// labs

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.

We recently developed the Flash sketchpad component for the BIC Express Yourself campaign site for our friends at HardHat Digital.

The site features a great Flash-based sketch pad which let's users create their own artworks for the competition. It's been going really well, and some of the entries so far are mind-blowing!

Check it out and if you're feeling artistic, get in there and maybe win an iPad!

DISCLAIMER: If you win, the sketchpad application will not work on your iPad! (thanks Steve.)

BIC Express Yourself - Big Friendly Giant

We've put up a site for Melbourne based photographer, Lachlan Moore. He is a great photographer and I've found myself wasting a lot of time looking through his portfolio. My favourites have to be some his landscapes of New Zealand.

Check it out here.

Together with Citrus, we built a competition based website giving fans of Ford Fiesta a change to win the ultimate weekend away.

The site required users to enter a code and build a image of their Fiesta "Key to the City" experience. This involved users building their own image with the editor interface, importing and editing photos, and sharing their creation through social networking integration with Facebook and Twitter services.

Check it out here.

This one has been frustrating me for a while, I just wanted to open an actionscript project that we have in our svn into my workspace.

Seemed like a simple concept, but I only recently discovered how to do it:

• Go to File > Import
• Select General > Existing Projects into Workspace
• Find your directory with your .project file and select finish

Seems so simple now.

One of our recent projects, Marija Ivkovic has been featured as the site of the day on Design Licks.

The site has already been featured on a few other design sites, but of course we're proud to announce this latest one

Marija Ivkovic on DesignLicks.com

Our first major project, ABC Black Saturday Interactive, went live yesterday!

"It pulls together hundreds of pieces of media – professionally produced media, official documents and records and the best user generated content – to provide a stunning insight into the fires and the people who lived through them. An interactive map and timeline allow you to explore the events through time and location, and a series of dramatic video portraits provide a moving insight into the personal experiences of some survivors."

This project has been a great experience, and we're really happy with the end product. The site pulls together a heap of media data such as video, audio, imagery and news content from a multitude of sources and combines it into a great interactive experience. The Google Maps API also provided us with a really interesting way of exploring the data visually based on the time and location of every media item and story.

Huge thanks go to the ABC Innovation Department, the producer Priscilla Davies, designers Bec Smith and Sarah Fawcett, and everyone else who contributed to the project - it was a great team to work with.

We're really proud to see this online so please go and check it out and explore the site!

Black Saturday Interactive