Monthly Archives: February 2005

Y! dodgeball tournament begins!

Posted on by
4


Cautiously we ventured out into the sun to remember the days of old when we dominated on the black top. Yes, it is time for the dodgeball tournament here at Yahoo! Alas, due to rain, the team that I am on has not had the opportunity to play yet. What we lack in ability, we have made up for in style. Our team, the BarronVonAwesomeBallers brings together the raw athleticism of:

Peanut
Trixie
The Barron
Chi Chi La Che
JC and the Sunshine band
Cupcake
and our team captain, Scotty McScottScott

GOOOooooo Team! ;)

Posted on by
Reply

Ray just forwarded me an unsubtle but amusing look at life with a poorly constructed National ID system provided by the ACLU. Flash as an advocacy tool is a nice idea, though I do wish thy had sone something a wee bit more slick.

As a privacy aside, I am ill from hearing the announcement that the CPO of Claria (formerly Gator) is on the privacy advisory board for the deaprtment of homeland security. A department that is being suspiciously watched as the greated threat to the privacy of law-abiding citizens has selected as an advisor someone that represents a company that has no understanding of notice, consent, or even ethics. I’m deeply ashamed of his appointment.

Flash Game whitepaper

Posted on by
Reply

Scott Bilas at Oberon Media has written an interesting white paper on the rationale for using Flash as a platform for casual gaming. I think it is an insteresting article, with some good references and tools mentioned. If you are into building games in Flash, this is a good document to have in hand when convincing clients and/or investors about the merits of Flash as a platform. The unique perspective, is that Scott comes from the traditional gaming industry, rather than just being yet another Flash developer who has realized the incredible power of FLash to make compelling games.

With great freedom comes great responsibility

Posted on by
Reply

I just read a great posting about “Dear Cell Phone User” cards. These are cutely-designed cards where you can fill in the topic of conversation that you have overheard and give that special cell phone user a piece of your mind. I love it. Obnoxious, passive-agressive, and far too much fun not to try out. :)

Cell phone conversations in public spaces have gotten my linguistics side thinking recently. Most of the places where I am annoyed by cell phone conversations are places where I would expect to find people talking already, but with another person that is present. So, what is the part that is sooo grating on my nerves with one person and a phone?

  • Is it the volume of the cell phone speaker? My phone seems to have a good mic, so I don’t think I get too loud on the phone (I hope)
  • Some other level of the prosidy that seems like agression?given that the speaker is trying to compensate for the lack of visual cues that we rely on in face-to-face communication, there could possibly be some differences.
  • Some nosy streak where I am resentful that I can only hear one side of the conversation?

Any thoughts on the subject are welcome. I figure some anthropology or linguistics student has probably already done some concrete research on the subject. Now to finding it! :D

Silk Mobile

Posted on by
Reply

Silk Mobile has announced that they have an application to extend the functionality of Flash Lite to allow for features like persistent data. I just sent my registrtion info in to get the demo. I can’t wait to give it a try! Once I play with it, I will post some thoughts on it.

Has anyone out there worked on using Flash as presentation layer and interfacing with another application to do the heavy lifting that the current version of Flash is less efficient at? In the PC world, directly embedding a Flash file within a C++ application isn’t too tricky, and then the interface between them runs pretty smoothly. If anyone out there that is say a J2ME or Python fan and wants to give ti a try, let me know. The way Silk is achieving this extension of functionality sound like it should be possible.

Cingular Cellular Cynicism

Posted on by
1

I am an AT&T Wireless customer. With the new merger though, Cingular does want me to really feel like part of their “family.” How sweet. However, The marketing person that came up with the whole family spin must have really had a bad upbringing, and for that I am truly sorry.

My orange adoptive family has a marginally better unlimited data plan. Under AT&T, I pay $24.95/month for unlimited data (arm and a leg). Under Cingular it is $19.95 (arm and a leg, but maybe I get to keep my foot). Not one to spend an extra $5 if I don’t have to, I stopped by the store and asked what they could do for me. I was told that was a great question (uh, thanks) and that to use a Cingular rate plan, I would need to switch to Cingular, which would be a one-time fee of $20, and that I would need a new SIM card. hmmmm… ooook.

But, shockingly, I have an AT&T phone, so that won’t work either since a Cingular SIM can’t work with AT&T. Of course they’d be happy to sell me a new phone to replace the one that I bought (2 days!) before they combined their billing system two months ago. When I asked if they couldn’t just unlock my phone for me since, well, they are now all the same happy family/company, I was told, of course not since they don’t want me to be able to use a competeing SIM card when I travel over seas. He continued saying that they want to make sure I “take advantage” of AT&T’s international roaming rates.

While I suppose their is something to be said for honesty, my mood is just not that charitable at the moment. Searching on their site, it is truly amazing how many of the new features that all AT&T customers can enjoy have the caveat that you must buy a new phone.

So I guess for now I keep paying my 5 bucks extra, and keep incrementally disliking Cingular more and more.

As a parting thought, there is a paragraph on the AT&T site describing the changes that says: “In addition, this union will provide you with many new benefits from Cingular in the near future.” The bulleted list below has customer service in it. Seems fitting.

its alive!

Posted on by
Reply


Well, more than a week later my computer is back up and running at home. All it took was reformatting my drive a few times, re-installing windows 8 times, buying a new video card, and severe loss of sleep.

What I learned as a part of the process:

My files, time, and sanity are nothing in comparison to Microsoft’s need to authorize the OS.

Microsoft’s solution for any conflict in your system is pretty much an OS re-install

Anything that wants to alter your Master Boot Record is evil. EEEEEVIL.
The settings transfer wizard is actually kinda cool, though it would be nice if it could realize that your old computer and your new computer are often the same machine.

I should be far more careful when trying to clean up my fonts directory (OS-re-install number 8).

As I have developed a need for masochism from this process, I went ahead and installed SP2. If anyone else needs to smack me around, now is a good time. MS did a good job of breaking me ;)

Team Macromedia – Mobile and Devices

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve recently joined Team Macromedia for Mobile and Devices. This is a group of developers selected by Macromedia to be active in their forums as well as mailing lists and mobile programs. I’m really pleased to be a part of the team. If you are interested in the topic of Flash on cell phones, PDAs, toys, remote controls, etc., you should check out the forum or the Mobile Flash Exchange