General | Interactive Llama : Stephen M. James : Indianapolis

The Democratization of Stock Photography

It’s been around for a while. I first heard of iStockPhoto while interning at Cre8tive Group back in 2004 when my co-worker, Peter Cook said “Have you checked out iStock?”

Well, I have plenty of 4MP photographs to upload to iStock (especially from my work in Greece), but haven’t found the time to write 10 keywords each. I have learned of other stock photo sites. Some messageboards say they pay better.

www.bigstockphoto.com
www.shutterstock.com

I’ve been told (from by a friend, Andy Didyk, who collects about $50+/month now) is that it’s all about the keywords (“People don’t search for animal when they want a lion.”) and adding a photograph a day for six months.

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

2 free audio books at Audible.com

As of now (Sept 22nd), you can get 2 free audio books at Audible.com. You can get a full refund if you want if you cancel within a month.

They download as “.aa” files that need to be activated by Audible to listen to them (So don’t think that you can cancel and still listen to the “.aa” files). There are two ways around this problem. One is burn them all to CDs or you can save the files as MP3s if you use Goldwave 5 and the Lame plug-in. It is shareware, although I have registered. The only side effect is that you do not have the chapter divisions.

Tonight, I downloaded Gladwell’s older book, The Tipping Point (Unabridged), and Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars (Unabridged).

Currently listening/watching: In Depth: Thomas Friedman (Book TV)

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

*I’ve been informed that one can cancel their subscription to Audible.com and still activate their “.aa” I have to say though that converting to mp3 and having to worry about having a network connection seems like the best plan to me, especially if you are on the road.

*There is also a “NetFlix” of the audio book world called Simply Audio Books. I don’t anything about them though. They are $25 per month for 2 rentals out at once.

* Added 10/27/05 :: I called customer support at Audible.com (1-888-283-5051) to cancel my subscription and recieve a full refund as the site said I could. The customer support woman had no idea was I was talking about. She said Audible.com didn’t give refunds and wanted to tell me how I could save $100 off of an iPod. I told her that her website said they did give refunds and directed her to this page and asked her to explain the meaning of “Enjoy your first two audio programs with your FIRST MONTH of AudibleListener 100% RISK FREE. Within one month of joining, you may call to cancel and receive a full refund.” After reading the statement she seemed befuddled and transfered me to the Sales department where I talked to Jay. Jay said that he would refund my money within 48 hours.

I guess that makes me a demon. (Angel Customers and Demon Customers by Larry Selden).

Book review: Blink

I just finished reading the latest from Malcolm Gladwell (Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking). It was an interesting read. He connects anecdotes across areas of medicine, medicine, murder, music, and military strategy. The connections are loose and essentially involve the premise that decision-making is often best with narrow yet prioritized key information (he calls this ?��Ǩ?�thin-slicing?��Ǩ��). He adds that this doesn?��Ǩ�Ѣt always work though.

I felt good while reading this book, because I was already familiar with a few of the anecdotes. Besides the loose connection between possible statistical anomalies, Gladwell repeats himself especially at the end of chapters. It is an easy read because much of it is not Gladwell?��Ǩ�Ѣs words, but those of his interviewees.

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

SMJ’s Actionscript Standards and Practices

The debugging situation did improved with ActionScript 2.0. I have yet to use Flash 8, but I hope this continues to improve. Something tells me that the Adobe buyout of Macromedia isn’t going to help with the programming interface. It will only lead to more components packaged into the box.

I’ve spent more than a little time trying to explain timelines and event handlers to my media friends. These are some of the practices that I try to convey. The majority of the time though, they just want to finish the project. ?��Ǩ?�As long as it works. . .?��Ǩ�� they say.

Well, the following are a few practices that I use to keep my code readable and easier to update in case you do use the similar framework in a second project. This is programming after all–no one will ever know.

