// labs

We've produced a series of games for ABC Kids around the "Giggle and Hoot" TV program. The games were simple "hide and seek" and "dress up" games aimed at young children.

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I've had a few requests asking about how to interact with the KML once you've loaded it onto the map. It's really quite an easy step once you've got the KML on there but I'll show you how in this simple example.

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We generally use Macs most of the time, but we also have to use PCs often for specific development or testing.

Using tail trace output for debugging on a Mac is great and we can't live without it, but I never really got around to getting it set up on a PC until yesterday. There's just a couple of steps to get it going.
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One of our latest projects, the 'Sportsgirl Virtual Style Studio', has gone live this week!

Working with Citrus, we developed an augmented reality Flash app which features interactive video scenes showing off the Sportsgirl range.

You can print out the marker from the page, and if you don't have a webcam, you can play through and watch the video scenes all the same.

Check it out here.

Okay so I'm not the most athletic person in the world, but one thing that does get me out of the house is tracking how far I've been running. Watching the km's tick over!

But I'm sick of iTunes and having to log into nike online all the time. So I got bored this weekend and the result is the start of a new little as3 interface using the content from my Nike+ device. Initially this library just processes files that nike+ stores on the device, but would eventually like it to access the online service as well.
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This one always gets me. Seems so difficult on OSX (Snow Leopard), so for all those who are trying to get https on the base install of apache(2) in snow leopard here are some tips.
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Here we'll show you how to move the present working directory of a Terminal window to the current directory in the front most Finder window.
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Ever since the lovely people at Google have started packaging the flash player into Chrome it's become a little harder to get the debugger version of the player working in this browser. Chrome will default to it's version of the player even after you've installed the debugging version. Here's the simple step you have to take, in Chrome go to:

chrome://plugins

Find the flash player, it should have 2 files as part of it, one is the built-in and the other is the debugger (you may have to click "Details" in the top right to see them). If you haven't installed it yet obviously you just see the built-in, and it doesn't matter the order in which you do install it. The trick is just to disable the built-in player, once you've done that chrome will use the debugger version you've installed.
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Recently we've been using some of our own tools in other projects and found some room for improvement on the KML Loader we developed. In particular we wanted a simple class that could handle all the processing from the loader, adding the resulting overlays to the google map. Also we needed it to load in some of the styles, such as colours and line types.

So we've expanded our KmlLoader class and provided a few additional utility classes.
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Our latest project for Zoos Victoria has gone live. Part of the FUSE (Find, Use, Share, Educate) portal that supports kids to explore and solve complex issues facing our society through the use of digital technology. Designed for school aged children to create a conservation based mashup video from a series of resources from the FUSE portal.

The site was released yesterday by the Victorian Education Minister, Hon. Bronwyn Pike MP.

Unsustainable palm oil production in SE Asia is pushing orang-utans to extinction through loss of habitat. At the current rate of clearing the Orang-utan could be extinct within ten years. Kids can access a collection of video clips and images and use an online tool to ‘mash up' their own video to support the Zoo's Don't Palm us Off campaign. They can share videos in an online gallery.

Check out one of the user's mashups below:

The site was all built in AS3 using Flash Builder and integrated with a custom build of our content management system (a Flex and PHP-based XMLRPC server). The CMS provided a simple interface for the administrator to preview and approve the submitted mashups. It also included an AIR application build for desktop use, and a standalone version of the mashup player (as used above to show the mashup).

Check it out here.