Check out this site: xrez.com. They have lots of pixels.

xres.com uses the GoogleMaps API to display a huge array of photos that you can use to zoom and pan in an environment. And when that environment is Yosemity then you have something worth exploring. I can’t wait to see more.

This is a short tour of my office here in Crestline, CA. I’d love to show more of the house but the webCam cable won’t reach.

The TED.com website has undergone quite a few changes recently with a new design and features. This morning I saw a video on their site that uses a very simple and usable form of video navigation that I think everyone should see. (In addition the video content itself is worthy of viewing.)

The video interface looks simple enough, as you see here. It pretty much your standard layout. What they did that is unique is when you mouse over the video timeline it expands - as you can see to the right here. In the expansion you get additional information about the video in how the content is arranged. So you can drag your playhead to view a specific portion. But even better, you con simply click on a label in the expansion and jump to that section of the video. So not only do you get more information about how the video content is organized and it’s length but you can navigate straight to it.

It’s pretty clear that to make this work you need to have Adobe Communication Server, or whatever they’re calling it today, because the video needs to be streamed instead of progressive. But this is TED where pretty much everything they do is top shelf.

You could do this with a progressive download but the user wouldn’t be able to jump to portions of the video that haven’t been downloaded yet.

This is the sort of User eXperience (UX) that when you see it you think, “Well, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.” I’ll see what I can do to add a UX like this to my video.Maru code.

Lets get some context here: I’ve seen most of the TED.com presentations. I don’t recall a standing ovation before. This presentation is moving, and perhaps life altering.

Great Flash funny about . . . Flash. You’ll have to watch it at least twice. Once to focus on the victim and once to focus on the mouse pointer.

If you like video mashups, and who doesn’t, then check out these:

How not to be seen

French Castle

Bridge of Death

This is the best spoof website I’ve ever seen. Kudos to the guy/guys who put this together. If their looking for work they won’t be looking for long.

www.shaveeverywhere.com

And on a personal note, that optical inch thing, not just an illusion. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Know what I mean?

Xbox 360 Standoff: I heard that this was shouted down because of the implied violence but it’s still a favorite around the Xbox office.

StellaArtois.com has launched a cool new site to promote their beer. They went way beyond creating a great looking site by using interactive video to tell a story that the user can participate in.

The user watches video and then has to interact to achieve some result before going on. In most cases I had to try more than a few times to get it right. Which is fun and makes it a game like experience. The setting sun was particularly challenging until I thought diagonally, hint-hint.

The following is an interview with the design/development team that put the site together.

1-What applications did you use to create the site and which were your
favorites? Conversely, which applications were the most challenging to use?

Since the site consists of a lot of filmed material much of this work has been done on film, in 3D and in Adobe AfterEffects.Then it is put together and made interactive in Flash with design made in Illustrator and Photoshop. The filmed material was compressed in Sorensen Squeeze.

 

I guess that all members of the team working with the site had their own challenges but the most challenging application for me personally is also my favourite Flash. I guess thats no surprise since I’m the Flash developer.

2-What was the biggest technical hurdle to overcome?

The balance between filesize and videoquality is always an issue.

But for the “le Courage” site I would say the flash players performance on slower computers. In some cases we would have multiple layers of video, some with blending effects and at the same time 20 moving objects controlled by the users input. We had to work a lot on the optimization to make it flow nicely.

The planning of the filming and/interactive parts in le Courage was a great challenge as well as the post production of the filmed material. To get the right mix of reality and fantasy and to make the filmed material blend in with the different Flash objects without sacrificing the “cinematic values”.

3-If you were starting over from scratch on this project is there
anything you would do differently?

No, this is the perfect project. But of course if we had built it now we probably would have looked at the possibility to build it in AS3 for Flash player 9. That would have solved a lot of issues with performance making it possible to add some of the effects we would have liked to add. Such as using larger video without losing quality and speed and more moving objects.

4-What was your beverage of choice for get-togethers after work at the
local pub?

Stella-Artois in our office since the local pub doesn’t serve it.

5-Is there anything in the site that you added that you are particularly
proud of that you would like people to know about?

I would say the whole experience, how the many parts of the site all works together to create a great atmosphere. And how it’s all focused on the perfect glass of Stella Artois.

6-Was the brewmasters young apprentice hurt when falling of the end of the
world?

No, that was all visual effects, the hen is also OK.

You can also read an interview with the creators at the StellaArtoisBlog.com: part 1, part 2.

I grew up in Alabama and I’ll always be a fan of the Crimson Tide. I randomly ran across this clip at YouTube.com. It was really cool leaning about how The Tide went from being an all white squad in decline to a mixed race team back on top of the NCAA.