Naming Schemes for Movie Clips

Sample path

someTextMovie_mc.someText_mc.someClip_txt

someTextMovie_mc :: This is the container movie clip that contains the animation timeline. I started out with the suffix ?��Ǩ?�Container?��Ǩ�� but decided that it was too long and now use the suffix, ?��Ǩ?�Movie?��Ǩ��.

someText_mc :: This is the movie clip that is animated. It is the movie clip that is tweened across a timeline This clip is needed, so that the text box inside of it is encapsulated. If the font of text box inside is changed, then all instances of someText_mc will change with it.

someClip_txt :: This is a TextBox inside the animated movie clip.

The above example includes object suffixes that enable the Flash editor to provide code hints.

Common code hint suffixes

Array :: _array; Button :: _btn; Color :: _color; LoadVars :: _lv; LocalConnection :: _lc; MovieClip :: _mc; MovieClipLoader :: _mcl; Sound :: _sound; String :: _str; TextField :: _txt; TextFormat :: _fmt; Video :: _video; XML :: _xml; XMLNode :: _xmlnode; XMLSocket :: _xmlsocket

Using Movieclips vs. Buttons

There is not much advantage to defining an object (Symbol) on the stage as a ?��Ǩ?�Graphic?��Ǩ�� unless the symbol is animation or static. A ?��Ǩ?�Button?��Ǩ�� can be used for a quick way to cause events to occur based on user interaction, but both these seem like limited ?��Ǩ?�MovieClips?��Ǩ��. I’ve never used a ?��Ǩ?�Graphic?��Ǩ�� or a ?��Ǩ?�Button?��Ǩ�� inside a Flash project. Often movie clips that function as buttons have a similar function. An example would be when the mouse is placed over this movie clip increase the brightness of the movie clip. In the following ActionScript, frame 2 is a highlighted (selected) version of the movie clip while frame 1 is the regular version.

_root.menuBar.menuFilm.menuSummary.onRollOver = function() {

gotoAndStop(2);

}

_root.menuBar.menuFilm.menuSummary.onRollOut = function() {

gotoAndStop(1);

}

If you have a series of similar movie clips that all brighten when the mouse is over them, then having the same exact code inside each and every ?��Ǩ?�onRollOut?��Ǩ�� and ?��Ǩ?�onRollOver?��Ǩ�� allows changes to be easily made. If it is decided that you need to animated the transition between the brightened movie clip and the original. A simple find and replace can replace ALL occurrences of ?��Ǩ?�gotoAndStop(2)?��Ǩ�� with ?��Ǩ?�gotoAndStop(10)?��Ǩ��

Loading Modules from a menu

First let me state that if you are wanting to make menu, you will need to be familiar with setInterval and clearInterval to make menus appear and disappear with a short delay

The easiest paradigm to imagine is that every section that can be clicked on a menu downloads a new swf file from the server. The drawback of this method is that every click causes a pre-loader to appear. If there are a few sections (external swf files) that have subsections (specific frames in the timeline of each external swf file).

Another technique that makes entering code more efficient is using variables to refer to movie clips. If you have a series of menu items (that have the prefix ?��Ǩ?�menu?��Ǩ��) that you want to each load content into a certain movie clip so that you have a modular site. If you name the movie clips similar names like ?��Ǩ?�section.subsection?��Ǩ��, then you can use the movie clip property, ?��Ǩ?�_name?��Ǩ��, with a substring function to grab the section’s name. ?��Ǩ?�substr(4)?��Ǩ�� removes all the characters before the fifth letter from the name of the movie (?��Ǩ?�menuFilm?��Ǩ��). ?��Ǩ?�substr(10)?��Ǩ�� would start reading the characters at the eleventh character.

