kosada incorporated
The Vital Information:
Kosada is a small, owner-operated company founded in Columbus and now based in Athens, Ohio. We build TWiki, Drupal, Wordpress, and other websites with custom features and functions, which we can design, build, and/or host for you, with special attention to accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO). We also develop custom plugins for various software platforms, especially Quartz Composer. And the cherry on top – we also do digital audiovisual media design and processing, like web-optimized graphics, video, and audio with appropriate compression and format-wonkery. So take a look around, and then contact us for a free quote for your project.
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The News:
Kosada's Quartz Composer department, aka Kineme, has come out with another new application: Quartz Builder allows you to easily create applications from your Quartz Composer creations, without having to muck about in Xcode. This nifty piece of software actually bundles together all the plugins and other files you need for others to use the products of your efforts in Quartz Composer, without having the same setup that you used to create them. A great boon to the usefulness and portability of Quartz Composer. Info and download link on the Quartz Builder profile page.
Announcing the release of Kineme's Performance Inspector! Performance Inspector performs a patch-by-patch analysis of the performance of your compositions while they're running, providing you with detailed information on which patches, exactly, are slowing your composition down. Info and download link available on the Kineme Performance Inspector profile page.
Announcing: the release of Kineme 3D! Kineme 3D provides support for 3D models in Quartz Composer including Twisting, Gravity, Scaling, Bend Boxes, and Quantization, as well as blending modes. Specs, download link, etc. can be found on the Kineme3D profile page.
Art-Net is a protocol for sending DMX data over IP networks. Kosada's Quartz Composer arm (codename Kineme) just released a patch to allow the use of Art-Net to send/receive data from/to Quartz Composer. Kineme Art-Net Tools actually involves two distinct patches for interacting with Art-Net devices, one to send and one to receive.
See the full Kineme Art-Net Tools profile for specs, video, download link, etc.
This year, Richie Hawtin's label m–nus celebrates its 10th anniversary with a series of interactive performance events called CONTAKT. Ali Demirel, Hawtin's visualist, uses a combination of Quartz Composer and other software to produce the show's video and also to interact with the audience. Here he talks about his use of Kineme to do this.
A little background: the most unique feature of the CONTAKT events is a lighted cube (pictured left) which contains an RFID scanner. Users who register in advance on the CONTAKT website have RFID chipcards which they can hold up to the cube's reader to interact with it in various ways. Read more
There have been a few changes in our contact info! Don't worry, this doesn't reflect any changes in our services, ownership, or management. The changes are:
- The old fax number has been disconnected. We are now able to receive faxes as well as phone calls at our main number, +1 (888) 8-KOSADA, thanks to a new integrated phone system.
- We have discontinued the 388-9026 number as a tech support line. Tech support can now be reached by dialing the main number and pressing extension 1. Steve can be reached directly by dialing the main number and pressing extension 0.
- Our main office is moving from Westerville, Ohio to Athens, Ohio. Mail sent to the Westerville address will be forwarded to the Athens address for the next several months to avoid any confusion, but you should make sure to send any postal mail directly to the Athens address for quick delivery.
Of course you can still contact us as always via our contact form if you have any questions or concerns.
Kosada's commitment to giving back to the Drupal community included publishing two modules earlier this month stemming from two related customizations for a client this past August: Organic group Titles and Organic group RSVP.
The development of these modules required intensive knowledge of prominent third-party modules for Drupal including Views, Organic groups, and Event. The Views module API changed from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6 requiring all module developers to learn new handlers to integrate their modules with Views functionality. Both OG Titles and OG RSVP included a taste of Views 2 joining group node and user tables in relationships, fields, filters, and sorting handlers. With regard to Organic groups and Event, Kosada included internal module hooks to take into account several use cases for a thorough implementation of a group RSVP implementation. Read more
We recently developed and released a small module that allows easy access for viewers referred by specific approved links to content that would otherwise be obscured from anonymous users. It was also the maiden voyage of Bradley Mellen, our newest hire – it was both his first project since joining Kosada and also his first Drupal module.
Role Referral allows the assignment of roles to anonymous users who enter the site at a specific URL ([drupalsite]/referred) from a specified referring URL. It relies on an access control module such as TacLite to allow or deny permissions to referred users, without their having to log in.
The module can be found on the Drupal development section of this site or downloaded directly from the Drupal website.
It is currently available only for Drupal 6.x
QuartzCrystal is a renderer for Apple's Quartz Composer. The new QuartzCrystal 1.2 release adds the following features:
* Temporal Supersampling (Motion Blur)
* Output to JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and OpenEXR Image Sequences
* French, Italian, German, and Japanese localizations
It also includes a few minor user interface improvements and bug fixes.
The official QuartzCrystal page on the Kineme website, http://kineme.net/product/QuartzCrystal , has downloads for purchase ($14 now that v1.2 is out) and more information.
Users who purchased QuartzCrystal 1.0 are entitled to a free upgrade to version 1.2. Just download the new version.
