newsflash

Minko is one of the lesser-known Stage3D frameworks but it is actually one of the most advanced. Developed in France by Aerys, Minko boasts some of the best technology for things like 3D model compression, dynamic lighting effects, and hardware-accelerated animations.

Aerys has just launched a preview level of their first game built using the Minko engine. In Black Sun, you are tasked with killing not only zombies, but Nazi zombies. The game has amazing lighting effects and is only 9MB large because of the compression technology built into Minko. Check it out!

In this quick tip I show you how to finally get rid of Flash’s right-click context menu once and for all! You can now listen to a right-click event and use it for a custom menu or for game play. Exciting stuff!

Company: Mirada

Location: Marina del Rey, CA, US Category: Coder Type: Freelance

Description

We are looking for an iOS Application Developer who will be responsible for the design, development and deployment of software for a short-term project.

Your responsibilities:

- Perform a technical analysis of requirements presented in design work. - Produce a solid, detailed technical design - Write clean, modular, robust code to implement the desired requirements with design and production supervision - Work with the QA and support teams to triage and fix bugs with rapid turnaround - Contribute ideas for making the application better and easier to use

Your qualifications:

- Programming languages including: iOS, Objective-C, Cocoa or similar - Experience working with and integrating content management systems (CMS) - A work style that is extremely detail oriented - The drive, flexibility and passion to work independently and thrive in fast-paced and adaptive environment - Strong communication skills - 3-5 years of programming experience - Bachelor’s degree in CS or equivalent experience - A complete and verifiable portfolio

To apply, send resume/reel/website/availability to Katie at khenderson@mirada.com.

Company: Mirada

Location: Marina del Rey, CA, US Category: Coder Type: Freelance

Description

We are looking for a Junior Android Application Developer who will be responsible for the design, development and deployment of software for a variety of mobile platforms. Here’s what you need to know.

Your responsibilities:

- Write clean, modular, robust code to implement the desired requirements under the direction of the Lead Android Programmer - Work with the QA and support teams to triage and fix bugs with rapid turnaround - Contribute ideas for making the application better and easier to use

Your qualifications:

- Programming languages and systems: Android, Java, HTML; OpenGL and Renderscript, a plus - A work style that is extremely detail oriented - The drive, flexibility and passion to work independently and thrive in fast-paced and adaptive environment - Strong communication skills - 1-2 years of programming experience - Bachelor’s degree in CS or equivalent experience - A complete and verifiable portfolio

Position has the possibility to work remotely part-time but meetings and reviews require attendance.

To apply, send resume/reel/website/availability to Katie at khenderson@mirada.com.

Is post social media friendship an emotional investment of diminishing returns? It really depends who you ask. Midwest-based designer Colin Pinegar’s recent BFA project Best Friends definitely calls the authenticity of ubiquitous connectivity into question, or at least adds some nuance to qualifying these relationships. Pinegar created a ‘scorecard’ for his Facebook friends that awarded each online connection 1-25 points based off a range of criteria (do I know this person’s phone number? can I recognize this person by their name alone? etc.)

Continue reading.... Best Friends [Objects]

Bowyer is a new company by Vadik Marmeladov, Sergey Filippov, a man known as “The Client”, and Ilya Kolganov. In this interview we talk through their first collaborations, philosophy, process, commercial projects, and future plans.

“Craftmanship is attention to details. Luxury is attention to unnecessary details.”

Typical phone games and apps retain a certain average appearance with a target on mass-market appeal. Design is usually not a priority, and as a result, often mediocre. Unlike the fashion industry, for instance, app development is young enough that nichés have not yet developed fully. Seeing this gap in the industry, Bowyer wished to target luxury markets.

“About 2 years ago while working on a commercial website we came up with a simple app for a luxury brand,” Vadik explained. The screen would be completely black, and through in-app purchases, individual diamonds could be bought and populated on the screen. The concept would be a reflection of physical diamonds: holding no real value other than the inherent scarcity and cost of ownership.

Continue reading.... An Interview with Bowyer [Theory, iPad, Interview]

I just uploaded a new tutorial that explains how to use the new mouse lock feature that is included in Flash Player 11.2. This feature allows you to create infinite mouse scrolling while in fullscreen mode, which is essential for things like first-person shooter games.

