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For ten years, since the first landing of Nothing on Earth, we have been working with Flash. This wonderful technology has grown as we have, and in the meanwhile we have acquired an ocean of knowhow and experience that enables us to exploit the vast potential of Flash. We playful beings at Nothing enjoy creating games with Flash (who would have guessed?), but Flash can be used for a plethora of other applications. In our solution sheet (PDF) you will find possibilities how you could benefit from Flash, too. With a professionally designed and programmed application from Nothing, of course!

Nothing has produced the new site www.sfa.ch  for the Swiss Funds Association, a complex, tailor-made solution that integrates seamlessly various elements: content management system (CMS), document management system (DMS), e-shop, closed-user group/ rights management, and an application to send out newsletters. For the migration of legacy content,we specially programmed a handy migration tool. You can find more information on this engaging project in our latest success story (PDF).

For three years already, Nothing has been sponsoring the short film festival Shnit as online partner. This year, the event takes place concurrently in Bern and Köln. Nothing has designed and produced a new website based on the technical platform WordPress. The new shnit.ch is optimised for the iPhone, too. The organisers of Shnit can easily administer the contents via a web interface. A special candy in this year’s programme: Spot’s movie 'Border' will be shown in the movie block 'Bärner Platte'. If you want to meet the Nothings in a relaxed atmosphere, come to Shnit!

Iteam is the online magazine for the employees of Swisscom IT Services. On behalf of Swisscom IT Services we have been publishing Iteam since 2007 (see our success story). In cooperation with Unic, we are currently working on a redesign of the application, with the aim of completely integrating the Swisscom brand into the magazine. Many new features will be added, like article rating and an archive of past issues. The magazine is strictly reserved for internal use of Swisscom employees, but nonetheless you will find some crunchy screenshots on our website.

Nothing has produced the next-generation website of the Swiss Funds Association (SFA). A tailor-made Content Management System (CMS) offers highest usability for the administration of the complex, multi-lingual contents of the site. The website is full of special features like a newsletter, a closed user group section and a document manager. Development lasted several months and included the migration of existing data with easy-to-use migration tools to convert legacy content and integrate documents into the new system.

For Swisslos, Switzerland’s principal lottery organisation, we have already produced Guided Tours to their games in the past. Now Swisslos has launched Euro Millions Systems, where you can increase your chances by betting on combinations of a larger set of numbers and stars. Nothing designed the online layout for the System game and produced again the Guided Tours that explain how to play and win. Once more, we used screen captures and flash video movies with the same underlying presentation framework.

To present complex information in an easily accessible way is a specialty of Nothing. The BKW energy landscape makes use of a complex mix of communication channels, addressing the visitor on different levels. The landscape with its 3D objects leads to the information texts, and these in turn are enriched with audio and video elements. Read all the details about this fascinating production in our new success story.

Inveterate monarchists and other people from the remote recesses of space might not be aware that a ‘parliament’ is an institution that allows earth-dwellers to elevate their chronic litigiousness to an art form. Nothing has created an information application for the presentation of the history of the Swiss Parliament allowing you to read, hear and watch the salient events in texts, images and videos. On behalf of the Parliamentary Services, Nothing has drawn up the concept of the application and implemented it graphically and technically. Of course, we used Flash and Flex, the state-of-the-art technologies for such a rich internet application (RIA).

Our Flash Video Player Fluffy has been downloaded more than 25’000 times in the first half of the year. Now we release a new version that not only plays the Flash Video (FLV) format, but also the newer, more efficient MP4 (H.264)! Existing installations will be upgraded via auto-update in the coming days. Whoever hasn’t tried out Fluffy, yet, can download the video player here for free. Our Taikonauts are already planning the following release. Please feel free to communicate your feature requests in the Fluffy forum.

Friday, 26 June: A threesome from Nothing takes centre-stage at the event ‚Flash at the Lake‘ in Zurich. Commander Zap, assisted by Tec and Raiden, presents a workshop on ‘The Workflow between Designer and Developer’. Everybody is very satisfied with this first edition of FATL: The presentations and workshops have been fascinating, the get-together among flashers relaxed and stimulating. Read Zap’s report in the Blog, and find some more impressions in text and photo. Nothing will most certainly participate again next year! 

The Swiss Flash User Group met on 26 May in Bern in the ops room of the Nothing rocket. Our flash heroes Key and Tec gave two exciting presentations. Key spoke about multiplayer games with the SmartFoxServer, while Tec’s contribution "divide, test and conquer" showed how to use unit tests and frameworks to produce RIA more efficiently. Blop gave a general introduction into what unit tests are all about. It was the last meeting of the SFUG before the much anticipated 'Flash at the Lake' event.

On 26-27 June, the first independent flash conference of Switzerland will take place at the 'Rote Fabrik' on Lake Zurich. Of course, Flash specialist Nothing will be represented in style! Commander Zap will lead the workshop  ‘Make that work flow!’ and share invaluable knowledge regarding the cooperation between designers and developers. Preparing graphical assets in Photoshop, Illustrator and the Flash IDE will be a core topic of this workshop. Participants will see practical examples and receive useful knowhow to take back into their daily work. Book now, the number of participants is limited!

Nothing is knitting its network of Flash-contacts not only in Switzerland, but also in the Netherlands. We are sponsors of the Adobe User Group Nederland and are talent-scouting for a Flash developer to join us in our ‘ruimteschip‘ (spaceship). That’s how our job advertisement looks in Dutch. „Spannende avonturen wachten op je!“- Oh yeah!