Near the end of June, I started a little experiment, just for fun, which would just immitate fridge magnets. I wanted to make it a multi-user experience. So everybody hitting the page would see the changes that are being made realtime. I built the first version and was quite happy.

But a few days ago, it struck me: I can just use the code I used for that experiment and port it to the iPad using the iPhone Packager (which comes with Flash CS5). So I did!

Although I had to change some of the code (loading settings files, etc), I was actually able to build this application rather quickly. I also added a multi-room feature, so everybody can have their own fridge with magnets
So you can now actually leave your boy/girlfriend a message on a virtual fridge (with no food in it) and then mail him/her the link! He/She can then rearrange the letters and leave you a message in return; Fridge-magnet style! That’s geeky, right!?

About the application

‘Spread the word’ is both an iPad and a browser application.
The clients are built using Flash Builder (for the browser app) and Flash CS5 (iPad app). The multi-user support is a Red5 application.

‘Spread the word’ online

You can view the application in the browser by hitting the following URL:

http://spreadtheword.nocreativity.com

If you want to have your own fridge, just add ‘?myOwnFridge’ (replace ‘myOwnFridge‘ with a name of your choice). For example

• http://spreadtheword.nocreativity.com?test
• http://spreadtheword.nocreativity.com?mySecretRoom
• http://spreadtheword.nocreativity.com?imOnAHorse

‘Spread the word’ for iPad

Currently the iPad application is only available though my Cydia repo. I will however be trying to get it into the Apple App Store (I know about 3.3.1, I’m still giving it a shot ). The app also supports rooms, so feel free to go crazy (but be nice, there’s kids on the internet )

If you want to install the iPad application you need a jailbroken iPad. If you haven’t added my repository to your Cydia sources yet, follow these instructions:

1. Open Cydia on your jailbroken iPad
2. Go to the ‘Manage’ tab
3. Tap ‘Sources’
4. Tap ‘Edit’ in the upper right corner
5. Tap ‘Add’ in the upper left corner
6. Fill in the following URL: ‘http://nocreativity.com/cydia’
7. Tap ‘Add source’
8. You’re done!

To install Spread The Word for iPad, do this:

1. Open Cydia on your jailbroken iPad
2. Go to the ‘Sections’ tab
3. Find the ‘noCreativity’ section
4. Tap on the application (there’s only one in that list right now, so you can’t do anything wrong from this point on )
5. Tap ‘install’ in the upper right corner
6. Tap ‘Confirm’ in the upper right corner
7. When the installation is done, exit Cydia. Spread the word should be installed now. Have fun!

Credits

Eventhough I created this app myself, I owe a big thank you to Eugenia Furman for letting me use her beautiful letters. Those are actually real letters, which she created herself. They’re for sale on Etsy. They’re really awesome. Make sure you go and check out her other work. I totally love it!

I thought about creating bitmapdata tutorials. I thought about covering some of the soundSpectrum stuff. And I even wanted to explain a bit of magic behind advanced runtime effects (done easy). But none of those really made me believe I could help a lot of people out.
But during the past weeks, it came to my attention that a lot of people really want to get started with Red5, but can’t because they can’t find any simple, straight forward tutorials. That’s where I come in.

Starting from september 3rd, I’ll be recording as much video tutorials about Red5 as I can, covering small topics. I’ll keep it short and real simple. It’s about helping you understand the basics and getting you started. I’ll post them as fast as I can upload them. I’ve got some topics in mind, but I’d love to hear from you guys what you really want to know.

A few of the topics I had in mind:

1. Your first Red5 app: Multi-user Hello World (remote shared objects)!
2. How to create the Shared Ball demo app (remote shared objects)?
3. How to create a fridge-magnet app (remote shared objects)?
4. How to tell other users to do something (remote methods)
5. How to build a basic chat app?
6. How to stream video & audio?
7. Building a custom Red5 application in JAVA
8. Executing methods on connected clients, from the server.
9. Sending data to a client (from JAVA to AS3)
10. Recording a complete audio/video stream.
11. Recording a part of a audio/video stream.
12. Room management done right
13. [more to come... Post your ideas in the comments]

Post whatever questions you have in the comments. I’ll try to answer every single one of them in the upcoming video tutorials, using simple demo’s and examples.

