We are seeking a Flash ActionScript 3 developer to add to our growing team.

You are:

An incredibly passionate, motivated Actionscript3 developer always on the cutting edge and able to rock out amazing work very quickly. You work in fullscreen, and think websites should be more experiential than static. You pride yourself in your beautiful, fluid tweening and movements, flawlessly organized code, and having never seen a Flash timeline. You see The Matrix, even in your sleep, and start to get the shakes if you are deprived of a computer for too long.

You recognize that Flash is NOT dead that it is, and will remain for the foreseeable future, the most powerful rich-media web development platform in the world – no matter what Apple says. You have fun playing with HTML5 and are eager to learn its new features as it matures, but your life’s blood is AS3 and you can’t live without it.

You are confident in what you can do, but your ego is in check and you’re still open to learning new things and new ways. You are comfortable working on your own and in a team in a modern open office, and would benefit from the mentorship of a Flash master.

You have:

-          High level experience with Flash Design, Actionscript 3.0
-          Experience in Server Side Database MySQL
-          Experience with PHP
-          Excellent spoken and written communication skills
-          Ability to clearly articulate design requirements
-          Organized
-          Punctual
-          Attention to Detail (a MUST!)
-          Experience in other Adobe Creative Suite Applications (Photoshop, Illustrator)

You are not:

A junior with no experience. A senior with bad habits. A company or subcontracting production house. Please don’t waste our time if you are.

We are:

An agency unlike any other. Our work is immersive and beautiful – it has to be because we deal with premium brands. Every project sets a new standard and is immediately copied (poorly) by our client’s competition. We are downtown Toronto in the Agency district.

If you’re what we’re looking for, please send your resume and portfolio to careers@pixelcarve.com.

We thank all applicants for their interest; however only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.

Salary:

Dependent on experience and skills.

All lawyers are the same, right? Not so. Wolf Kimelman has a unique understanding of the Canadian legal system, and of the challenges and crisis’s that their clients experience. As such, Wolf Kimelman required a website that allowed them to stand out amongst the clutter of law firms in the city, and turned to Pixelcarve to help them meet this challenge. We designed and built a beautiful and experiential website that portrays the power of Wolf Kimelman’s brand, as well as their level of unwavering skill and dedication to their clients.

Here is what senior partner Jason Kimelman had to say about working with Pixelcarve.

“We have just launched our web site which was designed and created by the great people at Pixelcarve. Having never purchased a web site and knowing very little about the intricacies of web sites and marketing, we were quite lost initially. Quickly, however, our nerves were calmed by Curtis, Ryan and Jeremy.

Throughout the process (which was relatively quick), our questions were answered, our requests were satisfied and our deadlines were met. We are thrilled with the finished product. It was a pleasure working with Pixelcarve and selfishly, I hope no one ever retains their web site design services in the future.”

Wolf Kimelman was a fantastic firm to work with, and we’re excited by the great results they are already experiencing from their new website.

You can check it out here: http://www.wolfkimelman.com

Tredd is a unique kind of insurance company. Passionately aggressive in serving the risk management needs of heavy industry, they elected not to have a website at all until they could find an agency able to intimately understand the nature of their brand. It only took 1 meeting with Pixelcarve to seal the deal, and the website and branding that emerged is not just a powerful business tool, but a flawless interpretation of who Tredd is as a company – clearly differentiating them in their industry, and defining what makes them exceptional.

For this project Pixelcarve strategized, designed and built a state-of-the-art website, portrait photography, and a full brand identity for both Tredd and TreddWest with business cards and stationary.

Isabel Silveira, Tredd’s Vice President of Operations, has this to say about Pixelcarve:

“Pixelcarve’s product, people amazing!

Here at Tredd Insurance Brokers Ltd., we could not be more impressed with the team at Pixelcarve.

They were a pleasure to work with, from the initial brainstorming meeting, to the photo-shoot to the after launch upkeep. They are timely, professional and patient. Not only are the people great but the product is outstanding. We’ve only been online for a couple of weeks and we are constantly getting compliments about our new website design.

