The FlashCanon

Over the past several months, I’ve been very busy with everything from changing jobs at the end of last year to moving into a new house less than two weeks ago. Combine that with all of the time I love to spend with my wife and our two beautiful children and it seems as though I’ve fallen behind on nearly everything related to Flash and Flex in my life (except work of course). Well, now that I seem to be settled in to my job, we’re all moved in to the house (even though there are plenty of boxes left to unpack) and I think things are getting back to some kind of a “normal” pace, I have some catching up to do.

Outside of just getting back to posting here, I’ll be spending some time soon updating a few items. A few of those items include:

One other thing I’m going to try to start squeezing back in is my lab. As you can see if you click on that link, I haven’t even touched anything there since January 19, 2007! Ironically that’s the day the lab got added to the MXNA. So I’ll be trying to do some experiments with both Flash and Flex when I get time but this will probably be the first thing to take the backseat if need be.

Anyway, I better get back to work (since I’m actually at work). Talk to you again soon…

Well, I’ve been with Blockdot a little over a month now and I thought I’d post a quick update for those that may care for one reason or another so here are some quick bullets:

• First off, I love games… this is awesome
• I’ve been working on some pretty cool games and I’ll post about some of them individually as they launch (much like I did with sites I worked on while I was with Click Here).
• The Flash team here is great and I have to admit that I’ve found myself humbled more than once by a few of the guys when it has come to coding.
• The type of development and processes that I’ve been used to while working at an agency for the past 4 years is a slight bit different than it is here so I’ve actually felt a little bit of culture shock (but it’s been a good shock).
• My title is “Game Developer”… this is awesome

Ok, I’m going to get back to work now but I’ll post more another time. Keep an eye out for my posts about our games and in the meantime check out our game site: Kewlbox

After much thought and careful consideration, I’ve recently turned in my resignation with Click Here and will be joining the team at Blockdot starting on November 26th. While I’m very much looking forward to meeting (and of course working with) all of the extremely talented developers at Blockdot, I will also miss my friends at Click Here who have been the best group of people I’ve had the pleasure of working with to date. The last 4 years have been very valuable to me in terms of both personal and professional growth and if anyone reading this post is presented with the opportunity to work at Click Here, I would definitely recommend it. With that said, it’s time for me to look ahead to my future and open a new chapter in my career… a chapter that looks to hold plenty of fun challenges, learning opportunities and of course… games.

The new player penetration numbers are out and they look like this:

I feel like I still need to tweak it here and there, but what do you think about it?

I was digging around some old files and found this little mini arcade that I built back at the beginning of 2006 for a contest that was being held by the nice folks over at PlayStation (which explains the heavy PlayStation branding in the games). The winner of the contest got a free trip to E3, but that winner wasn’t me (oh well). The mini arcade consists of 3 very simple games: “Game Box Memory”, “Sony Says” and “Mega Shooting Gallery”. I had fun making the games and I hope you have a couple of minutes of fun playing them.

Check it out here.

I have 4 Pownce invites. If you’re interested, be one of the first 4 people to email me (use the email link in the side bar on the right). I’ll post a comment here once I’ve received the 4 emails.

[EDIT]
If you’re interested, you can find me on Pownce under the name FlashCanon
[/EDIT]

On Thursday, July 05, Mark Berghausen wrote a post to the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog with the title of “Best uses of Flash” and today I’ve read a few posts in response.

I understand all of the points that are being made in the Google post when it comes to search and I don’t entirely disagree with them. However, Mr. Berghausen’s post came across (in my opinion) as stating that they are Google and they know best. That if they say these rules set forth by them are the “Best uses of Flash”, then the rest of us should simply accept and adhere to them.

Now, I DO know that search is VERY important to many, many sites out there. However, as Benny asks in the comments, “Isn’t it time to accept that there are sites (e.g. depending on audiences) for which it perfectly make sense to offer full flash sites?”

The question I pose is this: Are these REALLY the “Best uses of Flash” simply because a giant like Google says so or is this more along the lines of Google simply trying to persuade developers to do things the way Google wants them done?

Due to the fact that so many companies see the importance of having (and maintaining) an online presence, we’ve been very busy and busy is always good. One personal result of having plenty of work to do is that it’s been nearly a full month since I posted anything here. So I thought I’d take a quick break, grab a coke, and write something up real quick.

The biggest thing I’ve been doing at work is a new site for The Patrón Spirits Company. I’m not sure how much I can say about it, but if you like SimplyPerfect.com, which I posted about at the time it launched, you will like the new site as well. Obviously the two sites are different, but the clean and simple feel remains.

The biggest thing I’ve been doing outside of work is getting prepared for our new arrival who is expected to join us any day now and make our son a big brother. As you can imagine, I’ll be spending time with my family and probably won’t be posting much for a little bit after that day comes.

Finally, for those who may be wondering, the book is going great and is staying right on track to ship on time.

And now, back to work. Have a great day, week, and month (just incase it takes me a while to post again).

I’ve fought it for a long time, but with the recent work we did on a Hyundai community site, I just couldn’t hold out any longer. I always said I’d never create a MySpace account simply because everyone else under the sun has one, but I broke down tonight and did it just to see what it’s all about. I’m fairly sure I won’t be dressing my page up in any way (we’ll see how long I can actually hold out on that), but here’s the link if you’re interested in finding me there.

Oh, why do I feel like I’ve betrayed myself in some strange way?