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Third Parties Show Support for Flash
By Kathy White
2005-04-08
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Exhibitors at the Flashforward conference tout wares and services for rapid deployment of streaming media.SAN FRANSICO—If the theme of this week's Flashforward conference here was sharing, then the exhibits were hitting the mark. From staffing up with Flash developers to sharing your own Flash presence through the help of a worldwide streaming service, it's all about using Flash to create interactive Web content that excites the user.
The seminars covered everything from the fundamentals of Flash MX to Audio ActionScript and Interactive Sound. Also topping the list of events: learning about how fractions can be more easily taught via Flash teaching tools and how you can become a 3-D expert in no time.
In addition to the sessions and lessons, every speaker was available for a Q&A session after the presentation so that the faithful could learn even more from the gurus.
 Flash aficionados get a peek at '8Ball.' Click here to read more.
One of the highlights was the 13th Flash Film Festival, an online competition that culminated in a live awards ceremony Thursday night. It showcased the best work on the Web in 16 categories including applications, art, cartoon, commerce, educational, experimental, game and motion graphics. The nominees are listed at the Flashforward Web site and feature everything from building your own Web site via a Flash application, to buying clothing, to a weather classroom on The Weather Channel.
"You just can't beat seeing what people do with the Flash application," said Marvin Hawkins, a designer. "It's an application that can help you create just about the coolest content on the Web."
Exhibitors highlighted their wares for Flash and Flash development:
Metaliq, an application development company that specializes in Flash-driven Web sites. The company built the MyAOL site that gets close to 14 million hits a day.
VitalStream, a media delivery service for Flash, as well as other forms of media. "With the adoption of Broadband, companies can now see the benefits of using Flash for things like training. It cuts costs. There's no confusion around what player somebody needs to have and makes streaming manageable," said Tim Napolean, director of business development for VitalStream. "It's the perfect storm of technology, cost, business sense and client demand all coming together now."
Making Things specializes in rapid prototyping and development of products, exhibits and environments that integrate software with electronic hardware. The company says it can move an idea to production in the fastest, most cost-effective way.
Curious Labs just released Poser 6, which delivers interactive 3-D figure design, offering infinite opportunities to portray human diversity, form and expression. "The medical field uses this to teach anatomy or it's used for animated movies," said Tobias Sugar, a flash designer for the company. "You can use it for fashion. We have an entire content area on our site that has clothes you can buy to dress up your human figure." Check out www.contentparadise.com for some of the content available. The company also sells Shade 7, a more advanced program for photorealistic design with full 3-D modeling.
SpeedEra is another streaming service offering a global streaming solution for all kinds of media, including Flash, QuickTime, Windows Media and more.
Mdm highlighted its Zinc V2, which allows a user with Macromedia 4.5 and MX SWF files to create desktop applications for Windows. A user can completely customize every aspect of an application from size, style, border and icon, and with its scripting support, {mdm}Script, it allows improved functionality over its predecessor, Flash Studio Pro.
As a supplier of animation technology, Toon Boom Animation highlighted several animation products, including Opus, Harmony and Toon Boom Studio. Of special interest to the Flash community was Toon Boom Studio, the complete cartoon animation tool that comes with drawing, lip-sync and multiplane camera tools.
Xamlon makes the Xamlon Pro product line. With Xamlon Pro, developers write user interfaces in XAML while writing application logic in any Microsoft .Net language. The Xamlon Pro engines then publish the application to Flash Player, Windows Forms or Compact Framework. Developers can quickly create compelling applications for multiple platforms, building rich user interfaces with standards-based markup while cleanly separating application logic code.
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