I’m proud to announce the launch of my new blog “I was a creative.” This blog is aimed at anyone in the creative field who manages other creatives. This site is for creative people who have grown up building websites and interactive but are now managing people and the creative direction. Once upon a time you launched Photoshop for your day job, now sadly it’s only about meetings. My goal with the site is to write a quality post once a week.

The Fleb framework looks like an interesting project. It sounds a lot like the Gia framework, but with dynamic multi-language support. Out of the box it also supports SEO and the back button. The documentation so far looks straight forward. This project is still in development but it looks very promising. So far at first blush it looks very “interactive designer friendly”, so I other words you don’t need a masters degree in AS3 to use the thing. We will keep an eye on this project.

A new blog (Flash CMS info) is out (details about who is behind it are sketchy as there is no contact info., and they used one of those “whois” privacy controls on the domain, this always makes it suspect in my opinion) But it seems to be a good resource for Flash CMS’s that are out there. Although it may turn into one big ad for a “paid” CMS of choice, these type sites often do that after they get decent traffic. (Not that I’m helping by linking too it!). But never the less a good place to start on your hunt for a CMS for Flash.

Sidebar: Got to love it, a site dedicated to Flash CMS’s … but using WordPress as the CMS. Once again, loads of talk about Flash CMS tools but no one wants to eat their own food! Hmmmmmmm!

Even though I have been using the ‘internets’ since the days of Mosaic and my 2400 baud modem things still never seem to amaze me. For instance, if you google the term “Open Source Flash CMS” it seems Google loves this site. Why I don’t know because my article on the topic is rather shallow, and it seems no many people have written about this topic, or the blogs they write on have low Google Rank. Needless to say I’ve decided to help the ‘internet’s along by providing a list of open source Flash CMS’s here. The list is short, but maybe this will help in your search …

Sharing things you have learned is one of the best (and free) ways to gain more business. Clients will come to respect your opinion if you become recognized in your field for a particular area of Web development. For instance, I co-authored a book on Flash usability called Flash 99% Good: A Guide to Macromedia Flash Usability. The book generated a lot of positive PR. Macromedia (now Adobe) featured the book on their site, and the related book site won numerous national design awards …

No matter how great your work is, you can lose a client and damage your reputation if you don’t make a practice of good customer service.   Your client wants to know that the money they’re spending on you is worth it.   They’ll even pay more money for you than your competitors if they value the relationship.   So the key is to endear yourself to your clients by giving them the highest quality service possible.   Here are some basic points on maintaining good customer relationships that can set you apart from the pack:

Pretty Loaded is an amazing gallery of Flash preloaders. This is a great place to get ideas for your own preloaders. But that being said really you shouldn’t see these bad boys that much these days if you are building your Flash right. Loading things in parts is the way, the truth and the light. But to play devils advocate loaders are a great way of building some excitement into a Flash piece and a great way to brand a project.

d’bug. aka Brian Reindel (whom I had the pleasure to work with at Campbell-Ewald and Rare Medium) has some really excellent articles on javascript and the such there. If you are looking for concise and to the point articles about web development advice, including CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Java, .NET and Ruby on Rails d’bug is the place.

I’m happy to announce that I have finally updated the site to WordPress 2.7 and I’ve also moved to my new host Mosso. You will find many new features and enhancements to the site (check out the related posts). I’m also using an open source template called “Aeros” (switched to the lovely holiday theme from the folks at instantshift) as the base for the site. If you run a WordPress blog I recommend it as a starting point, it is well documented and easy to use. Finally, I can’t say enough good things about Mosso … unlike other “grid” based hosting systems theirs is based on the award winning RackSpace (the parent company) … so it’s “cloud” hosting that actually works. If you want to kick the tires it’s well worth a try. Use my referral code to give me a little love. “REF-AIRGID” Have a great New Year everyone!

While reading about Apple filing for a patent application for a 3D desktop I started to wonder if all the interface designers from the 1980’s have some how made a come back? I mean really, you would think after having 3D UI’s fail spectacularly on horrible Flash sites that someone would figure out that adding more crap to a interface isn’t the answer. I once worked with a programmer who who got it right: “Our job is to make the end user NOT notice we have been here.” I can only imagine a 3D interface getting in the way of everything I do everyday. The first thing most power users do when they fire up a fresh new OS is turn off all that “eye candy”. On OS X I turn off the “Magnification effect” and in Vista Aero goes bye bye. Man what are these people thinking?