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What I took away from FITC Toronto

I’ve just returned from the premiere Canadian new media trade show known as Flash in the Can. My head is now full of hope and inspiration for the future of rich media, and dynamic desktop applications.

There were so many wonderful things worth mentioning, and I fear I’ll only be able to only scratch the surface in a single article, so consider this a brief overview.

Let me start by discussing the potential for Adobe’s new product Air, which is a platform allowing flash developers to create dedicated desktop applications using all the same scripting and abilities of Flash CS3.

Before attending FITC I didn’t really appreciate the usefulness of a new platform to host Flash based applications. But now that I’m aware of its easy-to-use built-in SQL database, and the potential to access dynamic data both locally, online, and the possibility of syncing the offline with the online I’m eager to dive far deeper into this new dev platform. I’m thinking this would make an excellent platform for an Intranet, among other incredibly useful apps.

A few major websites such as PayPal, EBay, Google Analytics, FaceBook, and others have already built or are developing desktop versions of their huge and complicated sites to allow users a faster and more feature-rich experience then was ever possible before. In many cases it will allow their sites to operate offline which is a pretty major ability both for the company and their users.

Here is Adobe’s current Air app showcase site.

One other thing I took away from FITC was the incredible work being done by a few people in the realm of code generated artwork.

Flash has long been a favorite tool among groundbreaking designers to avoid the limitations of old-fashioned HTML/CSS styles, allowing the sites to be presented in ways that are near-impossible in most other traditional ways.

I strongly recommend viewing the work being done by Joshua Davis, Erik Natzke, and my personal favorite Grant Skinner. Skinner has managed to create some beautiful, natural looking trees and grass, entirely with code. It would take many pages to get into the details of how this is possible, but it essentially amounts to porn for Flash coders.

Anywho, it was a fantastic conference that will forever influence the way I approach my work.

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Kitchen Encounters: Cooking up a Holiday Treat

The Idea:

After hearing some conversations at lunch one day, something made me think of an idea. We could send out a BSL holiday cookbook. 10-12 pages in pdf format, so clients would be able to print it out. Staff can submit their holiday faves. We could print them out and have them bound for whoever wants one. We could send out a teaser like What's Cooking at BSL for the Holidays followed up by the cookbook. All the recipes would be baked for a certain day and a lucky client would be drawn to win a basket of fresh baked goods — the recipes in the booklet. Could be posted on our blog.

Just throwing it out there.
— Barry

The Response:

This sounds nice and warm and friendly (& memorable) to me…
— Chris

I think it's a great idea, Barry. It's electronic and so client's can print it out if they want to. It would be a real keeper and something that staff can really participate in and enjoy as well.
— Mary Ellen

I think it’s really nice! I should probably let you know what happened the last time I made Angel Food cake. Let’s put it this way … it didn’t look ANYTHING like the photo you’ve included! I think this will go over really well with the staff.
— Nancy



Download your own Holiday Treats recipe book

Enter to win some sweet sensations

Meet the bakers

The Stories:

Hmmmm… my challenge was that it was a two day process to make them (nothing like instant gratification) and an even bigger challenge was not eating the yummy peanut butter balls before they got their chocolate-y coating.
— Carolyn

I had to squeeze in the somewhat time-consuming process of making bread into a busy weekend, and it was tricky in that my mom had all of the ingredients for the bread, including the most important component - the food processor - at her house in the East end, when I now live in the West end. I had to transport the quickly-rising dough from there to my place - the dough sitting on the seat next to me in a big bowl covered loosely with plastic wrap - with heat turned up to a comfortable temperature it would take kindly to... Other challenges came when it came time to braid it, I didn't have a pan large enough so I had to be creative, and when it came time to bake it I realized I didn't have even one egg yolk so had to quickly make a trip to the store in the snowstorm!
— Julie

My biggest challenge was trying to decorate enough cookies well to photograph (I have a reputation to uphold after all those years of art college!). The icing was not co-operating! If that wasn’t difficult enough, I had to keep my husband and son from eating the nicely decorated ones (which looked much more enticing than the others) before the photo shoot.
— Nancy

The minute I knew we were going to do the Holiday Treats recipe book – I knew I wanted to find my mom’s “Jam Surprises” recipe to submit. The first challenge is that the recipe was handwritten by my mom and had very short, vague directions. Obviously she had made them a lot and just “knew” what to do when she made them. I had to figure out how to make a soft dough and also how long to cook them. I didn’t really know what she meant when it said to seal the corners either. After a visit with my Aunt Emily this weekend I found out something that makes the recipe even more special to me – it was actually my grandmother’s recipe! I didn’t even know that…
— Chris

I'm so far from being in the same class at making biscotti as my mom and sister — but I had a blast taking on the task anyway! Taking the photos of everyone's yummy creations was also a lot of fun. It was hard not to take a nibble while looking behind the camera at the sweets! So get dunkin’!
— Barry

Download your own Holiday Treats recipe book

Enter to win some sweet sensations

Meet the bakers

Crack Shot

Thought this was an interesting video in that it shows how a concept in photography becomes reality with the use of some inspired thinking, powerful software and a fair degree of effort. Its really quite a fun concept and the video of how it was done gives a great insight to what goes into pulling off a little photo magic. There are plenty of examples of elaborate photography out there and certainly some are better than others but it is seldom you get to see the "how did they do that" documentation. Have fun!