I just saw that Google News has picked up our Ariaware Optimizer press release from eMediaWire.

If anyone is linking to the press release, it would be really nice if you could link to the one on eMediaWire instead :) Thanks!

It's with great pleasure that I announce the release of Ariaware Optimizer, our latest product that reduces the size of Flash applications and web sites. Kudos to the whole development team with special thanks to Burak Kalayci and Peter Hall and to our wonderful group of beta testers -- it's been a wonderful ride and this is just the beginning!

You can download a 30-day trial and test it out on your sites and applications! We're looking forward to your feedback.

Here's our official press release with more information:
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I've been trying to compile together the feedback people have been posting regarding my session on Best Practices Flash Development last month at Flashtival, helped by my good friend Peter Elst who graciously translated and sent me some of the feedback from the forums at flashfocus.nl. Here's what I have so far -- it's really great to hear that people had a good time and found the presentation useful!

"What enthusiasm, he had a great presentation. Learned a lot from what he told us."
Ronald Craenen

"Incredible, that guy 'lives' programming. A fast paced session full of enthusiasm, intelligence and humour. Just perfect, Actionscript at a seriously advanced level and using AMFPHP Flash Remoting -- very cool!"
Robin Bultot

"Best presentation I've ever seen, that guy deserves his own talkshow ;)"
A3D

(Above comments posted on this thread on FlashFocus.nl and translated from Dutch by Peter Elst.)
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The open sourcing of Laszlo may be opening a new chapter in the history of RIAs. When compared to Flex, we have now have a robust, free presentation server alternative. (Coincidentally, Macromedia announced a free version of Flex for non-commercial uses today.) We're definitely going to be exploring Laszlo in much greater detail than we have been so far here at Ariaware.

In the battle for the limited time developers and development houses have to learn any new technology, Laszlo appears to have attained the advantage with this move. How will Macromedia counter? The result, I can assume, can only benefit all involved, including the field of RIAs in general.

WorldPay's services have been severely disrupted since about 6pm on Saturday, October 2nd, 2004 and it appears that they are powerless to do anything about it.

In their latest email to customers (which I recieved at 10am this morning), they state:

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