Links of the month

Beginning with this post, I will give you links to the most interesting flash places and news in the end of every month. The reason to collect such links was simple – unfortunately, there is no time to write about everything interesting in details. So, here are the most interesting things I found this month.

1. #tweetcoding Contest: Win With 140 Characters of AS3

http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/02/tweetcoding_con.html

2. The Russians are Coming: New Wave Flash Animation Via Moscow

http://www.webupon.com/Web-Talk/The-Russians-are-Coming-New-Wave-Flash-Animation-Via-Moscow.533685

3. Flaphone™ - calls from Flash to Skype

https://www.flaphone.com

4. Wonderfl – build Flash online

http://wonderfl.kayac.com/

5. Some useful flash tutorials

http://www.flash-game-design.com/tutorials.html

6. De MonsterDebugger - an open source debugger for Adobe Flash, Flex and AIR.

http://www.monsterdebugger.com/

7. Loading XML data using AS3

http://flashspeaksactionscript.com/loading-xml-data-using-as3/

Please share your interesting findings with me in comments!

Permanent Link

10 cute Valentine's Day Flash Games

Not to break the rules, after the selection of Christmas Flash games, I've made up a list of Valentine's Day Flash games. A little girlish, a little childish yet rather interesting and addictive games. So, let's play all these hearts, cupids and roses to create a romantic mood for tomorrow!

Love Arrow
Work as a Cupid and try to join two hearts with your love arrow. Good reaction is required.
















Catch the Heart
Catch as many hearts as you can before time runs out. Easy and cute game.











Meet My Valentine
Find the differences between the pictures as you progress through a story. Difference game with great graphics.

















Commuter Cupid
Help this cute little Cupid to hit everyone with his magic arrows so that everybody can be happy this day.















Trap My Heart

Use the roses and chocolates to capture the heart. Good logic game in a romantic design.














Love Tester Deluxe
Not really a game but a cute way to make sure you and your darling are the perfect match.
Name, zodiac and Chinese horoscope love tests.














Valentine Crush
Too much of hearts before the Valentine's Day? You have a chance to crush some of them. Remove the target hearts from the board by clicking on groups of two or more hearts of the same color.
















Heart-Break
Break the hearts before they reach the top of the play area. Interesting and cute.














FWG Valentines
Collect the roses for your loved one before the time runs out. Easy yet rather addictive.
















Hearts Sudoku
Good old sudoku game but today with hearts. That's not very surprising, yeah? ;)














Happy Valentine's day everybody!

Permanent Link

My top 5 Flash Slideshow Creators


This is a guest post by Miss Techie, a great tech blogger and a good friend of mine. Hope, you'll enjoy it!

When reviewing software, the most difficult is not to pin a label on something and remember that there is no good or bad software, there is software for different needs. So, today I want to list 5 different Flash Slideshow creators. Each of them is the best – for different purpose.

Flash Slideshow Creators



1) Easy inserting into other SWF files or Power Point presentations - FlashSlider

flashsliderFlashSlider lets easy create slideshows in flash format while controlling and customizing every slideshow option. I like FlashSlider for the fact slideshows it makes are clear and perfect for further inserting into another files. Still, FlashSlider has such advanced features as adding preloader, background music, navigation controls, etc., and its library of flash transition effects is very extensive (more than 110 effects).

2) Easy embedding into website, MySpace, blog etc. – Photo Flash Maker + Go2Album

Photo Flash Maker Sometimes I use online services to create web slideshows, but I still prefer desktop slideshow creators. Among them, to create flash slideshow for further embedding into a web page, I use Photo Flash Maker. It's an easy to use tool which allows publishing slideshows to the web hosting Go2Album directly from the program. After slideshow is uploaded to the web, it can be embedded to MySpace or Bebo profile, blog or any other website. Go2Album gives you URL of your SWF slideshow, HTML code to embed it to web page and, of course, free hosting.

3) 3D Flash effects – 3D Flash Slideshow Creator

3D Flash Slideshow CreatorAre you bothered with usual slideshows and their typical transition effects? Yes, sometimes I want something else too and use Aleo 3D Flash Slideshow Creator. 3D Carousels, Rollers, Scrollers – very nice and unusual 3D slideshow templates. The program also lets customize slideshow and publish it easily as an SWF and HTML.

4) Built in photo editing – SWiSH Pix

SWiSH PixAmong other great options of this slideshow creator, the one I like most of all is built in photo editing feature. SWiSH Pix lets rotate and crop photos, adjust brightness and contrast. Edit each photo directly from a slide preview – easy and quick. That's much easier to get perfect displaying when editing photo in a slideshow maker than when editing it with other editor and then inserting into a slideshow.

5) Cute templates and cliparts – InAlbum Deluxe

InAlbum When I need a cute, sweet, funny, yummy, etc. slideshow, I always use InAlbum Deluxe. More than 100 extremely cute templates, each with its preset music theme, animated cliparts, morphing faces, applying sound effects to the recorded voice or using program sounds – InAlbum has everything to have fun creating a flash slideshow.

That's my top 5 Flash slideshow creators. Now it's your turn to choose.

Permanent Link

Best Free PPT to SWF Converters

Microsoft PowerPoint is known to be one of the most powerful and flexible tools for creating presentations or slideshows. Still, ppt format has its own disadvantages for web-oriented users. Converting ppt to swf is the easiest way to make your presentation web friendly. Swf format or Flash is compatible with all platforms and browsers, optimized for distribution on the Web, secure and small-sized. Flash presentations are perfect for embedding into web pages and sharing. Also, they look exactly like original ppt presentations if they are converted with a good tool. Today I offer you small reviews of two free PowerPoint to Flash converters.

authorPOINT Lite. This neat converter runs both as a PowerPoint plug-in and as a desktop application to give you more options. From within PowerPoint, you can set converting options (choose template, set picture and audio quality) and convert a presentation to Flash. authorPOINT creates nice looking slideshows with slides thumbnails, presenter's info, etc. Desktop application also allows batch conversion, adding your photo and logo to presenter's information, edit presentation details.

authorPOINT Lite toolbar

iSpring Free. It is PowerPoint add-in which works within PP and transforms ppt presentations to swf quickly and easily. It has Quick Publish option to convert ppt to Flash within a minute and Publish options which lets set such parameters as presentation title, slide range, autoplay and loop play, slide duration, animations, background color, etc. Besides, iSpring can help you insert Flash into PowerPoint presentations.

iSpring Free toolbar

These tools have also something in common: both of them offers uploading PP presentations to the Web – authorPOINT to authorSTREAM or WiZiQ and iSpring to SlideBoom. Both generate HTML. Both tools have professional paid versions with advanced options. I like and use both of them and hope you'll like them too.

Permanent Link