This was a site I developed a couple years back actually. Great group of people at this clinic, it started out with Dr. Thrash as the initial doctor then Dr. Krunic bought them out – either way they both new what they wanted to see in their site and saw the power and potential having a site would bring to their clinic. The site is still growing as the clinic continues to grow.
Monthly Archives: December 2009
Google Gadget Development
This was a fun project to take on with a great group in a smaller interactive agency here in Chicago. The project consisted of developing multiple Google Gadgets that people would be able to download and place into their iGoogle as applications. I developed games, clocks, quizzes and many other fun elements.
Gatorade – Flash component for site
Here is another flash component I designed for Gatorade that would live on their site. Its simply a nutritional and facts data sheet for the Powder Pack product. Not sure if this is still currently on their site, I designed this piece over a year ago.
Five Reasons You Should Use Flash Video on Your Site
Flash Video is an accessible, fast-loading, pretty much globally supported video format. And, as the “official video format of YouTube,” Flash Video has emerged as the standard video format for the web. In this article, author Dave Karlins explains why you should use Flash Video on your site.
Before I explain why you should use Flash Video on your site, let me break that down just a bit. I’m going to explain why you should use Flash Video on your site. The “Flash Video” part will cover why this format is the best choice for sharing your videos online. And the “your site” part will explain why you can, and should, pop Flash Video files up on your own site, rather than sticking them up on YouTube.
Creating a Twitter Widget with Flash
With the help of ActionScript 3.0 and PHP, Kris Hadlock, author of Ajax for Web Application Developers, shows how easily you can add your tweets to your website.
Twitter usage is growing at a phenomenal rate—in just one year, Twitter grew by 1,382%. In January 2009, it received 4.5 million unique U.S. visitors. Recently I wrote an article called “Creating a Twitter Widget with Ajax,” which explained how to bridge the gap between a local website and remote RSS feed using PHP and Ajax. This article addresses the same concept, but we’ll be using Flash ActionScript 3.0 and PHP to create a handy Twitter widget for displaying your latest tweets on the Web.
It’s not a requirement, but we’ll assume that you’re already familiar with ActionScript 3.0 and PHP. If you need to get up to speed on ActionScript 3.0, check out my book The ActionScript 3.0 Migration Guide: Making the Move from ActionScript 2.0.
Flash CS5 Physics
Long are the days where a designer could simple explore flash and learn it. The current times and ActionScript 3 require some programming skills. Fortunately Flash CS5 includes a simple way to associate gravity behavior to objects making certain animations easier.
Flash CS5 introduces a whole bunch of new features in order to keep up to date with the current necessities in the development of RIAs and other software for Mobile hardware such as the iPhone.
The video after the jump will show some of Flash CS5 gaming capabilities and, starting at 3min50sec, an introduction to Flash CS5 physics.
Dark Grunge Photo Effect
In this Photoshop tutorial you will learn a neat grungy photo effect using a variety of Photoshop filters and image adjustments.
How to Turn Humdrum Photos into Cinematic Portraits
There are a plethora of ways to treat a portrait for a myriad of uses, but that is for another feature. Let’s tackle adding drama or a cinematic quality to a regular, humdrum portrait. Let’s even throw in a little bit of faking HDR. That way if you work on a project that requires a stunning shot without the stunning photography, you’ll be able to cobble something together using your mad skillz!
Create dynamic distortion effects
Bring velocity and meltdown to your subjects with a little Photoshop magic. Doucin Pierre, aka Soemone, shows you how
I like to create dynamic work that conveys a sense of velocity in its subjects, and the visual featured in this tutorial is a prime example of that style.
In the following steps, I’ll let you in on one of the most effective and easily mastered techniques that I use to make striking, dynamic distortions of subjects – in this case I’ve used a model, although the technique can be adapted to any objects that you wish to feature in your work, such as cars or trees.
In this tutorial we’ll use brushes to create what look like stains of paint, but in your future work you can use similar techniques with any number of style forms to dissect and distort your subject.
Brace yourself for the real-time Web
London, England (CNN) — Real-time is a top 10 Web trend for 2010, I proposed in this column last week. Now the stage is set: Google this week launched real-time search, bringing live updates from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more into a scrolling pane in your Google search results.
How will the real-time trend evolve in 2010? Rapidly, no doubt. Why will it sweep the Web? Because it fuels our insatiable info-addiction.
Why real-time?
What’s driving this real-time trend anyway? In large part, lowered barriers to content creation: Posting a 140-character update to Twitter is so effortless that Web users are becoming conditioned to create.
They’ve learned to expect a response, too: The immediate feedback provided by Facebook comments and Twitter replies is an incentive to make continued contributions.
But the real answer may be in our heads. These technologies are literally addictive, says psychologist Susan Weinschenk, fueling a “dopamine-induced loop” of seeking behavior and instantaneous reward.