Shelby.tv

Shelby.tv is a new web service (and iOS app) that collects video published by your friends across a range of social networks. The collected content is queued for your viewing pleasure, resulting in a sharable, lean showreel that reflects your friends’ tastes.

Vimeo Redesign

Vimeo has published a short film that explores their exciting new redesign. Currently not available to all users, the new design promises a more cinematic experience, boasting a number of revisions to streamline the way in which we enjoy videos, follow user activity and browse content.

Evi | The New Siri?

Evi is a new mobile app that may have the potential to rival Apple’s own Siri. A product of True Knowledge, Evi is able to answer questions spoken aloud or by text, boasting direct access to nearly 1 billion facts. Evi’s creators pride themselves on its ability to understand ”natural conversational language,” forecasting significant growth with increased user interaction. App responses can be graded by their relevance, which is said to help the app learn over time, helping deliver an ever-evolving information service.

Warby Parker Annual Report 2011

In a great show of brand transparency, U.S eyewear company Warby Parker released a series of infographics illustrating their brand activity throughout 2011. Designed by New York’s The Bear Cave, the charts cover a variety of topics from their impact across social media to the success of their “Buy a Pair, Give a Pair” charity initiative.

Breunig’s Thoughts on Apple’s Textbook Announcement

Last week Apple announced that they plan to make a wide range of academic textbooks available on the iPad. Within 3 days over 350,000 were sold, opening up a great spectrum of debate as to its potential impact on the future of education. Tech enthusiast Drew Breunig promptly responded with his thoughts, highlighting some excellent points that really got us thinking.

Drawing lines does not sound very interesting, but in addition to my own app. development, another user expressed a desire for animated arrowed lines.  So, a new two-point stroke has been added to the library.  The TwoPoint class is the base for a family of classes in which a stroke is defined only by a starting point and the current mouse/touch point.

In keeping with the FDL architecture, an engine is assigned to a two-point stroke.  Two engines will be provided in the first release candidate, arrowed lines and arcs.  The start and end arrows are optional, so these engines provide a back-door to drawing lines and arcs.  Not sexy, but the existing line decorators are applicable, so it’s incredibly easy to draw dotted or dashed lines.

Since the point sequence to a stroke may be simulated in an animation, it’s now very easy to draw animated dashed or solid, arrowed lines.  Here is a screen shot from one of the demos.

Injecting a new line decorator is a matter of assigning the fully qualified class name of the decorator,

__data.lineDecorator = “net.algorithmist.freehand.decorators.SolidLine”;

or

__data.lineDecorator = “net.algorithmist.freehand.decorators.DashedLine”;

then, re-assign the stroke’s data provider,

__stroke.data = __data;

There are still a couple beta slots open, so if you are interested in developing a Flex-based application (mobile or otherwise) involving freehand drawing, please contact me at theAlgorithmist [at] gmail [dot] com.  There is a small, three-figure license fee that is a one-time cost.  Beta users get free upgrades for life!

I’ll be posting a roadmap for the anticipated release cycle shortly, so even if you are not interested in Flex/Actionscript development, say tuned.  A subset of the Freehand Drawing Library may be coming for JS or Corona developers.

First app post-Biophilia: MotionPhone by Scott Snibbe Studio is a network-enabled interactive app for communicating with animated colors, shapes, and movement. This application was Scott’s first work of interactive art, created more than twenty years ago and now released in a form where anyone can use it

Continue reading.... MotionPhone [iPad]

I just released a new blog called What, Where, Why?, focused specifically on web development, the Internets, and other related geekery.

There are already a number of posts on the site, including one titled Octopress in the Cloud explaining the technologies I used on the blog (which include Octopress, Amazon S3, CloudFront, and Route 53) and my latest post on two tools two help you develop responsive designs.

Hope you enjoy it!

I will be releasing a few other subject-area blogs in the coming days and this blog will continue as a place for general news, and updates on what I'm doing.

Check out What, Where, Why? today.

