19:11:00.000-08:00

The release of SpringWidgets and the SpringBox runtime caught my attention today. I have been working on widget like applications alot lately, the Finetune embedded player in particular.JD from Adobe posted a little call out for reviews , so here I am answering that call.First Impressions:The UI is nice. It has a little dashboard that holds nice looking icons representing the widgets you have

Let mE rAWK iT!

2006-11-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

I have been playing in bands for many years now. In recent past I played in a band that saw some relative success. We had a punk/metal/hip hop group called 54Stance, and we played on a few big tours, lots of club gigs, and even got to the point of showcasing for labels. Things fell through though in 2003.I have been working with some good friends for over a year now getting a new band together,

Apollo : It's Real First Class Feature

2006-10-25T11:25:00.000-07:00

It seems like people are starting to get what Apollo is all about, but I'll bet the majority of people are still missing the most important thing/feature of all. I missed it totally until it was fully explained to me.Before I tell you what it is, I want to say that I missed it because I am a person that has been working in Flash for a very long time, and have done alot of Flash Desktop

AS/Flex Posters from MAX

2006-10-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

Paolo and Mike from Teknision are at MAX. I couldn't make it this year due to the fact that I have so much work to do. I wanted Poalo to get me a copy of the MAX posters for AS and Flex, so he did, and FedEx'd them back to me.Wow, I see why they wanted to charge for them. They are huge! I don't even know if we have enough wall space available for them all. Ah well, I'll make em fit.They are very

Apollo, they got it this time!

2006-10-24T11:31:00.000-07:00

I have noticed around the community there are still many that don't quite understand why Apollo is such a major breakthrough technology, and why it will be so important. For those that are still in the dark, let me offer an explanation,but before that I just want to point out a few things:An old post of mine on CentralMan, that was a while ago and alot has changed. I really think that from what I

KRS ONE

2006-10-03T22:46:00.000-07:00

This has nothing to do with Flash,but tonight I went to see KRS ONE play live down the street here in Ottawa at Babylon. Honestly, KRS is seriously the best MC I have ever seen perform. I kind of knew he was before I saw him, but after that performance it was solidified for me. #1 MC no doubt.

Limo Day

2006-09-29T16:57:00.000-07:00

So pretty late on positng this one,Monday of last week, we took the whole Teknision crew out for a special day. We got a limo and took everyone to MTL for the day on the company. We were drinking Champagne and Rum+Cokes as we were cruisin. We also did a whole bunch of fun events like going to the biodome (Olympic Stadium) as well as shopping and the like.Check this link for pics:http://

What are we buildin today Bab!?

2006-09-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

BobVila.com PermissionTV ChannelToday the video channel for Bob Vila went up on his site. The channel spans the whole site and is a little different than other channels we have put up. This player is designed to send playback events up through ExternalInterface to an Ajax setup that handles refreshing advertsing, and page content without interfering with the video experience.The link above, is

Finetune - Embedded Player Available to All!

2006-09-12T14:43:00.000-07:00

http://www.finetune.comWell, all finetune users may now embed their playlists anywhere. The feature has now been added to the finetune site!As for Coverflow, well, we may make some slight adjustments over the next few days to avoid dealing with the comparison to Itunes, but other than that, the player is totally good to go.

Cover flow, arghh Apple!

2006-09-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

Cover Flow Ah man, of course a day after we publicly demo our Finetune Player interface, Apple releases a new Itunes featuring an almost identical navigational system.Geeze, I know what Apple feels like now (Microsoft).Obviously we didn't influence Apple or anything, but still what a weird co-incidence.

I can't work because of Digg!

2006-09-11T07:01:00.000-07:00

So Finetune got dugg this morning.That is cool, but the bummer is that it got Dugg before our new embeddable player was launched over the site. The are getting a bit of criticism on their site, but I am sure that once that new player goes up, people will see things a bit differently.The issue is though, that I can barely work on it right now. They are getting hammered so hard, that the most of my

Finetune : Tag Radio

2006-09-09T22:37:00.000-07:00

So another neat feature of the new finetune player is "Tag Radio".Ozzfest:http://www.teknision.com/preview/finetune/embed.html?playlist=t1300Canada:http://www.teknision.com/preview/finetune/embed.html?playlist=t698The links above, like any other player this can be virally circulated using the right click menu.Finetune intends to serve up dynamic tag query playlists and spread these around the net

Finetune RIA : Evolution of the Mixtape!

