Hey Guys, One of my new years resolutions is to start blogging again. I’ve started a new blog over here: http://robmorgan.id.au. Check it out, Cheers Rob.

Adobe has just recently released the Flash Player 10 Beta. You can find out more here on Adobe Labs: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/. The hardware acceleration features are nice, but my favorite feature is the new 3D API. We will also be able to fine-tune effects and filters using the Adobe Pixel Blender toolkit. Flash Player 10 can load the filters (Hydra-Format) created by this toolkit.

Lee Brimelow was nice enough to create some introductory videos. Check them out at gotoAndLearn(). They demo some of the newest features, including the 3D Effects, new Sound API and the new Local File Support. Adobe’s Press release is here.

I recently discovered Apache Ant and it’s an absolute godsend! Ant is an automated build system written in Java. You write build(make) files in XML. This allows Ant to be cross-platform which is very handy in my line of work. Previously I used a combination of manual tasks, windows batch files and shell scripts on linux to manage my builds.

Heres a small snippet of code I found that will successfully post updates to your Twitter account:

curl --basic --user username:password --data status="Having fun with cURL" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml


The command ‘curl’ is normally present on most Linux distro’s these days. Windows users will need to Google and download it. To use the code above simply replace ‘username:password’ with your real ‘username:password‘, the string of status in double quotes is the update that will actually appear on your Twitter page. The url present at the end of the code is the Twitter API endpoint.

Twitter will reply with a response similar to the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<status>
<created_at>Sun Apr 08 01:25:56 +0000 2007</created_at>
<id>12345xxx</id>
<text>Having fun with cURL</text>
<user>
<id>xxxxxxx</id>
<name>Your Name</name>
<screen_name>your_username</screen_name>
<location></location>
<description></description>
<profile_image_url>[removed]</profile_image_url>
<url></url>
<protected>true</protected>
</user>
</status>

Note: I have replaced specific numbers with ‘x’s.

Just after releasing their latest product – Highrise, 37Signals published this blog post which announced changes to their pricing structure. This was made in response to customer demands, something I highly commend them for.

I was just checking Technorati tonight for details on the blogosphere when I saw Twitter at number #3 for popular searches. I thought to myself this is amazing. I’ve been a registered user on Twitter since it’s inception, although my activity has been somewhat appalling. For those of you that don’t know about Twitter, it is often summarised with the Quip: “Twitter asks the question, What are you doing now?”. It is like a tumblelog for your personal activities and of course you can see what others are doing as well. Alot of users consider Twitter addictive.

When Obvious (Twitter’s Parent) announced recently they were selling Odeo, I thought they would become another bright star fading out in the horizon. I thought of Twitter, but did not expect it to be so successful as a key product to focus on. Many people argue why Odeo flunked, some (including me) blame it on the explosive growth of iTunes – in particular the podcast directory. I guess Obvious are in luck with a new mainstream product.

Microsoft are giving away Ultimate versions of Office 2007 to Students on the cheap. $75 gets you a full version to use forever, $25 buys a one year subscription. You can then pay $50 at the end to upgrade to the unlimited use version. Check out WWW.ITSNOTCHEATING.COM.AU.

I’m not sure how many PC’s you can install this on. I know Office 2003 (For Students) could go on up to 3. I thought this deal was worth blogging about, but they are also offering prizes for blog entries as well. Defiantely worth a look.

Update: I’ve got it on 3 PC’s so far all activated!

Today I recieved a batch of SPAM comments from an anonymous user via Blogger. The funny thing is that my Blog has since miagrated to Wordpress, but I still have my Blogger account hanging around. The comments triggered Blogger to regenerate my entire website killing my Wordpress installation.

When I first discovered this, I noticed a nice blue Blogger banner across my webpage along with a very stale theme. My wordpress cron job was thrown off guard as the Wordpress installation was rooted. I have sinced disabled Blogger Comments, and I can’t seem to find where my SFTP details might be. The SFTP box is empty???

I just managed to upgrade to Wordpress ‘Ella’Â 2.1. Looks Interesting So far. Morale of the story: SPAM is bad.

Prototype 1.5 has finally been released as stable along with a new website. The team have also started a documentation effort to make life easier.

Hundreds of actors of all playing the same character. Sort of a stop motion live action combo all mashed together. I really can’t explain it, just take a look.

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