An examples is:

The user clicks the item, ?��Ǩ?�menuFilm.menuSummary?��Ǩ��. ?��Ǩ?�menuFilm?��Ǩ�� is the section of the short film web site. ?��Ǩ?�menuSummary?��Ǩ�� is the subsection of the web site. The onRelease() of this item calls the following line:

loadMovie(this._parent._name.substr(4)+”.swf”,_root.content);

This takes the name of the parent movie clip of the movie clip instance that was clicked (menuFilm) and minuses the first four characters. This loads an external movie clip with the name ?��Ǩ?�Film?��Ǩ��. The problem with this is that if you have a subsection clicked (menuFilm.menuSummary), then you need to create a function that tells ?��Ǩ?�Film.swf?��Ǩ�� to go to the subsection, ?��Ǩ?�Summary?��Ǩ��. This might look like the following:

loadContent(this._parent._name.substr(4),this._name.substr(4));

The inside of loadContent might look like:

function loadContent(clickedSection,clickedSubSection){

//load the correct swf file into the movie clip ?��Ǩ?�content?��Ǩ��

loadMovie(clickedSection +”.swf”,_root.content);

/* go to the frame of the swf file just loaded that corresponds

to the subsection clicked on the menu)

_root.content.gotoAndPlay(_root.clickedSubSection)

}

–Stephen M. James

www.smjdesign.com

Reading anyone? 113 Voice articles

Well, it took a few hours, but I feel like a veteran grokker. If you would like to read any articles posted on AIGA’s journal, Voice, at www.journal.aiga.org then you can search them all on one page at: www.smjdesign.com/grok/

Then click “aigavoice”

It’s over 200 pages of text. This script should work as long as the AIGA doesn’t change their ColdFusion URL structure or article database ids.

I’m working on an archival grok of Fast Company Magazine. It’s going to a more difficult due to where they place the ads and the hierarchy of the site.

Does anyone know of open source (or compiled and free!) programs that grab text from HTML?

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Uniqueness

The idea that the solution to every project needs to be unique is entrenched in the mind of creatives–at least the passionate ones. If we are creative problems solvers and every problem is unique, would not the solution be unique by definition. If it?��Ǩ�Ѣs the same problem, then why not use the same solution? Most problems are similar but are always different.

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

OS X vs XP in my opinion

FireWire vs. USB
Winner: FireWire

No contest. FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394) easily wins over USB 2.0. I?��Ǩ�Ѣm sure we can expect the same with FireWire 800. I hear that the reason that Intel selected USB as the plug and play port of choice is Apple wanted to charge a $1 licensing fee per port. For every $100 motherboard, Apple would pocket four dollars. So what did Intel go with? USB 1.0/2.0, the inferior, but royalty-free system.

Stability
Winner: OS X

Although if you treat a WinXP well you can get days without rebooting, I would have to say that OS X would win. It makes sense when your software developers start over from scratch. If I had a web server that had to be up as if my life depended on it (and Linux/Apache wasn’t an option), I would choose a Mac over a PC any day.

Freeware
Winner: WinXP

Yeah, I hear Widgets are the next coolest thing. They are the development of all the programmers that now work on Apples because Unix is now under the hood. More power to them, but in a browse of the web downloads, the list of free PC applications is vast. Most open source applications have a Win32 binary file along with the source code, but not a Mac hqx. Most businesses have the money to spend on a program, but individuals don’t. If I need to make an icon for a program on time, I’m not going to buy Icongrapher or Miconangelo. I’m going to download a shareware program, use it for 30 days, and then uninstall it.

File Browsing
Winner: WinXP

Yeah, Spotlight is cool . . . and some people really do use coloring coding. This is personal preference and depends greatly on your working habits. Mine include using a mouse as little as possible. I just love the fact that I do anything with my keyboard. This includes using the keyboard to move windows, select non-contiguous multiple files (hint: use the CTRL and Shift key), and tabbing around to any selection. The fact that I can turn on my computer and run a program with my monitor turned off is very cool. Does anyone how does one select the search field with the keyboard in iTunes?

More to come. . .

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com/

Rational Egoism

This post doesn’t specifically relate to media.

This morning, I watched part of a lecture on abolishing anti-trust laws. The proponents were Ayn Rand objectivists stating that rational egoism is better than altruism, because it hinders innovative businessmen and aids those who are less innovative.

I take issue with objectivism’s ethical stance that man is the end within himself. I have many altruistic beliefs in my worldview, but we do seem to accomplish more when we are egotists. This is in quantity though and not necessarily in quality.

