Now on to the business at hand:

There’s a big firestorm brewing right now about a “racy” presentation that was given on the last day of the conference. A blog called the Geek Girls Guide posted an email written to them by an offended attendee.

I believe that the description of the presentation in the above post is somewhat inaccurate because it is given without the context of the reset of the presentation and the kind of conference that Flashbelt is. So I wanted to post a response in defense of Flashbelt (and yes, Hoss too).

UPDATE: After writing this, but before posting it, Hoss posted a response (with a short note from Dave from Flashbelt before it) on the Geek Girls blog. It’s a good read, and you should read it.

Full disclosure: I consider Hoss a friend of mine and have known him for a number of years, mainly from attending or speaking at the same conferences that he has, so read this with that in mind. I’ve also been a speaker at the Flashbelt conference for the past three years.

I’d like to start with an overview of the presentation that Hoss gave from my point of view:

UPDATE: Hoss has posted most of the slides from the talk here, along with some descriptions of the content. I’ll leave my account of the talk here for those interested in another opinion.

First, he started off with his “ignite stye” talk that is a few slides about his recent work and the tough economic times, and yes, as Grant pointed out, it does begin and end with a picture of him at a club called “Club 11″ in Amsterdam (a quick Flickr search turned up this image of the club in question. May be NSFW for some, but it’s certainly not R-rated). UPDATE: Erik Natzke has posted a video of the first few minutes of the talk (which funnily enough, I have a small cameo at the start).

After this he then moved on to talk about a project he worked on for Adobe (the project appears to be no longer live), which was a graffiti/drawing tool. He said that any time you create a drawing tool online, the first thing people do is “draw penis swastikas” with it, which indeed, if the creatures that people have created with the game Spore are any indication, that statement is spot on.

He then went on to explain that in order to perhaps one-up the penis makers at their own game, he embedded a penis in the app itself as an Easter egg. (Before showing this he of course asked any Adobe folks in attendance to cover their eyes). He then went through some steps to place some stuff on the stage, and zoomed in on a crudely drawn penis, which you can see here.

I believe next he showed a couple of drawing tools, and since we were on the subject of drawing “cocks”, he decided to try to draw one. (Note that he had injured his hand a couple of days before and had a splint on his wrist, which was hindering his ability to draw anything, so his drawings looked especially crude and he had to start over a couple of times.) He drew a crude face and a penis and a white line coming out of the penis to the face. I considered this to be a little over the top, but it was at least on topic since he was using a drawing tool and as he just said, people draw cocks when you give them a drawing tool.

He then explained that he wasn’t an illustrator and wanted to invite an illustrator from the audience up to draw something better with the tool, so he asked if anyone was an illustrator, and a woman raised her hand, so he invited her up to draw something. Unfortunately she must have been confused about what he wanted, because she just drew a bunch of random lines and abstract doodles. He thanked her after a minute or two and she went back to her seat. As she left, he hit the replay button on the app so it would re-draw what she drew. As he was talking about how great it is to create an app and see what talented people do with it, he noticed that one of the doodles she drew very closely resembled a penis (which it actually did). So of course he laughed and said that she had drawn a cock and had upstaged him (clearly in a joking manner, it was very funny).

He then showed a fridge magnet tool his company created, and talked about how the narrative of the intro helps people figure out how to use the app, and he showed a video of someone using the app, moving the letters around. I believe it spelled out some PG-13 rated words, but nothing too bad. He was also talking about how the interface is super simple, that it’s magnet letters, which everyone knows how to use already, so it doesn’t take much to get people going with it. He also made references to how complicated video games often use the first level as a tutorial to teach you how to play, and that web apps could gain a lot from this type of set up.

He was then nearly out of time, so he opened up his “Orgasmorator.” The app is pictured here on Flickr if you are curious (don’t worry, it’s G-rated). The app is this: It shows a 3d rendered image of a woman’s face, and as you move your mouse up and down, her facial expression changes. This is in tune to some music I believe, and eventually if you move your mouse enough/in the right way, she gets a big smile and some happy music plays. The app is completely G rated. There is no nudity, no suggestive sounds, just some music and a happy woman. I believe he made a comment to tie the simplicity of the Orgasmorator to the simplicity of the fridge magnets app: that everyone knows how to move a mouse and it’s very basic. UPDATE: There’s videos of the tool here.

So this was the end of the talk. Everyone clapped and seemed to like the talk. There was no nudity and no “sexist” things said.

–

Now, I’d like to talk a bit about what kind of conference Flashbelt is. First, Flashbelt is not simply a technology conference. It includes many speakers who are not simply programmers, but artists and designers as well. It has a fairly high ratio of designers/artists to programmers, and I think this a big reason as to why the conference is so successful (and indeed, why other “Flash” conferences are so popular). People love going because you don’t just sit in a room all day and listen to programmers like me teach you about the subtle nuances of Flash Player security. You spend part of the day learning new things, part of the day seeing some incredible work from some of the best artists the internet has to offer.

