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It’s no secret that creating sleek and usable interfaces in flash is a big pain in the head. Whether your the average run-of-the-mill blogger who wants to add a little bit of flashy animated navigation or a seasoned web designer working on a tight deadline - creating flash navigation from scratch is almost a death sentence. Unless you really know the inner-workings of animation design, designing visually stunning animation in flash seems far from achievable (or at least not without effort).

Fortunately, there are a number of readily available flash components that you can avail and can make the job of creating professional animated interfaces really easy and fun while achieve quality results. Today we look at one of such components - Flashloaded’s photoFlow.

photoFlow is a flash component that showcases photos in 3d stack effect, complete with realistic physics-based flipping animation and reflection. This is similar to an already loved interface prevalent in iTunes and OSX Leopard. For this review I was able to play around with Actionscript 2.0 version of the component. Here are some of the key features of photoFlow:

• Easily update images using the Component Inspector, ActionScript or an XML file
• Adjustable flip speed, spacing between stacked images and image size
• Customizable perspective view and reflections
• Option to flip images as a slideshow
• Add links/hyperlinks to each image
• ActionScript events to perform an action when an image has loaded, is selected, etc…
• Images can be external or included in the library
• Mouse wheel image flipping (Windows only)
• Optionally display a name for each image
• Option to set the number of images to preload
• Option to automatically scale images to fit or to fill the defined size
• Zoom in on selected image or on all images on mouse over
• photoFlow can open on a pre-defined image
• Customizable background color and opacity
• Option to start flipping from left-to-right or right-to-left
• Supports sound effects for image flipping
• Built-in preloader
• Light weight (weighs only 18kb with the scrollbar)

Setting up photoFlow was really straightforward and easy. It took me less than 30 minutes to get an actual working photoFlow interface after installing it through Adobe’s Extenson Manager. photoFlow comes with very thorough and easy to understand instructions that walks you through a basic setup to explaining more elaborate integration points through actionscript events.

One roadblock that I ran to while setting it up was that I forgot that I had the actionscript 2.0 version and proceeded to make an Actionscript 3 project - in which case I couldn’t find the photoFlow component in the Components panel. So it’s important to double check whether you have the Actionscript 2 or 3 version of photoFlow before you make a new flash project.

Aside from that everything was a breeze in using the component. There are a lot of settings to play around with. You can even opt to either manually load files through the component options or load via xml for more advanced users. Skinning is also no problem as you can customize the look of your photoFlow component. Animation and transition of photos can be tweaked to your liking including perspective and depth of the reflection.

All in all photoFlow is one topnotch flash component. Easy to setup, install and tweak - photoFlow is an excellent tool for those who want to setup quick but elegant photo galleries for portfolios, photo albums and even as navigation for a product catalog. photoFlow would definitely cut your time in figuring out how to do stuff and just get you right to creating and designing. It’s something I definitely would consider next time I had to make a flash-based interface.

photoFlow costs $59.95 for the ActionScript 2 version, and $79.95 for the AS2 and AS3 version. Licensees of the AS2 version can upgrade for $20.

Asst. Editor’s Note: this is a sponsored post written on request by Flashloaded.

Detailed in my previous postings, the video card is one of the core elements in creating a Media Center. Having one that isn’t up to snuff is a downright horror, one that no one should have to experience, from stuttering playback to limited resolutions. However, you don’t need to break…

Macs are known to last a long time when taken care of, but I had the pleasure of receiving a new Mac, well, new in the sense that I have never owned a PowerMac before.

I had considered buying an Apple TV but the purchase was put off.…

Traditionally, holsters haven’t been made for iPods and were exclusive to phones for the longest time. The same could have been said for the iPhone, until manufacturers seized the opportunity to fuse cell phone accessories and their typical designs for iPod cases into a sleek package. Holsters from Vaja, Belkin,…

My previous articles have focused on upgrading an older PowerMac to Leopard and outfitting it with a NewerTech G4 upgrade, but now it’s time to go deeper and finally build a PowerMac media center.