2006-09-08T17:24:00.000-07:00

So,Bling Blang! I have been itching to talk about this one. This is for the music lovers out there!Take a look at the music player I have on the right>>>>I have wanted to talk about this one for a little while now. This is probably my favourite project I have ever worked on to date. Not really a full RIA or anything, but probably one of the coolest widgets going on!My friends, Legal Free Music is

PTV : Memory Makers Launched

2006-09-05T08:45:00.000-07:00

MemoryMakers MagazineAnother PermissionTV channel launched. This one is a small channel, but very cool because it was done by a relatively new Flash designer/developer at PermissionTV, based on the PermisionTV player framework we created.Good work Doug! Looks great!

MyNetworkTV Launched

2006-09-04T12:28:00.000-07:00

MyNetworkTVAlong with a variety of different parties including Fox, PermissionTV and Ultra 16 we have launched MyNetworkTV.com.MyNetworkTV is a site dedicated to a series of new "Telenovellas" airing on Fox this fall. The site uses a PermissionTV Player to view all of the prequel content.I am not sure yet, but full episodes may appear as the show airs.

Head out of the sand.!

2006-09-03T17:45:00.000-07:00

Well I think the last time I posted was in May. It is not that I haven't had anything to talk about, it is just that things have been very,very busy at Teknision.First off, we celebrated our 5 year aniversary on Friday. Most people say that when a business passes 5 years, then it is pretty much safe for the long run. We had a great time, we had champagne at 9:00 am!While Stace (Bitchwhocodes) has

On the 360 tip!

2006-05-24T11:31:00.000-07:00

Been a bit busy lately,Had some pretty major client work going on, also working on a very cool AS 3 utility project I will talk more of in the future, but, the biggest consumer of my time since FITC has been the XBOX 360. Steve at our office convinced me to get one.I have really been enjoying it, especially Oblivion! I have been a big RPG fan for a long time, and Oblivion is one of the best.I

E3TV - PermissionTV Channel

2006-05-10T06:01:00.000-07:00

So I have been heads down a bit over the last week working on a few things, and one of them has been a new PermissionTV Channel deployment for E3:http://www.e3insider.com/e3tv/E3 features the new subscription system that automatically downloads videos that you are interested in, even when the application is not running.This has been up since Monday and has been doing incredibly well. We have got

SlingBoxes are Cool!

2006-05-01T18:47:00.000-07:00

Last week I ordered a SlingBox I got it today and so far I am really impressed with it! It is a device that connects to various devices in your home entertainment centre and allows you to stream video from the various devices to computers on the network, or even over the net. They even have a player for Pocket PCs now!Anyways, I set it up and so far it is cool. I am writing this post right now,

Off to FITC

2006-04-20T09:02:00.000-07:00

So just like many others I am on the way to Flash in the Can this afternoon.I have many things on my slate this year to do while I am there:1/ We are looking to hire Flash/Flex developers and a designer. I am going to be looking to talk to people to fill the positions we have, so if you are looking for a job developing advanced Rich Internet Applications, please come and talk to me.2/We have 2

Peldi on REST

2006-04-17T17:09:00.000-07:00

I just read Peldi's post on REST.After reading the article, a few things came to my mind as a Rich Internet Application Developer:First off, when it comes to REST, things can get a little confused and the term ends up being used loosely. When you talk about "State Transfer" is that "Model State" , "View State", or "Application State" (the latter being a combination of both).REST can be used very

PermissionTV Gets nominated as well!

2006-04-02T09:10:00.000-07:00

Wo,just noticed that our internet TV channel application PermissionTV got a nomination in the Convergence category at Flash in the Can as well! It is for the first public channel called UpdateHollywood:http://awards.fitc.ca/pc/UpdateHollywoodAwesome!

the Mighty merger Model gets nominated!

2006-04-02T08:53:00.000-07:00

Well our monster RIA we developed for SNL Financial got nominated for technical excellence in the FITC awards:http://awards.fitc.ca/pc/SNL Merger Model RIA PreviewHope we win, worked really hard on that one. It can be really hard to communicate it's value to most though as the target audience for it is invesment bankers. We shall see.

