Flashing Bollocks

If you think my environmental concerns against the iPhone are complete bollocks, That's nothing compared to a NSW Police's campaign called iDead. They advise that pedestrians should refrain from listening to their iPods or cell phones when crossing the streets, or they may risk either being hit by car or getting a $53.00AUS fine. I'm glad we didn't move to George Orwell's 1984 OZ!

"Members of the public are advised to exercise caution when using mobile phones and portable media players, as they pose a potential safety risk when they distract pedestrians from their surrounding environment. Recent growth in the use of portable media players and mobile phone usage has led to a need for greater awareness amongst both pedestrians and motorists to ensure these new technologies don’t lead to a rise in pedestrian accidents."

In other semi-un-related matters... this month's Adobe Edge Newsletter features some interesting websites using flash. It's quite interesting how they are now using 3D like effects... although, I am still not convinced on how long it takes to load some flash content. Some flash developers really have the Dog's Bollocks Syndrome and put every single actionscript just because they can! Despite having broadband (OK, very slow semi-broadband) I still have time to go to the kitchen and make me a sandwich while some pages are still loading. It took me a (long) while, but I found all 20 bones of the Scruff's dog... I was stuck on the main page until I finally gave up, clicked on the info page... and realized that the rest of of the bones were on those extra pages!!! It's just a pity that the actual game is only for PC's =(

I loved the Kung Fu Panda! I am looking forward for that movie... but I have my concerns about american martial arts pseudo-manga. Usually their stories are too much Hollywood and zero anime... they focus too much on having celebrities making the voices, and adapting the character to that voice, that they forget about actually developing a character or a story. Anyway, another extraordinary flash site is Errol Schwartz' Portfolio. A nice way of presenting his works using a 3D envirnoment... the site has a game mode and a browse mode... and he also included all his projects on a single html page... however, the link to the html version should be on the entry page, not until the flash page is loaded!!! Maybe I'll review designing for accessibility later.

ciao