photoFlow – The Sleek and Easy Path to Flash-based Photo Navigation

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It’s no secret that creating sleek and usable interfaces in flash is a big pain in the head. Whether your the average run-of-the-mill blogger who wants to add a little bit of flashy animated navigation or a seasoned web designer working on a tight deadline – creating flash navigation from scratch is almost a death sentence. Unless you really know the inner-workings of animation design, designing visually stunning animation in flash seems far from achievable (or at least not without effort).

Fortunately, there are a number of readily available flash components that you can avail and can make the job of creating professional animated interfaces really easy and fun while achieve quality results. Today we look at one of such components – Flashloaded‘s photoFlow.

photoFlow is a flash component that showcases photos in 3d stack effect, complete with realistic physics-based flipping animation and reflection. This is similar to an already loved interface prevalent in iTunes and OSX Leopard. For this review I was able to play around with Actionscript 2.0 version of the component. Here are some of the key features of photoFlow:

  • Easily update images using the Component Inspector, ActionScript or an XML file
  • Adjustable flip speed, spacing between stacked images and image size
  • Customizable perspective view and reflections
  • Option to flip images as a slideshow
  • Add links/hyperlinks to each image
  • ActionScript events to perform an action when an image has loaded, is selected, etc…
  • Images can be external or included in the library
  • Mouse wheel image flipping (Windows only)
  • Optionally display a name for each image
  • Option to set the number of images to preload
  • Option to automatically scale images to fit or to fill the defined size
  • Zoom in on selected image or on all images on mouse over
  • photoFlow can open on a pre-defined image
  • Customizable background color and opacity
  • Option to start flipping from left-to-right or right-to-left
  • Supports sound effects for image flipping
  • Built-in preloader
  • Light weight (weighs only 18kb with the scrollbar)

Setting up photoFlow was really straightforward and easy. It took me less than 30 minutes to get an actual working photoFlow interface after installing it through Adobe’s Extenson Manager. photoFlow comes with very thorough and easy to understand instructions that walks you through a basic setup to explaining more elaborate integration points through actionscript events.

One roadblock that I ran to while setting it up was that I forgot that I had the actionscript 2.0 version and proceeded to make an Actionscript 3 project – in which case I couldn’t find the photoFlow component in the Components panel. So it’s important to double check whether you have the Actionscript 2 or 3 version of photoFlow before you make a new flash project.

Aside from that everything was a breeze in using the component. There are a lot of settings to play around with. You can even opt to either manually load files through the component options or load via xml for more advanced users. Skinning is also no problem as you can customize the look of your photoFlow component. Animation and transition of photos can be tweaked to your liking including perspective and depth of the reflection.

All in all photoFlow is one topnotch flash component. Easy to setup, install and tweak – photoFlow is an excellent tool for those who want to setup quick but elegant photo galleries for portfolios, photo albums and even as navigation for a product catalog. photoFlow would definitely cut your time in figuring out how to do stuff and just get you right to creating and designing. It’s something I definitely would consider next time I had to make a flash-based interface.

photoFlow costs $59.95 for the ActionScript 2 version, and $79.95 for the AS2 and AS3 version. Licensees of the AS2 version can upgrade for $20.

Asst. Editor’s Note: this is a sponsored post written on request by Flashloaded.

Skitch: Screenshots Made Easy

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When it comes to blogging, there are very few tools I feel compelled to rave about or wonder how I got along without.

For example, I edit my sites with Mars Edit because it is easier and faster. However, I am just as comfortable with my browser and the vanilla WordPress editor as they get the job done just the same.

Skitch, however, is an exception to that rule and is both a tool that makes my life much more simple and a great service that I don’t know how I got along without.

For any blogger (on a Mac) that takes a modest amount of screen grabs or likes embedding images into his hosts, Sktich provides an easy and powerful service that combines capture, editing and hosting all within the same application. For me, it has sped up the process of taking screen captures and enabled me to include many more in my posts.

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LG searches for European mobloggers to capture “style of Europe”

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Consumer electronics company LG, who have recently started making great mobile phones, are currently running a competition in five European countries, trying to find the ten best mobloggers to capture images of people which best shows off the style of that particular country.

Mobile phone users in Germany, Spain, the UK, France, and the Netherlands, have been taking pictures and posting them, with a subject, to the City Clickers web site.

The ten people (two from each country) who snap the best photos will win a new LG Viewty phone, plus their bill paid for two months, and training on how best to use the phone.

It’s been running for a couple of weeks now, and closes at midnight CET on Sunday 25th November 2007. So you Europeans still have time to get out there this weekend and snap some stylish shots.

(Via Tech Digest)

Photo blogging site selects StrongMail

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StrongMail Systems, Inc. announced that Fotolog, a photo-blogging community with growth rate of one million new members every six weeks, has selected StrongMail to further enhance its member experience and accommodate explosive growth with a reliable platform for marketing and transactional email.

Fotolog generates a high volume of transactional email from member registrations and automatic notifications of blog posts, photo uploads and other community-building tools. Extremely popular in Latin America and Europe, Fotolog’s members have posted more than 200 million photos and 2 billion guestbook comments. Fotolog’s sharing and collaborative environment depends heavily on the reliable and prompt delivery of email to its 8 million members across 200 countries.

