Just monkeying around.

Well, I think I made my foray into soft-porn last week by helping out with the launch of a free online magazine called Monkey (not work safe and broadband required!) :)

It's been a grueling week to say the least (the phrase "work your fingers to the bone" must have been coined by a developer as I'm literally missing several layers of skin from the tips of my fingers as I type this!) We made launch with an initial version that went live in the early morning and a much more stable update that followed it a few hours later (before I finally expired and had to sleep after programming for 26 hours straight!) NOTE TO POTENTIAL CLIENTS: I don't normally do this, it was a favor to a friend and, no, I'm not interested! :)

I'm proud of the astounding effort the development team put into it, literally working round the clock in the last week in a development cycle that apparently lasted less than a month.

Personally, I think we got the core functionality spot on but, as always, there is definitely room for improvement and optimization. With more time on our hands now that the pressure of launch has passed, I'm looking forward to polishing off the engine so that it is rock solid. As it stands, the magazine is a great example of how Flash's integrated support of video can provide possibilities that are simply not possible with Ajax. It's not exactly the kind of magazine I reach for off the shelves of my local bookstore but I believe that Monkey will be a huge success (especially if the stats in the first few hours after launch are any indication.) And, I have to say, there's something to be said about getting paid to look at beautiful half-naked women that just borders on what most men would consider a dream job! :P

Check out Monkey here.

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