Teknision Hiring

2006-03-24T14:44:00.000-08:00

Teknision is looking to add two new members to the team. We are looking for a developer and designer that are willing to relocate to the city of Ottawa.More details can be found here.

UpdateHollywood gets FWA!

2006-03-22T05:40:00.000-08:00

The first channel UpdateHollywood that has been built using the PermissionTV publishing platform has won "Site of the Day" from the Favourite Website Awards.Congrats to all of the team that has worked with us on the project, including all the people from NetCableTV and Tim and Dan from Northcode for all the hard work on making the desktop player a reality.Our part of the project has been the

Apollo and Web Services

2006-03-19T09:55:00.000-08:00

I noticed earlier this week that Mike Chambers, had put out feature requests or Apollo. This would most likely be a difficult task for most as the actual vision behind the Apollo project is blurry to most people.I am going to assume (from what I have seen) that this vision is actually the evolution of Macromedia Central, mixed with AJAX and PDF.Great, so what we are talking about here is a

Teknision Podcast - OCRI Presentation

2006-03-17T15:41:00.000-08:00

Branded ApplicationsLast Thursday, Gabor Vida, the president of Teknision did a presentation to members of OCRI. The presentation was about Rich Internet Application development and Experience design. Most of the audience were marketers in Ottawa's technology sector.Gab is a great speaker, and the presentation was awesome.The above link will allow you to view it as Flash video in the browser, but

A sneak preview of PermissionTV

2006-03-17T15:01:00.000-08:00

A few times referred to a project I have been working on called PermissionTV . It is a pretty neat project, and we are starting to get to the point where we can show off some of it's capability.Update HollywoodIn a nutshell, it is a Rich Internet Application designed to deliver Video content. It is similar to the concept of MTV Overdrive.Working with NetcableTV, what we wanted to do was deliver a

Tony, bring down the "D"

2006-03-11T07:02:00.000-08:00

We took a day off from the usual stuff yesterday at Teknision, and focused on some team building. We have new faces joining the team, and as any team gets bigger it gets more important for the team to be able to communicate well to be effective.We had a guy come into the office and work with us all. His name is: Ray Brule from Thruhim consulting. He had all the members of our team do DISC

Me and the Bitch, feel free to drop in.

2006-03-08T11:35:00.000-08:00

Stacey Mulcahy (BitchWhoCodes) and myself are going to be doing a presentation over Breeze Live tonight to the Kansas City ColdFusion usergroup.We are going to be talking about Flash and Flex, but this won't be a chat that is focused on code, instead it will be focused on how we have used Flash and how it led us to Flex and the amazing applications you can build on this platform. We are going to

Teknision speaking events coming up

2006-03-07T10:15:00.000-08:00

This week a few of us here at Teknision are going to be doing a little public speaking:Wednesday, March 8th:Stacey Mulcahy and I will be doing a presentation on RIA development with Flash and Flex to the Kansas ColdFusion user group. We are going to talk a bit about our TimeTracking Application as well as the SNL Merger Model.Thursday March 9th:Gabor Vida, our president will be speaking for OCRI

Identity Revisted

2006-02-27T20:47:00.000-08:00

Jesse always gets me thinking. I posted a little while back on Identity 2.0. I watched an awesome presentation by Dick Hardt that really made me take a fresh look at the way World Wide Web has been implemented.Jesse states that due to the fact that Search Engines can basically sum up everything you've ever done online, and you are not in control over that information, that it is likely in the

Facets of User Experience

2006-02-27T16:26:00.000-08:00

Here is an interesting perspective on user experience design. I have always believed that there was alot more to building an experience for users than just simply the concept of usability. I have taken a little time out to try and expand on some of these concepts because as a designer/developer/architect I believe that a clear understanding will help:a - Keep me on track in regards to the overall

Test Clip Extension For Flash

2006-02-23T09:15:00.000-08:00

I haven't done any JSFL in a little while, but today I whipped something up for our designers at their request. The best Flash extensions for the most part are those that increase productivity, by simplifying those little annoyances in Flash.Our designers were working on a big Flash animation project that utilized alot of child movieclips. They wanted a way to a "Test Movie" that would just test

