Mobile phone service Stitcher provides a selected list of news feeds that are read to you. The production quality of this service is very good, and works well for iPhone users. Sign up, and Stitcher sends you a link to their IUI interface in Safari for the iPhone. When you find the feed you want to read, you click on a link to play the Quicktime file in your browser, and someone starts reading you a summary of the news from sites including TechCrunch and Wall Street Journal.
Web 2.0 makes inroads in the scientific community as the Hershey Center for Applied Research, in Hershey, PA develops a social network to improve interactions between industry, academia, government, venture capitalists, the work force and IP attorneys. The social networking software is said to provide a "LinkedIn look" that will enable scientists to connect with each other, and provide content areas such as wikis.
KnowledgeMesh is designed to create and improve interactions between industry, academia, government, venture capitalists, the work force and IP attorneys. Secondarily, Butcher said, she hopes the tool will position the center for growth.
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A social network can help bridge the gap between researchers and the resources they seek. Moreover, the social tools will let outsiders collaborate with scientists they wouldn't ordinarily be familiar with.
KnowledgeMesh includes profiles, wikis and other tools that were created by Intelmarx, a social software provider that caters to nonprofit organizations and higher education institutions.
Apture is a new web service that allows you to provide contextual links using an AJAX layer to display content from sites such as wikipedia. So when you see the little icons next to terms (like the AJAX and Wikipedia links) you can click those links to view content from Wikipedia. Nice.
Steward Mader provides suggestions for starting a wiki in the enterprise. His opening advice boils down to what I said in my enterprise blogging presentations a few years ago. To summarize:
- Go grassroots—start with processes you already do in other ways and migrate them to the wiki (meeting notes, documentation, etc.)
- Work with a small pilot team of doers
- Lead by example and then invite senior leadership to look and participate
Flash game design has become a subject of interest to me in the past year because my 7 year old son has expressed the desire to create video games. He has been making his own mazes, card games, and board games for a few years, and I thought that a natural progression in this interest might be to translate some of those simpler games into Flash. Guest blogger, Heather Johnson, helped me find some resources for people interested in this topic.
If you are interested in learning how to design Flash games, then you don't have to invest in expensive courses or confusing books. There are many free tutorials available online for those who already have Flash and want to learn more about the program. For Flash tutorials that are specific to games, I recommend the following eight resources.
- Actionscript.org – This site is brimming with Flash tutorials for those at all levels of expertise. Once you reach an intermediate level of skill, try this jigsaw puzzle tutorial in order to learn more about object orientation.
- Game Innovator – Game Innovator is a helpful resource for both new and seasoned game designers. The site offers a free ebook, entitled "Beginners Guide to Developing Flash Games and Javascript Games," which is a great place to start when you are new to the technology.
- Emanuele Feronato – Feronato is a self-described geek and programmer who offers many useful tutorials on his blog. His Flash game tutorial, in particular, has become a very popular resource for hobbyists and professionals alike.
- Learn Flash Games – This area of 2FlashGames.com offers seven free video tutorials. Learn about animation, tweening, action scripts and more with these helpful beginner's lessons.
- Peachpit – Peachpit is a publishing company that offers how-to books on graphic design, Web design, programming and more. This is the company's official blog, which occasionally offers sample chapters from their books. "First Steps of Flash Design" is a chapter from Macromedia Flash MX Game Design Demystified that will introduce new designers to the technology.
- Tutorialized – This is an amazing site that allows IT professionals and hobbyists to share and rate tutorials. There is a growing area that is solely devoted to Flash game tutorials, which is a great resource to both newcomers and veterans.
- GameSheep – This is a popular free gaming site that also offers various free tutorials. The Flash racing game tutorial is great fun and highly recommended for those at the beginner to intermediate design level.
- SitePoint – One of the most popular resources for Website and game developers, SitePoint offers an article titled "Online Games Development in Flash – A Brief History." This article outlines the history of Flash games and what Flash games are capable of. It also offers links to helpful tutorials.
Whether you are a hobbyist who wants to play around with Flash design or a serious programming student, there are countless resources available to you on the Net. Rather than submerging yourself in dry, confusing texts, I recommend you get your feet wet with the above online resources.
By-line:
Heather Johnson is a freelance writer, as well as a regular contributor for OEDb, a site for learning about online education. Heather invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com
Flickr Pro account users can now upload video up to 90 seconds long.
This week I'll be starting another new stage in my career, as I take on the role of Director of User Experience at Traction Software, Inc, marking my return to the subjects you've read me blogging about in the past: design of information retrieval and content management systems, knowledge management, and social networking and social software for the enterprise.
It's with great pleasure that I return to work on the application I used as a client, and to the team that I contributed some interface design work to over a year ago as a consultant. You'll be reading me return to blogging about the topics I mentioned above, but this time from the design and product development end of the conversation. Previously I wrote mainly about grassroots needs for social software and km and how blog/wiki tools meet these needs. In addition, I expect to show details of the application and its use for various forms of personal and enterprise knowledge management. I've used this tool in the past on a range of needs, including serving as a tracking system for usability testing issues, documenting project information (wiki style), and simply for logging my own projects and todo lists (personal km style wiki).
There will be more to come. I look forward to sharing with you.
I walked by with my headphones on, but glanced down and noticed the sign in his guitar case. It said something like, "Alabama singer/songwriter. Free CD. Donations appreciated." I dropped 3 dollars in his case and then jumped on the Q. I turned the sleeve over it my hand. It was a cut brown paper bag with ink stamps on it. It had an image of the singer's face and read Jamey Hamm, Get You A Slice. I appreciated the simplicity of it. I got home and ripped it onto my Mac. It's sort of the polar opposite of me in terms of musical taste, there's a touch of Christian & Country in there, but I like it.
This is my last week making the daily commute into Union Square. I take for granted the really great musicians banging, strumming, and belting out tunes in that station every day. Mecca Bodega are regulars, for instance. Some are not my taste (Chillean pan flutists, for instance). I usually stop a second for the singer songwriters and there's this guy who played classical guitar that's great.
I regret now, that I didn't buy a CD from every one of those musicians I gave a few minutes to. Some were so excellent, but I'm always 1/2 tuned out and eager to get home. Figures it took me a year to realize that I'll miss that now that I won't have it as part of my day. I don't know. Maybe I'll start making an effort now to collect the CDs of every halfway interesting musician I come across that's playing in the subway and start blogging about them. Might be cool.
This is where the site ended up. I can focus on blogging on that site again, now that I straightened that out.
Frankly, I'm tired of working on blog themes and it was refreshing to just strip all the visual artifice out of the skin so that the content came to the fore.
I'm going to be going through a career change in a week, so I expect to be blogging about blogging and interface design with a bit more vigor in the future. I also expect to strip out the design of this site once again so I can concentrate on the content.
Pursuant to that, I also expect that a little case study for how I built the themes for konigi and this site should be warranted. It's been an interesting 2 months living with that original fussy konigi design and ending up where it is now.