Ok.

Before the weekend I was under the serious impression (after hearing a couple of arguments floating around, sorry no links to what I heard) that my idea of using flash and relate it to a database and let people do a couple of small things with their images to share with their friends was suddenly a very bad idea.

A very bad idea when it came to achievability. (is that a word?) Apparently just the thought of using flash and php/mySql is enough to cause massive headaches. The thing is, I am a little stubborn, not only that, but I think my idea have some sort of potential. Of course to develop it fully in two/three weeks is a great challenge. Still, my target is to get some sort of functionality. People able to login, upload pictures and do some post, online editing on them, then use that snapshot and share that with friends and family and have fun while doing it.

At first I needed to set up a test enviroment on my comp.. I once installed Apache web server, ages ago for something I dont remember now. Today I installed that, then the php module (which didn’t work straight away) and then a mySQL server. I followed the the strongest suggestion I saw and went with phpMyAdmin for administration. That made me wonder why they don’t use that in the uni, since that MySQL Administrator that we use on the macs seems to be filled with bugs… of course.. it looks “prettier” than phpMyAdmin.. but if it doesn’t work and people are having problems… what’s the point?

After I got everything worked I decided to try a couple of tutorials I found on the web about integrating flash and php/MySQL. That provided key understanding on how possible my idea of managing images and data from databases was (or not) possible. And I am glad to say that results looks promising… it also look like shit loads of work, but if the potential is there, why not?

So yes. Today Monday Oct 30th I manage to test flash loading info (including images) from an mySQL database. I think that is a very important step.

My next mission is to “develop” a little flash app to play with the images in the way I want to. It shouldn’t be that hard.. but again, this is Flash we are talking about, and we know it could be a bit temperamental . . .

Anyways. If I achieve what I want in Flash, I’ll let u know.
Comments / Suggestions are always welcomed.

-j

Ok. I still have some reading to do about the theories. . .  but let’s talk about the assigment.

 I’ve been thinking really hard about what to do for my project. And one of the things I’ve decided at some point was to try to focus the interactivity on pictures. Meaning? that I do not want to deal with uploading videos, or with having just an online forum with some text.

The brief calls for a “online community based website where people can interact and share media artefacts and information.” … yeah.. right easy ….. not so much!

Basically we can do whatever we want with that guideline. Of course one of the things that most of us (students) try to do with every project is to make it somehow original.. even if is not *too* original (i think) we really try to add something to it to make it different. And at least for me that is very important, and even more important than the technical skills themselves.

 Anyways after some research and my decision to do something with pictures, I would like to do a photo-sharing site (yeah! that’s  o r i g i n a l  , isn’t?) with a small twist… Of course; I have to check if such thing exists, but if it doesnt and I manage to do it even remotely properly please don’t steal my idea, unless not before I make some profit out of it (you know joe, for the well being of $ociety and all that stuff Jefferson suggested …..  :-)   Well, joking aside, the idea is for people to be able to share their pictures as they do in many sites already, but at the same time give some very basic, easy-to-use tools to put text ballons, symbols, maybe dribbles on top of the pictures and share them like that.  I think is a good idea, but of course there is the issue of achievability (is that a word?). I think it would be a step further in sharing pictures with just a caption at the bottom and giving the user an online tool to make their pictures funnier is better than pretending them to open Paint in windows and do it there.

 Of course the first thing that comes to my mind in how to achieve this task it to do it in Flash, and my small research showed that integration between php/mySql and flash is possible as it is with HTML.  The workshops have come handy. Sometimes is hard to look at the big picture during a php workshop but I think the tools are there. Now I have to dig deeper into flash to see how can I make this happen and I already have a couple of ideas going thru my head. And is probably going to implicate a decent amount of database use.  I already know is possible to load jpg’s from “outside” in flash dynamically, now I need to figure out how to give the user the power to move some symbols, and then somehow take a “snap-shot” for it to become the shared artifact.

There are also other considerations as image sizes and so on that need to be sorted out. But I think is possible. Of course there are a couple of ideas to give this a sense of community.. maybe lets user fiddle with friends pictures, but first I need to get the functionality working.

Comments are more than welcome, and discussion is encouraged.

See ya around.

 -j

Well, back to uni after a very nice summer back home….

The first unit we are going to take this year is called Authorship and after just one week there is a couple of reflexions (sp?) about it. First is that the whole “traditional” idea of authorship is being somewhat destroyed and rebuilt by new media. Usually when we refer to new media we only think digital artifacts, but then when you think again you realize that is not only “digital” media. Is also how this enables a new way of interaction between… well, between everything! We are talking that 15 years ago a mobile phone was useful to make just phone-calls. Today not only I can play games on my mobile, but I can also mix sounds (never actually done it, but MotoMix is there as an option). I can take pictures with it and share them instantly with my friends. All this with my old cheap phone… is nothing compared to the new ones.

So, how is Authorship being rebuilt by new media? I am sure not all of us, but some of us have been part of this process. I remember I used to participate and check 3D imaging sites while trying to learn 3D Studio Max. A very common thing to find on those on-line forums is a Work In Progress area where users of all levels simply show their work and ask for suggestions on how to improve it. People responds with all kind of suggestions. Some are quite simple, but some can totally change the look of any given work and make it look impressive… and it raises the question on how the original author (artist) would have finish its piece without the other people collaboration. Would the piece be totally different? Maybe the impact level of the piece increased quite a bit during this WIP process and because of this process.

At the end all this suggest that we need to somehow (re)define the term authorship. In one of the lectures this week the lecturer asked us if youtube.com was a “common authorship” example. At first I thought that it was not, since all the clips that people upload are different from each other and not related to each other. There is no common ground, or goal to be achieved. Is just a very horizontal platform on which thousands (millions?) of clips are being showed. The problem is that is possible to argue that for the creators of this website maybe that was the objective. So if that were the case, then they (and their users) are authors of something. But maybe each user is author of their clips and the website is simply a platform for sharing them. So how we define the authorship? are the website creators authors of this massive phenomenon? is possible to say that youtube is like one piece of artwork in a museum that are just a splatter of paint with no straight sense but some people appreciate for whatever reason? or is it simple a platform, nothing special of sorts like a folder full of kiddie drawings with no (apparent) artistic value and with no established author ? maybe they all belonged to a group of kids in some kindergarten class…

Maybe the definition of authorship refers to a single group or individuals , easily identifiable. It appears that when we try to establish authorship in a massive scale (like the youtube users) the concept can’t cope with itself and gets destroyed and rebuilt into something harder to understand.

Maybe we need to wipe the traditional definition and start writing a new one. But then if we do it today, we would probably use something like a wiki, and suddenly our definition will stop being ours… and then authorship could disappear… again!

-j

ps. I haven’t read enough on the subject yet. I am planning on posting again after I collect more information on the subject.