Chiming In: Stop Bashing Web 2.0

2006-02-21T19:16:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to add the the comments over at 5 1/2 and try and add a little bit here. Some to support, some to challenge:The current web sucksNo it doesn't, the current web is awesome, if it wasn't, this conversation would not be happening. If all of these great new solutions like Flickr and Delicious exist right now then it is not the web that sucks it is rather the approach to web development

I could have lost it all, but all I lost was a word doc

2006-02-20T19:23:00.000-08:00

This morning when I got into work, I unpacked my laptop bag, set up my computer. when I hit the power button I quickly realized that my hard drive had died, and the data on it was pretty much lost. I have had the laptop in it's current configuration for almost 3 years, and while it was still able to perform for me, it was really time for an upgrade.Well obviously now is the time, but when the

Browser Divergence

2006-02-20T15:47:00.000-08:00

I wanted to post a response to John Dowdell's recent post, but I thought it would be of more value to respond as a full blog post as opposed to a comment. Here is the original post on Browser Divergence.I had this exact experience today with an audio player, yet it was more from the perspective of a combined experience rather than one offering. While I was working today, I was trying to keep up

Design Maturity

2006-02-19T08:15:00.000-08:00

I am the type of guy that has believed for quite a long time that design drives the development of most of the things Teknision builds and most definitely applications. When ever I speak publicly or post on mailing lists, or even here blogging, I claim this.There have been those around the community that have chastised my opinion, stating the architects should drive development, and to have it

Multi-Touch Screen

2006-02-16T07:32:00.000-08:00

This went around the news world yesterday but I was head down in some work and didn't get a chance to peek at it until today:Multi-Touch Screen VideoRemember Minority Report? I can't wait to be designing applications that utilize technology like this. Technically you could do this in Flash right now:Macrumors ArticleIf you read the description of the hardware they used to build this demo, I could

Identity 2.0 made it all come together for me

2006-02-13T18:15:00.000-08:00

I find identity discussions in relation to Web 2.0 fascinating. Today I watched a video by Dick Hardt, founder of SXIP and was totally impressed by the clarity of his presentation in comparison to most web 2.0 discussions that are generally vague. This topic is what glues the whole Web 2.0 concept together for me, and where the next generation web experience that we dream of will either succeed

New Ottawa Adobe Building

2006-02-13T09:34:00.000-08:00

Just wondering if anyone knows the details behind the new Adobe building being built in Ottawa. Is it going to just be the new home for the employees of the aquired Accelio(Jetform) people, or is there going to be new departments of Adobe located in Ottawa?I walked by the buildings under construction on Saturday after skating the whole canal. They are looking pretty cool so far.Anyways, if

I knew Ninjas were behind it!

2006-02-09T09:31:00.000-08:00

I am glad that the ninja community finally came forward and spoke up for Metal.Ask a NinjaI am a big metal fan myself, and I knew all along that metal and ninjas must have common roots.This has got to be the best episode of this podcast yet! Lovin it.

Flash Team > no need to focus on developers anymore

2006-02-08T20:56:00.000-08:00

The Flash Team is calling for wishlist features for Blaze aka Flash 9. In particular they are asking about additions to the code editing enviornment for Actionscript. I think at this stage, most developers that would be asking for major additions have already got their wish, and that wish is Flex Builder 2.With all of the beautiful features in Flex Builder 2 built solely for developers, there is

Waiting impatiently for Apollo

2006-02-07T16:15:00.000-08:00

I have had so many different perspectives of the product Macromedia Central. A few months ago I blogged my thoughts on Central and where I thought it should go in the future.At the time I was coming off the SNL Merger Model project, and my perspective was focused on the experiences of executing that particular project.Now though, I feel my tune starting to change. I do think that many of my

Flex Timetracking

2006-02-06T12:43:00.000-08:00

Internally here at Teknision we have been beta testing a Flex app that we started developing upon the release of the Flex Alpha. It is a Flex UI for our internal TimeTracking application that all of our employees use:Everyone in the shop uses the Timetracker everyday, so we thought it would be a great project to use to get everyone in the shop up to speed on Flex 2. So far in the testing I have

XHTML part 2: Rummaging through the garbage!