Company: Superfad

Location: Culver City, US Category: Technologist Type: Full-Time

Description

Süperfad LA is looking for a Creative Technologist to join the growing team in it’s LA studio. This person should be adept at a wide range of languages, platforms and technologies. Interfacing with developers and coordinating between developers and designers. This person can strategize and design intelligent, inspiring design concepts with interactive solutions. As the Creative Technologist you will be ‘in the know’ with the latest technologies and latest trends in the interactive industry. Including but not limited to conferences, blogs, latest software and applications, etc. And how it all relates to creative and setting it in motion. You will play a key role in our expansion into the experiential digital marketplace. Engaging with key counterparts at our Seattle and NYC studios, collaborating and developing as a group.

About you: • Minimum of 2 years experience • Advanced knowledge of current web-related languages and technologies (HTML, JS, CSS as well as Flash and AS3) • Ability to interface and convey complex, technical information to non-technical staff and clients • Willingness to dive into deeper, non-web projects (mobile apps, installations, etc) • A positive attitude and an inspiring work ethic • This person should have a rolodex of digital / interactive resources • Ability to work with the producer in figuring out and assembling the required team for the job. • Ability to help develop and pitch interactive concepts, particularly with an emphasis on technology-driven concepts

Full benefits (medical / dental / 401K) Great environment

Interested? Please email your resume and a list or URLS or portfolio of projects demonstrating both design and development skills to: jobs@superfad.com

I'm teaching my highly-acclaimed Native iOS development workshop in Brighton (UK) next month, from the 22nd-24th of February.

The course will give you strong foundations in Objective-C and Cocoa Touch to give you a solid start to building your own iOS apps in just three days.

You will be using the latest iOS SDK (iOS 5) and the latest Xcode (4.2).

Tickets are £999+VAT for the three days. If you're a freelancer or a one-person company, use the code IAMAFREELANCER to get 20% off that price.

Find out more information and reserve your seat today as there are only 12 spots open on the course.

pocode is a new open-source C++ library designed by Potion for the production of interactive media across multiple platforms. The frameworks provides a robust, high-performance software infrastructure that allows for the creation of all types of software, from simple visual sketches to elegant mobile apps to entire software applications.

Continue reading.... pocode [c++]

Company: Nice Shoes

Location: New York City, US Category: Other Type: Freelance

Description

Did your team get knocked out early on? Or you really aren’t into basketball or just a first timer to the March Madness. Here is where Play Nice March Madness steps in. A spin off of NCAA’s March Madness, Play Nice March Madness is a social media game. It has an online presence where the participants can get all the information they need about the game, vote on alternative brackets, visualize statuses, scoreboards and see results. The brackets get more weird or absurd with each game. Each participant can cast a vote on a team but unlike traditional march madness, you never get knocked out of the game for losing. You either get points for making the right bets or no points. Play Nice web-page links back to Nice Shoes Blog and Nice Shoes twitter and facebook page. Logged in via twitter or facebook, the participants can push their scores on their chosen social media.

The goal of this game is to attract a large audience within Nice Shoes, Clients of Nice Shoes or pretty much anybody who would like to play for some interactive playful fun.

We’re looking for a freelance web developer to create the backend of the site, a voting/judging system and build a user interface based on our designs. Our delivery date is March 2nd, 2012.

Interested parties should contact pd@niceshoes.com with a portfolio.

While developing this site, I was testing its responsiveness with that age-old method of resizing my browser window. In my case, I was testing in Chrome on my Mac. What I didn’t realise, though, was that my instance of Chrome will not resize below 400px and that I really wasn’t testing my 320px breakpoint.

This became very clear when I actually tested the site on my iPhone in portrait mode.

When I tweeted about this, I got a stream of responses¹. The first one that caught my eye was by Arjan Eising, urging me to try out responsivepx.com by none other than our very own Mr. Remy Sharp².

ResponsivePX

ResponsivePX is basically the bee’s knees if you want to test out your responsive design at exact breakpoints. And you can test locally too. Did I mention that Remy is a genius?³

Here’s a screencast of Remy, showing ResponsivePX in action:

iWebInspector

I’m not really sure how I stumbled upon iWebInspector⁴ but it, too, is amazing. This Mac app by Maximilliano Firtman can launch and connect to the iOS Simulator and gives you a fully-blown web inspector to use when developing and debugging your web sites in Mobile Safari, Phonegap apps, or even custom hybrid apps⁵.

