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
A website for Sony’s upscale boutique brand of home electronics.
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.
Using the Microsoft Kinect for sensor input, Adobe AIR for display, and a number of open-source drivers/frameworks for everything in-between, Daydreamer was a digital installation project that allowed the user to create music and visuals through moving their bodies. Along with the previously mentioned tools, I also utilized NITE & OpenNI (for Kinect data parsing), […]
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.
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.
Created a mobile landing page/microsite ad for Honda Civic with a responsive layout. Allowed one codebase to be served to all handsets regardless of OS. Included use of embedded HTML5 video.
Initially thought up as a project where I could use a ColdFusion beta (I’d never even touched CFML), once the ColdFusion beta expired, it then became a project for me to learn PHP and mySQL… I then later went on to make a (throwaway) port of the site in order to learn .NET.
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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/