Measuring in at 300 X 250 pixels, the new CBC Olympics widget was developed to push the boundaries of information density.

This flashy little piece of real estate really packs on the pounds by delivering up to the minute reporting on all 306 Olympic events, athlete blog feeds, breaking Olympic News for all 34 sport categories, Medals Results, Video feeds and program schedule with links to live events… whew!

Of course, as you might expect in a widget, you can customize and add it to your desktop as a Mac Widget or Vista Gadget, and even embed it into your favorite weblog or social application. Check it out on my facebook page.

Some long nights went into developing this application with developer Matt Rix taking care of the chrome and front end programming, Dayton Pereira tackling design and interaction, and I handled building the data provider and results parsing. Brodie Hanbuch, our Associate Technical Director, assembled the team and put the plan into action.

The whole production was a really dynamic experience with each person playing one part toward a larger goal, and that goal was to create the best damn widget concept possible. With such a tiny space to work in, the design challenges are obvious. It had to be intuitive, easy to use, aesthetically pleasing and readable.

On the front end, you can imagine the challenge Matt had managing the interaction, animation and general presentation. And if you want to hear about the challenges getting it all to work with facebook, I suggest you send Matt an email.

And as for the back-end… well that deserves a post all by itself. Unfortunately it would be so intricate and detailed, only the most die hard code monkey would find it interesting. (If I get 5 comments asking for that description, I’ll write the post. Unfortunately for me I find it interesting…)

You can get yourself a copy of the widget by clicking the “get and share” button on the lower right-hand side, or visit http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/olympicwidget/ and do the same thing there.

For more information on embedding the widget for your specific needs, visit http://www.cbc.ca/widgets/.

The Sun’s new AIR application called Desktop Keely reminds me of the writers adage. “Write for the masses and eat with kings, write for kings and eat with the masses.”

I’m not overly familiar with the United Kingdom and their cultural nuances, but even in North America their daily rag “The Sun” has gained a degenerate reputation. Maybe degenerate is a little harsh, but it’s pretty much the same word I would use for the National Inquirer and probably Star magazine. This stuff is pure brain garbage that does nothing more than stimulate a person’s most base instincts.

But alas, I have to admit, those very primitive responses are often undeniable even if deplorable. I have often fell victim to the magazine rack while buying milk and bread, wondering what sort of trouble Linsay Lohan and Britney Spears have gotten themselves in… and I have resisted, sometimes failed, to quell the overwhelming urge to flip through the pages and see the best and worst beach bodies this year.

Anyway, I’ve been suckered again… and this time from right across the Atlantic.

It’s a nice and simple desktop application, packaged up with long legs and bulging breasts.

Damned be my monkey brain, but this is cool, especially if you are into half naked girls, celeb gossip or sports.

It’s at least worth a look if you are involved in producing AIR applications. The idea alone is brilliant, and the final product is usable to those of us who can’t control our limbic systems.

I’m betting the Sun gets all sorts of hits back to their Page 3 Website (warning: link contains nudity) from this application.

Since I’ve been working with Open Frameworks (OF), I thought I might let a few outsiders in on an impressive project created by some of the members of the OF community.

Back in May 07 Evan Roth and Ben Engebreth started a crowd sourcing experiment. They asked the online community to come together and help change the world. Well, really they just wanted people to help track Michael Jackson’s white glove from his first nationally televised performance. The project is called White Glove Tracking and through it Evan, Ben and over 1500 users have compiled an awesome set of data.

This data is made up of variables that track the location of Michael’s glove throughout the performance. This data has helped many creative developers to produce some interesting visualizations. Check out the gallery here. Personally, the giant glove by Tim Knapen is my favourite.

According to the write up about the project, this experiment was a huge success for Evan and Ben, as the user participation blew their expectations out of the water.

I intend to make my own visualization and I’ll post it up here. The hardest part for me will be keeping the content tasteful.

Scriptographer is fun for anyone who uses illustrator, but if you love programming little scripts, this is the type of tool that will eat your long weekend away without notice.

The engine is built in Java, but the API is all JavaScript. If you have experience with ActionScript, this should be rather easy to pick up. I’ve just started, but man is it consuming me.

First of all, I’ve always loved Illustrator. It’s all you need (and more) in a vector drawing application, but the addition of the Scriptographer plug in, makes the program a dream for coders with visual sensibilities.

Download it at http://scriptographer.com, and make sure you look at the documentation in the package. It’s a little cryptic, or rather sparse on explanation, but if you like code you can jimmy your way around with little problem.

If you are not a fan of code, but love illustrator, the plug in is still worth it, as there are tons of customizable scripts already written.

I created the above pattern really simply with the following mouse drag function:

function onMouseDrag(event)
{
   var mousePoint = new Point(event.point);
   var centerPoint = mousePoint.add(event.point);
   var endPoint = centerPoint.add(mousePoint);

   var segments = new SegmentList();
   segments.moveTo(mousePoint);
   segments.curveTo(centerPoint, endPoint, mousePoint);

   var path = new Path(segments);
}

Now as you can probably tell, nothing really curves in this function. It was actually an unexpected mistake and the same result could probably be created using a more sensible lineTo function. But I like these little errors, especially when they resolve to pleasant surprises.

For a long time now, we have been talking about what the next generation of Internet technologies is going to be and where we may see the applications of those technologies. That is the basis of this post which attempts to look at things that go beyond the browser.

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I’m working on this really kick-ass Particle System visualizer that uses Perlin Noise to control movement. It’s almost exactly what Robert Hodgin does in processing, and I’m finding it a great exploration into the sorts of performance and effects possible in a stressed out flash player.

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For a long time we have been primarily a design and development agency focused on Flash as a platform to deliver the rich “immersive” online experiences. We haven’t been asked to do a lot of SEO work (Search Engine Optimization) or it really hasn’t been on our clients’ minds. However, in the last little while SEO and paid search (SEM) has taken up more of the lime light and we are getting tons of requests to have visibility strategies built into the development cycle.

The main problem is that our client’s valuable content is getting lost in a plethora of irrelevant information.

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So here is my version of FITC (not nearly as interesting as Brodie’s). I haven’t really participated in any FITC like I have in this one, I was at the FITC get a job event, where I met several very talented people that were kind enough to share their work and their ideas with me. I have to admit that I an encouraged that our industry does have some options to choose from when it comes to interactive talent. I was also on two panels Young Talent and Process with some very cool people like Ryan Wolman, Bradley Grosh, Andrew Bell, Ben Palmer, Ivan Todorov and Scott Prindle.

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