Flash provides a great interface for customizable interactions, but with typical Flash development, it's cumbersome to edit content after publishing an application. For many Flash projects, updating content after the fact isn't important. But if you want to save data or update information in your Flash application, then you're going to want to look at having some sort external data source.

External data for a Flash application can be accomplished by simply having the flash application read cookies or text files on your web server. This bare-bones approach is appropriate for some, but such an approach is pretty low-level and susceptible to bugs. If you want an application to have any sort of ongoing maintainability, then you'll want to have some sort of CMS to house your information. Because of its flexibility and widespread use, Drupal is an excellent choice for your CMS.

This tutorial is geared towards Drupal developers who may or may not have a background in Actionscript coding. You'll need to know how to install modules and be comfortable with digging into a .module file to tweak some code.

Photo by mushon

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I have a real soft spot for newspapers.

Before I set off on my own as a web designer, I worked at a newspaper in Memphis as a web designer for two years. My college degree is in Media Design, which is an amalgamation of a journalism degree and a graphic design degree. I cut my teeth laying out print pages for many, many different publications. So when I hear news that newspapers are dying, it makes me sad.

Photo by woodleywonderworks

When I was growing up, I loved playing with Legos. I was a pretty messy kid, and I would have Legos strewn all across my bedroom floor (among plenty of other throwaway toys). I'd put together blocks in a very haphazard way, creating these interesting shapes and spans that twisted and turned in every which way.

No matter how interesting the sculptures that you can make with Legos, there isn't anything that great about an individual Lego. They're usually square with some pegs at the top. More often than not, they're only one color. You can't really make anything out of a single Lego besides, well, a single Lego. It's only when you get a bunch of Legos together that you can build anything interesting.

Photo by Jonathan Ah Kit

Today on NPR's Talk of the Nation there was a interview with Don Tapscott from NGenera on how the US government can take advantage of existing web technologies to remove some of the walls between the bureaucracy and the people it serves.

Overall, the point is simple; an open government has no choice but to be a fit government. Traditionally, the openness of the United States Government has been directly tied to how much the press is willing to expose strengths and weaknesses and how well the government was able to communicate its own agendas (again, through the press). With the rise of the internet, it is far easier for governments to reach the masses directly, but it's also easier for anybody to critique the government as well. In many ways, they're just another voice vying for attention.