What Macromedia should enhance with Flash

Disabled back button is not good

Some Flash designers use meta refreshes or other tricks to disable browser’s Back button. As the famous usability expert Jacob Nielsen says, ‘Back button is the second most important navigation element after hyperlinks’. People not able to use Back button will click the third most important navigation element – that X button in the top right. Besides, if you are going to promote a Flash site via PPC, you should know that Google AdWords doesn’t approve pages with disabled back button.

Search engines do not like Flash

And perhaps the most important: not every search engine is able to crawl and index the content of Flash movies. Even those that can often do it with errors. This is in particular the case of a website fully implemented in Flash as a single file. Search engines just wouldn’t be able to direct visitors to the proper page within that file.
What is Flash really good for? Banners and ads – it provides far more useful features then the traditional gif animation. Online games – remember the ‘Yeti Sports’? Flash technology – the Flash videos - for video blogs.

Windows Mobile 2005 Smartphone with no touch screen doesn't support Flash Web Site

can't access web site running flash because there is no way to navigate within a flash object by using the TAB key

Cool toys

Sony ES 400 Disc DVD/SACD/CD ChangerDVP-CX777ES/B 480P

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start?ProductSKU=DVPCX777ES/B&CategoryName=hav_DVD_DVDPlayers&DCMP=FROOGLE&HQS=DVPCX777ES/B

DVD SAMSUBG HD860 HD BUILD IN SCALER
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=A0628263&cs=19&c=us&l=en

Panasonic HD-PLC Ethernet Adapter

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/CNet/story?id=2253392

Netgear Powerline HD Ethernet Adapter

http://reviews.cnet.com/Netgear_Powerline_HD_Ethernet_Adapter/4505-3304_7-31970278.html

TeraStation Home Server NAS 2.0TB

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=144&categoryid=25

HDMI Amplified Cables over 40 ft

http://www.bettercables.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=29

Windows XP Media Center keyboard

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=038
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/08/15/microsoft_mce_keyboard/

OnAir USB HDTV and WIndows Vista

I recently installed windows vista rc1 and i use to have few issues with the USB HDTV driver for my USB2HDTV box. so i decided to upgrade to vista RC2.
The upgrade was successfull without any trouble and i was able to upgrade my vista RC1 to RC2 without losing any previousley installed software.

I then installed the latest driver from onair solution OnAir USB HDTV Creator Driver v2.0.0.61
whose download is available at http://www.autumnwave.com/

At the end of the installation, i use to have some trouble with the installation even if i was runing the installer in compatibility mode.
Compatinility mode is the nice way to execute a process and target a specific operating system he was supposed to run onto thanks to a build in appcompat into the new explorer.
I selected Windows XP SP2.

Vista complained about a problem but an onairsolution folder was present at the root of vista OS drive.

I then went to the Control panel (in classic icon view) and i selected the system icon. On the top left tab i selected Device Manager then i right clicked on the USB HDTV driver which was marked as a device not beeing installed properly with the famous exclamation mark yellow icon.

I selected the 'Update Driver Software...' option from the right context menu and specify a path for the driver by pointing to the driver path found in C:\OnAirSolution\ subfolder.

Later on i choose the install anyway option when a dialog box popup with some red alert message.

The installation was successfull !

I then installed version 2.9.9 of the HDTV creator software and i got TVVVVV again but not on a dual screen only the primary screen...

BTW this is not bad for RC2, vista rocks again for me and the cherry on the cake with vista is that on mouse over ontop of the OnAir USB HDTV icon in the taskbar i can check TV in a popup window thanks to the new build in feature in Vista !!

Sony DVD JukeBox and RS232

Recently i had to play with the RS232 protocol and i found a very interesting opensource project
on sourceforge. Windows program to control your Sony DVP-CX777ES 400-disc DVD player via its RS232 port connected to the serial port of your computer.
The project includes documentation and all source to be able to control the Sony DVP-CX777ES 400 DVD jukebox using a RS232 controller. This project is quite impressive and i am hoping to be able to control a Sony Jukebox for a custom DVD on demand at home and then be able to link the video output of the jukebox with a USB HDTV OnAirSolution Nvidia Box to perform overlay on the PC.

I would really love Optoma to provide the RS232 protocol documentation to control optoma video projector as well to have a complete entertainment system from one PC APP control with a unique remote control off course over bluetooth :) So where are the bluetooth TV/Like remote control ??

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=99672

The beast :

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start?ProductSKU=DVPCX777ES/B&CategoryName=hav_DVD_DVDPlayers&DCMP=FROOGLE&HQS=DVPCX777ES/B

--
Thomas