Metal Fish Eggs

For the past few years zinc Roe has supported a number of charities. It’s part of being a good corporate citizen. Everyone on our team puts forward the name of one charity to give to. It’s a great chance to learn more about all the great work that charities are doing both here at home and around the world. To mark the holidays zinc Roe is giving a total of $1800 to nine projects. I hope you’ll take a minute to learn more about each of these groups.

Design Hope Toronto is a volunteer initiative that raises funds and awareness for local organizations dedicated to helping the homeless. We invite artists to create one-of-a-kind artworks inspired by the idea of “shelter.” These pieces are then auctioned and raffled off at our annual event with all of the proceeds going to one of the many deserving homeless programs in Toronto.

Sistering is a women’s agency serving homeless, marginalized and low-income women in Toronto. Our programs and services help women gain greater control over their life circumstances.

The Stephen Lewis Foundation supports community-based organizations that are turning the tide of HIV/AIDS in Africa. They provide care to women who are ill and struggling to survive; assist orphans and other AIDS-affected children; reach heroic grandmothers who almost single-handedly care for their orphan grandchildren; and sustain associations of people living with HIV and AIDS.

The Redwood is a haven. We’re here to help women and children just like you live free from domestic abuse. Free from fear. Free from threat. We provide safe and accessible services – from a secure home to counseling to legal support. We help you get your life back on track. And we bring the promise of a better future.

Mennonite Central Committee works alongside local churches and communities in more than 50 countries, including Canada and the United States, to carry out disaster relief, sustainable community development and justice and peace-building work in the name of Christ. MCC also seeks to build bridges to connect people and ideas across cultural, political and economic divides.

The Snowsuit Fund is an Ottawa-based charity that raises funds for the purchase and distribution of snowsuits to needy children, 15 years and under, in our community. In our 2008/2009 season, we distributed nearly 15,000 new snowsuits.

Interval House provides a continuum of services that enable abused women and children to have access to safe shelter and responsive services that help them establish lives free from violence. The continuum includes integrated and specialized services related to counselling, advocacy, outreach, legal and housing support, as well as programs to help build economic self-sufficiency.

Sunnybrook Veteran’s Care proudly cares for those who risked their lives fighting for our freedom. Home to veterans of several wars and the largest veterans care facility in Canada, Sunnybrook provides advanced and compassionate care that promotes health and independent living for our veterans and helps us better serve all seniors who turn to us for care.

Map is a team of photographers working together since 1993 encouraging and helping young photographers, writers and researchers. Map actively advocates social awareness campaigns in the rural as well in the urban communities in Bangladesh through their visual campaign materials using photo exhibitions and participatory workshops.

Just in time for the holidays, we now have three more Tickle Tap Apps available for download on the iTunes App Store!

Field Flier is a highly imaginative app that’s jam-packed with all-original (and quite wonderful!) illustrations, animations, music and sound effects. It took a great deal of programming prowess on Luke Lutman’s part as well. You really have to play it to appreciate all the minute and adorable details it includes. I love it when Robin reads the newspaper and stands on the turtle. “Robin is dancing!” is definitely my favourite part though. We were so excited when our composer Brian McBrearty delivered the music track for this animation. It’s got a definite Euro dance feel to it. Perfect!

Pattern Painter seamlessly integrates patterns and shape drawing in a single app. That’s because behind-the-scenes, this little app puzzler literally had our team going back to the drawing board repeatedly! We thought long and hard about usability. Our programmer, Colin McCune, had some tricky business to work out with the shape recognition as well. But once we had it all figured out and added our animal friends in (Jinja the cat, Harvey the dog and Robin the bird) it proved to be as fun and enjoyable as we’d hoped, if not more so!

