Alex Karasyov
Quantum Fantasy
Everyday Magic
Mar 29th
You should know that everyday is magical. You should keep that in mind throughout the day. There are opportunities everywhere, beautiful things on every corner, and amazing people surrounding you. Sometimes we forget that.
My recent encounter with Dmitry Myachin, CEO of DFMO.NET has reminded me that life is all about adventure. An encounter that has brought me to one of the top recording studios in Toronto, where Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, and many other artists have recorded, a place where I dreamed to be in when I had a band few years back.
Same encounter brought me to New York two days later, and I was blown away by the energy of that city. I met amazing people there, learned about the toughness of New York bureaucracy, and saw what amazing culture and knowledge has accumulated in the great city. Very importantly, I went into the office of Fantasy Interactive, a firm that has inspired me since the age of 13. Little things like that can make you feel very big.
Let’s make a deal. When you and I will wake up tomorrow morning, we will make the most of our days. We will make that everyday magic that makes life such an amazing thing.
Popularity: 22% [?]
The Message In The Bottle
Mar 16th
I spend almost three weeks working with DesignAxiom on a website for Molson and ARC. The whole site was developed from scratch in three weeks. We didn’t even get the files from the original site.
I did most of the front-end development for HTML portion of the site. I learned some new CSS and Javascript magic on the way. The site has turned out great.
Visit The Message In The Bottle.
Popularity: 21% [?]
How is 500px different from Flickr?
Mar 4th
 500px in the desert by cyberguss |
Also posted here.
Recently I have been asked this question a lot – How is 500px different from Flickr?
Let me quickly explain what Flickr is. It actually started as a community of gamers, and then evolved into photo sharing platform. Flickr is essentially a photo sharing site. Anyone can share their photos and stack them in large quantities on their Flickr account. While Flickr has been extremely successful in photo sharing, there is something essential that photographers need that Flickr never gave them.
500px has a very different story. It started out in 2004 as a little community of photographers. It has grown over the years and a need for more than online community has emerged. Today you can see that 500px has become a home for inspiring, admiring, and endorsing incredibly talented photographers. 500px has inspired many people (including myself). The sole purpose of this community is to promote great art and unite photographers in one place where they can share their work and grow artistically and professionally. This philosophy has turned 500px into a community that breathes with inspiration and beauty.
At 500px we want to enrich lives of photographers so that they can enrich lives of others. That is why we have given an amazing set of tools specifically designed for photographers to help them share their content with ease. We have tools for creating an outstanding portfolio, we have tools for photoblogging, photojournalism,(these tools are coming really soon!) and anything that photographers will ever need, we will give it to them. 500px has given what is truly important in any form of art and in our lives. 500px has given love.
Popularity: 24% [?]
iPhone Mouse Announcement.
Mar 1st
 Apple by denisemenov |
Recent discussion in the office has generated an great idea for an iPhone app.
It started with adding custom images for Apple’s Magic Mouse touch surface, which led me to Color Ware and their custom colored Magic Mouse.
Eventually we gave birth to the iPhone Mouse app. What is it? The initial idea was to built in a screen that would show custom buttons on the touch surface of the Magic Mouse. Since iPhone already has that functionality it was decided that it would make more sense to create an iPhone mouse app.
It connects to your Mac via Bluetooth.
Touch surface can have any custom buttons that the user wants.
All gestures available on the Magic Mouse would work on the iPhone Mouse app as well. (duh!)
Tracking movement is something that has not been completely figured out. Initially the idea was to use GPS signal to track the position of the phone, but the problem is that it probably wouldn’t register such tiny position changes. The next idea is to have a custom pad with special texture. iPhone’s camera would recognize the texture and move the mouse on your screen accordingly. Installing a laser tracker into the phone would work as well.
We are starting to work on the iPhone Mouse app early next week. Let me know if you want to participate in the development.
Popularity: 21% [?]
Future of Flash
Feb 27th
 digital computer by sam |
I have attended a FlashINTO Gathering on Wednesday, December 24. FlashINTO is a community of flash developers, designers, and enthusiasts in Toronto.
There was a lot of excitement coming from Indus Blue CEO Dayton Perreira & developer Cam Warnock. Indus Blue used to be a flash development company and now they have become iPhone application development company. They presented their extremely successful iPhone app developed specifically for the olympics – CTV Olympics. They talked about the good and the bad. The great feeling of accomplishment (their app became a featured app in the app store), and long hours of work that have went into it. It is always very inspiring to see a company that creates great products and truly dedicate themselves to their work.
For all you iPhone developers out there, the guys from Indus Blue recommended Flurry. It is a great free tool for iPhone developers that is very similar to Google Analytics.
The theme of the Gathering was the future of Flash. There is a lot of commotion around flash these days. It is not supported on the iPhone and iPad, HTML5 video tag may be coming to replace Flash video, and many other things are happening. The fact that 65% of all mobile browsing is done on the iPhone(Stats Here) definitely affects the attitudes of developers towards the Flash platform. However, Flash may soon be ready for iPhone application development. This means that these flash apps may be interpreted for other platforms such as Blackberry and Android. This would make mobile application development much easier for developers. It sees like Flash as a platform is slowly moving away from the web environment into the application environment. These changes, no matter which direction they take, are very emotional for me since I have been Flash user since I was 13 years old. The way technology is used is changing, let’s see what the future will bring us.
Popularity: 15% [?]