Nanocast alpha is released

Check out my blogspot for more Nanocasts examples: http://abdulqabiz.blogspot.com/.

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Nanocast is the startup I joined around six months back. We went public alpha couple of days back. We have done amazing work in last four months, yeah whatever you would see on http://www.nanocast.com/ has been done in four months. I think, we have really tried to push limits by using Adobe Flash Platform, I believe our tool is one of good examples to show power of Adobe Flash Platform.

There are many bugs and known issues in this release, but I would love to hear your comments/suggestions. Please feel free to either send them on channels mentioned later or through commenting system on my blog.

Following (italic text) is an introduction directly from the mouth of our community relation team.

This is about Nanocast at http://www.nanocast.com/. Our team have been working on something technically and socially challenging for the past coupla months. We've come to a stage where we are eager to get feedbacks from people who are Industry Experts, Community Harbingers, Internet Gurus and more importantly all the other internet enthusiast.

It would be an unpalatable choice if we have to tell you what it is and thus we'll leave it to you to figure out. This will make us easy to comprehend how to change/upgrade it further to make it more easier and productive to use. Please Visit, Register, Play & Work with http://www.nanocast.com/, Alright, here is a brief synopsis.

Nanocast is a service that gives you the tools to create rich-media advertisements or expressions containing video, audio, image, text and animation. These expressions, which we call "Nanocasts" are some of the coolest ways of flaunting your media on the web. At the very core of the Nanocast service is the Nanocast Creator, a unique web-based tool that combines the power of widgetized media presentation, collaborative photo and video editing and webcam capture in one unified platform.

Think of it as a free-form tool that can allow you to create anything from an advertisement, to a photo slideshow, to a collage, to a radio show, or a video channel. Its ease of use makes it possible to create superb rich media expressions within less than three minutes, while giving the experienced user a plethora of advanced tools to tweak their "Nanocasts" to perfection.

QUICK STEPS TO NANOCAST
Here is the quick step to Nanocast if you want to get in quick.
1. Register (and it is good to authenticate through your email)
2. "Create", Yes, use that big create button. That is most fun part. Select "Category" > "Select Template" > Add your medias > Play.
3. "Done". Well, that's done and now enter the Meta Data like the Title, Description and be "Done" finally.
Note: You can post your Nanocasts to your website, blog or to others like Blogger, Myspace, etc.

There are lot more features than meet the mouse, we'd love that you try them out. We would love if you would like to be more involved with Nanocast and share the excitement. Here's how you can do:-

FORUM: All Discussion related to Nanocast can be done at http://forum.nanocast.com/ and we'll be there to discuss, help and hear your feedbacks. This is separate from the Nanocast Login credentials to have a separate entity for free flow discussion.
BLOG: http://blog.nanocast.com/ is the blog where we will be updating "behind the scenes", updates, gotchas, undocumented features, et al. Or you can directly subscribe to our RSS feed at http://blog.nanocast.com/feed/.
However, if you don't want to do anything but just browse what others have created, published or remixed, feel free to browse the site through the categories at http://www.nanocast.com/.

Finally, just like every other company we too have our excuses for any glitches on the site - This Application is in its ALPHA stage.

If you are reading this line, it means you are interested :), so it's my duty to help you to get started. I suggest looking at Nanocast tour, we are working on help/documentation but this is something quickly made, hopefully would help you understand things better. You can also browse through existing categories(Personal, Jobs, Blogger etc) to see the creation by other users.  

BitmapData.draw (..) fails due to Security sandbox

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I am trying to take snapshot of a movieclip which has many children with loaded swf from different sub-domains. Due to security reasons, BitmapData.draw (..) fails, I am wondering, if there is any good workaround for it? I have crossdomain.xml deployed on all sub-domains with right permissions. I can even add Security.allowDomain (..) for SWFs coming from sub-domains but what to do with JPEG/GIF etc?

I would appreciate if someone from Adobe or community can suggest the right-way or a workaround?

I searched about this problem and came to know of following options:-

• Create a server-side proxy script, host it with your Flash application in same domain. Your Flash application requests all media/assets through this proxy script. f.ex: http://yourdomain.com/proxy.php?url=http://asset-server.yourdomain.com/media.jpg.
• Keep BitmapData.draw (..) logic inside a separate SWF in form of methods/functions. Host this SWF with media/asset in same domain. Load this SWF in your main Flash application and generate BitmapData through SWF's functions/methods. I am little concerned about the security, I don't want to allow this SWF to access code in my main application. If one sided (Main app --> SWF) access can solve the problem, it would be great. I need to test it. But another concern, when you are using load-balancing and assets might be coming from different domains (servers), then problem remains same.
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I found this comment on flashforever very useful.

Update (Aug 1, 2007): Chris Chen posted a nice workaround to grab video-screenshots for external (crossdomain) videos. His workaround works for AS3 and AS2. Check out it . BTW! You can see an example here, which takes screen-shot of YouTube video.