Because of this balance of art and technology, I think attendees should be ready to see things they may not see at other technology conferences. The talks may not be G rated. There may be cussing. There may be crude drawings of things. If you don’t like risqué content, it’s ok to leave the room and check out the next talk. Nobody will mind at all. And of course it’s ok to speak your mind and blog about it, but please keep things in context.

So to sum up, I’d like to say again that Flashbelt is easily one of the best conferences around, and I will absolutely attend it again and again, and so should you. I also think that Hoss shouldn’t change a thing. I think his talk was enlightening and entertaining, even though it was crude at times and some might even say juvenile, but I don’t believe that there was anything sexist about it. I think his best course of action would be to post a warning at the start of his talks to alert people that there will be drawings of “cocks” and strong language, because TV has warnings and they seem to be OK. And lets be honest here, you’ll likely get stronger language and racier content from a night watching prime time television than from Hoss’ Flashbelt talk.

Tickets are on sale now to this awesome small-ish Flash and design conference. This will be the third year in a row I’ve given a talk here, and it’s easily the best conference in North America.

My talk will be about building and maintaining the YouTube video players, and some lessons and tricks we’ve learned along the way, so if you are interested in very high usage/high performance Flash apps, this should be a good talk for you.

If you are still looking for a Flash/Design conference to attend this summer, I highly recommend Flashbelt.

The best European Flash conference is heading to the states this spring. Flash on the Beach has been happening in Brighton, UK for the last few years and is such a good time, I think everyone should go.

I’ll be heading down to Miami this year to talk about YouTube type things, so if you are curious about using YouTube for a project, or just interested in hearing some stories about a very high performance Flash application, you should come to my session :).

In case you are interested, there’s tons of pictures and writing about past FotB events all over the place. So check it out, and hopefully I’ll see you there.

What does this mean to you, the average user of SWFObject? It means you no longer need to place a copy of the SWFObject script on your own web server, and can instead link to the copy hosted on Google’s servers.

If you are unfamiliar with the AJAX Library API, you can find more information on the Google code site, or continue reading below for some simple examples to get you up and running quickly. SWFObject may not be in the docs on the AJAX Libraries API site yet because it was just added recently, but the team is working on the updated docs now, so check back later if you don’t see the SWFObject specific information.

Now for the business: I imagine that most SWFObject users most likely only use SWFObject and none of the other libraries hosted on the AJAX Libraries site. So here’s a direct link to SWFObject v2.1 that you can simply place on your site, and that’s it:

http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/swfobject/2.1/swfobject.js

Yep, that’s it. Just replace the path to your local copy of swfobject.js with this one and you are done.

Another option is to use the google.load call which is documented here.

The <head> Conference takes place online (via Acrobat Connect) or in a few local hubs around the world. Its going on all weekend, and there’s a ton of interesting talks, so you should check it out.

I’ll be giving a talk at the San Francisco (actually closer to San Jose) hub all about the YouTube video players on Friday at 11am.

It’s taking place at the San Bruno YouTube office this Thursday, July 10th from 10:30am to 5:30pm.

Here’s the blurb about it:

Powered By YouTube is a developer gathering focused on bringing together developers to learn more about the YouTube APIs and Tools. Spend the day at YouTube’s headquarters and learn how to bring YouTube to your website, share best practices, and get hands-on with the APIs. Meet fellow YouTube API developers across a wide range of companies, YouTube engineers and product managers, and leave inspired to enhance your user experience with the YouTube APIs.

Also: It’s free, and you get a free lunch.

If you visit this page in Firefox and click the “push me” button, you will see simply “Ref is:” but no other text. If you visit in with any other browser, you’ll see:
“Ref is: [http://dev.deconcept.com/referer_tester/]“.

The problem is that Firefox doesn’t properly append the referer header to requests made from swfs embedded on the page. Every other browser I’ve tested sends a referer.

How you can help:

Visit the bug page for this issue and “vote” for the bug. DO NOT ADD A COMMENT SAYING SOMETHING LIKE “Yes please fix this bug!”. This will only annoy the developers. Simply “voting” for the bug is enough. You vote for the bug by clicking the “vote” link on the top right side of the page, and putting a check in the box next to the bug and clicking the “Change my votes” on the subsequent page.

Flash on the Beach is a fantastic conference in Brighton at the end of September, and it’s one of the best Flash and design conferences to check out.

Registration is now open, so if you’re looking for an excuse to head to the UK, this is it.

Also, next week is Google I/O (Flight of the Conchords are playing a show there!), which I believe still has a few tickets available, and just next month I’ll be heading off to Flashbelt in Minneapolis, so come say ‘Hi’ if you see me wandering around either of these events.

