This will likely be of interest to most Flash Developers fortunate enough to be working on a Mac.

Since I recently stopped using Firefox due to its ever increasing size and annoyance of download requests every time I opened it, I chose to switch over to a much slimmer Safari. The only thing I really missed with Firefox was the Flash Tracer extension, which allowed me to see what was going on in the flash files loaded into Safari. So why not come up with a widget to make that happen. So I decided to download the new xcode development tools provided by Apple. It comes with a handy graphical tool for making osx dashboard widgets. After a few evenings of tinkering with the program I came up with my first widget, it is similar to Firefox’s Flash Tracer extension but will allow you to use any browser you want and has a few more features. It uses Ajax to load the flashlog.txt file generated by the flash player (debug version) and parses the data for displaying properly. Pretty strait forward but very useful for any flash developer I would think. All I do is hit the corner hot-spot that loads my dashboard and the flash tracer widget appears showing me all the guts of my flash files that are running in my browser.
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I am happy to announce that our company Kinoli just launched Free Shipping.org. The web site is an online shopping resource with a list of over 600 stores with free shipping coupons and promotion codes. By the end of 2008, we expect to have over 1000 free shipping coupons on the site. The site also has a list of last minute shipping dates for many of the most popular stores.

Some of the featured deals will get you Target free shipping , or free shipping at Kohls, Macys, Sierra Trading Post, Dell, Shutterfly, Snapfish, Lands End or JCPenney free shipping. You can shop by brand or category. The toys free shipping category is one of the most popular on the site.

Anyways, we hope you can get some use out of it this holiday season.

We’re super excited about FreeShiping.org and would love your feedback.

London that is. So I finished my trip in London for a few days. It was there I had met up with the friend (Kim) that passed on the earlier part of my journey but she finally came to her sences and joined my in London. The first thing I noticed about the big city is that it was real busy with people and vehicles, it seems to never sleep. However I could at least understand everyone; that was a huge plus, believe me, it got frustrating at times in the other countries when I couldn’t read any of the signs and had to keep asking people if they spoke english before I could find my way.

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My second and final day in Munich was one to remember. I had met a few interesting people the night before and decided to stick it out just a little longer in the land of the Third Reich. That final day I ended up going on 3 tours. A city sight seeing tour which was very informative on how the city and its rulers were formed and basically covered all of Bavaria. A Third-Reich tour which was the best tour of them all, I saw where the Nazi party was formed, where they held there meetings and even some of the buildings they had built during their reign. Munich bore the official title, Hauptstadt der Bewegung, the Capital of the Nazi Movement, and I learned all about the buildings that carry the secrets of a dark past. A Beer and Food tour which was actually somewhat boring but involved some beer tasting and some eating, so that made it all the better. I also hung out in the evening with some of the friends I had met there and did some of the Octoberfest stuff.

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Duh, I should have known. So the plan was to go to Freiburg, Germany today. Not knowing theirs also a Fribourg, Switzerland, I purchased a ticket from Bern to Friburg, about half an hour later I realized I was still in Switzerland. Doh! So I had to rail back to Bern then through Basel and now I’m in Freiburg Germany. Other than that things have been fairly uneventful for the past couple of days. Except for the extreme pain my legs are feeling right now due to the excess walking I do everyday, all is well. I sure wish I brought my bike along. I would be able to see more things and wear out my shoe’s/body a little less in the process.

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My 8 hour flight to paris was quit booring and uneventful as to be expected. Since I saw Paris on my last trip to Europe, I didn.t think it would be the highlight of the trip and just wanted to catch the main sights before pushing on, which I did. I saw the Louvre Museum, Iffel Tower, Arch de Triumph, Versaille Palace and a lot of other old stuff. It was all neet to see but to be honest I felt Paris was somewhat of a dirty place and very fast pased. It was also over saturated with tourists, which I was one of I know, but still, I.m talking, lines worse than Canadian Passport lines around Christmas time. So I pushed on to Bern after a day and a half in the French capital.

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Well, after a long hard working summer, I’ve decided to take a break from work and travel around europe for a couple of weeks. I’ve been looking forward to this trip ever since I returned from my last Euro trip with my brother about 4 years ago. Sadly, though, the friend I was going to go with has dropped out last minute, so I will be going solo. I leave in a couple hours but will be sure to keep my one or two site visitors informed of my progress. I don’t really know where exactly I will be going except that I arrive in Paris on the 21st and fly out of Manchester on October 4th. So far the plan is to check out Paris and Versaille for a day and then take a train to Switzerland, from there who knows what lies ahead. I will be staying in youth hostels along the way.

On this trip I hope to see a lot of historical sites, meet new people and get a little more cultured along the way. Oh yeah, and of course take a lot of pictures.

Wish me luck.

I was fortunate enough to be able to partner with Veer on an extremely interactive project showcasing their creativity and stock photography/font product lines. The website has more animation in it than probably any other project I’ve ever worked on. I was able to work closely with Veer’s creative teem in order create the animations they were wanting and also develope the mini-site according to their specs. Take a look and see what hidden gems you can find.

Click here and then click on the ‘Rest Stop’ image.

I recently had a client ask me to make them a flash video player that would stream video. I wasn’t really sure how to do that so I did some research and found some interesting information on it. Firstly, I think the internet community is a bit confused about the ‘Streaming’ term at the current time. Even Macromedia was at the Flash 6 stage. If you do a search for streaming video in google you get all sorts of responses. However, their are two main technologies that are at work in the online video world, that is, Progressive Download and Streaming.

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About 3 months ago I wouldn’t have dreamed about writing an article like this. But it is true. I really did make a complete switch to Apple. It has honestly been a lot less painful than I thought it would be. Here’s the reason and the results of my conversion.

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