Incidentally, if you're a serious Flash developer, you should check out the 25 lines contest.

The BBC signed a technology deal with Adobe last year. It enabled the BBC to make their iPlayer Mac-compatible. Replacing Microsoft's WMV and RealSoftware's proprietary formats by Flash Embedded video doubled the video views.

It's of course impossible to attribute this raise only to the Mac community. It proves that embedded Flash Video actually presents a lower threshold, enabling more viewers to take advantage of the iPlayer.

Recently, the BBC ditched Microsoft altogether and will be replacing their Microsoft-backed desktop applications by applications that are based on the Flash/Flex framework.

It's all the more an interesting development since the Dutch national television recently came under fire when they adopted Microsoft Silverlight technology to stream the European Soccer Championship.

I've been trying to perform Basic HTTP Authentication using Flex/Air yesterday and couldn't figure out what was wrong - until I RTFM'd and found out that .encode only encodes and returns void. One needs to .flush() to get the encoded data back.

 
private function loadSomething():void
{
	var strUserName:String = 'foo';
	var strPassword:String = 'bar';
 
	var myLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
	var myRequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest();
	var authEncoder:Base64Encoder = new Base64Encoder();
 
	var authHeader:URLRequestHeader = new URLRequestHeader();
	authHeader.name = 'Authorization';
	authEncoder.encode(strUserName + ':' + strPassword);
	authHeader.value = 'Basic ' + authEncoder.flush();
 
	myRequest.requestHeaders.push (authHeader);
	myRequest.url = "http://yourown.domain/your/url";
	myRequest.method = URLRequestMethod.GET;
 
	myLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, urlLoaded);
	myLoader.load(myRequest);	
 
}
 
function urlLoaded(e:Event) {}
 

Peter Elst just launched riajobs.org. Riajobs.org is a community-based jobboard. Amazingly enough, the site is free - even for companies that want to post jobs. There's of course the odd feature that requires a fee but even then, 20 percent of the monthly revenue will be donated to charity.

As I write this entry, jobs are being added to the site. The few jobs currently posted originate from all over the globe. Community support looks strong and will be a major success factor for riajobs.org.

The only thing this site needs is a little space for potential candidates and freelancers to leave an impression and the matchmaking site will be complete. And whaddayaknow? Peter already added that to the list of features to be added "in the near future".

Let's hope riajobs.org is not going to turn into another "enter ALL of your details including highschool friends and that female teacher you had a crush on and all the different types of pasta you've eaten in your life and all of the places you visited" setup, but, instead, a simple 1-minute setup. I've always felt that careersites asked way too much information. Just the basics and company and candidate will sort things out themselves, thank you very much.

I believe "niche" websites like this will become the ultimate future. A small company in the Netherlands has set-up a jobsite aimed solely at the creative industry and it's becoming increasingly popular as well.

Let's root for riajobs.org! From the community, for the community and, eventually, by the community.

Silverlight has very few to no features that do not exist in Flash or that cannot be created in Flash. Still, Silverlight fanboys insist on holding a peeing contest with Flash users.

Another painful example of this can be found at Tweakers.net which is a Dutch tech-site. The article reports on Dutch public television using Flash for online TV. A previous article on a Dutch Public Television using Silverlight already resulted in a Flash-Bash in which some people threw around "But Silverlight can do ... " statements, only to be countered by Flash-savvy people.

There are good and valid reasons for choosing Silverlight over Flash. For organisations that are deeply rooted in Microsoft development, with money invested in Visual Studio and .NET development, Silverlight is a logical choice. But please, stop making it all about features - neither Adobe nor Microsoft would be foolish enough to leave out obvious options and with Flash 10 on the way, possible existing gaps will be closed and the difference will be minimised.

Instead, both parties should be happy with the competition because it will probably mean a better effort from the developing companies.