Pronounced like “chimera”, and modeled after said word… Kimera GPS (“glyph pack system”) is the codename for a process I created wherein “font-packs” are compiled on-demand by the server and fed to dynamic display ads in the wild.
Pronounced like “chimera”, and modeled after said word… Kimera GPS (“glyph pack system”) is the codename for a process I created wherein “font-packs” are compiled on-demand by the server and fed to dynamic display ads in the wild.
Whilst creating dynamic display ads (using Oxford) for eBay, projects would arise where we would need to develop creative for the eBay Partner Network. This meant that the ads would be showing headlines and other text in languages other than english. Each time one of these projects rolled down, we would get a list of the countries/languages which we would be developing ads for, and invariably, one of those languages would be Chinese. Luckily, Chinese was always amongst the languages REMOVED from the list before entering development, but the specter of having to create ads capable of displaying asian charactersets always hung over my head.
Kimera is a process wherein, when an ad loads in the wild, after receiving its configuration information (containing its desired text to display) the ad then contacts the Kimera-enabled server, tells it what text it intends to display, the server (which possesses the full characterset) then generates a swf which contains the embedded font outlines for ONLY the glyphs that are to be displayed in the ad.
For ads using the Latin-I characterset, this results in font-outline bytesize dropping to ~2k (from the aforementioned 10k) The bytesize savings when dealing with other charactersets are even larger. Above all, it actually makes the idea of creating dynamic display ads for asian languages not just possible but executable with near-english bytesize results.
+ Flash development
+ PHP development
+ system architecture
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 08:49. It is filed under Spare Time, Work and tagged with AS2, AS3, banners, dynamic display advertising, Flash, fonts, HaXe, php, SWFMill. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Flash elements created for the showcase and menu navigation areas of the Breville USA website. My very last lines of code and bugs quashed for Avenue A | Razorfish involved integrating the Flash with their existing JSP-based eCommerce system. Link to archived site here. + Flash development + Platform integration
An interactive video rich-media ad which follows a woman on her morning run. As she moves through the seasons, her wardrobe changes and a selection menu is displayed behind her. At any given moment, the user can select from the product menu, see details about that particular product, and (if they wish) go directly to that product’s page on the Nike Store site.
A dynamic display ad that took data from the eBay Motors API and displayed said data using the Yahoo Maps API. Geotargeting was used in ad trafficking, allowing the map to initialize at the user’s approximate location. + System architecture + public & private API integration + Flash development
Created a WordPress-powered site for a design group in LA. It’s that’s navigable via either desktop & iPad. http://canyondesigngroup.com
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An immersive environment to introduce the user to the characters and experiences of the new Sony Playstation game Primal. Utilized cut-scene video for level transitions.
Combine Adobe AIR with Bluetooth with BlueCove (a lightweight server capable of relaying said Bluetooth data) and you get the, (maybe) cleverly-named “Hello There”. When running, it constantly scaned for Bluetooth devices in-range & made note of their device ID.
Provided Full Stack Development services for Republic Project. Day-to-day technologies used were Flash, HTML5, Javascript, and PHP/MySQL. Republic Project was a startup that was later bought by DG | Mediamind, which later spun off it’s digital ad business under the name Sizmek. At Sizmek, Republic Project’s product was relabeled “Sizmek Social” I continued to support […]
A Flash kiosk application created for deployment by Adidas at the 2007 Boston Marathon. When in place, allowed the user to enter their “reason” for running, take a photo (using the kiosk’s onboard camera), and receive a takeaway one-sheet containing (amongst other things) their photo, their reason, and a splash of Adidas branding.
A reusable AS3 codebase, used to create dynamic display ads for eBay. Packages up all of the service calls, load management, asset/font management, etc into a nice little package that’s fairly lightweight and super-easy to integrate into each project’s Flash creative. Drops development turnaround time for dynamic creative from a couple weeks to about […]