Making good, effective and usable site

Computerlove
If you want to see one of the best integration on the web on the latest cutting edge web application + high quality, I guess it's really been a while. but cpluv answer all your questions. What amazed me is not only very well designed XHTML+CSS valid site, and also, something you can see from Frappr, which connects you within the world of a network together with other really awesome designers, creative and art directors alike. Upon digging into their About section, the site's backend are maintained by the guys from Embassy of Aesthetics. And really cool photo sharing enabled by Woomp! I'm yet to know how far this competes head to head with Flickr's API, but it's promising, on the main page to see a rather dynamic presentation on recent uploaded pictures.


DQBooks
Very beautiful yet minimal approach on building skectchbook. And the work speaks for itself. Self explainatory. Art directed by 1h05, which also responsible for Days in a Day project that takes you through A city's map, which I've seen this 1 year back if i'm not mistaken. (It's rpg-like type of game, but without a specific character)

Refeed : Checking back with Andre Michelle's blog, lots of update on Flex2 & AS3 development. Happy to hear he's invited to Flash Festival's Paris.


Volvo Design
Very unusual, but intuitional and daring implementation of navigation, for such a big company, really, really, exciting. And I guess if this method are being pushed towards the market loudly, it can be a very useful and usable type of website, to stand on it's own, because you're navigation using the logical arrow navigation. Up, down, left and right. And you can zoom in and out. I'm not really sure but I guess it's also heavily influenced from gaming design as well, with the very useful "map" displayed on the bottom right to indicate where they are now. Very nice.


Media Catalyst
Heavily influenced from transitions you always from TV commercials (if you know psyop, you'll know what i mean). Besides from being experimental on the transition, they still maintain lots of usability on the site, content and navigation still remain intact and usable. But I guess by looking at this website, how much % it will impact your site's experience towards the user. See, the transition.


Shave Everywhere
If you wonder how far that Flash Video presentation would take your site, look at this site, and it answers most of your doubt in selling a product, on it's 100% effectiveness. Very smooth site on both platform, tested and one worthy note, there's very little hiccup in between of the loads of the FLVs, very optimized. With this approach, your audience will most of the times feels a lot closer interacting not in only mouse clicks, but, a person that talks to them, telling and educate the audience with the correct message they want to deliver.


Reflets
One of the very best animation work I've seen incorporating Flash8's filters after littleFoot, Prowlies at the river. You'll be amazed by the details and cinematography that is able lives almost up to the 'movie-like' standard. Unique style i would say, a joined effort between Sukiland and Papy3d, i wasn't too much suprised when they're being nominated on both Flashfestival and Brooklyn International Film Festival. Congrats guys. Yes, I still think, Suki's illustration is great as ever, check em out!



Webcam Fluid Dynamics
Certainly, another cool experiment done using Flash 8's new features. and live from gskinner's blog, i saw this... "...This experiment lets you interact via the webcam with particles that behave similar to fluids. They flow downhill, get caught in bowl shapes, and are generally a lot of fun..."

Converting SWF to other video formats

This has always been one of the most used feature that a lot of TV Shows are gaining momentum in using Flash to animate it before airing on the TV. So there's probably a lot type of question on beginners that how they can convert the ever small .SWF file to ...let's say... an AVI file format?

The Freeware
http://www.pizzinini.net/projects/swf2avi/
Though I have not used this one yet, but I guess it could be one of the good one out there.

/////////////////////////////////

LIMITATIONS

- no audio support
(simple workaround: record your windows stereo mix :)
- no support for compressed movies

////////////////////////////////


The Shareware
http://www.winmpg.com/SWF-to-AVI.html
http://www.flashants.com/root/swf2video.shtml
Not free but powerful, with support.

The Flash Itself
You can actually use the built in export function from the Flash interface itself, File--> Export Movie but there are of course certain limitations would occur from using that, and that's even if you're not using Quicktime Pro.

We'll discuss about audio export later, now we can come to the video itself, by using Flash export, it's easy, yes, but there are things you'll notice that the movie clips inside the main timeline, that normally has animation, doesn't play when exported and stopped at it's first frame. Why? I've yet to find an answer. But if you have everything animated on the main timeline, i guess you won't have any problem with it.

And as for the audio...
You can playback the SWF file, and while it's running...
1... You set your Recording Control's setting to Stereo Mix
2... Open or use any audio recording device, such as Adobe Audition, MySoundStudio etc etc.
3... Press record on your recording software and then fire up your SWF...
4... it will record whatever that is streaming on your pc at the moment, so make sure you turn off volume for all other application, if you have audio player running of course.

Combining the both
And after you get both output file, audio and video itself separately, you can now combine it with any video editing software, such as Adobe Premiere, or VirtualDub.

P.s. - not actually an official tutorial but more like a sharing. :D

Next generation 'trend' of Flash experience?

XRS Nowe Media
First the evolution of timeline-based-navigation. Now, inspired by airport terminal, which has all of the ambient and sound element when you are at that place. This site really captures it well, and should be one of the revolutionary one. What's very nice about this is the integration of the whole concept, planes, terminal, the 'ticking' sound. The good guys behind this.


Recruit 2007
Comparing to the XRS Nowe Media that is about some airline services, what similarity that shared among this 2 site is the navigation system. You are moving along the line.


Quasimondo : Incubator
One of the Flash developer page you shouldn't miss out anytime soon. You'll find Mario's experiment on generative art, prototypes on installation and more. But a look at the recent dugg article on his Minority Report 3D Cube prototype (you can control the cube with your hand!) has an interesting comment...

"...And if someone decides to decompile it and use the algorithms without my permission I will find out one day and sue that person's ass off..."

