I’m actually kind of interested in seeing the upcoming CG version of the Dr. Seuss classic, but I’m perplexed as to why such a blockbuster film would have an Apple-only mobile version of its web site. I mean, even if Apple is giving Universal (or whoever) wads of cash for some kind of exclusive mobile deal, it still seems like a terrible idea to make your site available to only a fraction of the mobile web. Unless, of course, we’re talking really huge wads of cash, I guess. The kicker for me, though, is that the desktop version of the site is built in Flash. How weird is that?

Android: 'But I thought you liked green!'

Addendum

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, I tried to visit the official movie site on my Android phone and was greeted with this notice:

No Lorax for you!

Upon clicking “OK” I saw a lovely white screen. That’s it. No simplified version of the site, no hold page, not even any text. Just a blank white screen. And, see, here’s the thing: they are apparently proactively deciding not to show me any kind of site at all simply because I’m not visiting with an iPhone or iPad. It’s astonishing to me.

I know this doesn’t rise to the level of importance of, say, starving children in Africa, but I’m tempted to stage a boycott of the movie simply because of this practice. Yeah, I know: good luck with that. Nonetheless, the very idea of dividing up the web based on who has what device is completely contrary to the concepts of open standards, net neutrality and the like. It’s not a behavior I want to reward with my hard-earned dollars. It is kind of par for the course for Apple, however, although it’s still unclear to me exactly what – if anything – Apple has to do with this particular instance.

Taking care of bisniess

If I ever meet these marketing geniuses, I’ll be really tempted to ask, “How are
ings?”

On a more serious note, I’m trying to get used to drawing in ToonBoom’s Animate Pro. I’m not super great at it yet.

Animate Pro practice

Good news, bad news.

And some sketches, done in MyPaint:

Who are these people?

What the hell, Flash?

Open source is the way and the truth and the light. Why? Because closed source expensive stuff isn’t really any better plus it’s closed source and expensive. And don’t give me that “industry standard” crap. It’s only industry standard because too many sheep buy what the advertisers tell them to buy. I know from experience: whatever it is you are trying to program or create, you can do it with open source software. And if everybody who uses Adobe products (for instance) took 1/100th of the money they gave to Adobe and contributed it instead to the open source counterpart projects, everybody would win.

Except, of course, for Adobe.

Which means everybody would win.

By the way, if you need to make a .swf and you absolutely must get your proprietary rocks off, get KoolMoves. It does anything you’d want to do and costs less than 1/10th what you’d pay for Flash. And, on top of that, the developer is an actual person that you can talk to. Imagine that.

3DMagix, 3DMagixPro, IllusionMage, scam

If you’d like to help stop the scam, here’s how:

A grass-roots solution is to push 3DMagix and IllusionMage from the top search results in Google, and replace them with a link to the article on Blender.org. This should warn people who are about to buy this ‘product’.

To do so, we’ll need as MANY well-formed incoming links on that page. Be sure to use the names 3DMagix and IllusionMage in the text part of the link. Here’s a piece of code that you can use on your own website:

<a href="http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-foundation/press/re-branding-blender/">3DMagix, 3DMagixPro, IllusionMage, scam</a>

Update: I won! Thanks for the help!