“As Fotolog drives explosive growth around the world, we are continuing to update our member experience in order to further build and realize the full value of our large and engaged member base,” said John Borthwick, CEO of Fotolog, Inc. “As we build one of the world’s largest social media networks at the intersection of digital photography, blogging and social networking, we need an email platform that can scale reliably, and StrongMail will play a pivotal role in keeping our community informed of new user-generated content and updated account information.”

A Remix Culture

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I’m a fan of remixes and mashups. A couple years back mashups exploded onto the scene. One of the most downloaded albums of all time is Danger Mouse’s Grey Album – a creative mashup of JayZ’s black album and the Beatles’ White Album. The Grey Album was plagued by copyright issues and couldn’t be officially released but that only fueled demand and massive downloads via p2p networks.

They often say where audio goes video follows. Bands were crafting their own master pieces via their desktop computers long before it was possible to edit video on consumer gear. But with the current explosion in user generated content, large numbers of people are spitting out content for mass audiences consumption. It seems likely that the next evolution in user-gen might just be found within in a remix / mashup environment.

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It’s a slam Dwank for Dwank.com

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They’re dubbing themselves as the next “MySpace” for people who love home decor. A brainchild of Danish web designer Jakob Jelling, Dwank.com is a free web site that offers people from around the world the opportunity to upload pictures of their home, condo, or flat with anyone who cares to drop by the site and look at them.

So far there have been some pretty distinctive homes from around the world pictured on the site and Jelling wants to remind visitors that all homes are welcome. It doesn’t matter whether your home’s a mansion or a ranch – what matters most is how you’ve decorated it.

Jelling hopes that Dwank.com will soon become the “MySpace” of your space. “My goal is to provide a venue for people from all walks of life to showcase their little piece of the earth and share their decorating ideas, challenges, tastes and accomplishments with others who are seeking inspiration,” Jelling said. That the website provides an opportunity to explore other cultures as well is simply icing on the cake,” he added.

With what I’ve seen so far, it seems like it’s a slam Dwank for Dwank.com. Be careful though with what you post, the “anyone who cares to drop by the site and look at them” can be someone who is out to pay your place a visit, unknowingly to you.

Yahoo China launches blog and networking service

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Yahoo China announced the launch of Yahoo Space, its blog and networking service. Tools included in the service are blogging, photo-sharing, and networking.

Yahoo China is operated by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.com, which is partially owned by Yahoo Inc.

“Search is a tool for the user to get the information he wants, but it is not the final destination,” said Yahoo China president Zeng Ming said. “Yahoo’s next step will be to allow users to share their hobbies with each other so that they can expand their knowledge.”

We can only hope that censorship does not spoil this.

Lonely Planet launches online TV

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Reality Digital today announced a first-of-its-kind deployment with Lonely Planet, a leading independent travel media company. Lonely Planet is using Reality Digital Opus, a digital media hosting platform, to launch the LonelyPlanet.tv website, an online community featuring a combination of user-generated travel videos and original programming from Lonely Planet TV. Reality Digital Opus, the technology enabler for the new online channel, is providing Lonely Planet viewers with a more participatory environment that includes blogging, video sharing, forums, geo-location information and more.

With lonelyplanet.tv, Lonely Planet now has a web channel that features original produced travel programming alongside the clips uploaded by viewers. “The idea was to create a place where travelers could share their own videos from their DV cams or cell phones and share real travel experiences with other travelers, as well as commenting, rating and interacting in a variety of ways with both professional and user generated content,” said Sohail Dahdal, manager of LonelyPlanet.tv.

Apple TV shipment starts now

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Apple is now shipping Apple TV, an easy to use and fun way to wirelessly play all your favorite iTunes content on to your widescreen TV, including movies, TV shows, music, photos and podcasts.

With Apple TV’s interface, anyone can quickly browse and view their entire collection of digital media from across the room using the simple and intuitive Apple Remote. Apple TV easily connects to almost all modern widescreen televisions.

“Apple TV is like a DVD player for the Internet age-providing an easy and fun way to play all your favorite iTunes content from your PC or Mac on your widescreen TV,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Apple TV allows you to wirelessly play your content from your PCs or Macs using your existing WiFi network as well as the newest and fastest version of WiFi-802.11n.”

The seamless integration of Apple TV and iTunes lets users choose from over 400 movies and 350 TV shows in near DVD quality; over four million songs; 5,000 music videos; 100,000 podcasts; and 20,000 audiobooks from the iTunes Store.

Enticing, true. But the next question, just like the gizmos that came out in the not so distant past is looking for supply. Start lining up now or better yet, wait until excitement dies down.

Build a community around your blog with “Your Own Social Network”

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Myspace, tagworld, bebo, and facebook. There are social networks for just about everything these days. But what if you want a simple social network for yourself, one that you can make totally your own?

THE FIND: Well Ning’s new “Your Own Social Network” might just be the answer for those who have been looking for a simple way to create their own social network.

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