It uses the YouTube player Javascript API to synchronize a Google Maps widget with the video (based on the current time of the video). It was pretty easy to throw together, it took maybe 4 hours from start to finish, and I’ve never used the Google Maps Javascript API before.

Check it out.

Yes? Then head over to this signup page and let us know you’re coming. The event is on March 27th, 2008 and will be held at the Google Mountain View campus.

p.s. free punch and pie

The project has moved over to the code.google.com website instead of my blog, so go over there and check out the docs and consider upgrading, as the new version is a lot more flexible than v1.5.

I’d like to give a huge thank you to all of the people who contributed and helped us test out the new release, those no longer with us, and of course to Bobby who is easily the biggest contributor to this new version (and has a new design up on his blog!) and has kept the project pushing forward at a good pace.

Moving foward, we’ll be continuing to work with Adobe to get the word out about SWFObject 2.

1. FiTC: Toronto (April 19-22, Toronto, Canada) – Always a good time Flash conference up in The Canadia. I’ll be giving a talk about the new YouTube API features we announced today, specifically the Flash and Javascript player control APIs and about the new Chromeless player.
2. Google I/O (May 28-29, San Francisco, CA) – A conference all about Google apps and how to use them. I’ll be giving a talk on using the YouTube player APIs and Chromeless player.
3. Flashbelt (June 10-13, Minneapolis, MN) – One of my favorite Flash conferences is back this year with a ton of great speakers. I’ll be giving a presentation on lessons learned while rebuilding the YouTube video players from scratch.
4. Singularity (October 24-26th, Everywhere) – Singularity is a new ‘conference’ that takes place online – all sessions are broadcast over the internet, and there’s a TON of speakers for this thing. It will be very interesting to see how it turns out – I think it has the potential to change the way technology conferences happen online.

I think that’s about it for now. I’m interested in talking about the YouTube API stuff at more conferences. So if you are running a conference and would be interested in having me speak, please let me know.

Here’s some general info on Google intern programs.

If you know a student who might be interested let me know, or you can forward your resume directly to Fred Soriano here at YouTube.

We’re also looking for a full time Flash developer, if you know anyone.

I haven’t posted anything in quite a while, but I suppose I’ve been busy enough to justify it. So, I’ll start with an update to what I’ve been doing over the last few months:

1. Rebuilding the YouTube video players. Nearly from scratch. More on this later.
2. Helping out here and there with SWFObject 2.0 – It’s nearly complete, go try it out. This is a completely rewritten version (sorry, not backwards compatible), but we think it’s an overall better solution to any other Flash embed method out there.
3. We got a puppy.
4. Mostly enjoying San Francisco. The city is a pretty cool place to live. If you’re a nerd. So far it doesn’t quite measure up to New York City, but it’s still growing on me. My main complaint is that everyone here is crazy crazy crazy about the hot new web startups or who you work for and what you can do for them. New York had a little bit of this, but at the same time there was so much other diversity of interests it just seemed so much more interesting. I used to think that a city full of nerds would be awesome, but now I’m not so sure. Anyway, enough of the SF bashing :).

In a couple of weeks I’ll be heading off to my first SXSW. Should be very exciting, as I normally just hang out with Flash or Javascript nerd conferences, but this one seems so much bigger.

The new version is a complete rewrite from SWFObject 1.5, so we’ll need lots of testing before we officially launch it and replace the older SWFObject and UFO scripts, and since we have Adobe involved, they will be including this embed system in the Adobe authoring tools in the future.

The SWFObject project is moving to Google Code, where you can download the source from svn, grab the latest build, or file bugs or read documentation.

I’ve also created a new Google Group for SWFObject support questions and discussion.

If you are at MAX today, our presentation is at 2:45pm in room W-196c and it’s called “Flash Detection and Embedding: An open source solution”.

If you can’t make it today, we’ll be doing it again tomorrw (Wednesday) at 11am in room W-185d.

We also announced that we are now working with Micheal Williams from Adobe – the author of the Adobe Flash Detection kit to make sure SWFFix can cover all the bases and be used by anyone. Very cool!

Go check out the dev blog and grab the files, then read the docs and try it out. Feedback is very welcome, so soak it in and let us know what you think.

It’s got a fantastic lineup if you are into the whole Ajax thing, so I definitely suggest checking it out.

Check out my session outline for more info.

Also: Flashbelt is only 2 weeks away! It’s JUNE already. Time to hit the upper midwest and talk Flash with all the cool Flash nerds again. If you haven’t looked at Flashbelt and are itching for a conference, this will be a nice one to check out.

UPDATE: Apparently, there’s only 50 tickets left for Flashbelt, so get your tickets now if you are planning on going!