Over at Social CMS Buzz, there's an intriguing list of sites built on Drupal - some of which I wouldn't have guessed (Mission Metallica? Looks like custom Flash all the way to my eyes).
Social CMS Buzz article

Here's a link to Drupal founder Dries Buytaert's more extensive - and more informative - list.

Big Blue brings us a thoughtful article on how to profile AJAX interfaces, with a view to increasing speed, of course.

Toolkit focuses on Firebug and YSlow.

Article

AJAX Resource Center

Adobe have opened their .flv and .swf formats, according to their release here.

Some key things they're promising:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications

• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player

• Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services

• Removing licensing fees - making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

From the CEO:

A consistent, more open platform for developers will drive rapid innovation, vastly improving the user experience.

My fondest wish in this is that third-party tools will flourish, hopefully making the Flash vs. DHTML/AJAX divide less of an obstacle.
Project Page

Press Release

uiGarden.net has this interesting Usability Report on the iPhone.

Apparently texting on your Blackberry (or other device with physical keys for the letters) is more accurate.

Favorite quote:

On feature of the popup keyboard on the iPhone is the drag and lift feature which is said to reduce errors. Unfortunately not one user discovered this feature.

uiGarden.net post

Related evaluation of the iPhone against two other devices

UserCentric, the folks who did the usability testing

Drupal, our favorite CMS (it powers this blog) has a new hi-profile case study - the Sony/BMG MyPlay site.

From the case study:

Myplay.com is a redesign and re-branding of Sony's Musicbox site which showcases SonyBMG's artists, providing free access to their videos, music and photos. Users can create lists of their favorite artists as well as review their music and embed widgets of their favorite artist's content into other sites.

This case study's particularly good, in that it details how various site features were accomplished in Drupal. Well worth a quick read.

Case study on Drupal.org

New Sony site

These people claim to have created an ad banner creation and submission engine.

This looks quite similar to what SpotRunner has done with cheap cable advertising.

AdReady has made creating a sophisticated online advertising campaign incredibly easy.
Select a performance ad template and customize it for your business in minutes.
Target your audience, set your budget, and access the web's largest publishers with only a few clicks.
Watch your website traffic and your sales grow while leveraging AdReady's optimization technology.

Create your custom ads at no cost — all you need is a standard AdReady account (which is free).

Minimum campaign is $100, and there are no set-up fees, no minimum term and no contracts.

You pay only for the media campaigns you run — a major credit card is all you need to get started.

You can also upgrade to a premium account, giving you the power of dedicated account management from the AdReady experts.

It's official - banners are commodities.
Link

I'm excited about this - it's happening at the same time as the AIIM-OnDemand show, so I'll get to go to both:

Drupalcon is being held at the same time/place as AIIM International Exposition & Conference, the largest content management technology conference in North America. Though technically independent of each other, the Boston team is working to arrange some cross-event access. The goal: introduce Drupal to thousands of potential new Drupalers.

Drupal is a powerful open-source system for building community-based web sites.

We're using it to power this blog, and I've also begun using it to build some in-house utilities for N-GEN.

Here are some projects I've done in Drupal:

• http://xinetusersgroup.org
• http://coveredincathair.com
• http://ngenroom.n-genstudios.com

Drupal is built in PHP with a MySQL database. I'm running it on Linux but it'll work on Windows and Mac OSX hosts as well. The community is extremely stroing and quite responsive. The system is highly modular, and has inspired me to consider building a website toolkit for our own projects, modeled on the Drupal approach. This is as yet a pipe dream, but stay tuned.

Drupal has been featured in Packt Publishing's CMS awards for several years running, and this year won the Overall Open Source CMS award.

More info here and here.

Eye-candy time.

I can't help thinking some of these are trying too hard to be Art, but of course your mileage may vary, as they say...

Smashing Magazine

TracyLocke's Joanna Peña-Bickley is #15 on the Silicon Alley People's Choice list!

Congrats to Joanna, who's been an insightful commentator on our business as long as I've been reading her.

People's Choice Link

Joanna's Blog

Here's a rundown on some well-made Flash sites, along with some useful guidelines on how to avoid Stupid Flash Tricks.

Sample:

Long texts shouldn’t be embedded in Flash movies, because it’s harder (if possible at all) to work with the embedded text once you need to. Cubamoon is a perfect example of how this is done wrongly. The completeness of the design is enviable, its beauty irresistible, Flash-effects are stunning. However it’s really hard to work with the content of the site. Visitors can’t open links in new windows and the text can’t be selected and copied.

Here's one they like:


Visiting the agency’s web-site you actually visit their agency. Clean images, great use of video features.
Smashing Magazine link