If you send headers to a domain that does not match the domain where the SWF is hosted, you need update your crossdomain.xml file to allow them to continue to work with Flash Player 9.0.124.0. While this is discussed in the ADC pre-announcement, it could use a bit more detail. Flash Player support wrote a great technote on details of how to set up <allow-http-request-headers-from>.

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb403185

One of the examples from the article is:

<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<!DOCTYPE cross-domain-policy SYSTEM “http://www.adobe.com/xml/dtds/cross-domain-policy.dtd”>
<cross-domain-policy>

<!– This domain can accept a MyHeader header from a SWF file on www.example.com –>
<allow-http-request-headers-from domain=”www.example.com” headers=”MyHeader”/>

</cross-domain-policy>

Also, it is worth reiterating that the new header crossdomain syntax is required for both send and sendAndLoad network APIs. For network requests without additional headers, traditional crossdomain syntax and behavior continues.

Yahoo! launched YUIBlog.com and the Design Pattern Library today to start sharing the interaction design lessons learned by Yahoo! over the last decade. A lot of great work has gone into this, and should be a very valuable tool to web developers and interaction designers.

The library has been launched with Javascript/DHTML/AJAX/(is there another name yet) source, but this is not meant to be a technology specific effort. Even though the presentation platform library is purely DHTML, the design patterns are technology agnostic and can be applied well in Flash.

A lot of the Rich Internet Application building blocks that we take for granted in the Flash development world are just getting started with AJAX. No matter what you have to say about the Macromedia component sets, it was a huge leg up for all of us to have some place to start. I’m glad to see Yahoo! taking the lead in creating some baseline AJAX components.

Whew!, I’m so happy that “new media” stopped being the code word for Flash. Flash really isn’t new any more, plus “Rich media” is far more accurate. Now you are probably wondering about why I’m writing this in 2005 and not say 4 years ago when people stopped using “new media” as a common description for Flash. Enter Jeff Gannon aka James Guckert aka pseudo-military prostitue. From Wonkette I ended up clicking over to his site mostly from shock that he is trying to stay around after his 15 minutes were up.

Jeff Gannon has styled himself the “voice of the new media.” Thank goodness that isn’t us anymore! no siree we are “Rich” media now, and not a moment too soon. Luckily, having Gannon as our voice was probably not going to happen anytime soon anyway, certainly not with those PhotoShop skills. Take a look at Gannon in front of a flag (above). It seems the flag didn’t want anything more to do with Gannon than the rest of us. But really, a tip for the novice PhotoShop user: if you are evil, *don’t* include your dark aura in the picture! It scares the children.

It’s either that or he isn’t really bald. his hair just moves really really fast and even with high shutter speed it can only be caught as a diffuse blur.

Ms. Mary Engelbreit, do you realize that you just took credit for the design of a paper towel? While your style isn’t really one of my personal favorites, are you really excited as your site would have us believe that it is a good fit for paper towels, a bastion of poor design?

Certainly nothing says Brawny Man tough like illustrated florals! I’ve always wondered why paper manufacturers seemed determined to add these cheesy sort of prints to paper towels. Mind you, I’m not completely opposed to prints, I just find it cynical that the companies believe 90% of Americans are as tacky as to have kitchens in which the normal paper towel prints manufacturerswork. Because of the types of prints available, I for one go for that trendy minimalist approach to my paper towels with just plain white.

I know for a fact that Georgia Pacific can recognize better design than this. Look at the website for Brawny, the brand of paper towel that the Engelbreit prints are going on. That is a pretty nice looking Flash site (notice also that the rolls on the site have no prints). Speaking of good design and marketing on brawny.com, you MUST check out the Brawny Innocent Escapes.

Innocent Escapes is a Flash Video campaign produced by Fallon New York where you can play out warped fantasies of the ultra-sensitive yet masculine brawny man. He comforts you when you’ve had a bad day and can be an oh, so good listener (a badly spliced video loop of “uh huh”, “interesting”, “uh huh”). The whole thing is too funny.

So, good design is good anywhere, but bad design can make me even think of what my paper towels look like. I don’t have the sort of brain cells needed for that, so let’s just agree here and now that its ok for paper towels to be blank so that we can all create pollockesque art form after you’ve cleaned up your spills.

Ray did ask for one caveat though. If Thomas Kinkade should ever want to do printed toilet paper, let him. It would be the perfect synergy of form and function.

