Out of Inspiration by Roy Hoes
I think I spend too much time going through sites, threads, rss feeds, etc all for one thing… inspiration.
I love it and I think it takes over too much of my time. Ask any of my co-workers and friends. I’m sure they’ll tell you daily horror stories of me sending them links upon links that I find interesting and inspiring. I’m not really sure why I do this and why I love going through so much media. I think if you ask some people they will say “I need it to stay ahead of the curve” or “I need to think of a new idea for a website design”. They will pour through books and websites. It’s almost like getting a fix for that great work that just makes you say “I want to do that!” Suddenly, a lightbulb is lit and you’re full of ideas and your second wind has just sprung. I don’t know about you but this type of rush keeps me motivated, allowing me to go through the “real” days of work. I feel like we all need something like that. There needs to be that edge that pushes you further when you’re running on empty.
At the end the day of the day you have to ask yourself “What inspires me?” Could be your job, family & friends, religion, or something else. If you can find it… then hold onto it.
So, I recently wanted to play around with the Bit.ly API and use it in flash. I decided it would be best to write up a nice little helper class. The usage for this is pretty simple and right now it only implements two of the API methods, shorten and expand. I’ll work on the other calls but I figured these were the most widely used.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
| import com.imperez.apis.bitly.Bitly;
import com.imperez.apis.bitly.events.BitlyEvent;
var bitly:Bitly = new Bitly("bitly username", "user api_key");
bitly.addEventListener(BitlyEvent.SHORTEN, this._shorten);
bitly.shorten("http://www.google.com/");
function _shorten(event:BitlyEvent):void
{
var shortURL:String = event.currentTarget.shortURL;
trace(shortURL); //http://bit.ly/4BSxf
} |
As you can see from the code above it’s pretty simple. Pass in your username and api key in the constructor and then listen for the BitlyEvent.SHORTEN event. Make your call along passing your long url and you are set to go. I wanted to keep this is as easy to use as possible. I also wanted to make it so you wouldn’t need to have to parse xml in order to get this information.
And that’s it. Nothing more to see but sweet, sweet code . If you’re interested I have it up on my repository located here. There are still some bug fixes and general clean up to on top of further implementation but I would say it’s a good start.
I was lucky to get my invite for Google Wave yesterday and quickly logged on. So far things seem smooth and I think this application has a ton of potential. It shows off my email from google mail and offers up a couple of default extensions. There’s even a section to manage your contacts on google wave. All is right but right now there’s no one to really… wave with. Hopefully once the invites keep coming I’ll be able to test it even more but for now I can just wait.
For anyone else riding the wave I hope you’re enjoying it and getting more out of it. As for those that are waiting for your invite don’t worry. I already sent out a few of mine and hopefully it won’t be too long until you get yours.
For now check out all the great previews here, here, and oh yea way over there.