Chill out dude :D. Another noteworthy group that Mario's behind as well, côdeazur.
(côdeazur is the venture of four renowned software engineers, Claus Wahlers, Ralf Bokelberg, Mario Klingemann and Florian Krüsch.)



Pulpservices
The ambient of this site is just cool, bringing you through various quizes that is related to the services provided by this company, and the hands on experience is not bad, with being you walking around the forest with a piece of paper, marking down the answers on the paper. Reminds me of BadLuck-o-Meter.


FlipMo v.2
A really cool portfolio site really lives up to its name, Flipping Motion, as what you can see, every transition towards other section gives you a whole-moving section. Controlled dynamically with ActionScript and XML, I can say the cpu usage for this site is awesome, optimized and smooth between pages. And i'd want to congratulate him for winning few recognition and being nominated as the 6 finalists in Flashloaded for May. Kudos.


Frappr
Another RichMedia Application, that is going pretty hot and gaining momentum slowly, well, slow i mean. Which at this moment it's still beta, and acts more like a community site that lets you get to know where your friend located at, through the integration of google earth/maps. Similarity found @ shoutwire :D


Diesel | Cabinet of Visions
The brand, which is really has been infamous as one of the big brand incorporating designs strongly with fashion. I'm really suprised that the ambience of this site has gone way higher notch than I expect, from the loading screen that emulates the old TV screen, which flickers with dust and scratches, and when being at the main page, dropping petals. Awesome.


Mind Flood
Going back retro, this site aesthetically has the 'look' & 'feel' but what's more interesting is the organisation of the content, and how it is being presented. As the finalist of One Show Interactive, they're no small names to be reckon with, but I guess, featured work such as Red Bull MET and Interactive Mirror really does justify at where they stand now. Check em out.


Yoann Lemoine
One notable thing with this site is the 3D space around the main page, while on the other one, is the illustrations.


Mazda5 Quiksilver
Bling your car, the street style. We make graffiti out of anywhere or canvas we can find, the wall, table, bags and more, but, this time, legitly, on the car, pre-customized by designers.


The Formshape
Multi displicinary designer, from Crew11 (remember the toysite?), with just only 21 this year, does scores a lot of promising work so far. From visual identity to illustration. You just gotta dig into his style of presenting portfolio, 3D space in an interesting setting, leaves as transition


_moving
A bit on the experimental work asides, this Shockwave page provides you a random list of picture displayed all around that the installation has occurred. I guess you will have to check out the site for more interesting specs on it.


Full Throttle Energy Drink
Those dudes from BigSpaceship has done it again. Integration of FLV clips within the sites, transitions and smooth surfing experience, all packed into one, and of course, being in that site reminds me of a retro console game "Rock'N'Roll racing" back in the Sega Megadrive era. I guess that's how gaming really plays a big role inspiring some great works.

Coming back towards the mid

Spam Recycling
Who doesn't hate receiving spam? A project initiated by EnBW, we had enough hearing from recycling bottles, cans, aluminium cans and stuff...but...spam? Why instead of trashing away all of your spam mail, why not participate and make the world a beautiful place? Yes, your spam mail can create really nice artwork, logon to see.


Jan Peiro Communication Design
It's interesting to see how flexible this website can be, being catered towards two different distinct audience, his client. With both option to choose from, both high and low bandwidth, design are altered and file size are reduced greatly though the content stays the same. This is where the power of XML comes in, and of course that is from my point of view on how I intepre the site is being done, possibly could be done the other way, but this is what XML integration really comes in and powerful, which you have one set of standard content but you'll able to socket it with different design


Tom on the web
Another Flash tutorial goodness, but this is catered specially towards FLV, though you'll find other speciality within that site. Look at how and what can be possibly done with your FLV plus with the filters.



Ashtray Mouth
Of course, myflashportal is not the one portal that talks about good design and methodology but, we can discuss about how effectively one thing is being applied towards a subject, for an instance, i guess it's good for once in a while for an awareness campaign towards anti-smoking campaign, but how effective is this? As usual which i always saw around my country that promotes it using the 'scary-pictures' which has larva brains, and a lot of disgusting pictures, but well, still, i'm not really sure if that is really working. Look on the other side, there are always debate on "why do they pay for killing themself?". Interesting thought.


The Flash Blog
Hey, if you're interested in some interested inside-scoop of what's gonna come next on Flash, look no more to keep yourself hook onto this site always. And if you know, the guy behind gotoAndLearn? Yes, it's the same author, just except to feed yourself with really goodness of flash tips and tricks, especially on the really neat alpha mask tutorial. And also, you'll find some Breeze presentation on filters in flash8.


Yutaka Loves London
This has to be one of the blue moon i've seen any site providing tour to a tourist attraction this way. Being in love with one place is one question, but to make a site out of it and to present and introduce to other foreign visitor as you're the resident there is what makes it unique. I once heard and I still believe that..."content is...king"



Forgotten War
Being in the midst of war of commercialism doesn't always take you far if you only think of digging up cashes from your beloved clients and consumer's pocket, but as what Pill & Pillow are moving toward are different and seem to gained a lot of momentum. Forgotten war is one unique site that acts as an awareness central to keep people aware of what's happening on the world outside, in Congo. This site certainly reminds me of a site back then that is done by the good guys from Leo Burnett Malaysia on Pakistan's war (correct me if i'm wrong, i have bad memory). I'll try to dig the URL to see if I still have it. It resembles quite a bit in a way that both of the concept/contribution from the user will form the shape of the 'country' that is under fire, while unveiling a little bit here and there of the suffering people. And it has also came across my mind that the navigation has seem to go trendy from an experimental one. Remember the one that yugop did for the xbox360 campaign in japan (i guess that site went offline)? and leoburnett canada?Zoom in Zoom out.