The Summer of Flash Page on My Site
I just wanted to point folks to the Summer of Flash Podcast page on my blog. I thought it might be good to have a place on my site where the podcast that features Garth Braithwaite, Stacy Mulcahy, Zach Stepek, and myself droning on and on about the Flash Platform. The "info" links are to the InsideRIA site pages that Garth put together for us, but I wanted to put all the information in one place so that I can refer people to it.
I totally enjoy recording this podcast. It is so much fun and honestly it's almost therapeutic for me. I don't work in a work site environment where there are a lot of Flash and Flex developers. In fact, I am the only one in the office who does that type of work, so getting to "hang out" online with the Summer of Flash crew is pretty healthy.
I want to thank the people at O'Reilly who have been so supportive. This was their idea and I feel lucky to have been asked to come along.
Oh, boy. Did I just say that hanging out with Stacy was healthy? What was I thinking?
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Summer of Flash Podcast Episdode 1
I am pleased to announce that the first episode of O'Reilly's InsideRIA Summer of Flash podcast has been released.
In this episode, Garth, Stacy, Zach and I discuss the recently released Flash Catalyst Public Beta and what we like and dislike about the product.
We're continuing to record episodes and have lined up a few people from the Flash Platform to waterboard... er, grill for infor... er, interview about all things Flash.
If you have any thoughts, ideas, questions or requests, feel free to leave them in the comments for my entry here or at the entry on the InsideRIA site.
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Introducing Leif Wells, Editor-in-Chief of Flex Authority Magazine
I'd like to officially announce my new role in the Flex community; I am now the Editor-in-Chief of Flex Authority magazine. Flex Authority was started last year by House of Fusion and currently is in production for Issue 3.
Back in February 2008, I was helping my friends Tom and John with 360|Flex Atlanta by allowing them to send packages to the Roundbox Global office so that they wouldn't have to pay the insane storage fees at the conference site, which happened to be a couple of miles from our office. Needless to say, the pile of boxes got fairly impressive fairly quickly. Adobe sent posters and t-shirts, there were boxes of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" , and a ton of other stuff.
Then a call came in from Judith Dinowitz requesting assistance transporting some printed materials, fliers for the attendee bag they were having printed in Atlanta to avoid some difficult shipping costs. I believe that is the first time I had heard about Flex Authority. Judith confirmed that it was in the works and that they were going to launch the magazine in the middle of 2008. My reaction was, as with a lot of things that promote the community I work in every day, "What can I do to help?"
And help I did. I was Technical Editor for several articles in the first issue, authored a "10 Questions with..." column with Adam and Dave from the Merapi project , and even took the time to write a couple of filler pieces at the eleventh hour. I was excited about Flex Authority and hopeful for its future.
Flash forward to January 2009. Judith calls me to discuss a change in the magazine management; the position of Editor-in-Chief was open. She said that my name had risen to the top of the list of candidates. She presented me with an opportunity, one that I was sure I'd regret letting pass.
The Editor-in-Chief position at a magazine the size of Flex Authority isn't a high paying gig. In fact, I am not getting paid at all. The position requires a lot of reading and re-reading of articles, balancing grammatical and technical corrections while considering the author's voice, herding cat-like authors, technical editors and copy editors who are balancing full-time jobs (and lives) with a magazine schedule; it's not an easy job. Sure, I'll avoid the stereotypical publishing industry traps like hard drinking, chain smoking and womanizing, but those activities actually sound like rewards compared to these responsibilities.
So, why did I agree to become Editor-in-Chief of Flex Authority?
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Wiley AIR Bible Ships!
I received a copy of the AIR Bible on my porch this week. This book marks my first foray into the madness that is technical editing for industry books. Having had a little taste of writing part of a book in my past, I can tell you that technical editing a book can be almost as difficult as writing a book.
Ryan Taylor, a great local resource here in Atlanta, is one of the authors of this book. Ryan has presented at a couple of our user group events locally. He has really gotten into Flash CS4's Pixel Bender functionality. You should take a look at his site for more on that. Ryan will be presenting "Pixel Bender Unleashed" at MAX 2008.
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AIR Window Explorer: I Owe Daniel Rinehart A Beer
Daniel R., if you are listening, I know that you don't know me, but I owe you a beer.
This afternoon as I was working on my 360Flex presentation and example code I became very, very frustrated with NativeWindow and Window and all the various similarities and differences in the options for creating and manipulating this much-used feature in AIR. So I thought, "Let's Google this bugger and see if there is a chart out there that can help."
No charts, but I was intrigued by a link to Daniel's site: AIR Window Explorer. You've seen the Flex Component Explorer and the Flex Style Explorer, well, Daniel's app is in the same vein. Decide on your Window options, create and open the window. Click on the "Show Code" button, and you will see the code used to create the Window. Nice! This application isn't perfect, mind you, but it does give you a a good idea of what you can do with the Window and NativeWindow classes in AIR.
So, for saving me an hour (and a lot of frustration) today, I owe Daniel R. a beer. Not a crappy beer. A really great beer.
Hopefully Daniel will be attending 360Flex in August so I can repay him properly.