New email! Unread Tweets! New comment on your blog post! Each new alert is like Pavlov ringing a bell.
Real-time search
If this new paradigm stimulates our seeking behavior, it follows that search is central to the real-time Web. Before Google entered the fray, OneRiot and Collecta stood out among real-time search engines.
The reigning champion of real-time search, however, is Twitter Search, which provides instant updates whenever new Tweets are posted. “108 more results since you started searching. Refresh to see them,” implores a message below the search box. Enter the topic du jour here and you’ll no doubt find yourself in one of Weinschenk’s dopamine-induced loops.
This thirst for the new and novel is by no means limited to search, however: It looks set to pervade the entire Web in 2010. Let’s look at a few more examples. Continue reading
At a loss for words? Google offers search by sight
Mountain View, California (CNET) — Google’s first search engine let people search by typing text onto a Web page. Next came queries spoken over the phone.
On Monday, Google announced the ability to perform an Internet search by submitting a photograph.
The experimental search-by-sight feature, called Google Goggles, has a database of billions of images that informs its analysis of what’s been uploaded, said Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president of engineering. It can recognize books, album covers, artwork, landmarks, places, logos, and more.
“It is our goal to be able to identify any image,” he said. “It represents our earliest efforts in the field of computer vision. You can take a picture of an item, use that picture of whatever you take as the query.”
However, the feature is still in Google Labs to deal with the “nascent nature of computer vision” and with the service’s present shortcomings. “Google Goggles works well on certain types of objects in certain categories,” he said.
Google Goggles was one of the big announcements at an event at the Computer History Museum here to tout the future of Google search. The company also showed off real-time search results and translation of a spoken phrase from English to Spanish using a mobile phone. Continue reading
Top Web Trends for 2010
This video I stumbled upon when searching for Web Trends for 2010. The video is hosted on CNN here is the link: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2009/12/09/data.doctors.seg.02.cnn
Facebook’s Secret Code
(TIME) Probably not a big shocker that the minds behind Facebook are a little dweeby. Proof positive? They’ve incorporated an old video-game code into the site.
The Konami code, named after the Japanese company behind classics like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series and the Nintendo Contra classics, is one of video-gaming’s most storied cheats. During development of the 1985 Konami arcade game Gradius, a programmer found the game to be too difficult and programmed in a key sequence — up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A — that, if entered, gave the player a set of the game’s power-ups. As word of the shortcut spread, other programmers aped his cheat, working the same sequence into their own games. The Konami code works in nearly 100 video games now, including Frogger and Dance Dance Revolution. (See the 50 best websites 2009.)
And now it works for Facebook. Try it for yourself — log in to Facebook and type the code: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, enter. It doesn’t matter where you type it: just have the Facebook page open and active. The result? Lens flares — those groovy circles that appear when pointing a camera into the sun — appear on your page with every click of the mouse. Useful? Not in the slightest. But they’re easy enough to get rid of — logout and they’re gone. (Facebook users, comment on this story below.) Continue reading
Facebook unveils privacy changes
(CNN) — A large pop-up box will greet Facebook users logging on to the social-networking site on Thursday, asking them to modify their privacy settings.
The company says the changes will help streamline privacy controls that have confused many of its 350 million users and were sprawled over six separate pages.
What is getting the thumbs-down
Complaints have started flowing in, focusing on three areas:
The changes treat as “publicly available information” the following: your name, profile picture, current city, gender and networks, and the pages you’re a fan of.
Until now, you had the option of restricting much of that information. That option has been removed.
The ramifications, as the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation sees them:
“For example, you might want to join the fan page of a controversial issue (like a page that supports or condemns the legalization of gay marriage), and let all your personal friends see this on your profile, but hide it from your officemates, relatives or the public at large.” You cannot do so now. Continue reading
Social media brings bullying to light
(CNN) — Her choppy blue-and-blond hair hiding the fear in her eyes, a 15-year-old voiced her dislike for a hip-hop music group and got punched in the face by a classmate. The whole thing was caught on tape and social media helped police in their investigation.
A crowd of six to 10 classmates were following the self-described emo girl and her boyfriend home from school in Newark, Ohio, on an autumn day in September. Some kids were taping it and others were egging on the assailant, who was on the school wrestling team. It all started because Alexis Xanders doesn’t like Insane Clown Posse.
One of the students who recorded the incident contacted Xanders on MySpace and sent her the video two months later. The teen says she wanted something done, so she uploaded the video to YouTube and CNN iReport last week.
While only six to 10 people witnessed the alleged assault, the video has received more than 1,000 views on CNN iReport to date.
A local newspaper reporter saw the video and alerted the local police department, says Newark Police Sgt. Scott Snow. A police report was filed on September 24, and authorities are now investigating the other kids in the video who were goading the suspect. Continue reading
Jason Uzarraga 