Flash components have traditionally been terrible to work with. The new ones in AS3 are much better than the previous AS2 ones, but there are still some frustrating parts to them. I recently created a form using the AS3 components, which uses an alpha tween to fade from page to page. However, when I tween the form page, which contains components, the text on all the form items does not tween (meaning the font is not embedded - this also happens if you use a dynamic text field and do not embed the font). It seems like it would be simple enough but at least in my situation the obvious does not work:

var myFormat:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
myFormat.font = “Univers 55″;
myFormat.size = 11;
myFormat.color = 0×333333;

//buttons
myRadio.setStyle(”textFormat”, myFormat);
myRadio.setStyle(”embedFonts”, true);

Right? Wrong. Something is missing. The font won’t embed, particularly with RadioButtons and ComboBoxes. Here’s the kicker - you must embed the font in the library.

1. Go to your library panel and click on the tiny menu on the top right.
2. Select “New Font” (don’t feel bad if you didn’t know it that was there, me either).
3. Select the font you are using, and size.
4. Make sure to set the Linkage “Export for Actionscript.”

With AS3, one thing is for certain - you learn something new everyday.

EL SEGUNDO, Ca. – Snowball Media, a newly re-transformed convergence media and advertising agency, is happy to announce another win from the Summit International Awards. For the 2009 Summit Creative Award season, Snowball Media was the recipient of a Silver Award for the development of e-commerce website, Warner Bros. Blu-Ray (warnerblu.warnerbros.com).

The Summit Creative Awards competition recognizes creative excellence from companies and individuals (advertising agencies and other creative marketing groups) with annual billings under $30 million or less. Over the past fifteen years, the competition has established itself as the premier arbiter of creative excellence for firms of this size.
The thousands of entries from 26 countries are entered under 22 creative categories and are judged against a stringent set of standards. During the blind judging events, judges search for innovative and creative concepts, strong executions and the ability to communicate and persuade.
“As ad2, Inc., we were recognized by the Summit International Awards 13 times, which is a tremendous achievement,” said Terry Balagia, CEO of Snowball Media. “As we march towards the future as Snowball Media, we hope to continue our success within in SCAs. With our expanded offerings, our hope is to expand within the SCAs and win in other categories.”

About the Summit International Awards:

The Summit International Awards (SIA) organization was founded in 1994. The organization conducts the Summit Creative Award, the Summit Marketing Effectiveness Award and the Summit Emerging Media Award. The 2009 competition is the 15th year for the creative competition. Additional information about the Summit International Awards organization, its competitions and winning firms can be found on the Summit Awards web site at www.summitawards.com.

About Snowball Media:

Previously ad2, Inc., Snowball Media is a convergence media and advertising group with 29+ years under its belt. Snowball’s brain trust consists of TV network execs, Silicon Valley CEOs, creatives from traditional multi-national advertising agencies, CRM masters, digital web innovators - all with the unifying passion and solid understanding of changing technology. www.Snowball-Media.com

Here’s a new marketing trick I was just subjected to by no other than Google and Virgin for their new site www.dayinthecloud.com:

Create a link that creates a tweet for someone. Make sure you’re logged into twitter and click here.

No matter what the implications of this type of “voice” influence are, the web is still the wild west baby, play ball! I give this two weeks before they cut this out of twitter, or someone figures out how to use javascript to push the “update” button without the user knowing.

Today on hulu.com Vitamin water is offering viewers advertising by choice. What you mean I can choose if I want to watch a commercial? So what’s the catch? The catch is, similarly to those Las Vegas “stay-for-free” rental property deals, if the user agrees to watch a commercial up front (long format), they can sit back, relax and enjoy their show commercial free. If the user chooses to watch with normal commercial breaks, their show will be interrupted occasionally like normal TV would (except there is no TiVO on hulu…. yet).

Why not just pay consumers to watch their commercials? Maybe that would help the economy. People who don’t have jobs can take money from advertisers to watch ads, and they could pay their bills. Who knows, it could happen!

Air Lines is an art project showing worldwide airliner routes. Every single scheduled flight on any given day is reresented by a fine line from it’s point of origin to it’s port of destination. Thereby forming a net of thousands of lines. Hubs like JFK, FRA or DXB turn into dark knots where lines meet, lesser served local services are only are a subtle hint.

Visit site

http://fffff.at/kanye-vision-bookmarklet/

The previous post “Archived Flash Players For Testing”, provides a useful tool to use for Flash Development. swfversion.com adds to that tool bag. At swfversion.com one can discover what version of the Flash player a swf was designed for.

37Signals, creators of Ruby on Rail, Basecamp, and numerous other sucessful projects has released a book aimed at explaining their approach to building software. You can purchase the book, or read it online for free here:

http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php