Note (again): I’m trying to get you to understand the very basics, and interesting tricks. I’m not going to help you build insane custom apps.

Well, this time it’s for real. It isn’t powered by Adobe or supported by Apple but the fact is: Flash is now running on the iPhone. I said ‘is running on’; I did not say ‘is running perfectly smooth’.
There’s still a lot of work but this first step is a very good one, and everybody should be excited about this!

I took the time to test a few of the experiments I made over the past years on my iPad. I am pretty surprised about how well everything is going. In the following video I’ll show some of the tests I did.

About the ‘Red5-Letter-demo’: For some reason I wasn’t able to drag and drop during the demo. However it does work from time to time (still buggy as explained in the video though).

After seeing this video, you’ll probably wonder why I didn’t just give ‘real Flash sites’ a run for their money. Well, I already did. I tried DerBauer.de and 2Advanced.com. I saw intro screens but that’s it (site died after I tried clicking stuff). For the sake of making this thing look good, I prefer not to show how bad it performs on ‘high-end production‘ sites I mean, it’s still an alpha version. Give him/them a chance of getting there before saying it’s performing poorly

How to install Flash on your iDevice?

1. Make sure your iDevice is jailbroken. If it’s not you won’t be able to install Frash on your device. If you want to jailbreak, the simplest way I know at this point is by visiting jailbreakme.com using your iDevice. (Works for most iOS’s and devices). Other ways of jailbreaking can be found on the internet. (I will not assist anybody, just saying…)
2. Open Cydia on your device, go to sources and add ‘http://repo.benm.at‘.
3. When Cydia’s done adding the new repo to its database, go to the ‘Search‘ tab and look for ‘Frash‘.
4. Install it!
5. Go to Safari and visit a site using Flash. You should see a ‘Click to Flash’-like space where the Flash object should be. (If you don’t, you might want to try rebooting your device. It worked for me straight away) Click it and enjoy!

What follows is a (bit like a) ‘note to self‘ of what I should never ever forget again.

Let your inner child be your guide

If you have kids you’ll most definitely already know this: Kids are insanely mindblowing when they try to explain something they saw. They have the craziest visions of the world. Not because they are smarter than we are but because we are smarter than them. While they are talking about a huge television in a room, we talk about a cinema.

You know what they’re trying to say but they just see the whole world differently. That is a great thing to do/have. Make sure you keep this alive in yourself. Let yourself be amazed by flying birds and soap bubbles. It’s okay to be blown away by cool and simple stuff. It’s okay to actually enjoy life at its fullest.

Make sure you bring back that inner child in yourself. It’s fun! (and cute! Girls love it, believe you me!) It’ll make you think up the craziest stuff in the world. No reason. Just fun. And who doesn’t like fun?
Your inner child knows what you want. You don’t. The only thing you know is you want to pay your bills before it’s too late. The inner child in you wants chocolate. I suggest you give it to him.

Just do it

The worst thing that could happen is: God is having a good day and figures: ‘Oh what the hell, let’s give that kid a great idea!‘. So there you are, in the middle of the day with that great idea that just inexplicable just popped into your head. You think about it all day, you get home, and then… You continue thinking about it…

You think some more… And the next morning you wake up and realize you killed the idea. You killed the spirit and the fun of it. Because what you did was to try to go beyond what the initial idea was and make it better by thinking about it.

Stop doing that to yourself. If all of a sudden you have a great idea, it’s because your gut feeling is on to something. Don’t try to understand it, just go for it. Whatever it is that seems so cool to you: don’t waste time thinking how you could even make it better. Just get started and do it. Once you’re working on it, your subconsciousness will take over and show you where to go from there. It’ll be awesome. You’ll feel great, you’ll be happy, you’ll feel satisfied. In a lot of ways I think that feeling you end up with comes close to what sex is like: Fucking awesome…

Experimentize the shit out of it

A lot of people try to make a living doing serious business. I know a lot of people that just create projects for work. One serious (and sometimes insanely boring) project after the other. Beyond that: Nothing.

