Chrysler Didn't Win at MAX

Oh well. The Chrysler application that we from Knoware worked on last year did not win the MAX award at this year's Adobe MAX conference. But, it was an honor to be involved with a project that was nominated none the less! Scrapblog.com was the winning entry in the section that the Chrysler application was up for. Congrats to Scrapblog and their excellent RIA!

Woohoo! Adobe MAX Awards Chrysler wiTech AIR app

Joe Johnston of Universal Mind forwarded a link to me the other day regarding the Adobe MAX Awards for 2008. One of the finalists in the contest for the RIA category is an application that Joe, Christian Saylor, Tim Todish, Grant Carmichael, Mike Kopchick and I worked on back in the day - Chrysler's wiTech Auto Diagnostic AIR application. Our team worked with the team at Atomic Object on the original proof of concept as well as a good portion of the final build.

This application was built to display the diagnostics of a vehicle when the mechanic hooks the car up to the 'computer'. Joe, Tim, Christian, Grant, Mike and I worked on this back when we were all at Knoware. Jim Mitchell was our point person over at Chrysler when we worked on this app. Congrats to Jim and the Chrysler crew for all the hard work on the completed app!

Big props to Joe, Christian, Tim, Grant, Mike and the AO crew for all their work on the app - since the original team is nowhere to be seen in the award entry on the MAX site... bummer!

Here we go...

As we all know, it's about that time again. Do we change what we're going to do as a country moving forward, or do we stay the course and weather the storm? No matter what side of the coin you're on, voice yourself with your vote.

And just because Sarah Silverman is so damn funny, try this one on for a good laugh:

Working with XML Namespaces in Flash

Today I was having some issues with parsing RSS/ATOM feeds in Flash. I forgot to factor in the fact that both use namespaces in the XML. Here's a simple block of code I used to handle the namespaces and parse the XML into Value Objects:

public function xmlLoaded(event:Event):void

{

trace("done loading");

theXML = XML(myLoader.data);

var ns:Namespace = theXML.namespace();


for each (var property:XML in theXML..item)

{

var atom:Namespace = property.namespace("atom");


var fVO:FeatureVO = new FeatureVO();

fVO.pubDate = property.pubDate;

fVO.updated = property.atom::updated;

fVO.category = property.category;

fVO.title = property.title;

fVO.summary = property.atom::summary;

fVO.link = property.link;

fVO.enclosure = property.enclosure.@url;

fVO.xmlData = property;

model.featuresArray.push(fVO);


trace("creating featureVO "+fVO.enclosure);

}

This is what the sample xml looked like from Blogger's RSS/ATOM feed:

<rss xmlns:atom='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' xmlns:openSearch='http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/' version='2.0'>

<channel>

<atom:id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-</atom:id>

<lastBuildDate>Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:07:53 +0000</lastBuildDate>

<title></title>

<description></description>

<link>asdfasdf.com/</link>

<managingEditor>noreply@blogger.com (Erik Loehfelm)</managingEditor>

<generator>Blogger</generator>

<openSearch:totalResults>9</openSearch:totalResults>

<openSearch:startIndex>1</openSearch:startIndex>

<openSearch:itemsPerPage>25</openSearch:itemsPerPage>

<item>

<guid isPermaLink='false'>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-</guid>

<pubDate>Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:07:00 +0000</pubDate>

<atom:updated>2008-09-10T15:07:53.696-04:00</atom:updated>

<category domain='http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#'>feature</category>

<title>People Singing</title>

<atom:summary>This is going to be a feature for the portal.v/atom:summary>

<link>asdfasdfasdf.html</link>

<enclosure type='image/jpeg' url='http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Slideshows/_production/ss-080522-idolfinale/ss-080522-idolfinale-09.hmedium.jpg' length='0'/>

<author>noreply@blogger.com (Erik Loehfelm)</author>

</item>

</channel>

</rss>

You can see the syntax to be used on the 2 lines highlighted in bold above. The first defines the namespace (atom) and the second shows how you access elements in the xml that have the atom namespace applied to them.

Photoshop Tip: Creating a dotted line

Here's another handy tip for Photoshop CS3. To create a dotted line in Photoshop:

1. Select the Pencil or Brush tool from the tool menu
2. Open the Brushes Palette from the Window menu
3. Click on the 'Brush Tip Shape' item in the list on the left
4. Adjust the 'Spacing' slider on the bottom of the right list

This will give you a dotted line while drawing with that particular pen/brush! Save it as a new brush if you'd like to use it again in the future. Adjust the 'Spacing' slider to give you the spread between the dots that you'd like. Playing with the adjustments on the other settings will allow you to create dashes, or other shapes along the same pattern. Easy peasy!

Photoshop Tip: Switching between open documents

As basic as this might seem, I always seem to forgot this little key combination to switch between open documents on the Mac.

Hold down Control:Shift and press Tab to cycle through the open documents in Photoshop.