6 Reasons to oppose ACTA

What is being creative? Well… this is. I love videos like this! Even though, typically, products like this never get released, they help push the limits on what is possible. Only thing missing is a manufacturer willing to take the risk on something this different.

The Protect IP Act (PIPA) is a U.S. Senate bill introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy. Along with its House counterpart Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the bills are designed to provide the government and copyright holders with powers to block access to “rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods,” especially those registered outside the United States. Since its introduction on May 11th, 2011, the proposed bill has been met by opposition from various digital rights activists and bloggers for its encroachment in online activities protected under the first amendment of free speech. Congressional hearings for both bills began on November 16th.

Below you can see opposition and more information on the Act.

My latest flash component I’d like to showcase. Take a look at the Demo or feel free to download the source files.

You can view the demo below, or download the source files here

This was built using OOP, so the player class files are found under com>audioplayer>main.

Your browser does not support iframes.

Facebook has recently launched Facebook Studio, a site dedicated to showcase advertising campaigns that utilize Facebook as the central mean to reach consumers. I think this site is a great resource to gain knowledge on other successful campaigns and help spark inspiration and creative ideas for new ad campaigns that look to utilize social media. The idea behind the Studio is not to show companies how to use Facebook to drive awareness and sales, but to simply showcase other successful campaigns, what type of success the campaign had received, and give credit to the agencies who have developed the campaign.

For further resources on working with the Facebook platform, see the Facebook Learning Lab

I’m currently working on building a simple portfolio site in Flash built all in AS3 code utilizing Object Oriented Programming techniques. I will post the source code and a link to the demo site for anyone interested, but my hope is to outline what a flash site structure should look like and highlight two key frameworks (Signals and TweenMax) that are used to help simplify code and reduce file size.

I hope to be done shortly with the site, and plan to post a separate demo specifically for utilizing the Signals library (only because I found it so difficult to find anything useful).

Special thanks to Michael Z. for all the help with getting me into AS3 and OOP!

***** UPDATE *****

I have completed the site and the source files can be downloaded here

Flash and HTML can work together to create the ideal user experience

Early web design concepts are usually hard to follow when thinking in the lines of a pure HTML site.  Typically this will cut the design down on functionality and the idea of ‘interactive’ will slowly fall apart.  A 3D menu with multiple pieces of functionality on rollover will immediately be shot down and be redesigned into a simple CSS rollover effect to ‘accommodate SEO’.

Keeping in mind that Flash can make external calls opens the door for the design concept to maintain the creative strategy.  This allows you to pinpoint which pieces of the design need to be static and which pieces can be flash objects. Below is how this would be done on the technical side:

JavaScript code to allow for page clicks

<script type="text/javascript">
function changePageAbout() {
   window.location = "http://mysite.com/about"
};
</script>

ActionScript code to allow the flash navigation clicks to interact with the page. This code would need to be added to the event listener attached to the navigation button ‘myButton’:

myButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, myfunction);

function myfunction:void(evt:MouseEvent){

getURL("javascript:changePageAbout();");

};

The application of this solution is simple so it will not become a burden on the project budget or timeline.  This could allow for most of the webpage to include flash, while important content, like images, text, footer, and header, to be built in HTML.

When I first saw the aquatic looking Google logo, my first instinct was to figure out how it was built. People were tweeting that it was built in Flash, but a simple right click could tell you otherwise, and others thought that it was built using Google’s favorite language – HTML 5. But with a little further investigation, it is simply built using CSS3 and jQuery. Opening Google in any IE browser showed that it functioned all the same without the rotation of assets.

De-constructing the logo is a good exercise to help understand design patterns. Visualizing the initial comps of logo from the beginning would have most people think to cut up each fish and ocean element to create the visual effect of 3D space. However, if you look at the relationship of the elements and which piece overlaps with another, it is easy to group them into 3 sections. This allows the JavaScript to only have to animate 3 elements at one time rather than mapping out each individual design element.

This will show the completed logo with all layered images.

Each layered transparent .PNG image:

The Super Bowl is one of those events that bring this nation together under a common interest – Football. And every year there is hype over the commercials that will be played during the game.  Not too many years ago it would be all the talk on radio stations about which companies are buying $5 million spots, keeping us wonder who will have the best (by best I mean funniest) commercials.

In recent years, companies who are investing millions of dollars in a one time TV commercial are looking to stretch that investment a little more.  Companies have lately been releasing their TV spots early to help drive the buzz around their campaign.  It doesn’t help in keeping the surprise when the commercials air, but it pushes awareness and allows the campaign to get more views in the week before.  This could be the fail safe in the event of an unlucky football fan going to get another beer during the break.

When it comes to online marketing, a campaign should follow a few key guidelines:

1) Get the message and brand across to the user. Keep in mind most people surfing the web aren’t looking to spend a lot of time in one place. example: The Snickers teaser ad is the simplest, and what I think to be, the most curious type of viral campaign coming to the Super Bowl.  This ad follows the ‘daring, funny, what-the-heck-is-going-on’ type of brand equity that Snickers has been doing for the past few years, as well as giving the end card beauty shot of the product and logo lockup.

2) Create relevant content. Nobody likes being interrupted, the concept should relate to what the user is engaged in and what they might be interested in.  example: Chevy partnered with the Transformers movie to ride the movie buzz wave. The first Transformers movie created a lot of interest around the Chevy Camaro, and why not use that same philosophy around the newest Transformers release.

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3) Create an action.  An engaging online advertisement is useless without driving the user to the next step in learning about the product or purchasing the product.  example: Motorola plans to advertise the new Motorola Xoom tablet during the Super Bowl, and to drive buzz they have released teaser ads.  This type of online campaign is focused on driving the curiosity of potential customers.  The action that most users take after seeing a teaser ad online is to search for the product and find out more.