PixelBreath

Snippage for AIR 1.0

Gabo — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:48:07 +0000

Just a quick update to make Snippage work with AIR 1.0. I’m currently planning a rebuild from scratch with tons of new features so stay tuned.

The Joost of It

Gabo — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:45:32 +0000

This might be old news to some out there, but I started working as UX Lead for Joost last month. I’m really excited about the new things coming down the pipes for us. Lots of cool projects to develop. Once some of the stuff I’m working on becomes public, I’ll try to post about it. Also have some personal projects I’ve been meaning to work on but Joost keeps me busy.

Resigned from Comcast

Gabo — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:39:54 +0000

So, yesterday I resigned from my position as UX Lead for Comcast Interactive Media. I’ve been struggling with this for a while, but I just felt that it’s about time I moved on. I’ve made some good friends and met many extremely talented people during my time there, and hopefully we’ll stay in touch. My most sincere thanks go out to all those I’ve worked with while at CIM. It’s been a great experience that has changed me tremendously. For now, I’ll concentrate on my consulting work, but am considering a couple of job offers so things might change soon. Anyways, whatever I end up doing, I’ll try to keep this site up to date.

Dang, I just realized I’ll have to pay for cable now.

Snippage 1.0 R10 for new AIR Beta 2

Gabo — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 04:37:13 +0000

Yep, new version up. Unfortunately no new features. Just a quick update for the new AIR Beta 2. Because it’s a new runtime, you will need to upgrade manually instead of relying on Snippage’s auto-update feature. anyways, check it out at snippage.gabocorp.com.

And thanks to Adobe for mentioning Snippage at the keynote for MAX. Very cool!

Snippage 1.0 R8

Gabo — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 03:07:53 +0000

Just uploaded Release 8 of Snippage with a bunch of interaction tweaks and bug fixes. Also includes auto-updating (thanks to some very nice code from côdeazur) so upgrading to future releases will be less painful. I really appreciate all the support and positive feedback I’ve been getting over this app. Thanks to all. And please, keep the suggestions coming.

Snippage AIR app

Gabo — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 06:52:46 +0000

I’ve been playing around with the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) for the last week or so, and came up with a little app. It started out as just a test to teach myself the ins and outs of as3 development in Flex Builder and AIR, but I’ve shown it to some friends and they seem to like it. Basically, it lets you easily make widgets out of parts of *almost any web page. You do so by opening “snips” which are little web browsers you can crop down. It’s a simple concept, but it’s surprisingly powerful. I keep finding new uses for them. They also have options like auto refresh, and linking out to your default browser. Obviously, it’s early in development, and it’s built on AIR witch is currently in Beta, so it might behave unexpectedly. If you’re OK with that, go check it out.

*AIR doesn’t support embedded Flash in HTMLComponent yet. I assure you, the irony does not escape me. But Adobe said it will be releasing new versions for this year’s MAX, so I’ll update the app once it’s out.

Reach Out and Pownce Someone

Gabo — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:20:31 +0000

It was originally described to me as a kind of AIM meets Twitter meets FaceBook thing, and ever since, I’ve been wanting to give it a try. This morning I finally received a Pownce invite and, though it’s not at all what I expected, it is definitely a cool app/service that is worth a look. Although it is indeed a bizarre mixture of the above ingredients, what was most unexpected was their proportions. Anyways, if you get the chance, do check it out.

Preview is Up!

Gabo — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 07:41:56 +0000

Ok, so technically it’s Saturday morning here, but it’s gotta be Friday night somewhere out there, right? Anyways, the preview is up here and I’ve set up a page to handle comments and information here, so go in and mess around with it. It’s got some bugs and plenty of missing features, but I’ll keep working on it once I get back from FITC. Have a good weekend everybody!

Gabo of the Klondike

Gabo — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:59:57 +0000

I’m trying to get the Flash preview site up before we leave for Toronto on Saturday but things just keep piling-up. It won’t be feature complete but it’s kinda fun to play with, so I’ll put it up regardless of its state. I want to get as much feedback as I can on it.

This is my first FITC but I’ve heard good things about it so I’m pretty excited. And the fact that this also happens to be my first time to Canada makes it even better. Kodiak Marmosets aside, this trip sounds like it will be a blast. Even the Chumby guys are going.

Fan 4 is square?

Gabo — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 19:53:23 +0000

The alpha for Fan 4 square mode is up at cimlabs. I had little to do with this one but I think it’s a step in the right direction. We start work on the Fan 4 ‘circular mode’ tomorrow, and I’d love to hear suggestions from you guys. Any features you’d like to see?

Flashified PixelBreath preview is Coming Soon (maybe?)

Gabo — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 19:46:47 +0000

Things have seriously slowed down with the Flash GUI I’ve been working on. I’ll try to have a preview up later this week. Arpit has been on my back trying to get me to show it, but other projects are sucking up my time. Argh! Also got hit by a minivan while riding my bike. Fun…

New URL for the Blog

Gabo — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 14:29:31 +0000

Just a quick reminder to please update your links to the new URL: pixelbreath.gabocorp.com.
Note 2: This is also an excuse to post another “note” since I’m playing around with the css on the site :).

Success

Gabo — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:21:47 +0000

The move to the new server went smoothly. woot!

Flash and Burn

Gabo — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 01:58:48 +0000

Progress on the Flash front end for this site is coming along nicely. I might upload a preview pretty soon, though most of my time is being taken up by my job and a freelance project I’m working on with Fredo. Anyways, I’m doing it in AS3 so it’s taking me some extra time to get used to all the new goodies in Flash 9 (or is it CS3?). Yes, the new Creative Studio 3 stuff is about to be announced and, even though I’m fairly confident they’ll do ok with the new Flash IDE (judging by the Flex 2 IDE), I’m seriously hoping Fireworks doesn’t get left behind. Improved psd importing is a good thing, but if the biggest selling point for this new release is that image-gallery-maker-thinggy, I will not be impressed. I guess I should be grateful it didnt go the way of Freehand, but I just love my Fireworks. Don’t get me wrong, Photoshop is great for… uhm, “photoshopping”… but for interfaces, widgets, and general web stuff, Fireworks is the proverbial “shit“.

Also, I’ll be switching hosts pretty soon so there might be some down time. Probably not though, just sayn’.

the Fan 3.0

Gabo — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 22:27:30 +0000

So we just started conceptualizing a new Fan video player and I was thinking it would be a nice time to make a post about good ol’ 3.0.

For those of you how haven’t heard of it, the Fan is the video player/delivery system for most of Comcast’s online network. It has been extremely well received by the public taking home the FlashForward 2006 People’s Choice award. This was the second project I worked on when I started at Comcast. I was responsible for the tab behavior, the curved menus on the sides, and the pop-up balloon menus that show up thought the interface. The design was done by the Alfredo Silva and the coding for the play-lists and video player (and other stuff) was done by Jeremy Landis. Currently, the Fan is maintained by Arpit Mathur and his crew.

You can only see the live version if you’re a Comcast subscriber at comcast.net, but the beta version over at cimLabs.com is available to anybody.

PixelBreath?

Gabo — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 04:41:26 +0000

Yep. I’m starting a blog. Why? … Well, it’s mostly to blow off steam. I’ll be making a Flash front-end for WordPress so there will be a lot of posts about that. I might even experiment a bit with WPF. Who knows?

So, a blog about building a blog? Well, I’ll also be posting a bit about the Comcast projects I’m involved with. I work mostly with the R&D team so I can’t show much without proper clearance, but once in a while I might be able to show some interesting things here and there ;).

Anyways, this blog is young. So what’s next?