2006-02-04T14:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I did a big post on XHTML. I claimed that XHTML was possibly one of the best innovations on the web as it would allow levels of syndication and remixing never before seen. I also claimed that XHTML has not been explained well to most people. Some people seem to understand the requirement that it is HTML that can be parsed by an XML user agent (most don't even get this though), but

This morning at Algonquin College

2006-02-03T14:25:00.000-08:00

This morning Steve and I went to speak to students of Graphic Design at Algonquin College. We were invited to speak about interactive design and what they can expect out there in the industry.We went and did a pretty full talk on our history in building up Teknision, then shared our visions of the future of the Graphic Designer role in the web of the future.It was a great visit. The class was

XHTML, future proofing our crappy markup.

2006-02-03T09:24:00.000-08:00

XHTML was probably one of the best innnovations of the web I can think of. XHTML was designed to allow content to be marked up and delivered to a browser (including old ones), and have it render correctly as HTML, but also to be passed to an XML user-agent and be consumed there as well.This was achieved by taking HTML and making it comply with the parsing rules of XML. Tags must always be closed,

Main Event : Text Reflow vs Copy and Paste

2006-02-02T21:11:00.000-08:00

I have been doing a little playing tonight where I am using Flash to read my XHTML pages from my blog hosted on Blogger. I am disappointed with Flash Text Fields. Take a look at the image below:I am just extracting the body of a blog post, and dumping the contents into the text field. The contents usually contain images, and luckily Flash text fields support the use of img tags for loading all of

Pondering Web 2.0

2006-02-01T20:25:00.000-08:00

Over the last year there has been so much talk going on about Web 2.0. Many people are spending alot of time and effort creating definitions, writing manifestos, hosting conferences, and trying to prop up a new "Boom".I have been listening carefully, as I am sure many in the Flash community are as well. I have got my hands on as many conference tapings as I can, downloaded related podcasts, and

Just give me an uninstaller for pete's sake!

2006-01-29T20:05:00.000-08:00

At home I installed the Flash Player 8.5 just so I could test out some stuff I was working on at work. I now have the player stuck in my Firefox browser and I cannot seem to uninstall it. Right now it is a pain in particular, because the Flash 8 content I am trying to get to is obviously not compatible with the new player for some reason.Anyways I went here:Adobe Labs - DownloadsAnd followed the

Take the whole team Curling!

2006-01-27T09:34:00.000-08:00

So we decided to take a little time out in the everyday effort to take the whole team out for an afternoon of curling. It was a bizarre idea but everyone seemed to have an awesome time.We split into 2 teams:Team 1:Gabor VidaSteve MackenzieStacey MulcahyIssac GarciaTeam 2:Tony MacDonellMike MartinErin Fraser (Rockin Ronny Frashe)Kathrine BurkeMost of us had never curled before so it took us all

Fun at the PhotoClub

2006-01-26T08:43:00.000-08:00

Last night I attended an evening hosted by the PhotClub here in Ottawa. I went to see an old friend of my family Fred Cattroll who is a very well respected Professional Photographer in Canada. The focus of the evening was just photo critique, by Fred. He critiqued a few shots from all the members of the group.As the critique progressed I found myself unable to hold back, I really felt like taking

!I Look Forward to Killing You Soon!

2006-01-16T21:30:00.000-08:00

Ever since I got my video IPod, I have been hunting down as much awesome content for it as I can find. It seems lately though that there is a great surge of awesome video podcasts coming out that crack me up. TikiBar is pretty cool, but the best I have come across by far is:Ask A NinjaI won't ruin it for you, go check it out yourself.It is content like this that really gets me excited about the

Flash for Flex

2006-01-12T07:11:00.000-08:00

We have been spending quite a bit of time lately ramping up our Flex skills around the office for both Flex 1.5 and Flex 2. We have been focused mainly on developing custom components in Flash for use in Flex. Seems that most of the Flex work that we are being approached on is up that alley.Now while the process is quite straight forward, I have found that there are a few annoyances that come

Apple Keynote - RIA style

2006-01-10T09:07:00.000-08:00

This seems like the best way to get live coverage of the keynote event at MacWorld:http://www.macrumorslive.com/web/Macrumors is using AJAX to give live updates on the fly. Way better than constantly refreshing on the other pages like engadet that are so slow.

