This will be a very special presentation on FlashPress – Bridging Two Worlds. I have been working really hard on this project with a local firm in Toronto, OneMethod, and developers Ryan Andal (zeropattern), and Darryl Cheung (deezilla). This is a project that started over a year ago at PHUG with a bunch of students from Seneca College.

We did an alpha launch and presentation at WordCamp Toronto this year, and we are now ready for the beta  at WordCamp Montreal, you don’t want to miss this one!

Description: FlashPress is an extension to WordPress, which allows the ability to use an essentially PHP based CMS to communicate with a Flash site. The FlashPress project aims to develop a new WordPress bundle that will allow anybody to download, install, choose a template, and be up running with a fully CMS backed Flash site or blog in minutes. As part of this project we will be publicly documenting the process, code, and challenges along the way.

This will mark the first WordCamp in Montreal and so far they are off to a great start! They have landed an excellent location in downtown Montreal, SAT ( La Société des arts technologiques ), some really great sponsors, and an excellent list of speakers. I have also heard through the grapevine there will be an opening night party at the St. Sulpice.

So make sure you register for tickets now before it’s to late!

We’re making some changes! As you may already know, we’re currently re-modeling the main BackSpaceStudios website. As part of our new look we have decided to take BackSpace in a new direction. We are focusing our efforts on “Building Better Communities”.

What this this all mean? Our philosophy is simple. We believe in Open Source Design and technology and practice this philosophy in all our work. It’s about using Open Source Tools to create an interactive, engaging, accessible, and intuitive experience for every community.

It is our goal to bring Open Source to the commercial workspace, deliver alternatives, and change the face of design as we know it! it is our responsibillity to build a better web and help foster Social Media and Networking.

This new philosophy comes with new services, new staff, and re-branding. Our goal is to promote the use of open source technologies such as WordPress, Drupal, and Social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Ning, etc.

We have also re-organized our staff. Please welcome Nicole Kelly – Project Manager, Darryl Cheung – Technical Director, Justan Accaputo – Creative Director, and Jeff Knights – Client Manager.

And, finally, a new logo and name. This is just the first step of what is to come for BackSpace.

There are many examples of red5 chat tools and apps all over the web. The downside is, we have yet to see any examples used in commercial projects or any real world examples, which makes it difficult for most developers, who are not involved in open source collaboration’s, to see the benefit of using Red5.

However, that being said, I am very excited and proud to say that I, including many other talented developers, was involved in the conceptualization and development of an outstanding, groundbreaking, and innovative use of Red5 for a major web project…

ZOS – Last Tango in Jadac – http://zostv.com/interactive

Last Tango in Jadac, follows an interactive cinematic following the characters of the series featured on The Movie Network.

The experience is a mix of Papervision3D, Red5, and interactive video that take you on a journey while allowing you to explore and discover your own paths and unfold the dense storyline. This project was produced by Whizbang films in association with the Bellfund and LifeCapture Interactive.

The chat tool is quite an accomplishment, it is very unique, and definitely adds to the over all user experience.  It allows for users to communicate with each other while they are exploring the the PV3 world of Jadac. Considering there are no avatars the chat tool becomes an essential part of the experience and game play by aiding users follow the storyline and successfully complete the 3 missions, and discover hidden secrets and easter eggs.

The chat tool is a multi-layered application that can be minimized and maximize, sort users, find friends, and choose from to different display options. It also allows users users to log in anonymously, randomly puts users in different rooms, displays current population, handles special characters and html tags, stores and tracks user sessions, disconnects during idle time, and more.

ZOS Chat Organized View

ZOS Chat Random View

We had many obstacles and challenges to over come while working on this project. Initially the chat tool was written in AS2 and eventually we decided to port it over to AS3, as well we had to learn how to uses eclipse, compile java, and build server Red5 modules to handle all our functions. Working on this projec was a labour of love and well worth it it.I hope that in the near future we will be able to extend the chat tool and more features as well as open source it.

