Connecting the Dots / An Agency Blog

During the creative phase of any project we spend hours doing interviews with our clients, collecting reference and doing creative explorations that usually result in what I like to refer to as a total mess. Through the ungentle process of elimination, arguing, late-night epiphany and revision what we distil is still a dog’s breakfast of ideas. In the days following we start becoming more attracted to certain elements and as we continue to remove what isn’t working we start to find out what does. It’s an ugly process but by the process of elimination we’ve end up with a cohesive message that will eventually end up on a screen or device somewhere and hopefully in front of the audience for who it was intended.
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The past few months at Engine have found us using frameworks to build all our Flash projects; for obvious reasons. Frameworks allow for a scenario in which we’re building libraries of reusable code. Multiple developers are able to work on the same project in their own “views,” until we need to bring all the code together into the end product. It’s a much more efficient and consistent development experience. There are a lot of romantic scenarios for frameworks to put hearts in the eyes of developers, but as most of us know, they’re not all built the same. PureMVC was great for a time, but it didn’t take long for me to discover its limitations. A great, confident beginning was quickly reduced to writing a hundred lines of the same code to simply wire up into the framework. Which is why, when it comes to frameworks, we’re happy to get some fresh legs in here. Robotlegs, specifically.

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Is Flash on its way out? From where I sit, I can’t imagine it anytime soon. BC Business recently posted an article about the demise of the Flash website due to an increased interest in HTML5. While there are a few points in this article that we can appreciate, the whole Flash vs. HTML5 argument seems to be fueled by a very narrow view of the web combined with the momentum of Apple hype. We’re all for new technologies and advancements in the digital space, but assuming Flash to be irrelevant any time soon make very little sense.

Assuming Flash will disappear this year or even in the next few years is so completely misinformed, I don’t even know where to start. This whole notion, spurred by Mr. Jobs and his crusade for full control of, well, everything, is completely hyped up and based on little to no hard data. I don’t understand how anyone is even listening, let alone participating in the debate.

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Guess who’s going to Kettle of Fish for dinner tomorrow? You guessed it, me! Well, at the time of this writing, me and 259 other tech savvy people. It’s all part of the buzz that’s surrounding the launch of Groupon in Vancouver earlier today. Groupon is a Chicago based website that negotiates discount deals that they can bring to a huge list of followers subscribing to the site via Groupon’s daily newsletter.

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Youtube users freaking out over the new iPhone 4G

Think about it. The story that’s still unfolding, even as I write this, has it all. Espionage (iPhone’s crazy security measures), romance (brand love on the part of the maniacs eating this stuff up), danger (dude might lose his job), disguises (3g disguised as 4g), and now, EXOTIC DESTINATIONS.

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