BRUSCA

Using Online Video to Market Your Business

Posted by Brusca under Australia Zoo, Design, Flash

Recently a colleague (Yvette Adams @ www.thecreativecollective.com.au) invited me to speak at a monthly meeting in the local region called “Web Wednesday”. The focus of this meeting was how to market and build your business by using online video. I have made a point to focus heavily on online video in the past 4-5 years as there has been a big shift over that period and it is still evolving. With the continuing advancements of broadband, the Flash player and Flash Media Server and sites such as www.youtube.com, www.vimeo.com and content providers www.hulu.com and www.revision3.com now is the time to start moving your business into the world of online video.

I could talk in detail about a lot of the points in the following SlideShare presentation for hours but this presentation was more geared towards touching on the important elements of online video and related marketing techniques. We even got a mention in the Sunshine Coast Daily.

Check out the SlideShare power point article below for more details and links to some awesome examples. I think I will blog in detail about some of these examples in the near future.

Sunshine Coast Daily article

Rescue Unit to the Rescue

Posted by Brusca under Australia Zoo

Currently working on a new web project with the Australia Zoo Rescue Unit, which is extremely exciting for me. Unfortunately not a lot of people know about the Rescue Unit and the amount of work they do. It is nothing short of amazing the amount of animals they rescue on a daily basis. I have been lucky enough to travel with the Rescue Unit once a week for the last 5 weeks. They are an awesome crew and are all amazing characters.

Everyday is a different set of circumstances and different animals requiring the help of the Rescue Unit. Turtles, Kangaroos, Koalas, Carpet Pythons. The list is long and every day they average 10 or so rescues. In 2008 alone they accumulated over 5000 rescues. You can currently catch the Rescue Unit on the below links.

Rescue Unit facebook profile

Rescue Unit Twitter

New Actionscript 3 Australia Zoo Banners

Posted by Brusca under Adobe, Australia Zoo, Flash

We just launched the new home page for the Australia Zoo website. This has some very nice features. New flash banners and an Ajax accordion to help deliver fresh daily content.

Below are some examples of the flash banners and a flow of how the display object works loading in the flash banners.

The home page flash banner loads in external (swf) banners and can currently take 1,2 or 3 banners rotating through. Each banner can have sound but is not critical and is developed to handle both regardless.

The initial swf stage file is only 24kb and loads each banner individually on a Timer() function. The stage is set to scale and will align the externally loaded banners to the center of the stage upon loading and if the stage is re sized.

Banner 1 of the new Australia Zoo Banners

Whale watching banner, from the new Australia Zoo banners

Showing the display objects and how they load the flash banners

Above you will see the displayObject layout for loading in the external banners. As mentioned the banners load in on a Timer() function and iterate through the length of a banner array, which is being passed through the swf object embedded in the page. This allows us to develop banners and add them dynamically without having to alter a core file.

If an individual banner has an existing sound file, this is also loaded externally to the swf file and stops the Timer() function until the sound has completed playing. Once sound is completed playing the timer will start and continue to rotate through the banners.

Also displayed at the bottom left of the banners are banner buttons, allowing a user to click through to a banner at anytime.

There is some more work to be done on fine tuning these. Creating AS3 packages, making the banners even more modulated. Allowing for the sound to be turned off permanently using stored objects so upon multiple refreshes the sound is switched off.

Check them out here www.australiazoo.com.au.