Random Fractals» interactive http://randomfractals.com/blog Sat, 27 Mar 2010 13:57:26 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc en hourly 1 Another hit… http://randomfractals.com/blog/2008/12/19/another-hit/ http://randomfractals.com/blog/2008/12/19/another-hit/#comments Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:21:08 +0000 Taras http://tarasnovak.com/blog/?p=299 Flickorama finally got approved on programmableweb.com and was selected as the Mashup of the Day today.

Flickorama on ProgrammableWeb.com

I only noticed it because after reading The 3D Web in 2008 by Sarah Perez on readwriteweb.com last night,  I started considering getting back to it and adding some new features to keep me busy.

Eric Miraglia posted an encouraging Flickorama review on his Impressive Pixel blog with good suggestions on improving ergonomics of this application, making it more responsive to mouse gestures, improving large photo view and taking screen resolution into consideration when displaying the photo sets.

I really liked the Popup Thumbnail component Josh posted recently with the Lightbox popup effect. I think that will make my large photo view really pop and create a much smoother image loading effect with the added animation. That’s one area I’ve been struggling with when designing this photo viewer.

I’ve started my own wish list in my previous update on Flickorama. Also, I’ve been doing some custom Wordpress build outs lately. More on this later, but what struck me is the staggering number of Wordpress plugins available, and I’ve been itching to do a plug-in of my own to get my hands dirty in some php.

So, I’ll be plugging away on Flickorama over the next two weeks.  Please drop me a note with your comments and suggestions on improving user interface, interactions, adding additional data sources or parametrized widgets/plugins you’d like to see.

Yes, 3D browsing is finally here and I think it will become mainstream for multimedia and news browsing in 2009.  The PhotoStream is a good example of such a news site.

As Sarah notes in her 3D Web in 2008 article:

Where 3D is Cool: Browsing

… we’ve seen some developments in the use of 3D to deliver better visual browsing experiences. Amazon launched their 3D Winodwshop site which lets you virtually browse through the company’s top products.

We’ve also seen other web applications integrate this 3D visual browsing technology including ManagedQ’s semantic Google-based search, Photo Stream’s visual newsroom as well as newer search engines like Viewzi and SearchMe. Although none of those have hit the mainstream, they all are interesting experiments.

However, one of our favorite 3D browsing tools is the technology from Cooliris, a browser plugin that lets you transform the web into an immersive 3D experience. With Cooliris, you can surf a “wall of content” from sources like Google, Flickr, Yahoo, SmugMug, and DeviantArt.

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]]> http://randomfractals.com/blog/2008/12/19/another-hit/feed/ 0 2008 Campaign Finances Remix — Mashup of the Day! http://randomfractals.com/blog/2008/11/11/2008-campaign-finances-remix-mashup-of-the-day/ http://randomfractals.com/blog/2008/11/11/2008-campaign-finances-remix-mashup-of-the-day/#comments Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:05:19 +0000 Taras http://tarasnovak.com/blog/?p=257 My NY Times 2008 Campaign Finances Remix was selected the Mashup of the Day yesterday on programmableweb.com:

I created a shell for this application on election day and added quite a few features to make it more appealing and interactive since then.

You can see the features added last week and the different iterations of getting to the current state in this slideshow (click on the Full Screen button in the slideshow toolbar to see it full screen).

[[Show as slideshow]]

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]]> http://randomfractals.com/blog/2008/11/11/2008-campaign-finances-remix-mashup-of-the-day/feed/ 0 Interactive BitmapData Perlin Noise Explorer http://randomfractals.com/blog/2008/10/16/interactive-bitmapdata-perlin-noise-explorer/ http://randomfractals.com/blog/2008/10/16/interactive-bitmapdata-perlin-noise-explorer/#comments Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:49:17 +0000 Taras http://tarasnovak.com/blog/?p=124 If you’d like to create your own Perlin Noise music vis or try to produce programmatic natural-looking textures, here is an interactive BitmapData Perlin Noise Explorer for you to play with:

I’ll post some sample configurations for the clouds, sea, smoke, wood grain and brushed steal textures later.

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]]> http://randomfractals.com/blog/2008/10/16/interactive-bitmapdata-perlin-noise-explorer/feed/ 1 Noise Test http://randomfractals.com/blog/2008/10/10/noise-test/ http://randomfractals.com/blog/2008/10/10/noise-test/#comments Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:41:27 +0000 Taras http://tarasnovak.com/blog/?p=40 While attempting to build a sample video wall for my Flash video test drive, for loading all the video previews in a 9×9 grid I wanted to simulate that good old “no signal” image and noise you get from a tube.

Here is a sample:

Click on the image and mouse over the noise animation to hear that “no signal” sound effect. You can also View Source and download the tiny bit of code that generates this effect.

As I am sure you already know it’s generated with BitmapData.noise() function.

A while back I came across Keith Peters’s NoiseExplorer that was really handy to pick the color channel settings and other parameters of the bitmapData.noise() function to get that no signal image. The only part that nagged me was to click on the Render button every time I changed noise function parameters.

This sparked my interest in bitmapdata api and prompted me to explore Flex HSlider UI control capabilities, timers and sound effects. Before I knew it, I got too carried away and created an Interactive BitmapData Noise Explorer of my own to test those Flex features and find some use for Doug’s ResizableWrapper container at the time.

Here is my Interactive BitmapData Noise Explorer:

It provides informative tooltips for all the toggles. So, click on the image to pay with it. You can also view or download the source code.

What can you do with this?

I don’t think there are many practical applications of bitmapdata.noise() function. Video preloads and maybe some image transitions with alpha channel turned on is probably all you’d use this function for.

BitmapData.perlinNoise() on another hand is a powerful tool to generate natural textures and environments and will be the topic of my next blog post.

P.S.: unfortunately, I don’t recall where I got that nosingnal.mp3 anymore.

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