Web Worker Daily

Adobe has released new betas of AIR 2 and Flash 10.1, James over at jkOnTheRun reports. Both products now support multitouch, but most interesting for me in this news is that AIR 2 promises to be less memory-hungry than the previous version. I’ve shied away from many useful desktop apps that rely on AIR (TweetDeck, for example) because they hog so much memory — hopefully this new release will have much more reasonable usage of my computer’s resources.

Do you avoid AIR apps because they are so resource-hungry?

Project management seems to be the 21st century’s “better mousetrap.” There seems to be an endless supply of new project management services; the latest addition to the ranks of this huge category is Ubidesk.

It has an interface that I find more attractive than some of the other products I’ve looked at. Its navigation is better than Peago’s, with menus that seem logical to me, and slide-out sidebars that can be made to appear and disappear as desired. Ubidesk is Flash-based, however, so it won’t be useful in corporate and mobile environments where that technology isn’t available.

Ubidesk has a nice range of features, most of which are pretty standard in web-based project management apps, including: Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone has a different way of doing things. Fortunately, there’s a huge number of web services that offer groups different ways to coordinate their activities. Convos occupies a middle ground between basic group communication systems like listservs and Google Groups, and full-fledged project management apps.

As with classic email lists, Convos allows group members to send and reply to messages via email. But Convos has a larger feature set than standard email groups, including:

• A web interface where members can see and update what the group is working on. This password-protected, advertising-free web site includes panes to compose and display messages, upload files, manage tasks and schedules, and create and view on-screen pages. The interface has a custom URL like “group_name.convos.com” to which you can add your own logo.
• A system for creating and getting RSVPs for events.
• A system for posting comments and questions (which can be anonymous if desired).
• The ability to add subgroups, which could be useful for organizations with a committee structure. Read the rest of this entry »

We cover a lot of project management apps here on WebWorkerDaily; it almost feels like we’re inundated with them, with a new option being launched practically every week. So I confess to being wary about trying yet another offering.

Peago, a Flash-based PM tool, has some nice features, but in my opinion they’re overshadowed by a difficult interface.

There are certainly some things to like about Peago:

• It offers several free and paid options, as well as a 14-day trial. The site says that there are “no contracts, upgrade or cancel anytime for any reason.”
• The sign-up process is easy.
• Peago has a lot of useful features that are now standard in project management sites, plus some that aren’t seen as frequently, like timelines, Gantt charts, and an ingenious use of drag-and-drop for doing things like assigning users to tasks. Read the rest of this entry »

I got an exclusive sneak peek at the July edition of the Elance Online Work Index (a kind of Elance “Hot 100″), which will be published tomorrow. The index, which uses data from over 100,000 jobs posted on the site, is a monthly look at which job categories are the most popular in the freelance job marketplace.

PHP still holds the No. 1 spot (as it has since February), but what’s more interesting are the “movers and shakers” this month. In particular, jobs in the “Graphic Design” and “Adobe Flash” categories have leaped up the index this month to end up in second and third places overall (up ten and six spots from last month, respectively) — this is good news for designers. Another big mover is jobs in the “Joomla!” category (breaking into the top 10 by rising 10 places to eighth), suggesting that there’s increasing demand for people skilled in the open-source CMS. Read the rest of this entry »

Google has recently announced that it can index external files called from Flash sites. While I understand why Google wants to do this — it has been working on indexing Flash content for over a year — I hope the news doesn’t tempt web developers to increase their dependence on Flash.

Don’t get me wrong: Flash is fine when used for specific purposes, such as video playback and animation. But it can be overused. There was a fad for Flash-based web site introduction screens several years ago. We quickly found that just about everybody was clicking the “skip intro” link. (There was even a site dedicated to Flash usability called “Skip Intro.”) As a result, Flash introductions are much rarer these days. Still, Flash is ubiquitous, and that can cause problems. Read the rest of this entry »

Wix — founded in New York by ex-venture capitalist, Allon Bloch — offers users the ability to create a free, SEO-friendly, Flash-based web site using only drag-and-drop tools. I’m surprised I hadn’t come across Wix before, as according to the company’s PR, more than 500,000 users are actively using the service, a fifth of whom joined from the UK just last month.

Wix appears to be targeting professionals in various industries who want to set up a glossy site very quickly. The directory of published sites ranges from photographers, stylists, designers and actors to real estate companies, bands and arts sites.

What’s particularly notable about Wix isn’t the Flash-based authoring tools, but the ability to publish “widgetized” versions of your site to MySpace and Facebook, as well as publishing to online marketplaces such as Etsy, Craigslist and eBay. Handily, Paypal and Google Analytics integration is also included. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in November I was quite impressed with Flypaper, a Windows application that lets you create, manage and reuse Flash content. With version 2.0 the Flypaper team brings many enhancements to an already-strong product.

The interface isn’t radically different but there are usability tweaks. It’s now easier to add content to many pages automatically and navigation between items is now much easier.

The real enhancements to this version, though, focus on collaboration. There is now built in real-time capability to mark up and make notes about any element of a project. By integrating this functionality right in to the application, it makes it really easy to share mock-ups and comps and gather feedback on works in progress, especially for larger teams.

In addition, companies can now create a repository for storage and so provide centralized accesss to content and projects.

Flypaper is still a great way to create Flash content for your projects and your clients, but with this version, it does make the jump towards being more of an enterprise-level product, and the pricing represents it. It is still a great option for those looking for a powerful way to create rich media content and these enhancements make it a great option for large distributed design firms or companies who outsource their Flash development.

Individual seat licenses start at $795 annually, with the enterprise platform starting at $9,995

Flypaper is still available for Windows only and a free trial is available.

Have you tried Flypaper? Do these Flypaper improvements make it a more compelling option for your rich media creation needs?