The FlashCanon

Like a lot of people (I think), I do a google blog search for myself from time to time just to see what I find. Well, today I decided to throw the “extra n” in FlashCanon to make it FlashCannon and I found this. Looking further into their site, I found the following information about the game from November 2006:

“…If you don’t already know, we are working on a casual game for the PC, and (possibly!) the Xbox 360…”

“…The game is a top down shooter, with many genre standards implemented. However, FlashCannon will break away from the staple behaviour in terms of enemy introduction…”

Surely this name is a coincidence, right? I mean which one of my 3 readers would really see this blog and say, “Hey, what a great name for a game!”…. right?

FlashCanon factoid: I call it an “extra n” because my last name has only one n there: Fincanon

I usually try not to post too much on this blog about topics unrelated to Flash, but I just had to share this one. Wizbang is doing a PS3 giveaway for Christmas and I’ve secured a spot in the drawing which will happen on December 15th. The drawing will have one winner chosen at random out of the 25 people who have made it in. So jump on over there and see if you can’t get one of the remaining spots. Good luck to all!

From the site:

Every day there’s a new way to way to enter. Each day we’ll post a new assignment, which you are eligible to participate in. There’s no cost to you, and most tasks are ridiculously simple. From the pool of eligible applicants who successfully complete the task before the next assignment we’ll randomly choose one person as a finalist. Each day a new name will be picked from the previous assignment and another name will be added as a finalist. There’s all sorts of different tasks planned and you can attempt all, some or none of the - although you’ll have a hard time winning without at least making an effort…

While Chris and I were at Flashforward Austin, we found out what different people were doing with Flash while talking with them. We started talking about all of these different things ourselves and got to wondering just how many people in any given room used Flash for any given task. For example: we talked to a couple of guys who built animations for a company in the health industry. Along those same lines, I used to build animations for court cases, but I now work for an advertising agency building full sites, micro sites, and banners (no, nothing like the annoying mortgage ads with the list of state abbreviations).

Anyway, to get to my point, that topic was brought up again today and I thought I’d go ahead and see if I could get the answer to the burning question: What do you do with Flash?

I’ve been kinda quiet here lately because I’ve gotten started writing my book, but I thought I’d do a quick post to mark the release of the Flash Player penetration numbers for September 2006. Looks like we’ve got the following in what the survey is calling “Mature Markets”:
Flash Player 6: 96.0%
Flash Player 7: 94.8%
Flash Player 8: 89.1%
Flash Player 9: 35.9%

In the US and Canada:
Flash Player 6: 97.0%
Flash Player 7: 95.6%
Flash Player 8: 90.3%
Flash Player 9: 40.3%

Europe:
Flash Player 6: 95.8%
Flash Player 7: 94.3%
Flash Player 8: 87.8%
Flash Player 9: 36.8%

And Japan:
Flash Player 6: 98.5%
Flash Player 7: 98.0%
Flash Player 8: 92.0%
Flash Player 9: 24.8%

Here’s a nice little article I just read by Ryan Blitstein over at Mercury News. Ryan writes about the history of Adobe and how it came “from $83,000 in revenue in 1983 to $83 million five years later” and continued to rise to “an expected more than $2 billion this year.” He also writes about how John Warnock and Charles Geschke “launched the desktop publishing revolution” starting with a little thing called PostScript and how they “were heavily involved in Adobe’s $3.4 billion acquisition of Macromedia”.

It’s a good little read. Check it out here.

Looks like the 16 finalists for the 2006 MAX Awards have been announced.

For Achievement:
Charter One Bank
U.S. Army

For Advertising and Branding:
Nike Air Max
Volkswagen GTI Features

For Industry Innovator:
Fidelity Labs
The Wharton Course Auction

For Interactive Process Management:
Kane County Circuit Clerk
Verizon Wireless

For Media and Entertainment:
Click.TV
Smilebox

For Mobile and Devices:
MTV Mobile - Italia
Poolside Airhockey

For RIA/Web Development:
Dorado
goowy webtop

For Training and Collaboration:
TeachCTA
TIAA-CREF

Congrats to all! For links to the finalists and honorable mentions, check out the MAX Awards site

Via Light Reading:

ATLANTA — Internap Network Services Corporation (NASDAQ: INAP - message board), a leading provider of performance network services over the Internet, today announced it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire VitalStream Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: VSTH - message board). VitalStream is a leader in audio and video streaming services and a global provider of integrated rich media content delivery services that enable businesses to broadcast digital media content to worldwide audiences via the Internet.

Read more HERE.

If you are using WordPress and you are posting code, what plugin are you using? I’ve just tried quickcode, but it strips all of the formatting out of the code and sets all of the lines flush left. I’ve also tried preserve-code-formatting, but got the same results. If anyone can help, I’d greatly appreciate it!

A coworker of mine by the name of Chris Long has just launched a new blog titled Flash In Your Face where he’ll put “Flash all up in yo bidness“. As of this writing, he has only had time to post once and it’s his Flashforward schedule. Check it out when you get a sec and bookmark it or add it to your feeds as I’m sure he’ll be writing more.

Tran also warns that Ajax, a free and universal technology, could eventually supplant Flash as the standard platform for Web applications.

Does anyone else think that’s just silly?
Here’s the full read.