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10/29/04
I came across PlaydoCAM today. Looks to be an “eyeToy” for Shockwave and Flash. Well, not really the hardware, but the software. It works with an “ordinary web camera”. It works without any new Xtras, so it must be using Flash’s ability to get cam input. It probably does this through the Flash Xtra for Shockwave. Looks like this is commercial development — nothing for developers to see here — but it looks like the first instance of using this functionality that I have seen since the release of Flash 7/Shockwave 10.
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10/25/04
Macromedia has put up a game at their site to promote Shockwave downloads. It is interesting because this is actually a game AT Macromedia’s site. Rarely has Macromedia ever funded game creation. This is part of their new initiative to promote Shockwave and increase the percentage of people that have the Shockwave player. It is also worth noting that the game was partially created by my friend Chuck Neal of MediaMacros.
Honestly, though, I don’t like the game. It doesn’t feature anything that really shows off Shockwave — notably 3D. This game could have easily been done with Flash, like my own election game. But it is good to see Macromedia spending money on Shockwave rather than Flash.
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10/24/04
So I just switched this blog over to a new system that will accept reader comments on any post. I did this 4 days ago. So far, I have receieved 1 user comment and about 180 spam comments. The first two blocks of 60 spam comments went straight up on to the board. I got email notification (120 emails!) and removed them a few hours later. I then activated spam filtering on the comments, so the next group of 60 never made it to the live site. I still had to delete them, though. Plus the 60 emails. Good thing I can use MySQL directly and delete them with one command, otherwise I would have had to use the admin interface to delete each one individually.
I can’t beleive that it is this bad. I’ve just this year gotten my email spam under control by using Spam Assassin, my client’s filtering and a few other techniques. But now I have to put up with deleting 60 emails + posts a day in order to have comments on my blog! I’m going to try some ‘clever’ solutions, like changing the names of the comment submission form input fields and such. But if this keeps up, I guess I will go back to a no-comment blog here.
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10/22/04
I got a chance to take a look at a retail CD-ROM game developed in Director using the 3D Xtra. It is called Kaptein Sabeltann (Captain Sabertooth) and is on sale in Europe. It was developed by Artplant, with coding by a friend of mine, Luca Meijer. It has tons of smooth character animation and movement, rich 3D scenes and high quality all around. Plus, it is about pirates! I’ve got no idea what it is actually about, since it isn’t in English. But you can check out some screenshots here and see a Norwegian review here.
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10/21/04
Many of your may or may not know, but the install Shockwave process just changed a few weeks back. Now, when a user without any version of Shockwave at all encounters Shockwave in Internet Explorer for the first time, they are given a bare-bones install of Shockwave. This install doesn’t include any of the Xtras, even ones as commonly used as Text, Font, Flash, Multiuser and 3D. The result is a much smaller install, but one incapable of playing almost any Shockwave content out there. But when the user firts needs these Xtras, usually immediately, they get them installed quietly. However, I came across some situtations where some movies fail to download the needed Xtras. This is easily fixed by having the user get those Xtras first by visiting another movie. Or, you can simply force a full install of Shockwave by adding the following piece to your OBJECT tag:
<param name=swInstallType value=full>
For non-IE users, you can direct them to the “full installers” rather than the “slim installers” at http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/alternates/#sp
Unless you are developing content that is specifically designed to work with no Xtras, I recommend including the <param name=swInstallType value=full> parameter in your OBJECT tag.
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