Yes. Yes I am. I’m all about the cheap laugh and Shell Oil was happy to help me out in more ways than one. It starts out with driving home in the rain on fumes. I am relieved to see a shell logo appear on the horizon. What? tonight it isn’t Shell. One light burns out and I am left with a cheap joke about gas prices. So here we go. (full-sized image here)

As I pay almost $3/gal (sorry Europeans, I know you don’t get this joke) looking up at the sign saying “hell” I am struck by the thought “I need to drive a marketing person by this sign. They might see an honest advertisement for the first time in their lives.” After realizing I didn’t really feel like spending my weekend wiping up exploded brain chunks, I file the thought away and went back to getting some gas.

On the topic of truth in advertising, if you haven’t seen the movie Crazy People, I highly recommend it. Its a very funny movie about a Madison Avenue ad exec that is overcome by the desire to tell the truth and is put into a mental institution. It was also filmed in the town where I grew up.

My last thought on this is that my partner Ray saw this differently. While I was amused about the marketing issues involved, Ray saw it as a political comment (our perspectives certainly are a product of our lives! ;)). You should definitely read his entry. It is funny, interesting, and as always left me angered by the right-hand side of the political spectrum. Oh yeah, and he passed by a gas station where the premium was $3.15!!!

Today I ran into a challenge that I haven’t experienced since the very early days of my career when I did web design/computer tech support (I think my title was “dances with computers”). Trying to work with computers from the early to mid 90s is real pain. Specifically, about a third of the time I couldn’t figure out how to open the thing. Keep in mind these weren’t the 90% plastic easy-to-break-if-you-really-need-to cases we have now, they were the all steel cases that rivaled Buick for amount of steel in their machines. If only they had taken the ease of opening the case from a car manufacturer. Instead, most computer companies hired frustrated, out of work puzzle-box manufacturers to tease and torment a the “digital generation.”

As a case in point, there is the IBM Aptiva. I need to transfer a hard drive out of this for a friend getting a new computer today. Like all riddles, I decided to try and figure this one out myself. After much inspection, I found a switch! By sliding what looks like a case lock to the side it “unlocks.” By unlocking, I think it means that somewhere in a Gothic castle a stone wall just slid open revealing a secret passage. I assume this because nothing happened here.

After much more studying and a few rude gestures to the computer I gave up and turned to the resource that was not robust enough to help me years ago, web search. Now, my first search yielded a site with that answers the question “What is the best way to identify my Aptiva model? …and how do I open the %$#@ case?” My thoughts exactly. It turns out that what I was missing was to then use the hidden lever under the front of the case that is the release. At that point the entire case slides off thusly. Of course, its all so simple now!

My daily caffeine intake comes in the form of Diet Pepsi. As part of the latest and last over-hyped Star Wars installment, Pepsi has just lost it as far as I can tell. Looking at the black bottles in the super market, I think I might be drinking Wookie Juice these days. With Chewbacca grinning? grimacing? getting ready to belch from too much soda? it has left me confused. The other side of the bottle still claims to be Diet Pepsi, but I grew up with Nerds candy though so it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility that this is a twofer.

This marketing approach has left me with a few burning questions.

• Is Diet Pepsi going after the hairy unkempt raging male population to steal market share from Jolt and Red Bull?
• Under all that fur is Chewy some sculpted Adonis with no body fat from his 0 calorie beverage?
• Is a wookie dexterous enough to even open a can or bottle of Diet Pepsi?

I guess now that Amidala is preggers, she doesn’t meet the needs of the Diet Pepsi demographic. Can’t have Diet Pepsi come across as matronly. Nope, definitely go with the wookie instead. No way of telling if he were ever fat under that fur. My personal vote would have been for Anakin changing to Vader. As Anakin gets whooped by Jedis he gets replaced with more and more parts that are as artificial as the sweetener! (*sip*)

Desires for sense and symbolism aside, my note to Pepsi. If you make half of your bottle a completely different color that has no Pepsi branding on it, its really hard to find your product in the store. My mega-mart has a “few” soda choices. I got to work off my zero calorie drink going up and down the aisle looking for the crack. I mean caffeine. I mean Diet Pepsi.

Tonight I am going to be visited by a young co-worker of the tooth fairy who will see my agedness, call me an “old person” and kick my butt out of the twenties and move me into the decrepitude of my third decade. Or so goes the story from several post-30 friends anyways.

Yes, tomorrow I am 30. The number is big and round so of course it has meaning! What that meaning is, I will have to let you know tomorrow.

