For those of you who have ever needed to edit a FLV this app can be a godsend. Perian can be really helpful for importing FLVs into apps like Quicktime, but Rich FLV is a FLV editor written on the Adobe AIR platform.
RichFlv can:
A great tool for printing business cards or postcards. They are a little expensive, but their main appeal is being able to print several different images in the same run. You can hook into your Flickr account and have a differnt image on each card you print. Collect them all.
There is a new version of the swfobject out. It improves greatly upon version 1.5 adding some huge fundamental changes. Now instead of having an all Javascript embed and a HTML backup, there is object code to help degrade more gracefully gracefully. Also there is no ugly cumbersome js code in the body of the HTML, the js is all in the header leaving only standard compliant html code in the body. Definitely worth a look.
There have been a lot of really exciting developments around social networks recently. Myspace and Facebook are opening up their networks allowing users to pull pieces of their site and functionality onto other websites. And Google is looking to totally break down the walls around social networks, making the entire web one huge social network with Google as the hub. I think this also has the potential to turn white label social networks like NIng and Kickapps on their heads by letting users hook into existing social networking platforms instead of creating networks from scratch. None of these programs are live at this time, but change is coming.
MYSPACE DATA AVAILABILITY
With Data Availability, partners will be able to access MySpace user data, combine it with their own, and present it on their sites outside of the normal widget framework. Friends lists can be syncronized, for example. Or Twitter may use the data to recommend other Twitter users who are your MySpace friends. Right now they are only allowing this functionality with key partners and they are using proprietary code, not open social code (Open Social is a standard way, sponsored by Google, to build new features and plug those features into social networks all over the web) which they claim is not yet ready.
FACEBOOK CONNECT
Facebook connect is essentially going to allow users to create all the same apps using the same APIs on and off Facebook. This allows for secure access to Facebook accounts, ability to bring your identity with you around the web, the ability to access friends and the ability to bring along privacy settings. It looks like this won’t be available for a few weeks.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/09/facebook-responds-to-myspace-with-facebook-connect/
GOOGLE FRIEND CONNECT
With Google Friend Connect any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.
http://blog.mycardmywork.com/?p=334
or watch the video. It’s pretty amazing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIEwUxMrJ4Y
NING VS GOOGLE
This article is about Ning, but could easily be about any of the white label social networks. For clarification: Ning is a complete social networking site that you can use without doing any coding. Friend Connect is a platform for building social networking features into existing sites.
http://scobleizer.com/2008/05/14/did-andreessen-miss-the-point-of-googles-friend-connect/
Hope this clears up any questions people had around these announcements.
We’ve been using Wordpress to power a lot of our blogs at Atlantic and my designers and I have been lamenting the lack of Wordpress Flash integration. Tim Wilson at tvwonline has a really elegant solution to this issue. He’s releasing his php scripts for free but there is a small fee for the Flash pieces to power the front end. Check it out below.