Having an online presence is so important for all businesses but it isn’t always executed to a client’s expectation. Pixelcarve was able to grasp the essence of our corporate personality and translate that into a streamlined, sophisticated website that will help attract more clients and get our message out there. We would highly recommend them to anyone.”

Working with Tredd was incredibly satisfying for us here at Pixelcarve. They exemplify our values and it resulted in a project that we are very proud of. You can check it out here: http://www.tredd.ca

Highlighting their innovative use of technology to merge beauty with function, Chronicle follows Pixelcarve’s growth from a 2 man freelance shop into one of Toronto’s most innovative digital agencies, getting candid, and setting the record straight on the more prevalent myths about Flash.

You may download the full article here.

ESPN – Homepage Takeover

YouTube – Voken

Yahoo – Homepage Takeover

So what’s the problem? As with all war, selfish interests, propaganda, misinformation and the unwavering entrenchment of ideologies make it difficult to dissect the real conflict. Being an innovator and leader in new media technologies, especially with the use of rich media, we have a stake in the outcome of this war. Therefore it is important for us, and you, to understand exactly what is happening and why.

So when did this all start? Well, the battlefield was set when the first smartphones were released using rudimentary web browsers. They were basic, featureless and supported very few plugins – probably the most obvious missing plugin was the very popular and desktop standard Flash player. Adobe had not yet developed a mobile version and was keeping “mum” on its progress (eventually a “Lite” version was released, but it was so weak it doesn’t deserve much more mention than this one sentence).

Then came the release of Apple’s much anticipated iPhone and iPod Touch. Devices that were expected to literally transform the way human beings interact with mobile devices. In addition to their new Touch interface they boasted a proper web browser, HTML5 support (sort of) and actually viewed most websites properly. Considering most mainstream desktop web browsers only supported HTML4, this was a significant leap forward.

But Apple’s devices were not without their flaws. The initial releases were buggy, limited in even basic features such as cut and paste, had only moderate HTML5/CSS3 support, and sported archaic single-tasking operating systems. Many of these features were added over time or are planned for future releases, but one of the biggest problems revealed itself in the web browser – people realized that using a website designed for a large monitor just wasn’t functional on a small phone. Quickly the concept of “pinch and zoom” became fodder for mockery and using websites became more of a chore than a convenience.

But the potential was there. Enterprising companies started using the powerful web browser engine within these devices to build sites designed specifically to fit the smaller screen. It was certainly a lot better, but it was not perfect. One could not help but notice that the “mobile” websites still lacked that fluid and engagingly interactive experience people were becoming used to on both desktop computers with Flash based websites, and on mobile devices with apps from Apple’s App Store. The HTML5 in the mobile devices just lacked that organic motion and user experience – and Adobe was about to step up.

With much anticipation, Adobe announced the release of Flash Player 10.1, bringing support to mobile devices and including hardware video acceleration for increased performance and battery life. They also announced that the release of their next Creative Suite (5) would support Apple App development, allowing developers currently designing applications in Flash, Flex or AIR to compile for Apple devices.

Well everything sounded fantastic and the future was looking very positive indeed. Suddenly the very restrictive model of Apple’s App development was about to get blown wide open – both in that now developers would be able to build more powerful mobile websites, and also in that it would be easier for developers to build applications in one language and compile for multiple devices – significantly reducing costs, increasing productivity and setting the stage for major innovation.

So what happened? Well, as many knowledgeable industry experts are aware, Apple has a long and sorted history with proprietary thinking. Although topic for another article completely, the critical mistakes they made during the evolution of the personal computer and their refusal to share or play nice with others resulted in their near-demise a number of times.

One would have thought Apple would have learned from their mistakes in the past, but in Steve Job’s now infamous letter posted on Apple.com recently it appears as if they have returned to their old ways – only this time they have enough market share and influence that it actually matters.

