July Meeting - Starting out with Fireworks / Project and Learning Incubator
on Jul 16 in Meetings
16 Comment(s) »Meeting Time: 6:30pm on Tuesday July 29nd
PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGE! DUE TO A SCHEDULING CONFLICT WITH THE LOCATION, WE CAN NO LONGER HAVE THE MEETING ON THE 22nd.
Location: Railinc Corporate Headquarters, 7001 Weston Parkway, Suite 200 Cary, NC 27513
Join the Raleigh Durham Adobe User Group and the Triangle User
Experience for the first of many shared meetings! Presenting first will
be Ben Farrell and Eric Coker taking you through the basics of Adobe
Fireworks CS3. Eric will specifically be covering image exporting, and
Ben will be covering a basic workflow from Photoshop to Fireworks to
Dreaweaver or to Flex. For those of you who don't know, Fireworks is
the best program you've never used - it saves loads of production time
if you can integrate into your workflow properly, and we'll show you
just how to do that, along with some basic features.
Next, as our groups join forces and meet, we'll be asking those with an
idea or a desire to learn speak up and let us know what's on your mind.
The "Project Incubator" is our idea to get innovative ideas out there
and get skilled people together on these innovative ideas. Here's how
it works....You present an idea you have for a project, let us know what
your goals are and if you'd like to make money on it or just bask in
fame for doing something very cool. As a group, we'll ask you
questions, offer our critiques and concerns over how to meet goals, what
wrinkles lie ahead for your plan, etc.. At the end of the meeting,
we'll all socialize and see if people would like to help you on your
project or vice versa. It's like a support group for future
web/software inventors and renown artists!
If you're just starting out, and are a little shy to talk projects -
maybe your a beginner and are still learning, we'll also host the
"Learning Incubator" portion of the group. Here we'll be asking those
with a desire to learn a particular subject to speak up. We'll try to
put some groups together to learn a subject, and hopefully we'll put
groups with a volunteer instructor.
And lastly, we'll be providing one lucky winner with a software prize
worth up to $2100. If you present a project idea to
the incubator, or offer your expertise to lead a group to learn a
particular subject, we'll give you a raffle ticket to win the Adobe
software prize.
Please RSVP by leaving a comment in this post! You're also welcome to leave other comments or suggestions in this post.
One of the odd things about an open source project is the abiliity to watch progress as it happens. Despite the fact that its not like christmas morning anymore when the product drops, it is nice because you can keep tabs on it at every stage.
Of course Flex 4 SDK is open source, and you can download an early release right now. It's available here
Geek Glue is calling it a beta, but it hasn't even reached a milestone yet on the opensource page, so who knows what it is. To read more about it, the same Geek Glue article is a good read. Watch the video on this page to get a sneak peek at the skinning improvements - its pretty cool!
Mini-Meeting: Texturing your 3D models using Photoshop CS3 Extended
on Jul 13 in Meetings
1 Comment(s) »Hey everyone! So our last mini-meeting was small but successful. It was just Troy, Iris, and myself. Troy showed us the basics of using Papervision3D, while Iris showed us the basics of using the free 3D software called Blender. We can't wait to present on this stuff in August!
But in the meantime, I did some research and figured out a pretty good workflow to texture my Blender models using Photoshop CS3 Extended. Iris asked me if I wouldn't mind showing her sometime soon how I did it. And of course I'm more than happy to share, but wanted to share with anyone else who's interested as well.
So! I'm going to pick a time and place. If any interested folks don't like it, I'm more than happy to change it, just leave a comment in this post so we can discuss. My choice is Thursday night at around 7. I'll offer up my house at 706 Cross Timbers Drive in Durham. I know lots of folks live in Cary or Raleigh, and I'm more than happy to come to you - so if that's your preference feel free to tell me your chosen time and place.
To recap - we'll be learning two things. The first is prepping your 3D models with a texture and UV map. And then the second is importing a 3D model into Photoshop 3D extended to edit and preview the texture. Comment in this post if your game!
Adobe Flash Technology Enhances Search Results for Dynamic Content and Rich Internet Applications
on Jul 1 in News (Adobe & RDAUG)
No Comments »SAN JOSE, Calif. — July 1, 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the company is teaming up with search industry leaders to dramatically improve search results of dynamic Web content and rich Internet applications (RIAs). Adobe is providing optimized Adobe® Flash® Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines. This will provide more relevant automatic search rankings of the millions of RIAs and other dynamic content that run in Adobe Flash Player. Moving forward, RIA developers and rich Web content producers won’t need to amend existing and future content to make it searchable — they can now be confident it can be found by users around the globe.
The openly published SWF specification describes the file format used to deliver rich applications and interactive content via Adobe Flash Player, which is installed on more than 98 percent of Internet-connected computers. Although search engines already index static text and links within SWF files, RIAs and dynamic Web content have been generally difficult to fully expose to search engines because of their changing states — a problem also inherent in other RIA technologies.
“Until now it has been extremely challenging to search the millions of RIAs and dynamic content on the Web, so we are leading the charge in improving search of content that runs in Adobe Flash Player,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the Web, and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users.”
Google has already begun to roll out Adobe Flash Player technology incorporated into its search engine. With Adobe’s help, Google can now better read the content on sites that use Adobe Flash technology, helping users find more relevant information when conducting searches. As a result, millions of pre-existing RIAs and dynamic Web experiences that utilize Adobe Flash technology, including content that loads at runtime, are immediately searchable without the need for companies and developers to alter them.
“Google has been working hard to improve how we can read and discover SWF files,” said Bill Coughran, senior vice president of engineering at Google. “Through our recent collaboration with Adobe, we now help Web site owners that choose to design sites with Adobe Flash software by indexing this content better. Improving how we crawl dynamic content will ultimately enhance the search experience for our users.”
Yahoo! also expects to deliver improved Web search capabilities for SWF applications in a future update to Yahoo! Search. “Yahoo! is committed to supporting webmaster needs with plans to support searchable SWF and is working with Adobe to determine the best possible implementation,” said Sean Suchter, vice president Yahoo! Search Technology Engineering.
“Designers and Web developers have long been frustrated that search engines couldn’t better access the information within their content created with Flash technology. It’s great to see Adobe and the search engines working directly together to improve the situation,” said Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief, SearchEngineLand.com. “The changes should help unlock information that’s previously been ‘invisible’ and will likely result in a better experience for searchers.”
Adobe Flash Player is the world’s most pervasive client runtime that delivers unparalleled creative options, highly engaging user experiences, stunning audio/video playback, and nearly universal reach. To download and learn more about Adobe Flash Player, please visit www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/ .