Recently, a port of OpenCV, a library of object detection functions, was created for AS3 which has sparked a lot of interest and creativity in the flash and flex community. Stemming from this came facial recognition for AS3.

It is often difficult to find useful applications for these new technologies. Luckily, BKWLD was recently approached by .net magazine and was asked to write 2 articles. Jeff Toll, who’s article can be seen in this month’s issue, worked with me to come up with a design for a facial recognition application that will be featured in an upcoming issue of .net magazine. Together we came up with an idea for a virtual window, where the users can essentially fly through a 3D flickr gallery.

For the true experience you can visit the following link (you must have a web cam): http://bkwld.com/headtracking/. If you do not have a web cam, I have uploaded a demo video onto Vimeo at the following link: http://vimeo.com/7092048.

Here is the source if your feeling adventurous.
HeadTracking.zip

There are a couple things to note about the source code. First, this was developed using flex, so if you want use it in flash you will have to set HeadTracking.as as your document class. Second, I did not leave my Flickr API key in the source for obvious reasons. So, you will have to apply for a Flickr API key if you don’t already have one and enter it in the init function of the HeadTracking.as class file where it says “Enter your API key here”. If you find any errors in the source code be sure to yell at me in comments.

The following resources were used:
http://www.squidder.com/2009/02/26/realtime-face-detection-in-flash/
http://www.quasimondo.com/archives/000687.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

ActionScript is awesome, but developing with it can be tedious. I have compiled a list of 10 resources that I use on a daily basis to help speed up development. I have purposely not included any animation, 3D or physics frameworks because there are far too many to include in a top ten list. If you have any that I didn’t include, feel free to post them. So here we go, listed in no specific order.

Monster Debugger
I’m loving this new debugger. It’s very easy to include in your code and it even has live editing! Moving that sprite over a couple pixels has never been easier.

Degrafa
I’ve been using this a lot lately. If you are doing any skinning in Flex you’re crazy if you aren’t using Degrafa.

Actionscript 3.0 TextMate Bundle
Here at BKWLD we LOVE TextMate. Although I still use Flex while developing with the Flex framework, I use TextMate for all of my Flash projects. The AS3 bundle makes Flash Development a breeze. Imagine being able to create a class file with the constructor, package declaration and custom class comments already there. At BKWLD we have taken it a step further by creating a huge list of custom snippets and templates that work with our AS3 library.

Pure MVC
While there are many great AS3 frameworks out there, this one is my choice. There are better solutions out there as far as frameworks for Flex development go, but the beauty about Pure MVC is that it is compatible with both Flash and Flex.

Flash Tracer
I use this thing all the time! It’s a Firefox add on that enables you to see all the output generated by any running flash swf, even the ones in your browser. It works great for debugging live content. Also, you get to see all the curse words that other developers have “accidentally” left in their trace calls.

Firefox Web Developer Toolbar
Every web developer who uses Firefox should have this. I mainly use it to test various screen sizes with liquid flash layouts.

Flash Player 10 Debugger
An absolute must have for any flash developer. Make sure you have the debugger version and not just the regular flash player.

Tour de Flex
This is really nice Flex component inspector that also allows you to quickly view the documentation of any component you are looking at.

Losum Ipsum Widget
Quick, randomly generated lines of lorum ispum text.

SQLite Admin
A quick and simple tool that allows you to view the structure of any SQLite database and execute queries. This is a great tool for anyone who is developing for AIR.

For the soundwave360 site we decided to use Limelight to stream the audio. Once the audio was moved over to the Limelight CDN everything was streaming a lot faster. However there was one problem, flash was throwing a sandbox security error every time I used the computeSpectrum function to create the sound wave. Read the rest of this entry »

After recently launching a flash site developed in AS3, a stupid, stupid bug appeared that caused a slight amount of brain trauma. In InternetExplorer 6 the site loaded, and worked fine. But when you would navigate elsewhere and come back to the site, everything was all screwy. The alignment was off and the site wouldn’t initialize. Clear your cache, reload and everything was perfect. So, obviously its a cache problem, and it only occurred in IE6.

Here’s how I had my project set up:

Read the rest of this entry »

So, my thanksgiving break consisted of 4 days of leftovers and HBO On Demand. I also decided to make this nice little thingy. I have been talking about the new SoundMixer class introduced in AS3 for some time now, but I never utilized it. Well, I decided to create an equalizer using the new SoundMixer, Graphics and ByteArray classes introduced in AS3. It’s not too hard and can be implemented in soooo many ways.
http://www.maxrox.com/expirements/equalizer/
Source Code

Taking it one step further, I decided to include a little papervision3d magic. The result ended up looking very cool. It didn’t require an insane amount of code and runs fairly smooth.
http://www.maxrox.com/expirements/3dequalizer/
Source Code

Just wanted to share a simple widget that is very handy when developing: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/developer/cicero.html It simply copies random lines of Lorum Ipsum text.