The goal here is not to build some super rig capable of plotting the…

One of the most fundamental blocks in a Media Center is the video card, and a poor choice can cause loss in quality and performance, forcing your Mac to bear too much of the burden. In part 2 of building a Mac Media Center, I’ll discuss which cards from Nvidia…

This is an acronym that most Mac users are very well aware of. Ever since the launch of Mac OS X in 2001, Mac users have been chanting this phrase and hoping that Apple will take note of it and fix the Finder with each subsequent upgrade. It seems that…

Even though a lot of argument suggests the killer app has seen its day, some apps are still revolutionary enough to swing some folks’ buying decisions. They’re not going to start a stampede to the Mac platform, but for some people and their needs, some of these apps are their…

NiGHTS fans have been waiting for a proper sequel to the Dreamcast cult classic for some time now. Sega’s attempt to capitalize on Sonic’s ring collection mania in a more robust 3D world, NiGHTS was a landmark game for the era.

Now NiGHTS has come back to the masses on the Wii in NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams. So does its predecessor live up to expectations? Hit the jump for our Frankenreview: every thing you need to know about everything that is this one particular game.

GameTap
You can play Journey with several configurations. Each of them has a steep learning curve, but the remote-only setup will wear down your patience and send little kids crying to their mommas. It’s just too tough to keep the remote cursor steady enough that it doesn’t skitter around the atmosphere as you try to guide Nights past obstacles. Better to attach a nunchuk or plug-in a classic controller or even a GameCube controller, where the analog joystick eventually rewards your persistent thumb work with fairly smooth flying.
GameSpot
Visually speaking, Journey of Dreams is deliciously vibrant. Each dream world is unique and colorful without veering from the overall art design. From beautiful underwater vistas to a busy carnival complete with exploding fireworks, environments are created with painstaking care. Nights is smoothly animated, though in the ground levels, the children don’t move as fluidly. Cutscenes are also well done and often poignant, thanks to expressive facial animations. You will encounter frequent moments where the frame rate dips a tad, but it doesn’t usually get in the way of smooth flight.
1UP
This time, you assume the roles of William and Helen, two new tykes sucked into the dreamworld of Nightopia in order to better cope with the very modern pressure of living with unloving, often-absent parents. Unfortunately, you’ll actually get to know these kids a little too intimately, thanks to an overabundance of heavy-handed, talky cut-scenes that assault the eyes (and ears) with amateurish production values. We definitely liked Nights when he/she was an enigmatic, laconic benefactor 10 years ago…now that it’s more of a corny purple Mary Poppins that won’t shut up, we’re considerably less enamored.GameZone
More than half of Journey of Dreams’ stages are worth playing through multiple times. Unfortunately, there are a few stages that you won’t care to revisit. It’s not that they’re significantly bad, but they’re not much fun either. They lack the excitement and awe-inspiring feeling that the rest of the game offers.
IGN
You’ll also find odd sections of loading that don’t bring up screens or icons at all, instead keeping the screen fully white or black for upwards of 15 seconds with no explanation. If it wasn’t for the music playing in that background we would have assumed the game was frozen. This lack of overall polish can be found in virtually any area…
It looks fairly passable unless you are a big NiGHTS fan, though Wii owners who’ve beaten Super Mario Galaxy may be looking for something new.

Review aggregation site Summize certainly isn’t the first kid on the multi-site review block, but it’s looking to stand out with the sheer breadth of its coverage. Type in a movie, book, gadget, or anything else that someone might have taken a critical eye to, and Summize shoots back a color-coded summary of what bloggers, user reviewers and other sources had to say about it—divided into segments ranging from “great” to “wretched.” Many of the reviews seem to come from database-type sites like Amazon, IMDB, and the like, but round up hundreds of blogs, dozens of newspapers and user comments on any topic, and you’ll never want for input. The site is free to use, and sign-up seems to mostly be for the benefit of bloggers who regularly contribute to the discussion.