Just install and start up the app and press the Open iOS Simulator button to launch the iOS Simulator if it isn’t already running⁶, launch Mobile Safari and load a site, and then click the Load from Safari button to see your DOM magically appear. You can use the inspector just like the Elements Inspector in Chrome Developer Tools, Firebug for Firefox, or Opera’s Dragonfly.

How. Cool. Is. That!?⁷

I know for certain that these two apps are going to make my life so much easier, and I hope that you find them useful too. Here’s a huge thank-you to both Remy and Maximilliano for making then and sharing them with the community. Thanks, guys–you rock!

This week marks the triumphant return of Corpsify, a collaborative art project inspired by a collective drawing method known as ‘exquisite corpse.’ Formerly a Flash product, Corpsify returns with a freshly coded heart, now powered by HTML 5. This new language allows for greater access across a range of devices including the iPad.  Head over to www.corpsify.com to try it out for yourself.

Company: Stinkdigital

Location: London, UK Category: Creative Code Type: Full Time

Description

We’re looking for a Junior Developer to join our team on a full-time basis in London. You will work alongside our creatives, developers, designers, producers, directors and animators to create immersive interactive experiences. This is a golden opportunity to do world class work with world class people.

You: * live and breathe digital and have a strong knowledge of all the emergent trends and technologies in the interactive space. * write structured object-oriented code and relish technical challenges. * enjoy creating experiments, prototypes and toys and can show us some examples. * have a keenly developed aesthetic sense and are comfortable spending time polishing visual effects. * work well within a collaborative environment, and thrive on an exchange of ideas.

Must-haves: * Strong foundation skills in ActionScript 3 * Competent with JavaScript, HTML and CSS * Good knowledge of OOP and design patterns * Experience with standard frameworks, libraries and API’s * Understanding of source control systems such as SVN and Git * Familiarity with development environments such as FDT/IntelliJ/FlashDevelop/Flash Builder

Nice to haves: * Any other programming languages * Mobile development * AIR apps * 3D libraries such as Away3D * Photoshop/After Effects/Video editing * Experience working with digital video as source material * Hardware (such as Arduino) * Sound processing/editing

This position requires 0-3 years commercial experience (not more). Music lovers, film geeks, video gamers, Internet nerds and whiskey drinkers will be welcomed with open arms.

How to apply: Please email juniordev@stinkdigital.com.

Karl Bartos (electronic musician, ex-Kraftwerk, co-composer of songs like The Robots, The Model, Computer World,…) and Masayuki Akamatsu (media artist and author of various iPhone apps) created a 16 step music sequencer now available for free on the AppStore. Created in support of Red Cross site, the app was presented in the form of installation in Kyoto comprising 35 iPads and inviting guests to download the app to the iPhone and use the room as an instrument

Continue reading.... Mini-Composer [iPad, iPhone, Sound]

(This essay was commissioned by Centre national des arts plastiques for Graphisme en France 2012)

- Edited by Casey Reas and Chandler McWilliams -

Technical mastery and innovation are part of the rich history of visual design. The printing press is the quintessential example of how a shift in design technology can ripple through society. In the Twenty-First Century, innovation in design often means pushing the role of computers within the visual arts in new directions. Writing software is something that’s not typically associated with the work of a visual designer, but there’s a growing number of designers who write custom software as a component of their work. Over the last decade, through personal experience, We’ve learned many of the benefits and pitfalls of writing code as a component of a visual arts practice, but our experience doesn’t cover the full spectrum. Custom software is changing typography, photography, and composition and is the foundation for new categories of design practice that includes design for networked media (web browsers, mobile phones, tablets) and interactive installations. Most importantly, designers writing software are pushing design thinking into new areas. To cut to the core of the matter, we asked a group of exceptional designers two deceptively simple questions:

1. Why do you write your own software rather than only use existing software tools?

2. How does writing your own software affect your design process and also the visual qualities of the final work?

Continue reading.... Designing Programs [Theory]