That’s bad. You have to experiment. Experimenting keeps your inner child alive. It makes sure your ideas stay fresh. It helps your mind evolve and it helps you develop and discover your own style.
And don’t you dare to say your research is your ‘experimentation‘. Experimenting can be a viable part of research though(but that’s not what I’m trying to point out).
I’m referring to the kind of experiments where you just create something totally senseless, just to see if it is as easy/cool/funny/arousing  as you thought it might be. A simple fun experiment that proves nothing but the fact that you have too much spare time.
Once you’re done you might in fact realize how crazy the whole process was: Don’t worry, that’s completely okay. We all lose our minds at some point in life; it might as well be while you’re doing what you love most!

Iteratation! Iteration! Iteration!

Experimenting is like sex: It doesn’t matter how often you do it, it’s stay fun to do it!
The first time you take a shot at an experiment you’ll just want to focus on making it work. Whatever it is you do. Just make sure you kinda-somehow-maybe-sometimes make it work…
Then start over: Make it better! Make it more fun! Give it more color! Add more actors! Add more interactivity! Iterate!

Iterating is fun! It doesn’t matter how many times you do the same thing: As long as the result amazes over and over again, you’re golden. Take something away, add some new things. It doesn’t matter what you do, or how many times you do it. Just make sure you give it a new twist every once in a while.

If you look back after a few months/years you’ll have a hard time believing the evolution between the first version of an experiment and the latest one. The power to blow your own mind with ease: You got it.

Stop thinking ahead and continue to be an idiot

Don’t try to think about what happens to this if you change that. Don’t try to fix bugs before they have even revealed themselves. For one: Don’t spend time thinking about stuff that might just not matter at all in the end. Yea, sure: You should think about a few things you do, but don’t over-engineer stuff before you actually get to make things… Let’s just get there as fast as humanly possible. If you run into problems along the way you can always fix them then.

Way worse than this: By trying to avoid bugs/unwanted visual results, you choose to not run into ‘chance’. You can be wrong a thousand times, you only gotta be right once. Do take credit for being wrong. Being wrong is fucking great! Because it reveals something you didn’t know or expect. Therefor it gives you new knowledge! New ideas! New experience! For free! I’d take that over The Routine any day.
Hell, the coolest stuff I’ve created so far were results of an idea that came to life due to unwanted behavior and visual disasters.

Don’t plan, it’s bad practice

I once wanted to work together with a friend on a little experiment. It was 8PM at night and we felt like creating a little fun-stuff-toy-thingy. I just started a project in Flash Builder, opened a new PSD, and I was set to just kick off.

He felt otherwise. He wanted to start by drawing an UML scheme that would allow us to exactly plan how we would create this. From the top of my head, this thing could’ve been up and running in 4-5 hours. However 3 hours later, we were still talking about PureMVC, models, facades, all that kind of stuff that just shouldn’t matter in a little project like this.

Here’s one for the hardcore developers out there: Planning is bullshit. It costs time (way too much), it kills motivation, it tries to be perfect (and it just won’t. Ever.) and it doesn’t know what unforeseen problems will pop up anyway (just to make sure you have to start planning more things all over again).

Planning is probably a great tool for big applications and ’serious projects’. Not for fun stuff like this though. And most definitely: not in the complexity my friend desired.
So what should you do? The same thing you would do if Megan Fox came over to your house, strip down and ask you if you felt like giving her a massage: Get started right away! No thinking through required.

By the way: We never finished the project. And according to me: We never actually started either.

Forget everything you think you know

One of the cool things is: Doing what we do will always teach us something new. I don’t care how old you are and how many years you have been doing this: Your inner child will always take you back to school.

Don’t try to know how an experiment will end. Don’t try to foresee bugs/problems you will come across in your experiment. Don’t try to know what will happen. Just let go!
It becomes even more fun if you don’t have a clue what you’re doing! Act like a total idiot, it’ll make you feel awesome, I guarantee!

Just copy paste some code and change some values. Grab a PSD somewhere and mess around with all kinds of sliders. Download a 3D model and play around with the materials…
Not because you’re lazy and you don’t feel like creating those files yourself, but because the original author tried to put some rational sense into this thing. That means by just messing around with it for a while, you’ll be able to create a million things that are something totally different. And it didn’t even require your higher brain functions.

(Some people told me they were more creative when they were drunk or high… Why would you think that is?) Just leave your educated and experienced brain aside… You’ll discover a whole new world of ideas… Hidden in your own imagination.

Stop caring

This one makes all of the other so much easier. Stop caring what people think or tell you.