Ever since Yahoo! released its Shortcuts plugin for Wordpress I’ve been wondering what Yahoo!’s role in the blogosphere is. The plugin is developed for Yahoo! by Alex King who wrote an impressive amount of popular WordPress plugins. Will this plugin become another success? Responses seem to mixed and vary from “Please God, no more pop-up links” to “Very Cool!”

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I haven’t discussed movies a lot over the past two months. I’ve been mostly too busy to see many movies … and honestly there hasn’t been a whole lot out there worth while seeing.

I did manage to get in Across The Universe. This is a musical based coming of age tale based in the mid to late 1960’s using the music of The Beatles to tell the story. The visuals are amazing - I could easily see

As some of our tipsters and commenters have pointed out, game review harvesting site GameRankings no longer displays any scores from sister site GameSpot, despite both being owned by CNET. GameRankings still features prominent GameSpot logo placement and links, but the reviews have disappeared. CNET’s other review gathering property, MetaCritic, still features GameSpot scores as part of its database. While conspiracy theories abound, it seems the real story behind the removal of GameSpot reviews isn’t as dramatic as some might think.

GameRankings editor Lee Alessi writes today on his GameSpot blog, “No, I didn’t get rid of their data ‘on purpose’. I honestly have no clue how it disappeared and before anyone asks—no, I didn’t delete the site. I am no Tech but I will take a guess and say there will have to be a restored backup to get close to 10,000 in reviews and 60,000 in other articles back on GR.”

Yes, GameRankings did indeed drop GameSpot reviews, but looks like it found them, plans to put them back in their spot, restore balance to all important percentages and (hopefully) defuse any further potential drama.

We’ve contacted CNET and GameSpot reps to get an official statement on the matter. Regardless, it sounds very much like this is not news.

Before people jump to conclusions/ make assumptions [GameSpot]

While Google’s Blogger platform has come a long way since its rebirth, it may have taken “two steps back” after launching OpenID within their system.

Without warning, Google removed the ability for non-blog*spot commentors to link their domain with their name in the comment section, which made some users very upset.

Blogger users seeking to regain control of their comment section may find outsourcing their comments elsewhere may be the simplest option for their readers, and Intense Debate may prove to be the easiest way to open up their comment system online.
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Get gift recommendations for the best products for your loved one’s hobby or area of interest with expert recommendations from web site Lootist. Although there are tons of sites that provide customer reviews of products, it’s difficult to know how much you can trust a reviewer. Lootist changes that by making reviewers sign up and declare their specialty; users then rate the specialists so that over time you can find trusted recommendations from quasi-verified experts. Lootist doesn’t actually sell anything, instead linking to off-site stores like Amazon or Best Buy. If you’re having a tough time finding the perfect gift but you know what hobbies might be of interest, Lootist could be a good place to find that perfect gift.

For those who haven’t heard, Hitman actually got some decent reviews. OK, maybe not some. Maybe just notably one, from Roger Ebert. In the midst of screening films lusting after precious Academy Awards in full heat, he bestowed upon the movie 3 stars.

What I found intriguing about the movie was the lonely self-sufficiency of Agent 47, his life without a boyhood, his lack of a proper name, his single-purpose training. When Nika comes into his life, he is trained to guard against her, but he cannot, because she is helpless, needy…To the degree the movie explores their relationship, it is absorbing.

But to the degree that it doesn’t?

Other scenes, which involve Agent 47 striding down corridors, an automatic weapon in each hand, shooting down opponents who come dressed as Jedi troopers in black. These scenes are no doubt from the video game…It has a high body count but very little blood and gore. I wish it had less. It’s the people we care about in movies, not how many dead bodies they can stack up. “Hitman” stands right on the threshold between video games and art. On the wrong side of the threshold, but still, give it credit.

Not having seen the movie (and generally avoiding video game movies like the plague because I too believe they stand on the wrong side of the threshold…the movie side) I can easily imagine the film as a Hollywood blockbuster that replaces the clever, resourceful Agent 47 with a John Woo unlimited-bullets-pistol marksman.

Anyone see it yet?

