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.
In the early 2000’s, Nissan was set to relaunch its fabled “Z” model. Chiat was tasked with creating the microsite to build buzz and provide enthusiasts with a few tasty media bits prior to the launch of the 350Z. Link to archived site here. + Flash development
Corporate home for TBWA Worldwide. Flash configured itself via a configuration file, which was generated by a TBWA-made CMS admin area. Map/location section utilized Flash Remoting (AMFPHP flavor) to sort/filter through the huge number of TBWA offices before drawing to screen for the user.
Created a concise mobile site for Methodist Health System using the Javascript mobile framework jQTouch. Having looked at the analytics for the client’s site, I determined that the current mobile users had been visiting bestcare.org looking for a distinct subset of information. So, rather than try to cram all of the content from the standard […]
A microsite where visitors could record video of themselves (via their computer’s onboard camera) singing along with the AskDeals jingle track and share the resulting video. The home/landing page of the microsite played an seamless & endless loop of all submitted tracks.
Affiliatør didn’t get much further than one day of development. This proof-of-concept was born when I had account people telling me about how affiliates were creating their own perverted versions of current eBay ads. I thought to myself “What if eBay affiliates could just download an app that would let them create their own ads with their own copy… but using our design template?
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 […]
Realtime dashboard for Morrissey Engineering which reflects current status of solar panels & external conditions. Data is retrieved from proprietary solar panel API & cached via PHP & mySQL… and from there, served to the website widget(s) Link to current site: http://www.morrisseyengineering.com/live-solar-output/
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
It looks a little chintzy, but YOU try fitting a physics engine, sound AND good graphics into a non-rich media ad. Final ad size fit nicely under the 40k limit… coming in at a svelte 37k
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