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February 27th, 2009 by: Josh
The below list matches the user base of popular social networking sites to the population of countries.
MySpace would be: 
Indonesia
Myspace users represent nearly 3.5% of the entire worlds population.
- Myspace user base: 253,145,404
- Populations of Indonesia: 229,550,810
Facebook would be: 
Pakistan
Facebook would be the 6th biggest country in the world. After MySpace, Facebook is the 2nd biggest social networking site.
- Facebook user base: 175,000,000
- Population of Pakistan: 165,704,000
Habbo would be: 
Japan
Not bad considering that Japan has been around since 30,000 BCE (as opposed to Habbo’s 8 years in existence).
- Habbo user base: 117,000,000
- Population of Japan: 127,704,000
Friendster would be: 
Philippines
Appropriate, as Friendster is extremely popular in th Asia-Paciifc region of the world and especially in the Philippines.
- Friendster population: 90,000,000
- Population of the Philippines: 90,457,200
Xanga would be: 
Afganistan
Though a smaller social networking site, Xanga would still be larger than 176 other countries (and non-sovereign entities).
- Xanga user-base: 27,000,000
- Population of Afghanistan: 27,145,000
LiveJournal Would be: 
Angola
The 59th biggest county. Both entities have been accused of shady dealings in Russia…
- LiveJournal: 17,564,977
- Population of Angola: 17,024,000
Twitter would be: 
Latvia
The smallest on my list, Twitter would still be larger than almost half the countries (and non-sovereign nations) in the world.
- Twitter user base: 2,200,000
- Population of Latvia: 2,261,100
As usual, all facts and data were made up completely.
List of social networking websites – Wikipedia
List of countries by population – Wikipedia
February 27th, 2009 | Tags: Country, Facebook, Habbo, MySpace, Size, Social Networks
Posted in: iD Tech Bloggers
February 25th, 2009 by: admin
I’ve created a video tutorial breaking down in 10 minutes how to make a Flash defender game. If you’d like to check out the game and source, they are also available.
Play the game: http://forum.internaldrive.com/files/vlog/Yadder.swf
Download the source: http://forum.internaldrive.com/files/vlog/VLog1Yadder_src.zip
February 25th, 2009 | Tags: Actionscript, defender, Flash, game, tutorial, video
Posted in: iD Tech Bloggers
February 24th, 2009 by: Justin
The temptation is great. Filters are awesome. Everyone has their own artistic vision, but after the shiny-newness of all those cool Alien Skin filters we all love to use wears off a bit, you may want to take your photos to the next level, and the way to do that is by subtle changes.
Here is a before-and-after. The original is a film photograph I took in my photo studio, and had printed by my high-end local photo shop. Because they have color chemistry, their black-and-white prints always come out as sepia. (CLick on image to see it larger.)
The modified photo has gone through the subtle set of changes that I feel makes for a stronger photo. In this case, the subject matter is neutral, and therefore could be considered a bit boring, but I chose it because there is nothing to take away your interest from the pure processing differences between the two images.
You want the nitty-gritty on the changes I made, don’t you! Well, I’ll give you the basics here, and stay tuned for the video version, with the walkthrough of the changes I’ve made.
First, I scanned the image with all presets off – no in-scanner-sharpening or anything like that. I cranked up the brightness in the brightness/contrast adjustment until the histogram shows the brightest part of the photo nearly at the right edge. Contrast is also increased to give more drama. Adjustments/Black and White is next, bringing it back from sepia to true greyscale. Some people prefer sepia, but I’m showing you what I personally chose, so there you are. A little bit of vignetting is added through the filter/distort/lens correction selection, and there you have it. I didn’t do anything drastic. Practice with these few adjustments and see how much better your own photos start to look!