Hitman Review [rogerebert]

[Today we welcome back SG, a twelve-year-old who previously reviewed the B2 version of the One Laptop Per Child computer. SG had a chance to examine the latest (B4) version of the OLPC machine and write a new review. As before, the review is unedited, just as SG wrote it. — Ed]

After my first review, the administrators at OLPC were kind enough to send Mr. Felten the newer model of the computer, the B4, for me to review. The difference between the two models was quite dramatic. Between new games, new applications, design changes, and a few touch ups for the system, the B4 clearly outshines the B2. I didn’t even know about a bunch of problems in the B2 until they got fixed in the B4!

The minute I picked the new computer up, I saw the physical differences. There are bumps on the handle of the B4. The B2 has none. The flip- up antenna on the B2 was encased in hard plastic, and on the B4, it’s just thick rubber. The keyboards are pretty much the same, apart from a few minor differences along the top. Once I opened it up and started it, I noted how much quicker it booted up than the B2. Then I saw the icons. The B2 has less than half the icons than the B4, which has 13!

As for games, entertainment, and the internet, this computer has bountiful resources. There were many new and fun programs. One of them, called “Block party”, is just plain old tetris with a different name. As I am not really gifted in tetris, I had a lot of fun losing repeatedly. The internet was a lot better on this newer laptop. In my last review, I complained about how slow it was and how the connection was so-so. In the B4, both of those problems have been fixed. It is quick, always connects, and is really very nice. If you don’t want to go on the web to read the new Freedom to Tinker article, “News Reader” lets you subscribe to websites’ feeds. In the games category, “Connect” is a game which can only be played on two separate OLPC laptops . The game is a little like tick tack toe. If you’ve ever played “Connect 4”, that’s the same game. If you want to watch some video clip from the web, “watch and listen”, OLPC’s media player, has you covered. Want some music? Use “tamtam”. This application is similar to Garageband, but not quite the same. Last but not least is “Record”. On the B2, “record” just took pictures with an okay camera. On the B4, you can take pictures with a pretty good camera AND record video with no time limit (as far as I can tell). I was surprised and overjoyed to discover I could take video with the new one.

One of the coolest applications is called simply “Chat”. It is basically an IM-ish kind of thing that works between all OLPC laptops. Since I got two laptops from OLPC, I could test out the chat application with my friends and family. I spent a lot of time having silent conversations with the friend sitting across the room, so that was fun. Etoys is another cool application, and it is definitely the program of a genius technologist. Although it is difficult to understand and use, once you get into the swing of things, it’s awesome. To use Etoys you make a “sketch” on the computer, then save it, and that’s where the fun begins. You can write “scripts” that make the sketch move around the screen in the way that you want. You can put it in “books” that have multiple pages for a flip book or make animations with it (ie. a bouncing ball, flying bird, eating kid, etc.). In Turtle Art, you get a chance to write a simple program that makes the turtle in the middle of the screen move. It’s very cool.

Last review, I said that my main problem with the computer was its slow speed and its battery charge. And I am happy to say that both of those problems have been fixed in the new version. It has more applications, higher quality camera, more games, a few design changes for the better, and much more. I tested how long it would stay alive by opening it and leaving it open. Surprisingly, it stayed awake for more than four hours! And some other testing revealed that the B4 does, in fact, auto save your documents and stuff if it runs out of battery while an unsaved document is on it. I like that feature, because there were many times with the B2 that I was typing and it just died, leaving me rather stunned for a couple seconds until I came to my senses and wearily plugged it in. Then it would take hours to charge up again. But in the B4, it charges up really quickly. Another minor turn for the better is the plug. Now they are greener, more round, easier to hold, and they have the XO sign on them.

I thought that this version was way better than the last one. It was just easier to figure out, more fun to spend time on, just better. It’s going to be hard to send it back to OLPC, but I’m going to have to. It’s great that they’re going to start selling them to the public. (You have to buy two, and you send one to a needy kid in a third world country and keep one for yourself. Read about it in the New York Times… …) I hope I can get one!