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Consulting vs. designing

I’ve made some headway in getting my head wrapped around the issue of what a graphic design firm or a media marketing is. It may shed light on the goals of mid-level firms.

The larger firms often come with the total package. They do the market research and solve the problem through media. This increases overhead, because the consulting time is higher. The questions that a client might pose are closer to “I need to promote this product or service” than “I need a brochure, website, or CD designed.” This takes it out of the desktop publishing realm for print and the website designer world for interactive and into the problem solving consulting realm. The problem is that consulting has a connotation with talking without action and designing has a connotation with action without talking. Does the phrase “media marketing” take in the whole package?

This begs the question also, “What is the marketing department in the corporation getting paid to do?”

My experience seems to say that the in-house marketing department handles day-to-day problem solving and the out-sourcing to the media firm is done in special cases that the inhouse department cannot handle because they are focused on other projects or don’t have the expertise.

Btw, I found a webpage that had outlines the AIGA’s “12-step-program” previously mentioned (in selectable text).

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Return on creative?

How do creatives consultants that produce media products know that value has been added to the client? I am assuming that the client must share with the creative that revenue that has been created and associate that with the creative consultant. With this model, there has to be a tangible and quantitative goal, no? This goes against the idea of “art for art’s sake.” (I never bought into that, btw.) Corporate identity has been dwarfed by the surge of branding in today’s industry.Then, this of course leads to the question what is the line between responsibility to your client and responsibility to the end user?

Excerpts from “Return on Creative”
http://www.agda.asn.au/dm/observations/Retur.html
When we speak of a ‘return on creative,’ we become aware that designers have more to add to the business process than elegant brochures and eye-catching web sites. Designers can bring a return on creative because they are trained to bring something out of nothing. They are results-oriented.

‘Return on creative’ emphasises that creativity can, should, and will drive business success. Designers find themselves at the centre of this epochal transformation of business practices thanks to the dual meaning of the word ‘design.’

The rise of design as a social and commercial force drives us to the considerations I have engaged in here. It is becoming more and more clear that an enterprise without creative direction cannot succeed, and that creativity without a social goal flirts with frivolity. As the demand for a ‘return on creative’ increases, we will see, first of all, that there can be no return without the judicious application of creative resources. But we will also see something else: the breakdown of the division between business leaders and design leaders as more and more people realise that an enterprise can only succeed ‘by design.’

A comment that was added to ‘Return on Creative’

Creative Business Ideas
http://www.eurorscg.com/h/s/ow_cbi.asp
“Today, marketers need more than good advertising and promotion. Marketers need ideas that apply creativity to their business strategy in new ways to drive profitable growth. We call these ideas Creative Business Ideas: they transform the product, the brand, the company?��Ǩ��and sometimes even the business itself. “

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Selectable Flash text or lack of

View the following first: http://designing.aiga.org/static/why.html

At the AIGA, they posted this 12-step problem solving process, but they don?��Ǩ�Ѣt give you a list that is selectable so that you can copy it to one?��Ǩ�Ѣs clipboard and insert it into a text document. What kind of design is that? Maybe it’s great visual design.

Maybe they want us to type out the process stage so that it?��Ǩ�Ѣs a learning process. I doubt this though. My guess is that the creator made the text in Photoshop and didn?��Ǩ�Ѣt want to create the text boxes and retype it in Flash. It also could be, because Flash does a decent job of kerning, but not as good as Adobe. They would have to embed the fonts in the swf, too. An XML format of the information would be nice. . . Many of the prospective employer’s web sites that I’ve visited have their contact information as a graphic which prevents copying the phone number or address to the clipboard. Does anyone else use the clipboard this much?

So that begs the question, how much intellectual property control one should keep? If one doesn?��Ǩ�Ѣt make the text selectable, then for a viewer to post it on their blog they would have to retype it. Is this bad? I guess it depends on whether a link to the source is given. That would increase viewers of the original site. It seems that online the less control you have over your content, the more popular you become.