ITunes XML

2005-12-31T14:31:00.000-08:00

Right now at home I am working on a little personal application. I have always wanted to try and build a little home media app that integrates content from ITunes as well as Flash content piped in from Flashcom. the destination for all this content is my television in which I have a Flash interface running on a box connected to the TV.I have finally got started on it and things are looking cool.

Video IPod - Review

2005-12-30T08:22:00.000-08:00

So I posted right before christmas about the aquisition of my new Video IPod. Since, I got it, I have been gathering content and working to fill it up with as much as I can.As a result I have started to build a little IPod wishlist as well as a list of goods and bads about the IPod/Itunes as it stands now.1/ VideoI am actually really impressed with the video on the new IPod. If you have a good

Sens-ation!

2005-12-29T07:54:00.000-08:00

Alot of Flash people out there (mainly the Toronto heads) know that quite a group of us from Ottawa are big Senators fans. Flash in The Can in 2004 turned into quite the clash between the Leafs and Sens fans.Anyways, we have season tickets this year and I have already been to quite a few games so far. Last night I went to the game against Carolina. I sported my new jersey in the pics below:Go

SNL Merger Model Demo - Update

2005-12-28T06:56:00.000-08:00

We have added a use case scenario for the SNL Merger Model to our demo area. For many that have no background in analytics (like me for example, till this application), it can be very difficult to figure out how to use the application at all.We have had a walkthrough created that shows how the application is actually used featuring a real test case. To view the new Captivate demo select "Visual

Holiday Memory Game

2005-12-22T10:31:00.000-08:00

Over the last few days a few people in the office spent a little time putting a little holiday Memory game together:Give it a try!

SNL Merger Model RIA now public!

2005-12-21T12:39:00.000-08:00

Earlier this year we announced the launch of the SNL Merger Model 2.0. It was a Rich Internet Application simulating mergers in the financial sector, created for/with SNL Financial. The application was cited as an example of one of the best RIAs out there in the Flash Platform Whitepaper written by Kevin Lynch earlier this year.I am now proud to anounce, that we now have a live public preview

I pulled Xcalibur from the stone last night.

2005-12-21T08:26:00.000-08:00

So I have had it on my list of things to get for awhile, and last night I treated myself to a brand new Video Ipod. When I bought my Ipod Photo last year I had hoped that it would eventually play video, but nope, instead I had to buy the new one.I must say though, that they are a beautiful piece of machinery. The feel is so much nicer than my old one. I got the black instead of the white, cause

Christmas Cards!

2005-12-19T14:08:00.000-08:00

I have got some weird and funny Christmas cards so far this year.My uncle Clarke is a bit of a weird guy. He went out and bought this 5 foot tall santa claus that sings and dances. He then decided to record it using his webcam and then send the resulting mpg4 out to everyone.http://www.teknision.com/personal/tony/xmas/clarke/I re-encoded it in FLV to post on the net for him, but it is pretty

Everyone Seriously Underestimates Adobe. Relax everyone.

2005-12-06T11:02:00.000-08:00

I have been reading post after post about the Macromedia and Adobe merger, and everyone seems so worried that Adobe is going to ruin everything (especially server tools) that Macromedia has developed.Quite a few of the people we have working here did come from a print background, and have alot of experience in working with Adobe products that probably many developers in the web/application

PermissionTV

2005-12-05T07:26:00.000-08:00

Well I have been very busy over the last 8 or so months. Everyone that I know out there in the community has been talking with me, and asking what I have been up to, and I would always say “Something big, but I can’t tell you”. Everyday I would be heads down in it, and I would be ignoring all my daily chat friends to try and get this all ready. (Sorry Jeff).Anyways, no need to hide it anymore

Uncle Tone =)

2005-12-04T19:17:00.000-08:00

My sister Kerry(Cubby) is a funny character. Everyone in the office here knows her well, and everytime she comes in she rallies all our employees and tries to get a union started(as a joke, we aren't mean or anything)! Anyways, her and I are very close.On thanksgiving (canadian one) the picture below was taken. It is me and her comparing our bellies. Obviously she is well into her pregnancy (7

Microphone in AS3?