For a regular laptop, this would be the paragraph about its problems, its deficiencies. But the thing is, there aren’t any problems with this computer! Congratulations, OLPC. You’ve done it. Or will you come out with yet better laptops? Is that even possible? We’ll have to see…

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NewerTech has sold processor upgrades for PowerMacs which allowed users to take advantage of faster G4 chips to keep ahead of the technological curve for a long time. Eventually the option of Dual Processors became available and speeds reached a blistering 2 GHz, but even in a world dominated by Intel…

Unable to resist being left in the dark ages any longer, I made the plunge and installed Leopard, and found it to be a beautiful product with nothing significant to complain about and well worth the money.

So you read my piece a couple of weeks ago where I…

Let me say this now: Leopard is good for an upgrade, but there is no wow, nothing that would excite me to switch to a Mac when compared to Tiger. It’s merely an OS update that was meant to fill the evolutionary void and is reminiscent of Vista: delays, “overhauled” interface…

In part one of my series on MacFUSE, I described what FUSE is and how it could fit into your daily Mac routine. Today, in part two, I will describe one of the more innovative and Mac-specific uses to emerge from the MacFUSE project.

SpotlightFS is one of…

In this part of my series on MacFuse, I will discuss the installation and use of two very innovative implementations of FUSE filesystems. The first involves mounting your GMail storage on your Mac and the second allows you to edit the Wikipedia in your favorite text editor as if it lived…

A while ago I had the pleasure of arriving home to a PowerBook drenched in soda, that’s right, soda. I was furious, as everything was sticky from top to bottom, including the keyboard. Frantically I tried to dry it out using a hair dryer and accidentally burned a few keys to…

A file system is a method for storing and organizing computer files to facilitate finding and accessing them. Many popular file systems provide a method of access by maintaining the physical location of the files. This includes HFS+ (Hierarchical File System), the preferred file system of Mac OS X, in addition…

Last week I went over upgrading a PowerMac with one of NewerTech’s fabulous G4 upgrades (single processor, 1.8 GHz), and the process was easy enough when done with some common sense and a lack of rush. This week I’ll go further in depth about the true power of this G4 upgrade…

Safari

Web Clip
Web Clip offers something Dashboard lovers have been craving: an easy way to create Widgets. Although this won’t allow you to make a Widget about anything, it does allow you to take advantage of current web based programs without the hassle of…

Apple has raised the bar for using Leopard on a PowerPC based Mac: 867 MHz or faster. This makes older Macs obsolete to make way for Intel based machines to become the company’s main focus. However, you can get an older Mac running Leopard, it just won’t be so easy.

…

DISCLAIMER: This review was not solicited by Microsoft, the equipment was purchased with my own money.

Recently, my girlfriend Nicole surprised me with a rather unexpected birthday present: a brand new Special Edition Halo Zune. I had never experienced a Zune before, so I was really excited to try it out. I’ve had it for about three weeks now, and I wanted to report my take on this device.

My previous music player was a Creative Zen MicroPhoto, which was a pretty decent device, but had a really crappy battery life. I had also used a couple different iPods before, but never owned one. So I have a little bit of experience with PMPs, but there are a bunch out there I still haven’t messed with.

Unboxing
I have to say that Microsoft did a fantastic job with the packaging of this product. The outer packaging is clean and very attractive, and it opens up very nicely.

I posted some unboxing shots here to do the talking:

I think this is the kind of experience Microsoft was going for when they redesigned their software boxes for Vista & Office 2007… if only they weren’t harder to open than a bottle of Advil. It’s a good thing they got it right this time, and it was really fun to open.

Installation
Getting my Zune connected to my Vista machine was pretty straightforward. I really liked how it tried to download an updated version when it installed. I say “tried”, because it failed the first time, and I had to download the new installer manually. But after I did that, setup was a breeze. It even updated my firmware right away, which I liked a lot.

User Experience - Device
I absolutely LOVE the device. The UI is very responsive, and (mostly) intuitive. The screen is bright, and the contrast is easy to see in any light. It feels great in my hand, and the matte finish is a welcome change to the cold lifeless feeling of the Zen. And it’s practically impossible to get smudged up, unlike the iPod.

