Archive for August, 2007

Unit Circle Demonstration

This demo is kinda fun so I thought I would share it. Below is the visualization of my Unit Circle class I constructed in Flash ActionScript 3. I have a great need in the delicious:designer to do trigonometric calculations to find points in rotated coordinate spaces. So, hearkening back to my high-school trig days I created a class that defines a unit circle with a few unique properties. Perhaps the most convenient feature is the ability to set an artificial zero. In effect this rotates the horizon, causing all data points in the unit circle to be calculated with this angle taken into consideration. It also allows for the radius to be set to any arbitrary value (so it is not technically a “unit” circle), but this makes distance calculations between points in a rotated space quite convenient.

The sample here shows all the data points available in the Unit Circle class represented as labeled dots. To learn more about what each of these actually mean visit this article at wikipedia.

Using the unit circle class is ever so easy. Simply initialize it with three pieces of information: the center point, the radius, and either an arbitrary angle or an arbitrary point (that will cause the angle to be calculated). In this example the unit circle is animated by using a timer to continually set the angle to an ever-increasing number.


You can interact with it by clicking and dragging your mouse in any of the white space outside of the main circle. When dragging your mouse you are setting the arbitrary point to the current mouse position. Use the slider on the bottom to set the artificial zero to any angle between 0 & 360.



The class is still in production so I am not releasing its code, but if there is enough interest I will release it when I have fleshed out its features and completely debugged it. Drop us a line if you’re interested in seeing the code.

Build 39, The Social Design Revolution

It feels like it’s been so long since we’ve released, but it’s been a fantastic month with lots of new features to share with the world. So, without further ado:

delicious:designer, build 39, released August 2, 2007.

  • Dramatic social features added
    • Share your designs by sending eCards
    • Invite your friends to collaborate on your designs
    • Post your designs to many different bookmark sites like Blogmarks Blogmarks, del.icio.us del.icio.us, Digg Digg, Google BookmarksGoogle Bookmarks, Ma.gnolia Ma.gnolia, Yahoo! My Web 2.0 My Web 2.0, Netscape Netscape and Technorati Technorati.
    • Search through everyone’s designs
  • Add meta data (tags, titles and descriptions) to each of your designs far quicker with some crazy new AJAX wizardry.
  • Lots of behind-the-scenes changes and refinements that make your experience far more delicious. Just pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

And have no fear, we have lots and lots of features to roll out with the next build. So, go! Check it out!