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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Atlanta Adobe Community Events for March 2009
Adobe Community Events
for March 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009, 7PM
Atlanta InDesign User Group
InDesign and Flash: The Digital Transition
Paul Omeda, Chris Stalcup
Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 6PM
Atlanta ColdFusion User Group
Thursday, March 12, 7PM
Atlanta Adobe XD User Group
Wednesday, March 18, 6PM
Atlanta Flash and Flex User Group
Tuesday, March 24, 7PM
Adobe Flash Platform User Group
Simplified Logic's Andrew Westberg
Digital Rights Management and the Flash Platform
Thursday, March 26, 7PM
Adobe User Group of Atlanta
Illustrator CS4 with Adobe's Robert McDaniels
Related Events:
Monday, March 9, 7PM
Atlanta Flex & Actionscript Coders
Monday, March 16, 7PM
Atlanta JavaScript Developers Meetup
Wednesday, March 18, 7PM
AIGA - Atlanta
Wednesday, March 25, 6:30PM
AiMA
Thursday, March 26, 7PM
Atlanta Web Design Group
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This Thursday: Adobe is in the house! And they're showing Acrobat Professional
UPDATE: Find out how things went by reading the Meeting Recap.
This Thursday: Adobe is in the house! And they're showing Acrobat Professional
Adobe's Acrobat has been in the news a lot lately and for some bizarre reasons. Last week it was the whole Facebook and their redaction problem. On the same day, Rush Limbaugh ranted on-air that Democrats were hiding information in the stimulus bill by preventing search inside the published PDF.
Sigh. Good times, good times.
So, how wonderfully timely is this week's meeting of the Adobe User Group of Atlanta? I mean, seriously. We are featuring the Adobe Acrobat Professional product for the first time in our history! And some of our friends from Adobe will be doing the presentation. And these guys are good. No doubt that the Facebook lawyers and Mr. Limbaugh wished we had scheduled this meeting earlier this year. In fact, one of the topics at Thursday night's meeting is "Securing Your Intellectual Property", so you can learn what some in the legal profession don't know (and perhaps Rush would be interested in the "I didn't know Acrobat could do that!" topic, but it might actually be too advanced for him).
Please come and show Adobe some love.
WHAT: Adobe User Group of Atlanta February 2009 Meeting
WHEN: Thursday, February 19, 2009 starting at 7PM
WHO: Adobe's Ann Fracas and Phil Lee
WHERE: Roundbox Global (directions [PDF], Google Maps)
RSVP: link
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Thursday Night: Photoshop with Jim DiVitale
Most of our local Photoshop artists, designers and photographers enjoy it when Jim DiVitale presents at the Adobe User Group of Atlanta (Tomorrow night, Thursday, January 22, 2009).
But why is that?
Could it be that he has a great deal of experience? He's been a commercial advertising photographer for 28 years and has a long list of certifications and degrees.
Could it be that he is a great Photoshop presenter? He's been touring around the country presenting Photoshop and other related Adobe products like Lightroom for years.
Could it be that he continues to give back to the community? On his blog and in a ton of publications.
No. I think that it is because he always presents ways to to reduce time and effort using Photoshop. And he almost always announces every keyboard shortcut while he presents. That is cool.
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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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User Group Overload Ends with Tonight's XD Atlanta User Group Gathering
This week has been totally user group overload for me.
Tuesday we had Ryan Taylor present "Intro to Flash Player 10 and Pixel Bender" at the Adobe Flash Platform User Group of Atlanta. Ryan always wows us with his giant brain full of math. The part of his presentation that I thought was most interesting was his examples of Pixel Bender, the tool kit that lets you (yes, you. It looks like it's that simple) script filters and effects for Flash. Ryan has posted his presentation and demo files on his blog if you want to take a look.
Wednesday had me visiting the Atlanta ColdFusion User Group where I was pummeled by comments "Where the heck have you been?" and "You didn't RSVP!" Mea Culpa, my CF friends, I have been neglecting you badly. But tonight's meeting was a must-see event; John Mason gave us an overview of "BlazeDS for ColdFusion Developers" and he did so without showing a chat example (thanks for taking the high road, John). He replaced the unfortunately stereotypical chat messaging example with the much more pertinent ColdFusion error message widget example. John's presentation will be posted on his labs site.
Tonight should also be fun as Michael Hagel has arranged for the XD Atlanta User Group to have a "Summer Social Gathering" at STATS Atlanta, you know, the place where all the 360Flex parties were held (and the only place you could have seen me during 360Flex because I was too busy at work to attend sessions :-( ). It should be great. By the way, Michael, the site is looking great!
See you there!
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Kerner wants "One Brush to Rule Them All" and you should, too!
Matt Kerner popped up on my IM client with a long, expletive-laden rant (and he's actively religious, so I started paying attention immediately) about brushes in Fireworks CS3. It seems that he has a workflow issue with Fireworks that involves him moving from Photoshop and back to Fireworks all because he needed to use a specific brush that isn't available to him in Fireworks.
Wow. Who knew that is so simple as a *.abr file could effect someone's sanity. So much so, Kerner made a logo. So much so, he made t-shirts available.
If this was Flex or the Flash Player, I'd be suggesting that you go vote on the issue. Since we don't have that available, if you would find it useful for brush files be easily transferred between Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, Flash, In Design, and After Effect, leave a comment here and I will make sure that Adobe hears you.
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