I do have some issues with the UI though. For one thing, it takes WAAAY too many clicks to start playing a specific song with the “Enter” key. Yeah, I know you can scroll the song list and then hit the play button, but that wasn’t the most intuitive way to do it. Also, you can’t delete stuff off the device. Which is super annoying… more on that in a minute.

User Experience - Marketplace
Truth be told, the Zune Marketplace experience is pretty bad. I think it’s really lame that you can’t play media that is stored only on your Zune inside the Zune Marketplace. And you can’t browse the device physically (with the hardware buttons) when it’s connected. That, coupled with the lack of a delete button or keystroke on the device, makes it nearly impossible to delete anything off of it with confidence. I have to first browse the device, write down the artist and title of what I want to delete, connect it up, and then delete it from the Marketplace. That really stinks. Especially since it came with a ton of crap from people I had never heard of.

Other than that, it’s relatively easy to find artists and buy songs. I just wish you could pick the “Advanced” option of just using WMP11. A lot of the software just feels like an URGE ripoff. And seeing as how it’s all powered by MediaNet Digital (formerly MusicNet) anyways… seems kind of stupid that enthusiasts can’t have a little more choice if they know what they’re doing.

 Syncing
Holy crap, I’ve never seen a music player sync that fast. I put nearly 2GB on the device in a little over a minute. That would have taken almost an hour on the Zen. Now, if I could only sync wirelessly…

 Overall Opinion

So rumor has it that V2 hardware is on its way soon. One of the things that makes the Zune waaaay better than the iPod is that it’s software-updatable (I didn’t realize the iPod had firmware updates, I had heard you had to buy new iPods to get new features) I’m really looking forward to seeing what capabilities the V2 software brings to the table. Some things I’d love to have:

• Wireless Sync - already mentioned and self-explanatory.
  
• Wireless Purchases - I want to be able to purchase and download music straight from an access point to my device. It would be really cool if Microsoft partnered with T-Mobile to offer free WiFi access to their hotspots if they’re browsing the Zune Mobile Marketplace.
  
• Wireless Media Center Extender - I’d like my Zune to be a full-blown Vista Media Center Extender. That way I could watch HDTV on my Zune without dealing with the DRM that my CableCARD applies to all of my recorded TV shows.
  
• Wireless Xbox 360 Connectivity - I think I should be able to listen to music from my Zune on my Xbox 360 without having to directly connect it to the console.
  
• Xbox Live Video Marketplace Support - I want to be able to copy SD movies rented from the Xbox 360 Video Marketplace to my Zune. That way i could load it up with movies before a trip and watch them on the plane.
  
• Napster Support - I’m already paying for a Napster subscription for the Zen MicroPhoto, it would be really nice if I could use it with the Zune too. I understand the whole “closed system” thing (and the Zune Subscription), so you don’t need to take me to task for it… it would just be cool.
  
• Zune Phone - I love the way the Zune feels in my hand. I love the device experience. It would be great if I could get this same experience in a phone. (Don’t even say anything about the iPhone, I’ve used it and I’m not interested.) Yes, I understand this would require additional hardware… unless the headphone jack already supports the same type of headphones-with-a-mic that my cell phone has.

So anyway, that’s my opinion. How’s your Zune treating you?

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I spent some time ago reviewing a variety of ruggedized cases for small electronics, iPods, PDAs, even cell phones and cameras.

There are two different approaches in this sort of treatment, you either make the container bulletproof, or waterproof. Sometimes, in the better (IMHO) cases, you get both.

…

Let me introduce you to the most innovative music service available on the Internet. It’s called eMusic. This company has a revolutionary idea—allow people to use their music on any device.

In an idea that has not been heard of since the ancient “CD” technology—which according to historians,…

I find it worthwhile to do review updates, particularly when a company does something new or different with their products. A new version, for example, is certainly reason to revisit a product.

I have looked at both the iFrogz Tadpole children’s case for Video iPod, and their more adult…