Essentially Apple is banning the Flash player from running in their mobile web browser. And what’s more, days before Adobe announced the release date of CS5, Apple rewrote a section of their developer agreement to ban anyone from using any development platform other than Apple’s for building apps. A direct attack on not only Adobe, but also every other cross-platform development tool such as Unity, etc.

The reasons for this are unclear, other than a number of inaccurate and misleading points in Steve Job’s letter. What’s even more confusing is that the Apple devices tout themselves as supporting the “full web experience”. Since Flash is used on more than 85% of all websites, that claim is preposterous. What is obvious is that Apple is trying to protect its proprietary App store and control content and its delivery on their mobile devices. It would be unfortunate if Apple was willing to destroy the entire future of mobile computing over their selfish interests, but one could make that case from their actions. Apple has proven themselves to be anti-competition, anti-developer, and anti-consumer.

Apple’s arguments seem to mainly focus on Flash’s video use (Youtube, Facebook, etc. use Flash video), which they believe can be easily replaced by another video format of their choosing (codec H.264, which ironically is also the video format standard within Flash). The problem is that Apple is neglecting the thousands of websites built entirely in Flash using Adobe’s very powerful ActionScript3 development language. Long gone are the days when Flash was simply an animators tool creating annoying flashy buttons and “skip intro” pages. Flash has grown into a robust, open and powerful tool for building highly engaging and immersive online experiences – it is here to stay as a very powerful rich-media application development platform. Apple’s arguments that the currently unfinished HTML5/CSS3 spec will replace Flash are not only absurd, but surprisingly misinformed and dangerous.

Even if HTML5/CSS3 were completely finished and implemented into all browsers today, and even if it supported the full depth of Flash’s AS3 language (which is doesn’t come even close) it would take it years to roll out across the Internet to the majority of web users. Neither of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer versions 7 or 8 support it at all, which are still the standard for web browsing on desktop computers. Firefox, Chrome and Safari support an unfinished version of the HTML5 spec, but none of them support it in the same way and therefore it is impossible to develop websites in it that are universally compatible. Considering it has taken Internet Explorer 6 over 4 years to become obsolete (and astonishingly people are STILL using it), one could even surmise that HTML5 will not be a universally supported standard on desktop computers for another 5 years or more.

Flash meanwhile is supported by over 98% of all computers on the Internet, and runs exactly the same way in every browser, and will continue to run exactly the same way in every browser. Even arguments about Flash’s lack of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are fallacy now, with HTML sublayers and new tools available to bring Flash sites on par with HTML. Flash will also be supported by every other major smartphone maker, from Blackberry to Google’s Android.

So what’s going to happen? Well, Adobe has responded in kind. They have launched their own campaign to dispel the myths being propagated about Flash by Apple, and the founders of Adobe have written their own letter in response to Steve Jobs. Once close friends and business allies, the companies have for all intents and purposes declared war on each other.

Why? There really is no good reason. Who will win? It’s unlikely there will be a victor anytime soon, but the losers will most definitely be the developers and consumers.

People have asked if we’re biased because we develop in Flash, and the simple answer is yes. But our decision to use Flash as our platform of choice wasn’t made in a vacuum. It was a conscious business decision we made due to the demand by our clients to provide a more innovative, beautiful and rich online experience. The case is made by every single award winning website on the http://thefwa.com/ , which shows the true power and influence of this platform, and there is simply no alternative.

The US Department of Justice & Federal Trade Commission have also taken notice and are now investigating Apple for antitrust violations.

It is our hope that in the interests of mobile innovation Apple releases their firm grip and decides to play nice with the rest of the industry. In the meantime, we will continue to watch the battle unfold and provide whatever mobile solutions are available to our customers at the time. We recognize the importance of mobile support, and ensure that our Flash websites get mobile add-ons built in HTML that run properly on smartphones.