Update: It seems there is no way you can draw using BitmapData.draw (..), for media (jpeg, gif, png, flv etc) loading from different domain, in Adobe Flash Player 8 using crossdomain.xml or with a System.security.loadPolicy (..) call. This seems to be fixed in Adobe Flash Player 9.

Vivaah - my opinion about movie

Right now watching movie "Vivaah" in Gold adlabs and writing this entry using my phone. Ok, i think I like the movie so far, a movie after long time with good use of Hindi, a movie that targets common people of India, a movie that focuses on small-small details of a typical arranged marriage in India, a movie that shows some emotional moments between engagement and marriage. Interval, more l8r.

Most of people here are laughing. May be, they are not used to of that much of Hindi, they are not able to figure out those small details or emotions which are lost in todays metro/city life or some other things. I find nothing unusal because I have spent most of my life in a small city and village.
I noticed this entry appears on MXNA, sorry about it.
Update:Fixed typo in movie name :)

Three years of blogging

I didn't realize, I have been blogging for little more than three years. Though I had several accounts with blogger.com and others since 2001/2002. But I got reasons to blog since the launch of this site (abdulqabiz.com).

Three years passed, I have not yet been able to blog the way I want to. Yeah, by being more active, writing about things which are helpful to people/community. I am always hopeful, I would start doing sometime soon.

Brightcove adds fullscreen support to its player

Adobe Flash Player 9.0.28 is available. Apart from bug fixes and security-enhancement, it contains fullscreen-mode feature. If you have not yet updated, go get it.

Brightcove has also released their player supporting fullscreen-mode. Brightcove users running Flash Player 9.0.28 or later would be able to videos in fullscreen-mode. Users with lower version of Flash Player would be prompted to update Flash Player via ExpressInstall.

Check out the video below to see how better experience gets with fullscreen-mode.

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What is Adobe Flex?

Adobe Flex is an IDE for building web applications and rich internet applications.

Nah, I don't say that. I learnt this from Google search result as shown below.

I think, Adobe Flex is set of technologies (Framework, SDK, IDE, FDS etc) that together (or individually) allows you to create Rich Internet Application and more for Adobe Flash Platform.

Hope, Adobe web-team (JD?) is reading this post and correct the meta-description.

Searching about Flex made easier

Ted Patrick has been working on a search-engine that would allow us to search different Adobe Flex knowledge-bases (blogs, flexcoders, livedocs, Adobe-Devnet etc) from one place. He has just posted about the search-engine. I would rather let you read his post than rewriting everything here.

Interestingly,this search-engine is developed using Adobe Flex 2.0 and Coldfusion. The source-code is available which would allow you to customize search-engine front-end. I believe, it can be useful for companies who have Adobe Flex development going on and public internet-access is not allowed to employees, yeah there are many such companies :)

Oh yeah, if you write about Adobe Flex on your blog/website. You can get it added to search-engine, it would be indexed too. Follow these instructions.

Java 5.0 and ActionScript 3.0 syntax comparison

I found this link on richinternet.blog. You can find the comparison between Java 5.0 and ActionScript 3.0 language/syntax. It's helpful for any Java developers who want to try ActionScript 3.0 to build Rich Internet Applications for Adobe Flash Platform.

Comparison link

Rajshri Productions chooses Brightcove for content distribution:

I was talking to Tareef Kawaf of Brightcove this morning and got to know that Rajshri Productions of India have chosen Brightcove's network to distribute their content online. Infact, what excites me more is 'Vivaah', the latest release, is the first Indian movie to premiere on the internet (online). It is also the first Indian movie on Brightcove network, ok I don't mean those pirated (or copyright violations) uploads.
You can watch movie online or (and) download Windows Media Player format (I guess it is WMP with DRM), just for USD ($) 9.99. I would say it's reasonable price.
This is great news and I don't know why but I am very very excited to see this beginning. I am sure, more and more production-houses/studios are going to choose Brightcove network in near future.
Update: I forgot to mention Jeremy's post.

Blogines gets better

Bloglines has added a new feature called Playlists. Following is the description directly from Bloglines:

Playlists let you view your existing feeds in smaller sets available with a single click. What song Playlists are to your MP3 library, Bloglines Playlists are to your Bloglines blogs & feeds.
Glimpse lets you view every feed in your Playlist at once. You'll see the first five postings for each feed--and you can organize the feeds in your Playlist just by dragging and dropping.
I like this feature a lot, it allows me to quickly look at related posts, a big time saver. If you have noticed, Bloglines is getting better day by day. Thanks to Bloglines, they are indeed solving many problems and making us more efficient.
BTW! I am sitting at Bangalore airport using Airtel WIFI. Though Tata Indicom WIFI is also available but they don't have facility that lets you buy WIFI-access online, you need to get some kind scratch-card from some counter, where I don't see anything except a table and a chair :) I can bet, Airtel WIFI would be making more money because they do provide the facility.