I have to admit though that I have outlined text inside a Flash website to keep the text justified, since dynamic text boxes in flash can?��Ǩ�Ѣt justify (even with CSS!). That was made possible by importing a CS AI document into Flash. For some reason text is often corrupted when using the Photoshop->Fireworks->Flash process which is the process to use for images.

Anyone else realize that there are problems with copying text from multiple textbox PDFs. The selections are guided by either the Z-index or the chromological order of textboxes’ placement. That’s another topic.

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

112390617585326574

For the great majority of mankind is satisfied with appearance, as though they were realities, and is more often influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.

–Machiavelli

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Grokking and Composing

Well, the PHP script that grabs images from AIGA members’ portfolio is up and running. It’s not pretty though. I am on a dial-up connection, so it has been a pain to test.

http://smjdesign.com/grok/aigaportfolios/

The irony is that I’ve spent more time programming than on design pursuits in the last week as I’ve been finalizing my portfolios to submit to employers in the Indianapolis area. Why is it that I didn’t want to program? I think it had something to do with no one seeing my work and sitting in front of a computer all day working on the same type of project. It would be like being a writer and having to look at text all day.

I’ve been reading about design patterns recently (Head First Design Patterns from O’Reilly and Essential Actionscript 2.0 by Colin Moock, also from O-Reilly). Btw, I always research books with amazon.com and with bn.com, but buy them at half.com. It’s not half off, but it’s not too far off from half off.

I finally put class composition to use with a revamping of the poetry knook–that is, internally. Most readers will not be able to tell a difference. The most stubstantial changes were made in the administration section anyway.

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Cover letters, resumes. . .

It’s temping to re-purpose all the information concerning cover letters, resumes, graphic resumes, portfolios, and interviewing skills when this is all over. There are plenty of sites out there. I believe I would just be adding to the plethora of information already out there.

Convergence has always been a primary mission of mine. Having all the information from multiple websites copied to one Word file (RTF, not doc, because doc’s are binary and rtf’s are open source tagged text) is easier to read and search. It is the anathema of marketing and capitalism though. Repeat users and ad viewing are good for the bottom line. Most of the websites that I have viewed in the last 24 hours I am never going to view again.

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Gmail, enough said

The fact that Gmail has POP3 support was a great selling point for me. It doesn’t make sense from a financial standpoint though. The only revenue Gmail generates is from Google’s AdSense program. Btw, Google’s AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) rocks.

Now if the world’s greatest search engine could search my messages for partial words. Currently, if I want to find all emails sent from a username of “smjdesign” at a any domain and I type “smj” no messages are returned.

The other problem is that a user is limited to 20 filters. That’s like limiting someone to twenty rules in Outlook.

Here is a list of issues that can occur with AJAX.

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Good to Great Book

I watched the Charlie Rose Show last night on PBS. He interviewed Jim Collins who wrote the book Good to Great. The main proposition is that great companies do not change when their environment does. It’s based on a highly statistical study that required the companies in the study to have been around for the past 30 years (which took out many of the technology companies).

Here’s a good article from Fast Company:
“I want to give you a lobotomy about change. I want you to forget everything you’ve ever learned about what it takes to create great results. I want you to realize that nearly all operating prescriptions for creating large-scale corporate change are nothing but myths. > The Myth of the Change Program: This approach comes with the launch event, the tag line, and the cascading activities. . .”

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com

Welcome

Yesterday was my birthday. My age still hasn’t hit me. Afterall no one asks your age after a certain time. At least now, I’m being asked if I’d like wine with my meal. Of course, I never take it–not big on the taste of fermentation. The elders say that I will appreciate looking younger than my age in a decade. We’ll see.

I hope that this blog will be a place that I can enlighten others in the New Media business along with graphic designers and computer programmers with tips and techniques. I hope to discuss everything from design patterns to design patterns! I have a personal blog somewhere else for posts about my more private details.

I look forward to readers pointing me to their readings and experience. Don’t hesitate to post.

–Stephen
www.smjdesign.com