2005-11-17T16:22:00.000-08:00

A few of us in the office today were trying to determine how to play audio from your microphone locally in AS3.The Migration Guide:http://livedocs.macromedia.com/labs/1/flex/langref/migration.htmlSays that attachAudio has been removed and replaced with addChildWell if you try that it will obviously fail because it is not a display object.Sound objects in the new AVM are not bound to timelines

the mx namespce

2005-10-24T13:20:00.000-07:00

Just a weird top level thing I noticed about the next generation Flash platform:Actionscript 3 reorganizes all of the intrinsic Flash Player classes into neat and tidy packages. It makes alot of sense to do this, now that Flash is really maturing as a platform.Now we have Flex 2 upon us and I am a slight puzzled on why Macromedia kept the mx namespace for Flex packages. It is obvious that

10 questions for the B*tch

2005-10-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

Stacey got interviewed at 10 questions:http://10-questions.blogspot.com/pretty funny considering she is a girl.....http://www.bitchwhocodes.com

Bling Blang, Leafs Suck

2005-10-05T10:29:00.000-07:00

So this is a bit of topic, but on topic if you live in Ottawa or Toronto,http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Hockey/NHL/2005/10/05/1249809-sun.htmlhttp://www.team1200.com/audio/songs/outcast_leafs_suckX.mp3Our beloved NHL is back in action, and tonight Ottawa and Toronto go face to face to open the season. For those of you in the know out there, you will know that for years Ottawa has had a hard time with

Give us distortion in Flash Player 9!

2005-09-23T14:35:00.000-07:00

Well as we all know the Bitmap Data API is one of the most welcome additions in the new Flash Player. Today myself and another developer I work with here, Mike Martin, took it upon ourselves to attempt to create an effect that I have wanted to be able to produce for years in actionscript: In the above example numbers are between 0-100. 100 being normal and o being totally sideways. Check the

Want to see Avalon in Action>Max

2005-09-16T14:49:00.000-07:00

Download and Install this application.http://www.microsoft.com/max/It is a sample application that runs on XP today, that is built on WinFX. Our whole team here gathered around to see what it is like. To be honest it is amazing, and if this is the type of application we can expect on Windows in the future, then my hat truly goes off to Microsoft.Absolute Brilliance. Once again, I amso excited to

Avalon in relation to Apple

2005-09-15T18:28:00.000-07:00

So the more I talk with people about Avalon and Sparkle, I start to see things differently than I originally had. Everyone seems so concerned with the MS vs Macromedia/Abobe battle, but as I said in my last post, I don't see the two technologies facing off, I see them complimenting each other (for the first few years at least).However, after seeing all of these Avalon apps that are being built

My Sparkle Thoughts

2005-09-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

Ok I know everyone is posting about Sparkle, but just as everyone else, I have some thoughts to throw on the table here.First the link that everyone is linking to:http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=115387A great Video featuring Manuel Clement, and other developers on the Sparkle team showing off the tool.Ok, so I have been following all of this 'expression' stuff as well as everyone's

Fireworks8, our designers aren't happy.

2005-09-12T13:35:00.000-07:00

Steve, our lead designer here is a big Fireworks fan. He does most of his UI mock-ups using Fireworks, and uses it it very comfortably next to Photoshop.Today I pulled down my copy of Studio 8 from my Devnet subscription. Steve wanted to explore Fireworks 8 and see what they added. After playing for awhile as well as watching the new features overviews, he let as all know that he was pretty

Fine, don't sell me a copy of Flex!

2005-08-29T10:18:00.000-07:00

Over the last month I have started really getting into Flex. Of course I absolutely love using it, just like all the other Flex users out there will also testify to.I have already built 2 pretty cool apps that are running on my local machine right now, and I have decided that I really want to bring Flex fully into our development and staging enviornment here in the office.So, I start on the road

Still dissatisfied with results....

2005-08-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

I blogged a few days ago about Google's "Dissatisfied with results feature":http://teknision.blogspot.com/2005/08/dissatisfied-with-results.htmlWell, we contacted Google about this and recieved this response:// From the Google TeamThank you for your note. We understand your concern that our search results have been manipulated through our new "Dissatisfied" search suggestion feature. Please be