TOKI WOKI. 

Hey! Another free AIR app! This time that ain’t no side project I made on my free time for some obscure users, but rather a big thingy for a big com­pany. Namely Foto­lia.

I did all of the cod­ing part (Action­Script 3, Flex 4) and Steaw is respon­si­ble for the UI and all graph­ics. The app is basi­cally a solu­tion for power-users, pro­vid­ing most of the func­tion­nal­i­ties of the web­site and adding some more (such as direct down­load and local library). Allow­ing you to search, browse pre­view and buy all types of medias, includ­ing video and vectors. You can also log into your account and store your favorites in a light­box or cre­ate and fill gal­leries.

This is my first multi-lingual app: to this day it pro­vides 13 trans­la­tions includ­ing Japan­ese, Chi­nese and other funny look­ing languages!

Flex 4

This is also my first big real-life project with Flex 4 and I have to say it’s way better/easier than Flex 3. Really. What changed my life is the way it han­dles states and com­po­nent cus­tomiza­tion via skins… Oh boy, this is easy!

AIR 2.0

Yep, using the brand new AIR 2.0.2, buddy. What for? Mainly for global error han­dling and the almighty open­With­De­fault­Ap­pli­ca­tion (for both folder and medias). I’ve also heard this ver­sion of the run­time is faster and lighter, and we all like that.

Open­Source

As for every project I work on, I try to have some Open­Source bits so that any­one can ben­e­fit from the work and time I spent on it. I asked Foto­lia if the AS3 API I was going to write could be OpenSource’d and guess what, they accepted. So here it is, based on the as3-rpclib and on the as3 Sig­nals logic: fotolia-as3-api. I imple­mented most of (if not all) fea­tures of their offi­cial API so build­ing an AS3 app off of that should be pretty easy, do so!

Go get it!

Yeah, go get it.

This is how the Adobe AIR Chal­lenge (that took place in Paris this week-end) looked like: lots of young and fresh folks ready to spend 24 hours build­ing an AIR app.

Pretty happy the 3 apps I sup­ported all made it to the podium and can’t wait to play with Dig­i­tas’ Flickr app! Nice job, fellows.

See pics at Flickr, vids at Vimeo and wait for the apps: they should be out really soon.

The Adobe AIR Chal­lenge will begin tomor­row at 3pm in Paris, I hap­pen to be a part of the jury so I will have to review and judge all of the 15 apps made by the 15 2-member teams.

If you’re inter­ested fol­low the #air24h hash­tag on Twit­ter and watch the event (there will be a live broad­cast online)! A Flickr group also has been set up.

Make sure to also down­load and test the apps where they’re done!

I’m still hav­ing a hard time believ­ing what I’m about to write, but hope­fully you will.

That was my intro, buddy.

A lit­tle bit of context

I lis­ten to music, I try as hard as I can to be eclec­tic but let me con­fess that: I’ve always loved Hip-Hop. Of course my Hip-Hop heroes have changed through the years, but there’s one that never left my inner podium… He’s Cana­dian, he’s weird (proof: he’s worn a platy­pus shirt, once), he’s prob­a­bly the most sub­tle writer I know (OK, with Yoni Wolf) and he’s evolving.

He’s Buck 65.

An ounce of Twitter

As in every web tale, it all starts with a Twit­ter sta­tus. Mine started with this one:

I kinda need a logo-thing made of the num­bers 65 and 20. Any­one wanna take a crack? Who knows what might happen?!

I read this and thought “Well yes, but I’m kind of busy you know. And what the hell could I do with those damn num­bers? Plus, lots of fans will answer that”.

Some friendly advice

A few days later as I was chat­ting with a good friend of mine (and dis­creetly sent him the link to that tweet) he reacted some­thing like: “You bitch-ass cunt, you could try some­thing and see! Stupid-ass jerk”. “Hum, well yeah, you know. Just sayin’…” I kind of replied.

So I fired Illus­tra­tor and tried a few things out. A “65”, a “20”, and 15 min­utes later I had something.

Not quite ready for prime-time, but the con­cept was there. A few iter­a­tions later I was kind of happy with this:

So I tweeted back.

Who knows what might happen

And got an answer, a pri­vate one. Say­ing he was lik­ing it… Oh boy.

A few days later I received another pri­vate mes­sage ask­ing me if I could add a “th” to the logo, let­ting me know the mys­te­ri­ous logo was in fact for his “20 years as a rap weirdo”. Which I (of course) did.

We then e-mailed back and forth and “sorted out the details”, he “blew [the logo] up with dyna­mite and shot it with a gun a few times” and that was it.

Oh boy

I made Buck 65’s 20th “year in the game” logo, which is up on his new web­site.

Call me a happy fan. Yup.