Using Apollo to Create a Screensaver
I can’t wait for Apollo apps to take off in the same way that we have seen the likes of Yahoo! Widgets. Every day I am on the look out for new applications that run on the Apollo platform. We here at the geek are growing to love Apollo apps dude to their ease of use, very small footprint and cross compatibility between operating systems plus they look great as well.
I have been using tweetr the twitter client that runs on the Apollo engine and it has been awesome. Although I must admit that all this is very new and somewhat experimental and these things tend to throw the odd curve ball error. However, I think with the twitter client this has more to do with twitter than the application. The time that I get an error is when tweetr has difficulties communicating with the twitter servers. No kidding, ever had a timeout on twitter? No biggie.
This screensaver that I found is no different. Don’t ask me to explain the in’s and out’s of these applications because I would not do a good job. But while this screensaver is an Apollo application it is stored locally, utilizing the Apollo runtime engine that you need to run it. If you have the Apollo runtime engine from Adobe then you too can check it out.
The screensaver is a bunch of flying orbs (with obligatory Apollo logo) that move around the screen with billiard ball physics on a greyed out background. I think that it is a great concept. For those that know something about Apollo applications you are probably thinking that a .air file doesn’t make a screensaver. Here is the trick.
Take a copy of the .air once you have downloaded it, change the extension to a .scr type. Select it as your screensaver of choice. How easy and simple is that.
While all this may seem very simplistic as far as an application goes and true I have seen more stunning screensavers (although us geeks love this stuff), this is exciting. Reason being is that it is a demonstration of just how versatile and robust the code is. It opens the way for much bigger things to come.
Make sure you check out this weeks show, we have some more Apollo news and some future apps that are going to use the Apollo engine that have us very excited.
Follow the link for all the details. Just a word of note that it is undetermined if this works for Mac.
Get the .air for this application here.
Don’t forget to check out the Latest Special Post Rebuild Edition!
Subscribe to TPN :: The Global Geek Podcast by Email
Dave