I have long wondered about the appeal of having song clips as your phone ringtone. Quite frankly, I just don’t get it. Much like I didn’t get the time I went to a club and people were trying to dance to a Nine Inch Nails song.

Don’t get me wrong. Being able to change the ringtone on your phone is definitely worthwhile if you’re changing it to a louder tone, or a more effective ringing pattern — it’s just the song thing I don’t get. I am baffled that the ringtone industry is as big as it is! Do people really change their ringtones that often?

Hmm…maybe I’m getting old. Although I did hear one particular ringtone that I quite enjoyed — it was the theme song for Super Mario Bros! Now who doesn’t love that?!

[UPDATE]: Heh. Apparently I wasn’t the only one thinking about ringtones lately.

A very fun little quiz for you font aficionados out there. I got a 32/34 — bummer.

A little bit ago I posted about SoDA but I did not know exactly what the program was and I have yet to receive any updates on it.

Today, I decided to follow-up and see if I could gain any more knowledge on this new organization - and trusty ol’ Google didn’t disappoint - granted I’m a little late. SoDA is an Adobe-sponsored organization with a goal “to Drive Best Practices and Industry Guidelines” in the interactive design community. It is composed of 18 world renowned digital agencies which will

“meet regularly to address issues such as technical complexity, rapid changes in content distribution, scaling issues, timelines and technology’s impact on budgets — all of which effect the quality, innovation and accessibility of digital media.”

As SoDA’s role in the community becomes clearer, I am sure we will be hearing more about it. As a matter-of-fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Adobe makes a big hoopla over this at FlashForward in August, where all of these agencies are usually gathered for Adobe’s big keynote.

Of particular interest to me is the opportunity SoDA has to fill the gap left by AIGA in interactive media and my hopes are that it does not become just another marketing organization, or worse yet, another developer conference (we have plenty of those), but instead, focuses more heavily on art and design using interactive media as its canvas. One can only hope.

Read the full press-release | Visit SoDA Website

About a week ago I decided to finally give AS3 a real test drive as every other attempt I have made to understand the language has ended up in complete frustration that it doesn’t do things the way I’m used to. I have to say the experience has been painful, but I am beginning to understand (albeit slightly) how to work with classes and objects and all that fancy stuff.

[Warning: Geek-talk ahead]
Today, I ran into a particularly interesting problem. In AS2, any time you referenced Stage…from anywhere, Flash knew what you were talking about. In AS3, it’s not that simple. Sometimes you will want to reference stage from a class that hasn’t yet added anything to the DisplayObject (in other words, you haven’t used any addChild commands yet), and therefore Flash has no clue what the stage is, therefore throwing stage = null.
Read More…

I have just signed up for this year’s Flashbelt event to be held June 9th — 11th in Minneapolis. This will be my first time at this particular event as I have opted not to attend in the past. However, it seems like the event is gaining momentum and is getting some interesting speakers this year which I wouldn’t mind listening to. I’m also hoping to get a glimpse on what’s in Flash’s horizon, as it seems there are a number of recent developments (the release of AIR, the slow adoption of AS3, Microsoft’s Silverlight, etc) that might make for an interesting Adobe Keynote. Plus, it’s never a bad idea to get a handle on what everyone else is up to.

Space is limited (only 400 attendees) and the price is right, so I hope to see some of you there.