“It has been done before!“, “Oh that’s easy!“, “That’s just a ripoff…“, “You won’t ever be able to use this in a real life project“, “It’s not the best way to do this. I’ve seem better implementations of bla bla“, etc.

For the sake of humanity: Don’t bother listening to people that say things like this when you present them your latest experiments. They just don’t get what it is about.
Don’t worry what people may or may not think about what you believe is a good idea. It’s one thing for your friends to tell you what they think you should (not) do. It’s a completely different one for you to let their opinion change your believes.

I’ll just try to be as clear about this as I can: If you have an idea, an ideal, a wish or a dream of something you want to do, then there’s absolutely nobody to stop you from doing exactly that. You should go after your dream, and make sure you don’t let a single chance slip by. This is your life, there’s no real right or wrong. There’s only do and should’ve done.

The worst thing that could happen is that you fail or it doesn’t turn out like you hoped/thought it would. You’ll be disappointed, sure. But at least you tried! At least you gave your dream a run for its money. You should be proud of that.
On the other hand you might not do it for no relevant reason whatsoever and then spend the rest of your life, wondering what might’ve happened if you would’ve given it a chance…

Believe me, it’s easier to acknowledge your own mistake than deal with the fact that you chose not to do something you really wanted because somebody else told you not to do it.

That’s it.
I’m out. Seriously.

At good last

Creativity is a noun: Do stuff. Create stuff. No matter if it is cool or not. You go out there and you create stuff! That’s an order, soldier!

And to those who see creativity as a skill: You’re wrong. Creativity is like a cellphone. It’s cool if you know what it does. But it’s even better when you know how to use all of its cool features! Creativity is the toolbox in your mind that allows you to do anything. All you have to do is devote yourself to whatever it is you love.

I went out for a shoot at the well known bridge-spot in Kortrijk and by accident I made 2 great color-discoveries. A mighty blue shot and a horrifying red one… I love ‘m both.
I wanted to do some post-editing but after some feedback it turns out I shouldn’t tamper with the originals after all. I also recorded 2 timelapse shots, featuring the same awesome colors. Yesterday was an amazing day.

As it turns out I happen to have no life at all, so I went for insanity when I decided trying to get enough images for a 60 seconds sequence (Generating those images took a whole afternoon… I ended up having ±15GB of HQ PNG files).

Anyway, long story short: I’ve got this video I wanted to show you.

You know: Afterwards I realized this could probably be done using After Effects right away… (I wouldn’t know to be honest). But in the end, it’s proven again: Sometimes not knowing how crazy something is, is actually a good thing.

PS: I would share the AIR app, but right now it’s buggy as hell and somehow memory seems to be an issue. Will need to address those first. I promise I will release it sometime soon

That’s the number one reason to have a Google Wave account, right there.

However: since Adobe released Flash CS5 with the iPhone packager anyway, we can actually deploy iPhone apps created in Flash CS5. The only thing we can’t do is to submit these apps to the Apple App Store (in fact we can, but they will reject them anyway, so why bother?)

However: We can distribute our apps using Cydia! Okay, it’s not the same, but you’ve got to start somewhere!

Setting up a Cydia repository is actually pretty easy. There’s a great tutorial right here!

There’s a little problem though: Flash CS5 creates an .ipa file. In step 3 of that tutorial you’ll need to put your application in the Applications folder. That application is actually an .app file, not an .ipa file. (I’ve tried it using the .ipa file; it doesn’t work )
Getting the .app file is pretty easy:

1. Rename your .ipa file to .zip
2. Unzip the archive
3. Your .app file is in the extracted Payload folder

That’s it! You can now create your own Cydia repository and distribute your rejected iPhone apps to the (jailbroken) masses using Cydia.

Have fun!

You’ve probably seen those interactive Youtube games but I kinda love this one (because it let’s me be that cool guy that does those crazy moves without breaking all of his bones!)
Check it out!

That error isn’t saying much, so if you have no idea what is going on, this might take a while to figure out… (took me about 2 weeks…).

A few months ago, I was having trouble with a JAVA applet not working correctly in my browser so I changed a few settings in the JAVA preferences. Apparently that was a bad idea. When I set everything back the way it was, the error was gone

This is how the settings look now (in case anyone was wondering).