ExploreLearning won a Codie each of the past two years. This year we are finalists for a Codie in two different categories: Best Mathematics Instructional Solution and Best Science Instructional Solution for the ExploreLearning Gizmos.
Gizmos are made with Director (and have been since 1995).
Will I get my hands on two Codies this year? The two sitting on my desk are getting a bit lonely 🙂
4 comments February 13th, 2008
Interested in doing some 3D game development? If so, please drop a line to webmediajobs at gmail . com. Job description as follows:
I have an browser based multiplayer game under development. I’m currently exploring other options in the way of developers.
I want just one person fulltime for several months – maybe more.
The game is 3rd person style… a la tomb raider. All the CG has been done in 3DMAX.
11 comments February 8th, 2008
After more than a year, the Director Podcast has returned from the “virtual” dead. Drop over to the Magicgate Director Podcast site to listen to the podcast.
Looks like Director will be at the Games Developer Conference (as they were last year), and possibly making an announcement of the new Director on Feb 18 based on this thread over on the Adobe Director forums.
7 comments February 5th, 2008
From a comment posted to this blog yesterday and some discussion on Direct-L it seems as if an email went out to some people saying that Director would be available on March 3rd. That does seem to fit in with the February announcement date. Guess we’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out if this is true.
9 comments January 25th, 2008
The new year has arrived. I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to do much of anything lately other than watch Apple stock plummet. Hopefully I’ll have a bit more free time during this year to get posts up here, and to watch the stock go up. I even bought some Adobe stock today…I figure it will shoot up when Director gets released 🙂
So…where is that dreaded release. For those that have been paying attention to the Director FAQ it now says, “…However, our current planning assumption is that the next major release of Director will be announced in February 2008.” So it seems like we’ll hear about it next month.
This FAQ has changed quite a bit during 2007, but it continues to get narrowed down (a specified month is so much better than a ‘sometime in the 2nd half of the year’ statement). Back on January 10, 2006, Steve Jobs announced that the iMac would now be using an Intel CPU. It has been two years without a MacIntel version of the Shockwave plug-in (other than running in Rosetta…but please…that hurts). Can Director and/or Shockwave get back in the game after such a long absence? I guess we’ll find out this year.
Allen Partridge (the Adobe Director Evangelist) now has a blog up and running called Shockwaves that is all Director, all the time. Be sure to stop by to see it grow.
Looks like it will be a happy year for Director and my MacIntels.
5 comments January 23rd, 2008
Today Apple released Security Update 2007-009 for OSX 10.4 and 10.5. It includes both the Shockwave for Director and Flash Player Plug-ins.
The upside of this is that Apple thinks it is good to include Shockwave with a system update. Shockwave has been preinstalled on Macs for a LONG time now. The downside is that although the plug-in is update, it is the Rosetta-only Shockwave. It is getting so hard to deal with Rosetta. All I want for Chrismukkah is a MacIntel version of Shockwave.
This was the statement included with the security update:
Shockwave Plug-in
Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.1, Mac OS X Server v10.5.1
Impact: Opening maliciously crafted Shockwave content may lead to arbitrary code execution
Description: Multiple vulnerabilities exist in Shockwave Player. By enticing a user to open maliciously crafted Shockwave content, an attacker may cause arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issues by updating Shockwave Player to version 10.1.1.016. Credit to Jan Hacker of ETH Zurich for reporting the problem in Shockwave.
Thanks Jan!
And while on the topic of a MacIntel version of the Plug-in, it seems as if Director has been slightly delayed. Early in 2007 Adobe had said the 2nd half of 2007 for a new version, but that has now been pushed back to January 2008. Read more in the Director FAQ.
5 comments December 17th, 2007
With the upcoming release of Director 11 (still scheduled for last half of 2007…which is soon!) Adobe seems to have added a Director Evangelist to the team. From postings on the Adobe forums it looks as though Allen Partridge is now that person. He has been active on many mailing lists over the years, and was the author of Real-Time Interactive 3D Games: Creating 3D Games in Macromedia Director.
If you happen to be involved with a Director User Group you should check out this thread…he is looking for you!
Congrats Allen. Looking forward to hearing more about Director in the coming months and years.
7 comments November 25th, 2007
Like 2 million other people, I installed OSX 10.5 (aka Leopard) on my iBook this past weekend. The installation went smoothly. I made sure I removed lots of 3rd party toys I keep on my computer (ShapeShifter, FinderPop, etc.), and I made a clone of my HD using SuperDuper!.
I love having Spaces built in now rather than using a 3rd party app. In Safari you can control-click on anything on a web page and choose Inspect Element which pulls open a nifty tool. Screen sharing via iChat is sweet. Lots of things I really can’t live without (hmm…geek?).
Minor issues with my upgrade were with the web sharing. It now runs on Apache 2, so I had to edit my httpd.conf file sitting inside the apache2 folder to get php running again. Some of the permissions on mysql data also got lost, so had to tweek those.
Now, on to Director. I started it up and it seems to run with no problem, and something even got fixed! For years on OSX the little arrows on the floating windows pointed diagonally downward. They didn’t care if the window was open or closed. But now…look at the picture below! The little arrows actually point in a reasonable direction. GUI improvements on a very old program with a two day old operating system. Amazing. I’m so excited watching the little arrows move. The simple things in life 🙂
7 comments October 30th, 2007
For those that might be interested in watching the session, you can drop by and watch the entire sneak peek. It is a large FLV, so not sure how long I’ll get to keep it at that location. There is no audio at the start, and you have to really crank it up to hear things.
My poor little Mac Mini that hosts this site has been doing a bit of crashing lately due to lack of RAM. I plugged in the maximum 1 gig earlier this evening, so we’ll see how it goes. For the most part it is like one of those energizer bunnies and it just keeps going and going. Of course with OSX 10.4 and half a gig of ram it was just marginally sitting there with 12 meg free. Remember when that number was big…my how times have changed.
6 comments October 10th, 2007
The DevLearn 2007 Developers Conference started up today in conjunction with the Adobe Learning Summit. Dr. Ellen Wagner will be presenting several sessions at the conference. Two involve migrating from Authorware to other Adobe eLearning products. Dr. Wagner got a chance to speak during the BOF Director session at MAX 2007 where she talked about how Director is superb for creating serious games (immersive learning simulations).
Rick Jones (Adobe Senior Product Marketing Manager for Director and Contribute) also spoke at both of the Director sessions at MAX, and will be running a session called Creating Effective Serious Games with Director and Flash.
Adobe continues to heavily promote Director at various eLearning and game conferences across the country in the past few months. Adobe is definitely keeping busy.
3 comments October 9th, 2007
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