Fresh AIR Apps

Being a Mac user I always forget about the inbuilt webcam, apart from when I first got it and spent hours taking silly pictures using the bundled software Photo Booth. You could add live effects to your webcam feed and then click a button to take a snapshot after a few seconds.

Well Rich Tretola developed an AIR application that has been around for a while that does the same but using Flash and AIR. It offers a dozen different filters and distort effects for you to play with. The added bonus of being able to then send your pictures using one click to Flickr directly from the app.

Lots of fun and now Windows ( and possibly Linux too ) can share in some Mac fun!

Design eye

Styled on the Mac application crossed with Flickr the design is simple but fun. Once taken your photos appear in the ‘tray’ at the bottom of the app. The effects that can be applied are really cool and just go to show the power of native Flash effects in realtime. No custom chrome with this app but it still hangs together nicely.

Technical eye

The app is SWF based and I guessing it’s Flex application. Authentication is required to upload your photos to Flickr. It an update manager and you can check for the latest version by selecting the ‘about fotobooth’ button.