Posts filed under 'Daily thoughts'
Like many other Mac zealots I sat around with live text/image feeds from MacRumors (plus a few other sites) yesterday as Steve Jobs gave his sneak preview of OSX 10.5 (aka Leopard). The two things that got my attention (besides the new Mac Pro) were the backup feature of called Time Machine, and the inclusion of virtual screens called Spaces.
Both features sure look pretty.
I’m wondering how well Director will work with both of these. Currently I use virtual screens all the time. Sometimes I use Desktop Manager, and other times I use the more recent product of VirtueDesktops. Both are products are donation ware. Both have minor issues when using programs such as Director due to the fact that there are so many individual little windows that can float around, but even with the bugs the virtual world is high on my list of necessities. Combining all this with Expose will be even more fun.
The funniest part of the Time Machine was pointed out by a reader (Christian Kent) of Macintouch:
They demonstrate ‘lost contacts’ in the Address Book app, by doing a
search for the name ‘Rose’. They say that Time Machine ‘can even
reunite you with old friends’. This can’t be a coincidence — the most
famous time traveller on TV, Doctor Who, has just stopped travelling
with his companion, Rose, a month ago.
I loved the new season of Dr. Who. I can’t wait until the Season 2 DVD’s are released.
August 8th, 2006
Bruce Chizen, the CEO of Adobe, was interviewed by the New York Times this past weekend. The Shockwave plug-in was mentioned. I find that a rather positive thing, since no one from Adobe/Macromedia had mentioned Shockwave in recent years, and I often wondered if they were still aware of it. From the interview:
Q. You recently announced a partnership with Google, which is in a fierce battle with Microsoft in the Web search market. Was this a case of two players joining forces?
A. It had nothing to do with either of our relationships with Microsoft. It just made a lot of sense. We have significant reach to the user if you look at the Shockwave client, the Adobe Reader client, the Adobe Flash Player client, and Google wanted to have access to those customers.
Although I enjoyed that snippet the first paragraph of the article referred to “Adobe digesting Macromedia.” I don’t know if I’d like to be digested…
August 8th, 2006
Wow, I was gone for a week and all sort of Director news made it in to the world. Director lives! Tom Higgins posted a few comments in my prior post. Quick summary of links:
Posting on Tom Higgins blog
Interview with Tom Higgins
Director gets mentioned on MacNN
Director used in development of OSX (mentioned in Q & A session at SxSW Conference)
July 31st, 2006
From a mailing list I’m not on (I can’t believe it!) I see that the next version of Director was confirmed by Tom Higgins. You can see what was said in the mailing list message on this blog.
2007 is sounding better every day.
July 9th, 2006
For those of you that run OSX Spotlight as a search tool is a mixed blessing. Sometimes it seems useful, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes you wonder what the hell was Apple thinking.1
One thing that is very useful is the RavWare Director Spotlight Plugin. This allows indexing of all my .dir and .cst files sitting on my computer. When I recall that I wrote a behavior/handler to integrate a function (all that geeky math stuff) I could use spotlight to search for the word ‘integrate’ and there is a very good chance my Director file will appear among the results.
I’ve been using it since the day it came out, and find it worth every penny — it is a mere $10.99!
1 As a side note to Spotlight, I often use EasyFind when doing basic searches.
June 25th, 2006
Looks as though there is a new agreement between Adobe/Director and Google for the Shockwave Player. From my point of view, this can only be a good thing, since I don’t think Google would go in for an agreement with a company/product they didn’t feel was worthwhile. From Tom Higgins blog posting:
Adobe values both Director and the Shockwave Player as important technologies and is interested in ensuring their continued success going forward. We feel that partnerships such as this expand opportunities for Director and Shockwave Player, and the company as a whole.
I’m looking forward to future success!
June 21st, 2006
For those that develop Shockwave content it is often useful to have an older version of the plug-in kicking around for testing purposes. After doing a bit of digging I managed to find these on the Adobe site.
For those interested, you can drop by this technote.
They only go back to version 6…but that is pretty far back!
June 12th, 2006
I’ve heard that Dean Utian (from Dean’s Director Tutorials and Resources) was interviewed on the most recent Director Podcast. Be sure to drop by Magicgate Software’s Director Podcast Site for a great listen.
June 1st, 2006
Is this a picture of me at the latest club dancing the night away? I can’t say it is, but it is a picture from a project that was recently completed using Director located at Cadbury World across the lake in Birmingham, UK.
The development team at HMC Media Lab used 3 computers networked together with a shock sensitive floor and motion tracking to make interactive chocolatey graphics at Cadburys World theme park in the UK. Director was used to create “custom software from the ground up and installed it across three computer processors at the nerve centre of the installation.”
As you enter the infinity room a giant chocolate bar melts into gloopy puddles beneath you and, when you jump in them, chocolate splashes all over the floor. Then a sprinkling of individual Roses chocolates appear beneath your feet. You won’t believe your eyes when they unwrap as you tread on them but as you step off they wrap back up.
I’m always amazed by what one can do with Director. Now, if I make it over to to the UK I’ll be sure to stop by. Mmmm…..chocolate — Homer Simpson.
May 23rd, 2006
ExploreLearning won a Codie Award last night in the Best Instructional Solution: Science category. The only reason this is of interest here is that ExploreLearning creates all its Gizmos (online multimedia content) with Adobe Director. Oh yeah, I also work for EL 😉
May 17th, 2006
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