Adtools

CSS3 & HTML5 Ads Examples

Sean — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:04:10 +0000

The brainiacs over at Sencha have put together some excellent examples of CSS3 ads alongside Flash equivalents and ask you to spot the difference
http://www.sencha.com/deploy/css3-ads/
And here’s the article showing you the CSS and how they did it.
http://www.sencha.com/blog/2010/07/20/html5-family-css3-ads-versus-flash-ads/

SWFTools 0.9.1 released

Sean — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:56:32 +0000

Freshmeat are reporting an update to the open-source SWFTools package with increases in performance of the pdf2swf tool and fixes to numerous bugs.

“SWFTools is a collection of code for handling Flash .SWF-files. This includes a
merging tool (swfcombine), an extracting tool (swfextract),
PDF/JPEG/PNG/AVI/TTF/WAV to SWF converters (pdf2swf, jpeg2swf, png2swf, avi2swf,
font2swf, and wav2swf), a text parsing tool (swfstrings), an SWF parser
(swfdump), and a library for writing and reading SWFs (rfxswflib).”

http://freshmeat.net/projects/swftools#release_317771

HTML5 vs. Flash comparison finds a few surprises, settles few debates

Sean — Wed, 12 May 2010 15:31:25 +0000

“Think we’d all be better off if HTML5 could somehow instantly replace Flash overnight? Not necessarily, according to a set of comparisons from Jan Ozer of the Streaming Learning Center website, which found that while HTML5 did come out ahead in many respects, it wasn’t exactly a clear winner. Jan Ozer’s article can be found at http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/flash-player-cpu-hog-or-hot-tamale-it-depends-.html

Mike Chambers has an additional piece as well from his own testing:
Relative Performance of Rich Media Content across Browsers and Operating Systems (does not ‘perform consistently worse on Mac than on Windows’).
http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/03/01/relative-performance-of-rich-media-content-across-browsers-and-operating-systems/

This is a bit of an old article, sorry but it managed to not get published when it was supposed to.

Large number of .de addresses drop off the Interwebs

Sean — Wed, 12 May 2010 15:28:18 +0000

Am seeing reports of a major DNS outage affecting DENIC on Wednesday 12th, seems as iof iot’s been resolved now, further info here:
http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20100512-27149.html (English)
http://www.focus.de/digital/internet/denic-probleme-wie-das-deutsche-internet-verschwand_aid_507660.html (German)
http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/home/regularieninhalte/world-news-ticker/news,rendertext=12523314.html (German)
http://www.stern.de/digital/online/serverprobleme-bei-denic-massive-stoerungen-im-deutschen-internet-1565993.html (German)
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/05/12/1457240/Millions-ofnobr-wbrnobrde-Domains-Unreachable-For-Hours

Douglas Crockford on JavaScript and HTML5

Sean — Mon, 10 May 2010 11:01:55 +0000

Webmonkey have secured themselves some good video interviews last week at Web 2.0 Expo. Here Douglas Crockford talks about the future of Javascript & HTML5.

Adobe’s Kevin Lynch: Apple’s Playing a Legal Game, Not a Technology Game [Video]

Sean — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:06:47 +0000

Interesting interview with Adobe’s Kevin Lynch Web 2.0 Expo 2010: From this link on Wired/Webmonkey

How not to deal with Adblock users

Sean — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 08:16:34 +0000

Techdirt reports that gaming site The Escapist has apparently banned users who mention the Firefox add-on Adblock. After much user anger they listened to their users and later un-banned those them but it seems to have left a bitter taste in the users mouths.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20100420/1042189110.shtml

Android vs iPhone

Sean — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:57:27 +0000

Just a bit of fun, but made me laugh, thanks to Steve Culverwell:

Jing – A different take on the screengrab/capture tool

Sean — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:16:32 +0000

If you work in AdOps then you’ll know that screngrabs/screen-captures can be labourious and time consuming to create. Yes, there are already a number of tools out there but where Jing differs is it’s integration with hosting site screencast.com meaning you can easily snap, upload and share your screengrabs with anyone.

Jing comes to us courtesy of TechSmith, the people behind the other great screen-capture tool SnagIt.

Jing
Snag-It
Techsmith

Apple’s new iAd platform

Sean — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:01:32 +0000

So perhaps this goes some way to explaining Apples refusal to let Adobe anywhere near their mobile platforms. Control the technology, the platform and the means of production.

I’m keen to have a mooch/play around under the hood, hopefully I’ll be proved wrong. The current Apple App submission process is far from being a smooth and easy process, it’s slow and cumbersome and communication is poor. Now add in iAds to the mix… and what if Apple don’t like the ads we’ve submitted, what if they don;t meet their exacting criteria? Only time will tell. And lastly…

And lastly, Apple are demanding 40% of revenues, which seems rather high.

Update: 2010-04-13 17:18pm – Here’s some links to related articles as the story unfolds.
Apple to Lend Hand to iAd Producers [AdAge]
Apple iAd Platform: A Case of the Rich Getting Richer [PCMag]
iAd for the Win as iPhone 4′s Biggest Blockbuster [Macnewsworld]
Is Apple Trying to Create a Mobile Ad Monopoly on the iPhone? [148apps]

The latter article deals with a clause in the Developers agreement that states:
Section 3.3.9:
…the use of third party software in Your Application to collect and send Device Data to a third party for processing or analysis is expressly prohibited.