Include Digital are proud to announce that we have been retained by FremantleMedia to design and build a series of branded HTML emails. The six newsletter emails will allow Fremantle Archive Sales to keep clients informed of company and industry news whilst continuing to strengthen their profile in the market place.

The partnership has formed following the successful Sunny Side of the Doc email campaign earlier this year which saw Fremantle Archive Sales enjoying their busiest festival ever.

The emails themselves will be sent using Inbox Ally, Include Digital’s bespoke email system. The tool automates the process of inserting unique tracking links and provides comprehensive usage statistics that can be used to analyse the success of each communication in real-world terms.

The initial email is due to launch in early December.

Adobe have updated Flash Player 9 to support full-screen playback in both the standalone and browser-based players.

Full-screen playback is subject to a number of security restrictions: keyboard entry is disabled when this mode is active, presumably to prevent covert logging using transparent Flash content. Thankfully, full-screen mode can only be initiated by user interaction.

This new feature is bound to be popular on sites hosting video content - YouTube and its many imitators are sure to make use of this feature in the coming months.

More information is available over at Adobe Labs.

For a recent project, I needed to make a call to a Flash function from a link in the HTML page in which it was embedded. In the past I’ve done this many times but, as circumstance would have it, not for a couple of years or so. To refresh my distinctly blurred recollection of the methodology, I decided to consult Google.

I quickly found an example of the code with which I was familiar. The approach uses JavaScript to access the the Flash object’s id attribute and then calls its SetVariable() method, passing a string variable name followed by a value. Within the Flash file, a constantly looping script (or a ‘Watch’ed variable for those of you with a more CPU-sympathetic outlook) is used to detect changes in the value of the variable. It is then simple to map values to functions and all’s good.

Except it was buggy at best. For non-IE browsers, this method required the ’swliveconnect=true’ attribute to be added to the EMBED tag, and this provided reasonable compatibility across PC browsers. Sadly however, Mac IE users were left wondering if their mouse button had broken.

So what are the alternatives? If you’re publishing for Flash player 8 (or having fun with AS3 and Flash player 9) the ExternalInterface class is the way to go, providing a native API which makes player to container communication a breeze.

In this instance, however, I was publishing for Flash player 7 and the overwhelming weight of public opinion seemed to favour OSFlash’s Flash Javascript Integration Kit. It looked good; it works “across all major browsers and operating systems” and it’s also open source. So I downloaded the latest release, and set about making JavaScript and Flash the best of friends. I just wasn’t ready for the hours of frustration that followed.

It turned out that two errors in the online sample code were the source of my frustrations:

1. To access a method of your Flash file, you first need to create an instance of the FlashProxy JavaScript class which forwards the requests on to the included Flash gateway SWF. Create an instance according to the sample on OSFlash but disregard the parameters given by way of an example. The FlashProxy constructor takes two parameters only, the first is the unique id used to reference the Flash object, the second if the location of the gateway SWF. The Flash object id should not be included in the argument list.
2. The FlashTag JavaScript class provides the functionality to embed the player on the web page. Unfortunately, it simply doesn’t have the addFlashVars() method referred to on the site. Instead use the setFlashvars() method.

I’ve since found that the documentation included with the download describes the deployment process correctly. It’s a little late for me, but if you’re having install troubles, ditch the web instructions and update your code with the above and all should work a treat.

An invite to the private beta of Microsoft’s user-generated video site Soapbox arrived in my inbox today. A direct rival to Google’s YouTube, is Soapbox yet another example of too little too late from Redmond?

The welcome screen upon login promised much. Soapbox certainly looks more appealing than YouTube:

(Click the screenshot above to see a larger version).

Proceeding to the main application interface, I wasn’t disappointed. Navigation throughout is a very fluid, Flash-based experience, which works excellently for video-based content.

Searching for content proved very easy: both category selection and free text search were very responsive, and delivered appropriate results. As one would expect from any aspiring Web 2.0 application, all search results are delivered without refreshing the page.

The video player seems more refined that YouTube’s: the core controls are simple and clear, and the tools for rating, tagging and sharing content are equally straight forward. However, it does suffer one fairly irritating flaw; the fullscreen link fails miserably in Firefox on OSX, but as this is in beta, it’s likely this will be fixed prior to launch.

(Click the screenshot above to see a larger version).

Soapbox looks like it could be a real contender. Microsoft are sure to throw their considerable weight behind it, but they’ll have a real fight on their hands given YouTube’s total dominance in the field of user-generate video.

Google have launched Google Docs, yet another online application. Merging Google Spreadsheets with Docs (originally Writely, purchased by Google earlier this year), the service is being billed as “Google Docs & Spreadsheets”. Not the most imaginative of titles, but Google Office is sure to be upon us within the next twelve months.

I can’t help but wonder: is there really any demand for this? If you’re not interested in or and can’t afford to use Microsoft Office, there are numerous options available, including the very capable OpenOffice.

Google appear hell-bent on taking over the world: they know what you search for, they’d like to listen to your conversations, control your email, offer maps and satellite photography, productivity tools…. a digital Kim Jong il?

Include Digital, in colloboration with SOUK Response, have completed work on a Flash tour showcasing the features and benefits of mymarket’s online ordering and fulfilment application.

Provided as an alternative to the existing HTML tour, the aim of the Flash version was to highlight the key advantages of using the online service over more traditional ordering methods.

Google seem set to purchase video sharing site YouTube in a staggering $1.6 billion deal, if rumours are to be believed. Google’s own video service has long played second-fiddle to YouTube, which is far and away the most popular video site on the ‘net; as Google like to dominate every market they operate in, it’s little surprise that they now have YouTube in their sites.