There is another project that is kind of related to these ones, but is all about data: Adobe SiteCatalyst NetAverages.

SiteCatalyst NetAverages

So, what is this good for?

First of all, in my opinion, you can use it to optimize your web site or web application to have a best look on the most popular browsers or platforms. It’s a 20-80 kind of thing. Use 20% of your energy to support 80% of your market. And what better way to know what are your 80′s?

NetAverages offers a wide range of properties you can drill down into, like: JavaScript version, screen resolution, operating system or flash player version. It has properties for both the desktop world and mobile.

However, by far the coolest feature for me is the ability to set up alerts. Do you what to know when Google Chrome reaches 10% of the market? It’s just one click away:

Setting up an alert in NetAverages

Omniture Test&Target for Flash Professional CS5 – how-to in images.

Campaign with three experiences.

Having this place to start from, what it remains is to add an external image to the flash and to create variations for this image. To add an external image to your file just go in the Components panel and drag a UILoader to the stage.

Add an UILoader to the stage.

To actually add the external image to the stage, just go into the Properties panel and change the source property to point to an image. I have used as source an image from my previous article.

Add a source for UILoader.

The next thing to do is to add the UILoader to the campaign an create variations for this image. For that, just select the component on the stage and press the Include button. You can see now in the panel the image being part of all experiences.

Include the UILoader to flashbox.

Previewing the experiences will render the same external image for all of them. You will need to create now the variations for each of the experiences. The process simple. Open the symbol created for the UILoader when it was included into the flashbox (double click on it) and change the source property for each of the experiences. When previewing each experience you should be able to see each different image.

All three experiences have different images.

The UILoader is not restricted however just to images, you can also load other SWFs.

For this demo I will use a simple add that shows an image, some text and a button to click on. My goal is to have two variations for this add, both in the same SWF and the targeting for this ad to be done using Test&Target.

Create campaign and flashbox

As you can see in the image, I am already logged in and I can choose to work on an existing campaign or to create a new one. I will create a new one.

Create campaign and flashbox

After creating the campaign I will create two experiences that will hold the two variations I want for this ad.

Create experiences

So, one variation is exactly what the ad is showing right now and I’ve called it “Local Picks”. The other variation called “Subscription” will use the same ad as a template (design and animation) but will have a different image, text and button label. The first thing I will change is the text. The text is a symbol in this case so I will go inside the symbol and using the Include button I will include the text into the Test&Target workflow, making it part of both experiences.

Add text to experiences

To have variations between the two experiences I will select the Subscription experience from the Test&Target panel, go inside the text symbol and change the text to “Subscribe to our magazine”

Change the text

I will do the same thing with the buttons’s label and with the image.

Add image to experience

When adding an image to the Test&Target workflow, the image is transformed into a symbol and a labeled keyframe is created on that symbol timeline for each experience present into the panel. To change the image for the Subscription experience I will go inside the symbol and for the second keyframe I will swap the image with a different one from the Library panel.

Swap the image

Swap the image

After this, I sync my work with the Test&Target server. By doing so, all the information necessary to present the two variations for this ad are saved on the Test&Target server.

My campaign and flashbox on the Test&Target server.

On the server, I can still edit the text present in the ad WITHOUT the need to recompile the SWF. I can create new experiences if I want to test different tag lines also WITHOUT recompiling the SWF. The only limitation is that I can not select for these experiences images that are not already embedded in the SWF, at least not in the way I have created this demo. This is possible if a Loader object is used and the experiences will hold the URL to a remote image.

I will create some very simple targeting rules for my ad: I want my site to show the Local Picks experience for all the new users arriving on it and to show the Subscription experience for all the returning ones.

Add targeting rules

All I need to do now is approve the campaign and I’m set.

Belorussian provided by PC

First, a short description taken from the release notes:

• Omniture SiteCatalyst extension for Adobe Flash Professional CS5 – Visually add tracking to Flash content, directly from the creative workflow, without manually tagging each piece of content. This will dramatically shorten analytics implementation times, allowing you to focus on the impact of your creative work.
• Omniture Test&Target extension for Adobe Flash Professional CS5 – Easily create and manage Flash content variations for online marketing campaigns directly from your creative workflow, without duplicating effort or writing ActionScript code.
• Omniture Test&Target extension for Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 - Visually create and manage HTML content for online marketing campaigns, without having to write HTML code.

And now, lets present the Flash Pro extensions using some images:

login

call to action

working environment

Soon I will start to create some small demos to showcase how to work with this extensions on a real working scenario. Stay tuned..

Lemmings vs. Predator

of course after this we’ve started to let our mind run wild thinking about scenarios for this game. Lemmings will have to escape from an alien infested extraterrestrial base. You will also have 2 very powerful weapons: two “sigourney weaver”s  that lemmings will be able to use at any time to get out of a tight situation. However bonus points will be rewarded for each sigourney weaver you have at the end of the game. Great multi-player capabilities

Another possible title: Aladdin and the enchanted Terminator. Aladdin rubs magic iLamp to bring our the enchanted Terminator, something like T-X v2.0.

These platforms are in beta and our support is needed to use them in the real world and report any problems we may find.

Today thou I got a surprise: agendaBT. An AIR application that is a very nice agenda application. You can take notes per days using different colors, highlight what you have written or just draw. And while this is not particularly exciting by itself, the design is impressive, I really like it. You can see for yourself:

agendaBT

After a sudden surge in traffic yesterday to my blog, I have found the culprit: 64 high-ranked blogs for developers.

Thank you.

There are two major stories delivered with this new version:

1. Contributing has become a lot easier.
2. The prominence and recognition for community members who actively participate in Cookbooks was increased.

In detail, there is a set of new features that are making the experience more enjoyable and productive.

• Support for “topics” and “tags”.
• 17 technologies & products, including non-Adobe ones: AIR, Flash Professional, ColdFusion, LiveCycle, Dreamweaver, Flash Catalyst, ActionScript, Mobile and Devices, Video, PHP  and more.
• Improved content discoverability:
  • Search engine optimization
  • Ability to drill-down by tag, or do a full-text search
  • “data visualizer” – the Flash widget you see on the homepage, which is a fun way to explore the content and the community behind it.
  • Related articles recommended for each recipe.
  • Leader board featuring the most active and the most recent contributors, including integration with Community Help profiles.
  • A new way to pull in new recipes, called “recipe requests”: users can ask for a help on a task or topic, and receive solutions from the other members of the community.
  • Slicker design, improved performance, etc.