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30 Minutes with Active Media Architects

Flash and PHP are becoming a popular pair of technologies. It seems that every time I turn around, I'm seeing new Flash front-ends that are talking to PHP back-ends and doing some very interesting things. One of the most interesting things I've seen though has to be MyKleenexTissue.com. I was given the opportunity to sit down and talk with Andy Lintner, Director of Application Development, Jon Aniano, General Manager, and Jeff Kazmierski, President and Creative Director; all of Active Media Architects, the team behind MyKleenexTissue.com. Along the way we talked about the technology decisions they made, and the process they used for development.

Flex and PHP: Party in the Front, Business in the Back

Since the first time I really saw and understood what Flash was and did, I’ve been jealous of what Flash designers could do. Beyond just the cute animations for banner ads and games, Flash designers have always had a much more fine-grained control on their environment that HTML allows for. Besides my innate inability to design anything like a usable interface, the main drawback that has kept me from exploiting Flash is I never could get my head around the “Movie Timeline” metaphor for programming. As we say back home, “It just ain’t right.” That all changed with Flex. Now programmers can work with tools they are comfortable with and still take advantage of all of Flash’s…well, flash. Flex won’t help developers like me design eye-pleasing interfaces any more than a new pencil would improve my inability to draw. However, I can now put much more useful interfaces on my back-end code.

Flash and PHP in On-Line Gaming

Athlon Sports is tucked away in a non-descript building near downtown Nashville. Inside is a 40 year old company, well respected in their field that has been, not so quietly, moving into the world of on-line games.