Slide Show - and Projects
I made another small update to the Slide Show files I posted a few weeks ago. Now there is a version that receives the tag and user info from the url. (This uses swfObject, which is the best way to embed swfs.) Anyway - for this version you don’t need to compile anything to use. Just download the three files - modify the html page so it has your tags/user info, and upload to your site.
Also, I’ve added a projects page to this site. This lists, not surprisingly, projects I work on - some frequently, some, well, not very frequently at all.
Crispy Shop: Public APIs for Commerce
Check out Crispy Shop. Very nice AJAX/Flash interface for filtering and purchasing electronic goods. The bookmarking of favorite items is very nice.
This is a good example the next area for mashup development - commercial use. Commercial use is great because it means:
1. More stable APIs - no one is going to base their business on a moving or unreliable API.
2. (Hopefully) The loosening up of API licenses - currently many (flickr??) are only for non-commercial work. (OK, flickr does have the option for commercial licenses - but, they are notoriously difficult to get)
3. More UI innovation. If you want people to use your interface, you’re really going to have to differentiate yourself from the API’s creator (flickr, amazon, yahoo shopping, etc). If you don’t, why would anyone use your site? At the same time, because you’re using a public API, the time it takes to build an application is greatly reduced - so you can afford to take more chances.
State Pattern, Tonight!
Keith Peters is presenting on the State Pattern tonight at Brightcove. If you haven’t made it to a patterns meeting yet, this will be a good one. Plus, as always, Brightcove supplies pizza, beers afterward, and you can watch me beat James at foosball. Or watch Sam beat me.
Creating a flickr driven screen saver
This only works for Windows - sorry.
1. Grab the files from my mashup talk here. (Also get a flickr api key if you don’t have one. There is a link on the page.)
2. Open slideShow.fla - enter your flickr api key.
3. OPTIONAL: Change the background color to black - so it matches the screensaver background in Windows.
4. Change the tags to whatever you want. (Comment out //var user=’some user here’ if you want to search all of flickr.
5. OPTIONAL: To remove the slide show controls open “class com.forestandthetrees.slideShow.SlideShowPlayer” and comment out line 74
//h -= addUserNavigation(centerX, h, slideShowDelayVars);
6. Publish and test the swf.
7. Go to flashsaver.org.
8. There are a bunch of options I ignored on the first page. Go to the second page. Name your screen saver upload your swf.
9. Click Next. Download your screensaver.
Too lazy to make your own? Here’s a screensaver that displays photos from flickr tagged with ‘dog’.