Check out the example and source code below.

import flash.events.MouseEvent;
import flash.media.Sound;
import flash.text.TextField;
import fl.controls.Button;
 
// stage instances
var input_txt:TextField;
var speak_btn:Button;
 
var speech:Sound;
var url:String = "http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q=";
 
input_txt.maxChars = 100;
speak_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, handleClick);
 
function handleClick(e:MouseEvent):void {
     speech= new Sound();
     speech.load(new URLRequest(url + input_txt.text));
     speech.play();
}

Be sure to check out the new Adobe Flash User Group in Reading. The Reading Flash Alliance is a group of Flash talent made up of local firms and freelancers who share ideas, knowledge, and talk shop. They are having a meeting next month and are giving away some prizes including a copy of Creative Suite 5. Pretty sick.

Go check 'em out. www.readingflashalliance.com

Use your webcam to position yourself in the frame. Then you can save an image to your hard drive. I still need to tweak some things, like adding controls to adjust the brightness. Press the "BEGIN" button to Hulk Yourself.

InstaMapper API v1.00
0071543339995,Demo car,1209252615,47.58822,-122.17969,25.0,27.7,349

The format of each record (seporated by commas) is as follows:

1. Device key
2. Device label
3. Position timestamp in UTC (number of seconds since January 1, 1970)
4. Latitude
5. Longitude
6. Altitude in meters
7. Speed in meters / second
8. Heading in degree

So using a split() method on the returned string, I could just parse the latitude and longitude coordinates and sent them to my Google map object. Here is a screen shot of my application. The only problem is that instamapper.com does not (yet) have a cross domain policy, which is not allowing the SWF on my server to access instamapper's server. Though it works just fine when run locally. So for now, this is just a proof of concept.

So in my example I simply mapped Mikey's house from The Goonies and inserted the Goonies logo. Yes, I am a little geeky that way. And if you don't like The Goonies please leave this site now. Just kidding.

I started this example by making a MovieClip rotate around a center point. I know I could have used TweenMax to rotate around a center point, but the idea here is to do the math, remember? Here are some posts I referenced. Kirupa, ActionScript.org.

After I got the MovieClip rotating, I decided to use it to create some interesting effects with BitmapData. I simply referenced the ActionScript 3.0 Language Reference for this.

[Move your mouse around the stage. The closer you get to the center cross hair, the smaller the ball's radius gets. Click and drag your mouse to draw lines from the center.]
]]> http://www.flashgoblin.com/?feed=rss2&p=18 http://www.flashgoblin.com/?p=17 http://www.flashgoblin.com/?p=17#comments Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:07:09 +0000 Shane http://www.flashgoblin.com/?p=17 For a while I have been wanting to focus on the areas of Flash where I am weakest. So what better way to step up my game than to make a New Year's resolution.

My resolution:
Once a week I will learn something new and post a blog entry about it here. I don't claim that I will be doing any mind-blowing or uncharted discoveries or anything, but this will be an area where I will document my process. I hope it will help others who aren't familiar with some of these concepts, but it's mostly for me to keep tabs on myself.

We'll see how I do...

So that led me to want to learn more about the Flex Framework (MXML). Something that I've been wanting to do for some time now, but now have more of an urgent reason. So currently, I am watching the Flex 3 Essential Training at Lynda.com. (Great site!) I figured that this will give me a great overview of Flex and a tour of the Flex Builder IDE.

I realize that I can get Parallels or Fusion for the Mac so I can run Windows based applications. Perhaps I will eventually. But this way I'll be able to get more into Flex like I've been wanting to.

We'll see in a few weeks how I like the transition.