Color Collector is awesome. The team had great fun running around the office collecting colors during testing (we quickly realized we have a dearth of purple objects here for some reason!). But we were also breaking new ground in terms of programming with this app, and pushing the capabilities of the iPhone camera technology to its limits. Our programmer, Stefan Arentz, did an amazing job figuring out the challenges and intricacies of color recognition, and what the iPhone camera could and couldn’t do. After many, many hours of hard work we finally had something that worked wonderfully! And then we tested it on the iPhone 3G. Uh oh. I’m proud to say we at zinc Roe are not ones to panic, even in moments of sheer horror like that. We’re problem solvers! Of course we got it working well on 2G, 3G and 3GS in the end. Now that it’s available on the App Store, we really hope parents and children discover this game and enjoy playing it as much as we do. . .er did.

Thanks to everyone on the Tickle Tap Team: Jason Krogh, Stefan Arentz, Luke Lutman, Colin McCune, Carlo Alducente, Vanessa Leggett, Anne-Sophie Brieger, Ian Partridge, Aaron Leighton, Davin Risk, Lara Salam, Brian McBrearty, Carla Fisher, Mike Palozzi and Laura Kyswaty.

Color Collector, the playful preschool color quest, is coming soon to the iTunes App Store! This inventive app uses iPhone camera, and it makes it exciting for children to discover colors wherever they are. See Color Collector in action!

Pattern Painter, the perfect preschool puzzler is coming soon to the iTunes App Store! This brand new Tickle Tap App is a pattern, drawing and shape game all in one and features easy-to-follow tracing animations when children need extra help, along with comic relief by Jinja the cat, Robin the bird and Harvey the dog. Check it out:

I had some time to take a look at what Adobe Labs has been up to and got caught up on Stratus. Stratus is a (currently free) service Adobe provides that enables peer 2 peer communication between multiple instances of the flash player. It uses RTMFP which you can learn more about on Adobe Labs.

I have to admit, I didn’t expect it to be so easy to create a simple chat application using the service. But if you’ve ever played around with streaming anything in flash, the process is the same. Just to explain it quickly, you have to create a NetConnection instance that connects to the stratus service (rtmfp://stratus.adobe.com/[YOUR_DEVELOPER_KEY]). After a successful connection you will receive a unique id. You also need to create two NetStream instances, one for sending data and the other for receiving. Listeners added to these two streams will get invoked each time data is sent/received.

Here’s what I managed to put together in almost no time:

To start chatting, exchange id’s with the person you want to chat with (through im or email, or if you’re lonely you can just open this page in a seperate window), paste their id in the “FRIEND’S ID” input and hit connect, both users must do this. Once you’re connected to each other, chat away!

Soo…why do I need to use this awesome chat application if i have to communicate my id through some other way? Well, first, this is just a demo of the Stratus service. And second, in a real world chat application, the id exchange should take place through some back-end code, maybe based on the user’s email address or something.

Unlike Flash Media Server or other similar technologies, RTMFP has very low latency making it ideal for use in video/audio chat, multiuser gaming, and other applications that are dependent on fast communication between multiple users.

Here’s a couple resources which I found really helpful:

Video tutorial: http://www.flashrealtime.com/tuts/p2p-in-flash.html

Text tutorial: http://www.insideria.com/2009/07/getting-started-with-adobe-str.html

Field Flier, our newest Tickle Tap App is on its way! Preschoolers delighted by the surprise Robin the bird animation in Sound Shaker are going to love this app. It’s an open-ended learning adventure that lets children explore a day in the life of Robin the bird. Get a sneak peek:

Update: We are no longer accepting applications for this position. Thanks to all of those who applied.

zinc Roe is seeking an experienced project manager to co-ordinate the efforts of our production team and guide projects through to successful completion. zinc Roe is a creative studio committed to producing high-quality interactive content for kids. The project manager position will work with the team to keep production moving forward as efficiently as possible.

Responsibilities:

• Help establish project goals, timelines and team requirements.
• Manage day-to-day operations, including identifying tasks, setting priorities, and assigning resources to ensure project goals are achieved.
• Identify production bottlenecks and implement process improvements to address these.
• Guide the flow of information and content with our production partners and within the team.
• Help prepare project plans, documentation and follow-up reports for partners and funders.
• Help ensure the team is productive, motivated, healthy, happy, and communicating.
• Promote a culture of innovation and teamwork.