For examples, please visit the following sites on your iPhone/Pod/Pad to see how it works.
http://www.pixelcarve.com
http://www.jayhodgins.com
http://www.stokelydesign.com
http://www.rhombusmedia.com/

And contact us to learn how you can get one too!

Sincerely,

Curtis Priest
Partner – President, CEO
Pixelcarve Inc.

Steve Jobs’ Letter:
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Adobe’s Response:
http://www.adobe.com/choice/flash.html

Adobe Founders’ Letter:
http://www.adobe.com/choice/openmarkets.html

Mashable Article:
http://mashable.com/2010/05/13/adobe-responds-flash/

Tech Crunch Article:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/10/adobe-vs-apple-war-generates-rage-facebook-group/

ZDNet Article Regarding the DOJ & FTC Investigation of Apple
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/report-doj-and-ftc-investigating-apple-updated/6804

Maritz Canada, part of the Maritz global network the largest single source of sales and marketing performance services in the world, has partnered with Pixelcarve to bring a new dimension of engagement and interactivity to the Blackberry / AT&T “A Bold Step Ahead” campaign. Pixelcarve, known for their innovative use of new technologies, worked closely with the Maritz creative team to conceptualize, create and produce multiple media banner ads that encouraged user interaction and promoted brand engagement. The ads featured Flash AS3 interactivity as well as direct social media integration through Twitter. Check out some of the ads below:

Client: Maritz Canada
Media Buy: Starcom
Artwork: Pixel Pushers

Here is a sample of the ad on Wired Magazine. Also applied to 600 x 480 page take-over.

Enter Adobe, and their release of Flash 9 with its shiny new ActionScript 3 (AS3) language. As the true power of this new platform is being discovered, companies like us are using it to wipe out all of the things that we ourselves, as web users, disliked about Flash sites. Personally, I absolutely hated not being able to use the back/forward button in my browser, or send a specific page to a friend without a convoluted explanation as to how to get there. If I want to bookmark, or send to a friend the stunning Graves 601 Hotel project that Yabu Pushelberg designed, it shouldn’t be any harder than this: http://www.yabupushelberg.com/#graves_601_hotel

Now enter Google, a company that once shunned Flash, has now seen the light! Adam Ostrow looks into Google’s new love for this powerful interactive platform, and its support for analytics within Flash. Welcome to the world of Flash without compromise!

http://mashable.com/2008/11/17/google-analytics-for-flash/

STRATEGY
The strategy was to create a website that made the user feel as if they were in the Avenue Road showroom. It would feature video, photography and intuitive interaction with product. The website needed to maintain the beautiful design features Avenue Road is known for, while supporting functions and features conventionally found only on websites not capable of premium aesthetics. I.E. xHTML sites rather than Flash sites.

EXECUTION
Using Flash ActionScript 3 technologies, Pixelcarve designed, built and executed a beautiful, full-screen, indexable, searchable and categorized online catalogue, the likes of which has never been achieved before ( www.avenue-road.com ). Containing thousands of products, it supports all major conventional catalogue functions while enhancing it with fluid navigation, high resolution photography and video, browser intuition and unparalleled user interaction. The website is essentially an interactive experience, supporting live response feedback (the website knows what you’re doing and helps you do it more efficiently), bread crumbs, and Unique Page Identifiers (UPI – every page and product is uniquely identified within the browsers address bar). Deployed behind the site is a fully custom content management system (CMS) that allows Avenue Road to add, edit and delete product information & images, or import large databases with millions of data fields.

Additionally, Pixelcarve launched a number of micro-evite sites and eBlast campaigns to promote Avenue Road’s overall brand, collections and events.

IMPACT
The micro campaigns contributed to several high-profile and successful events, capturing the attention of the industry and the media. With the launch of the new website, Avenue Road has seen a 350% increase in web traffic, resulting in a substantial amount of positive feedback from users, unprecedented product inquires and sales, and an industry leading web presence.

Visit their site at: http://www.avenue-road.com

If you would like to know how we can help you, talk to us.