February 24th, 2009 | Tags: contrast, filters, id tech, photo, photographs, photography, Photoshop CS4, tutorial
Posted in: iD Tech Bloggers
February 21st, 2009 by: Ryan
Specialty camps bring out competition
By Alan Dessof
February 21st, 2009
Posted in: American University, College of William & Mary, iD In The News, Towson University, University of Virginia
February 13th, 2009 by: Donna
You may have already heard the news, but just in case you haven’t, iD Tech Camps has expanded to several new locations for our 2009 season! Recognizing the importance of exposing students to the wonderful world of technology, the arts, science, and beyond, we’ve also introduced the iD Programming Academy for teens ages 13-18. Students in this program will stay at Stanford University, learn from and personally work with industry professionals and real NASA researchers.
Be sure to check out our new and exciting locations, listed below. Our goal was to both respond to parent and student feedback about where they’d like to see our camps and simultaneously spread out to new and awesome areas.
• Stanford University -New Programming Academy
• Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO
• Wesleyan University in Middleton, CT
• Rollins College in Orlando, FL
• Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN
• University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS
• Long Island Summer Camp in Long Island, NY
• New York University (NYU) in New York, NY
• Ohio State University in Columbus, OH
• American University in Washington D.C.
• McGill University-New iD Film Academy Location in Montreal, Quebec
We also offer Continuing Education Units for our teen students! Get a jump start on your college units at iD Tech Camps and our Teen Academies!
February 13th, 2009 | Tags: summer camp, summer camp locations, teen summer camps
Posted in: iD Tech Camps, Locations, Uncategorized
February 13th, 2009 by: admin
Flex gives you a great deal of control when skinning your applications, but some of the options are less apparent than others. Although styling individual components of an application is easy accomplished through CSS file inclusion, there are global methods too.
The Pre-Loader
If your project is ambitious, you’ll probably want to design your own pre-loader to replace the default Flex one. If you aren’t that interested in re-skinning the default, however, you can simply turn that default Flex-blue pre-loader off. In your application MXML declaration, add usePreloader=”false”, like so:
Getting Rid of the Default Flex Blue
You know it when you see it – a Flash app starts to load and you see that familiar blue (#869ca7, or this color, in case you were wondering). Tracking down all the places it crops up can be a pain, but setting the default background color in your Flex Compiler options is an easy way. Right-click on a project, then choose Properties. Select compiler options and you’ll see the screen shown here. Simply add -default-background-color 0x######, where ###### is the html color code you want to use. Now Flex will generate the html template files with your color instead of the dreadful blue.
Changing the Skin Globally
You’ll also notice in the screen shot above that I have another option highlighted: -theme ‘myflexskin.css’. Using this option you can set the global (per project) use of that particular CSS file, versus having to include it individually in each MXML file.
February 13th, 2009 | Tags: code, css, flex, skin, style, theme
Posted in: iD Tech Bloggers
February 13th, 2009 by: Josh
I usually breeze past the “terms and conditions” sections of most software installs and on-line applications and so do you. Usually this is justified, but you may want to take a closer look when it comes to social networking sites, after all, you are intrusting them with your identity and that is not something to take lightly.
Here is an excerpt of the Facebook terms and conditions (http://www.facebook.com/terms.php “Licenses” section, don’t worry about actually reading this legal jargon, I surmise it below).
You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.
Summary:
1) Facebook can use any content that you post to make money, however they see fit, they are not obligated to give you credit or remunerate you.
2) Facebook may alter any content you post in any way they see fit.
3) Facebook can use your name, picture and essentially your identity for it owns purposes, with virtually obligation no to you.
Though technically you do retain the “ownership” of this property, as far as I can tell, the utility of that ownership is moot considering what facebook is entitled to. So, be careful surfing the intertubes of social networking sites, this type of clause is fairly common.
February 13th, 2009 | Tags: Content, Facebook, Inelectual Property Law, Terms and Conditions
Posted in: iD Tech Bloggers
February 10th, 2009 by: Pete
Hello iD Nation,
It’s Big Pete! Yesterday I had the chance to head to the User-Generated Content Conference in Silicon Valley at the San Jose Convention Center. I went with two colleagues. If you think of companies like Facebook or MySpace or YouTube…or Craig’sList, then you actually have an idea of what user-generated content is. In a nutshell, it is about letting the customers choose and decide what is important and relevant.