So what do I do with my last day of my advertising-study-demographically-granted youth? Well, so far I’ve cleaned out my youthful email, awaiting my already old email, I ordered new business cards (Fittingly the Y! business card changed to a bland design. :)), I wore my Flash Gordon shirt (my older friends tell me I won’t be moving fast from now on), and I am finishing my plans for my birthday party tomorrow.

Yes, the party is the real point of the post. For the first time in my adult life I am having a real birthday party! I actually like birthdays, and it is a better than average reason for having friends over. If you are in the Bay Area and want to come, be sure to email me!

Also, in celebration of the Messenger Beta release, my old team is going to see Star Wars en masse and they have kindly invited me to go with them! As the Star Wars movies have had the habit of coming out on my birthday, I choose to see the series as a parable for my youth.

For a few years, despite bad acting and my innate curmudgeonness, I have stayed young. From what I have heard about episode III though, my youth may be coming to a halt and I may be going over to the dark side. While the extra powers look cool and exciting, the whole wrinkly emperor thing isn’t as appealing. I guess I will have to watch the epic struggle of my aging play out on the screen (I’m sure that is what all the other patrons are thinking too).

Maybe I too can digitally enhance and revise the inner-yoda of my youth one day. I guess we shall see. Perhaps that will be for episode 40 in 2015.

A big “Thank you!” to the fine people that make NyQuil and DayQuil. For the 5th or 6th time this spring I have a cold or flu. This really bites. I almost never get sick otherwise but I seem to be catching every cold that has gone through the office. I have survived this spring through liberal dosage of both of these medicines.

A couple of amusing things though. Check out Vicks’s website. Is this the NyQuil talking or is there seriously a map of the world AND a dropdown to choose your country BETWEEN TWO COUNTRIES?? The two dots just sitting there is pretty funny. And just why is the Dutch site so much better than ours?

Oh yeah, the Dutch site seems to indicate that they make something that tastes good. I’ve never had a good-tasting Vicks product. Ummm… Have you ever tried the green NyQuil? How about we take a bit of that good-tasting pleasure and trot it on over to America. Looking at the pictures on the site, the pleasure is to the orgasmic level. They clearly have some to share!

I know the Dutch like their drugs and all, but man, somebody was on a major trip when making the dutch version of the site. Clicking random pages I ended up at this page which should really not be visited while partaking of any Vicks product. it is just too strange (and a creepy use of Flash). If you are using Firefox, click here. The site shows a jpg instead of the Flash if you aren’t using IE.

Also, from two versions of the flu ago which coincided with Flash Forward SF, my apologies to the people that I may have run into stepped on, tripped over etc. when fleeing the search engine optimization session. Seeing that there is a decent chance that someone out there is reading the blog, I figured I should offer the apology just in case

Also, a big thanks to our President on the whole flu shot thing. For the first time in probably ten years I didn’t get a flu shot. These were the first three flus I’ve had in that time. I’m sure I’m not alone. I wonder what the actual national loss is due to lost productivity for those that normally would have been healthy this year.

Having thus far been very positive about Yahoo! on my blog (and generally in life), I do want to take a moment to spew some negativity in light of the new policy about blogging at Yahoo! Don’t worry, I still love the policy, but it does say that we are free to express our opinions, both positive and negative as long as we explain our claims.

So let the Yahoo! negativity begin:

Having thus far been very positive about Yahoo! on my blog (and generally in life), I do want to take a moment to spew some negativity in light of the new policy about blogging at Yahoo! Don’t worry, I still love the policy, but it does say that we are free to express our opinions, both positive and negative as long as we explain our claims.

So let the Yahoo! negativity begin:

I hope I am not the only Yahoo! employee that when they started here thought the corporate colors were red and yellow. Apparently our colors are actually purple and yellow. If I didn’t know it coming in I know it now. Boy howdy, do I know it now. Our color scheme infects our campus. If it can be one or both colors it is. The carpet, the cubes, the signs, the grape and banana jolly ranchers in the cafeteria. Believe me, if you came here you’d notice pretty fast.

I’m all for color branding, but there is something here that crosses the line. The food served by the cafeteria should not be color coordinated to our company. Yellow squash and purple cauliflower is a common occurrence for veggies here. When it is time for roasted potatoes, they are Yukon gold, and those Peruvian purple potatoes that I have otherwise only seen on jetBlue and on cooking shows. It turned my stomach the first time I tried it, but I have conditioned myself on it. Today though crossed the line. Purple potato salad was too much. Chunks of purple potatoes peaking out from behind mayo. *shudder*

Seriously people, there is research on color and taste/quality perception! Here is a little test you can even run yourself.