You won't be able to add additional storage. In a its cheapest form, it has 16GB of storage. That cannot be expanded. Think how many pictures and music you currently have on your netbook or laptop.

It won't play music on the web. Last.FM, Facebook, YouTube, Hyves, MySpace and a myriad of other websites use Flash to let you listen to music. "The best way to experience the web" is as a deaf person.

You won't be able to connect to network or USB printers. This rules out the iPad as a business tool. Unless you absolutely never have to print anything out.

You won't be able to connect to external storage devices. You won't be able to connect to your Network Storage or other laptops - Windows, Mac or Linux.

It has no camera, so there won't be any videochat. Almost all current netbooks and laptops have a built-in webcam. And you won't be able to add an external webcam because, you guessed it, no USB support. There's also no mention of a microphone so even skyping won't work. Oh, and there's no USB support so no USB microphones either.

It won't play video on the web. Sure, it will have its built-in YouTube app, but since it doesn't have multitasking, that means you will have to stop browsing and watch the movie. When the movie is finished, you'll have to start the browser again. Manually. That's acceptable for a Smartphone, but not for a tablet. And you certainly won't be able to watch MySpace video. Or Vimeo. Or Blip.TV. All of which are very good and valid video sites with extremely good content.

There's no easy way to type text on the tablet. And you can't add a USB keyboard. Because it has no USB. So don't expect to type long mails to your mother - which you could just Skype if you had a webcam. Or even a built-in microphone.

For those of you who think the absence of Flash is good because "you browse with Flash turned off anyway". That is not entirely true for most. Most run with a Flash blocker which allows them to turn Flash ON every once in a while to experience additional content on a website. But you don't even have that choice. There is no Flash. And I highly doubt that it will have HTML5 video support.

So there. No iPad for me. I'll stick to my Acer Netbook for couch surfing.

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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.

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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) {}
 

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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.

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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.

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The PV3D implementation doesn't really add to the quality of the application, though. There's nothing to interact with but the navigational buttons. No clicking on trees, no walking back or front ...

There is however the "make your own" option which allows you do some mashuppy stuff with video's and voiceovers. I still don't get the meaning behind this concept, but it makes me wonder why they did it in Flash.

Edit: it looks like Microsoft came around and replaced the Flash by Silverlight.

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The problem is the way UI items are styled. While I can live with, and certainly appreciate, custom icons for maximising, minimising and hiding windows, I have a hard time dealing with the custom scrollbars, the dropdownboxes that simply look and feel different ...

Somehow, it never bothered me while running in a browser because my mind was set on "it's Flash, it's in a browser, it's a plug-in, it's not running on your O/S so it doesn't have to behave like it's running on your O/S".

But now, we have AIR and, from a user POV, AIR is at least making it look like the application is running on my O/S. It's a detached window, floating around on my desktop and so I expect it to look more like it belongs on my desktop and not in a browser.

The whole UI thing is also a lot less bothersome on the MacBook. On the Wintop, it seems ... out of place. It makes all AIR applications look like a gadget instead of an application. It's okay for an application like Thwirl which I consider to be a gadget, but it may actually make life just a little more difficult for full-blown AIR applications to make it onto the commercial market.

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This is a follow-up on Visualisations.

Unfortunately, that also resulted in me throwing the concept of the player around and build a proper Flex application. Getting my head around the complete system took me about a day, but once I got my head around it fully (some stretching was required), I was amazed by the Power of FlexBuilder. Hallelujah!

So, here is the next version of the SBMP3. It contains a control panel that allows you to modify all the parameters and also allows you to go fullscreen. Unfortunately, you're still stuck with the samples from my band but I promise to fix that in another update.

One final note: I'm still getting the random security errors. I can't find anything on the web about complete random security errors.

Press the fullscreen button (bottom-right) to enter fullscreen and enjoy the viewer fully. Or, you can open the player full-window so you can play around with height and width ratios.

Adjust the sample frequency depending on the size of the viewport. The smaller the stage, the higher your sample_width should be for maximum effect. The "bubbly" visualisations profit from a little blur and solid fills, especially when viewed fullscreen.

If you find some "sweet settings", be sure to post them in a comment.

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