Social Media Conference
I took these pics on my new Blackberry curve (Nextel service). So, the pictures aren’t all that hot. While I’m at it, if I can ask Nextel to upgrade their network, it would be much appreciated. I drive all over the Valley (always hands free!) and there are more dead zones than anyone should have to take. The walkie talkie feature on the phones is awesome for communicating with our summer camp staff, but the Nextel network is spotty and it’s been that way forever. Help!
OK, back to the conference. We got to hear Craig Newmark (Craig’s List Co-Founder) speak. I even snapped a few low-quality photos of the outing.
Pete and Craig. Good buddies!
That’s Craig in the background. You can tell we are highly engaged in conversation! OK, all joking aside, Craig was a pretty cool cat. He is a nerd, and proud of it. But he is sincere, and he had some good reminders and lessons. Here are a few of the things I plucked from his talk:
Fun Facts about Craig’s List:
Craig’s List started in 1994/1994 as an email list serve.
The company started from Craig’s living room in San Francisco.
Today, the site attracts 50 million unique visitors per month and 13 billion page views per month. Wow!
The company is a combination of a business and a community service. It is an interesting hybrid.
To Craig, the internet = inclusion. It is the biggest tent possible.
Craig’s secret for success?
Ask for feedback.
Listen to it.
Do something with the feedback.
Repeat.
Did you know that Craig spends 50% of his time in customer service? Why? So he can listen to feedback and hear what the customers have to say. It seems so basic, doesn’t it? He said one of the hardest things to do is to follow through with good customer service. But, once you master it, you need to do it even better. Keep improving.
Another lesson he preached was “getting out of the way.” He had several examples of how he and his team stepped to the side and allowed the Craig’s List users to lead the way–even if it meant the business had to flex and change.
Finally, Craig talked a lot about creating a “culture of trust.” He said “you don’t need surveys if you are listening carefully.” This is an interesting point. He wants to make sure his site is simple and fast (hence the spartan design and layout) and he wants to make sure it works.
It was a pleasure to meet Craig yesterday. He is pretty unassuming–but very smart and he is actually funny, despite what he says about himself.
Craig Answering Questions
At iD Tech Camps, we use Craig’s List quite a bit for recruiting. It is nice to know the man behind the list is real and genuine.
Until Next Time, Live Long and Prosper!
-Pete
February 10th, 2009
Posted in: CEO's Blog, iD Tech Camps, Summer Camps
February 9th, 2009 by: admin
Most people fluent in Flash Actionscript are familiar with unary and binary operators, but there is also a ternary operator that can be quite useful. First, a refresh on operators:
Unary: count++;
Binary: count = count * 2;
Ternary: var result:String = (count == 0) ? “Empty” : “Not Empty”);
So what does this mean? You can use the ternary form of the if statement as a shorthand. Let’s look at the equivalent full if-else statement:
var result:String;
if (count == 0) result = “Empty”;
else result = “Not Empty”;
Of course, using the ternary operator cuts down on code readability, but three lines can effectively be cut down to one. Remember, the form is this:
(condition) ? ifTrueDoThis : ifFalseDoThis;
February 9th, 2009 | Tags: Actionscript, code, conditionals, CS4, Flash, programming, ternary operations
Posted in: iD Tech Bloggers
February 5th, 2009 by: Jimmy
Today we congratulate Paul Eaker! Paul is the winner of a free week of Day Camp for iD Tech Camps! We are so excited to have your family join the iD Family! Paul is the first Camp Fair Raffle winner of the season. Stay tuned! We’ll be holding 3 more raffles, one per month and announcing future winners here!
Come see us at a camp fair event near you and enter for your chance to win! To find a camp fair in your area, simply call our client service department at 1-888-709-TECH (8324), option 1.
- TeamiD
February 5th, 2009
Posted in: iD Tech Camps
Indonesia
Pakistan
Japan
Philippines
Afganistan
Angola
Latvia