At some point I will embark on a step by step tutorial of both the java and as, as well I hope to open source it. In the mean time we hope you enjoy it.

Original concepts for the chat are the brain child of Geoff Whitlock ( CEO, Lifecapture Inc. ), creative concept developed by  Dan Riley ( Creative Director, Lifecapture Inc. ), Lead developers Brendan Sera-Shriar and Ryan Andal ( Contracted by Lifecapture Inc. for this project ), Red5 Java developers Brendan Sera-Shriar and Andy Shaules ( Contracted by Lifecapture Inc. for this project ).

The entire project took over 10 months to develop with team of 20 plus developers, designers, writers, directors, producers, motion graphic artists, animators, and other specialty staff, please visit http://zostv.com/interactive for a full list of credits.

Visit http://zostv.com/interactive for the full experince.

Hobnox is an online entertainment and publishing platform, a network for creatives and their fans. We unite broadcast-quality web media with cutting edge community-enabling technology. With Hobnox, an international media corporation is born. Created for artist by artists, Hobnox combines the best of current web entertainment with the newest technological possibilities of the internet to create fascinating opportunities for both artists and audiences.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.backspacestudios.com/beaker/simple3d_sphere.swf" height="400" width="400" /]

Download simple3d_sphere.as

A must see!

this has all chanegd with the GIFPlayer class!

To load an animated GIF :

// we create the GIFPlayer, it plays automatically by default
var myGIFPlayer:GIFPlayer = new GIFPlayer();
// we show it
addChild ( myGIFPlayer );
// we load a gif file
myGIFPlayer.load ( new URLRequest ("animation.gif") );
// you can also load any valid GIF stream (ByteArray)
//with the loadBytes method (version 0.2)
myGIFPlayer.loadBytes ( gifStream );
// listen for the IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR event,
//dispatched when the GIF fails to load
myGIFPlayer.addEventListener ( IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, onIOError );
// listen for the GIFPlayerEvent.COMPLETE event,
//dispatched when GIF is loaded
myGIFPlayer.addEventListener ( GIFPlayerEvent.COMPLETE, onCompleteGIFLoad );
// listen for the FrameEvent.FRAME_RENDERED event,
//dispatched when a GIF frame is rendered on screen
myGIFPlayer.addEventListener ( FrameEvent.FRAME_RENDERED, onFrameRendered );
// listen for the FileTypeEvent.INVALID event,
//dispatched when an invalid file is loaded
myGIFPlayer.addEventListener ( FileTypeEvent.INVALID, onInvalidFileLoaded );
// get total frames
myGIFPlayer.totalFrames;
// standard methods
myGIFPlayer.play();
myGIFPlayer.stop();
myGIFPlayer.gotoAndStop(3);
myGIFPlayer.gotoAndPlay(3);

Here’s a sample from ByteArray.org . Please don’t load huge GIF files!

Online Demo :
***Click on Load GIF File and paste this in the path >> http://www.backspacestudios.com/beaker/GIFPlayer/diego.gif
[kml_flashembed movie="http://backspacestudios.com/beaker/GIFPlayer/GIFPlayer.swf" height="500" width="500" /]

Sources and documentation available at http://code.google.com/p/as3gif/

Over the past few weeks I have become obsessed with the computeSpectrum function.

I have been creating all kinds of really great visualizers using standard AS3 and Flash, The examples are primitive and very much in the experimental stage of development click here to check them out…

A few days ago I began to wonder how the computeSpectrum function could work with papervision3D. After doing some research and coming across lots of great examples,

I have began working on a concept for the next PV3World.com project.

I had found the inspiration and learned how to work with it from the 3D sound Visualizer contest on Lee Brimelow’s theflashblog.com, and by working through some tutorials over at gotoandlearn.com

Stay tuned here on the BackSpaceBlabber and over at PV3World.com as I develop these ideas I’ll keep updates and write some tutorials along the way.

http://www.zefrank.com/byokal/kal2.html