Qualifications:

• 5+ years experience in interactive content production.
• Proven leadership and interpersonal skills.
• Solid written and verbal communication skills.
• A genuine enthusiasm for technology, design, and people.
• Understanding of the fundamentals of online technologies.

Desirable but not essential:

• Hands-on experience in interactive design and/or programming.
• Experience working in childrens new media, publishing, or television production.
• French-language communication skills.

As a team, zinc Roe prides itself on its commitment to producing high-quality interactive content for kids. In seeking a new project manager we are looking for someone who is ready to work with our designers, developers and content experts to help serve this goal. This is a full-time position and candidates must be available to work in our studio on a full-time basis.

Interested candidates should email jobs [at] zincroe.com with an outline of their qualifications and an explanation on why they believe they would be a good fit with our team.

Hurrah! The first three apps in our Tickle Tap App series are now available for download on the iTunes App Store. Sound Shaker is a sound-making designed for preschoolers, but so far it’s a hit among children of all ages. (You know something is entertaining when it brings a smile to the faces of serious-minded journalists, jaded industry-types and toddlers alike.) The barnyard sounds are my personal favourites—one of the funniest moments in development was when the programmer said he thought the pig sound was “very Orwellian.”

Sort Slider has a definite mesmerizing quality to it. I’m sure it’s a fun challenge for preschoolers to figure out which shapes match then successfully make matches by tilting the device or dragging the shapes with their fingers. It’s undoubtedly a treat for kids to see Harvey pop up and watch him jump and play onscreen. But for me, Sort Slider is a bit of a Zen machine. It was wonderfully calming to test this app. I would have happily kept on testing it, but then the team went and completed it.

Count Caddy is a unique little counting game. Counting balls of yarn, feathers and dog bones along with our Tickle Tap animal friends is about a million times more creative and inspiring than counting boring old straws and popsicle sticks like we did waaay back in my preschool days. During our voiceover recording session, our vocal actress admitted she really liked just saying the phrase “dog bones.” Go ahead—try to say “let’s count the dog bones” without cracking a smile. I double dog dare you.

We’ve been busy trying to get the word out about Tickle Tap Apps! Give us a hand, and keep up-to-date about Tickle Tap Apps by subscribing to the Tickle Tap Times newsletter. As a subscriber you’ll be among the first to know about new app launches, previews, events, promotions, discounts and deals. Plus, each issue of Tickle Tap Times features a Tickle Tap Tip for iPhone parents. Sign up for Tickle Tap Times now!

Why would a three-year-old want to play games on an iPhone? Actually, let’s re-think that—why wouldn’t a three-year-old want to play games on an iPhone?

iPhones and iPod Touch devices are extremely attractive to small users in the three- to five-year-old snack bracket. These devices are easy for small hands to use—much easier than computers, keyboards and mice. Children can also use them anywhere. Think of the possibilities: while waiting in line with you, while traveling or commuting, in the car, during quiet moments at home. Anytime your child is looking for an activity. Anytime you’d like your child to be engaged and interested instead of frustrated or bored and distracted.

But if you’re going to hand over your iPhone or iPod Touch to your child to play with, you’re going to need some entertaining apps for him or her to play. That’s where Tickle Tap Apps come in. Tickle Tap Apps are age-appropriate educational games that encourage learning through practice and exploration. They take full advantage of the iPhone platform in ways that make game play exciting. They’re also easy to use, with audio instructions and visual cues so preschoolers can pick them up and start playing right away.

The first three Tickle Tap Apps will be available very soon from the iTunes App Store. Visit TickleTapApps.com to learn more. Plus get sneak peeks at game play by watching demo videos of Sound Shaker, Count Caddy and Sort Slider.