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360Flex Atlanta + Adobe = Special Event
Yeah, if you live here in Atlanta you should already be attending this event because you're attending 360Flex Atlanta right? It's a great conference focused on your favorite RIA platform? All for only $480.00 (and you get to sleep in your own bed and miss out on those tiny airline seats with no leg room).
Well, if you can't gnaw off the business-hours ankle chain your employer welded to your desk, then here's your chance to mingle with people just like you! 360Flex has invited members of the Atlanta design and development community to a little get-together being held at Stats Sports Bar not far from where 360Flex Atlanta is being held. Yeah, that does mean adult beverages. Yummy.
So come out and see what's up. But you need to RSVP. Get your details here, here or here, but RSVP.
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Ben Forta, AIR and Flex: So Popular, Atlanta Had to Move Their Event
Ben Forta, AIR and Flex: So Popular, Atlanta Had to Move Their Event
As an update to my previous post, the Flex and AIR Pre-release Tour's Atlanta stop received so many RSVPs that the meeting site needed to be changed to accomidate the audience.
If you are planning to attend, please use this page for directions to the event.
I look forward to seeing everyone there.
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Atanta Stop for the Flex and AIR Pre-release Tour with Adobe's Ben Forta
UPDATED: 2008 - 01 - 18
Flex 3 and AIR are getting close to launch and in preparation, Ben Forta from the Adobe Flex/AIR product team is traveling to select cities to show off the great new features and help prepare us for this exciting launch.
Flex 3 is a feature-packed release, adding new UI components like the advanced datagrid and improved CSS capabilities; powerful tooling additions like refactoring; and extensive testing tools including memory and performance profiling, plus the addition of the automated testing framework to Flex Builder.
Adobe AIR is game-changing in so many ways, extending rich applications to the desktop, enabling access to the local file system, system tray, notifications and much more. Now you can write desktop applications using the same skills that you've been already using to create great web apps including both Flex and AJAX.
Don't miss out on the opportunity to see and hear about this highly anticipated release of Flex 3 and AIR during this special pre-release tour. Plus, in addition to giving away some one of a kind Flex/AIR branded schwag, we will also be raffling off a copy of Flex Builder 3 Professional (pending availability) and a full commercial copy of CS3 Web Premium at this event!
Event Information:
This event is on January 22, 2008 from 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
IMPORTANT: THE LOCATION HAS BEEN CHANGED!
South Terrace at Perimeter
115 Perimeter Center Pl NE
Atlanta, GA 30346
Driving Directions
RSVP
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Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.5? Get your Official Adobe CS3 Leopard Support FAQ's Here
From what I've been hearing, the only people who are having big problems with using Adobe products with the newly released Mac OS X v10.5, codenamed Leopard, are ColdFusion developers. Find out how your favorite Creative Suite product performed in the Adobe CS3 Leapard Support FAQ (pdf). As the document looks today, Adobe says they will have updates in December to make Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, After Effects CS3 Professional, Encore CS3, and Soundbooth CS3 fully compatible with Leopard. Adobe Acrobat Professional will also receive an update in January 2008 to make it compatible as well. Products pre-CS3 may or may not work.
The reported problems with ColdFusion are that the server will not start after the update, and will not start after a clean install on Leopard. ColdFusion installs, but will not start and will log errors on start-up. You can follow Ray Camden's blog post and comments here. I wish I could be more helpful. It is completely understandable that ColdFusion doesn't work properly as Leopard updates a bunch of server-oriented software. And with fact that every Adobe developer and manager that I saw at MAX 2007 was carrying a Mac Book Pro makes me believe that Adobe will either provide a patch for the problem soon or at least give everyone the heads up on what we can do to make ColdFusion work on Leopard.
The AIR product isn't even out officially, with the second public beta released on the Adobe Labs site. AIR application users (and developers) are warned by Mike Chambers on his blog:
"I pinged the team and they they told me that they are currently doing some testing, and havent run into any major issues yet. However, we are seeing some reports of issues from developers online, so if you are currently working on an AIR app, you might want to wait a little while to upgrade until we have more information."
Sound advice, Mike. Sadly, most of the people who will be disappointed with Adobe are the very people who could not wait for their pre-ordered Leopard package was dropped at their door by FedEx so that they could update every Mac they own. (And, yes, I am jealous because I have no Mac of my own.)
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Congrats to Local Award Winners Kenny Bunch and Alan Queen
I think that Kenny Bunch is an amazing guy. But, let me just say that somebody needs to promote him more because he is too damn shy to do it himself.
I was quite pleased to hear that Adult Swim received an Honorable Mention in this year's MAX Awards for their Adult Swim Interactive Video Commentary. What struck me as odd was that I know who did a lot of that work: Kenny Bunch and his company, Dreamsocket. And although the winner of the video category, HBO Voyeur, was great, I hope that Adobe, the MAX Awards Judges and the industry at large is paying attention: in my opinion, the interactive video experience that Kenny Bunch put together for Adult Swim is the future. Keep up the good work, Kenny.
Meanwhile, Alan Queen won the Wild Card category in the the Adobe AIR Derby with his entry Digimix, an AIR application that allows you to create and mix audio files. When Alan first showed this application at the Atlanta stop of the onAIR Bus Tour back in August he made the entire Adobe team speechless. Well done, Alan.
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