This isn’t Flex or Flash related, but Mike Davidson has a very interesting post on classing up MySpace. It’s a great tutorial and it’s inspired me to fix MySpace one of these days. Then again, MySpace is nothing if not about expression, and a lot of the people there are quite expressive.
TweetI have another guest post over at Read/WriteWeb in which I talk about different options for building Rich Internet Applications. As I’ve said before, the term Web 2.0 is thrown around a lot, but there are still cool things happening. As more and more people start to embrace the ideas behind Web 2.0 (if not necessarily the buzzwords) the needs of companies providing these applications is going to mature. They are going to be more demanding when it comes to experience, when it comes to integrating multimedia and in terms of how easily they can customize the applications.
All three options I talk about (OpenLazslo, WinFX, and Flex) provide a level of interactivity that is only just beginning to be understood. More companies will want to expand into the RIA space and the competition between providers is going to provide some pretty exciting features as well as some amazing examples. I hope you enjoy the overview.
TweetFrank Gruber of TechCrunch did a review of the major mapping applications and discovered something I already new, Yahoo Maps Beta wins. Not only because of features, but because of the interface as well as the great API. I’ve been hooked on Yahoo Maps since they released it, and since having the Flash Player 8.5 beta installed, it’s been very fast. Congrats to the folks at Yahoo.
I should also note that the people behind Yahoo Maps are looking for a Flash developer:
Want to be part of one of the most used Flex Apps on the planet? Yahoo!
Maps has another full-time position open.
This position is for a Senior Developer who will be responsible for
development on both our consumer facing application and our developer APIs. If you want to check out these projects, you can view them here:
http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/index.php
http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/index.html
We’re looking for a Senior developer with the following skills:
-Demonstrated experience/expertise with AS2 and Flex 1.5
-Firm understanding and appreciation of Application Architecture
(Experience with Cairngorm or ARP is a huge plus!)
-Strong foundation in design patterns (such as MVC) and overall good coding
practices.
-Experience working in a team environment and using code management tools
(such as CVS.)
-Experience with AS3/Flex2 is a huge plus
-Experience with unit testing is a huge plus
-Experience with Ant is also a plus
If you’re interested, send your resume and links to examples of your work to
Aaron King
Google has teamed up with the team in charge of The Da Vinci Code over at Sony Pictures to create a major puzzle competition. The contest itself is something that one would expect out of Google as they’ve come up with 12,358 original puzzles. Over the next 24 days they’ll be releasing 6 different challenges at 4 different difficulty levels. For those who can complete all 24, there are some amazing prizes.
What technology did the teams leverage for the puzzles? Flash. When the user experience is important, and they want to make it the focus of an application, there is no substitute for Flash. This is why Flash and AJAX are not competitors, because Flash provides for a level of interactivity and branding that AJAX simply can’t. Take a look at the puzzles and how much fun they are to play with. When building Rich Internet Applications in Flash, this is the effect that we can achieve. A highly customized, branded experience that places the user within the “world” of the RIA and gives them access to content in an intuitive way. Flash makes the web both powerful and fun and next generation RIAs are going to really take this to a new level.
I like to think that I have a pretty good pulse on the Flash platform community and what’s going on. As my wife can attest, I spend way too much time reading blogs and programming in my free time. However every once in a while I get a wakeup call and realize that MXNA is only one section of what seems to be a big Adobe community. Today was one of those days. Why? Because Craig Babcock pointed me to the Seattle Flash User Group. Seriously. Someone started a Flash group here and I didn’t know about it? Clearly I’m getting out of touch.
In any case, if anyone else out there is from Seattle and didn’t know about it, they’re meeting the 18th at the Adobe campus in Fremont. Should be cool!
TweetI just saw this over at katapultmedia – Flex Builder 2 won’t install on Vista. He says it doesn’t work as a plugin or as a standalone install and believes the problem is related to Java. I don’t have Vista running anywhere, but can anyone else shed light on whether or not Flex Builder 2 works with Vista? Anyone have any tips for John?
TweetIf you live under a rock (okay, maybe if you just don’t look at tech.memeorandum.com) then you may have missed the news that Disney is offering free downloads of some of its ABC shows. These shows currently sell on iTunes for $1.99 but will be available for free (with unskippable commercials) using Flash Player 8. This is another big win for Flash, and I think it’s one that may pay dividends down the road.
This is only going to speed adoption of the new Flash Player. It may not be significant, but it will help. What I will be very curious to see is if any video enhancements are made to Flash Player version 8.5 that would compel these companies (ABC, Google, YouTube, Jumpcut) to use Flash 8.5 instead. If that happens, then I wouldn’t be surprised to see the adoption rate for Flash Player 8.5 skyrocket. Just looking at the popularity of these sites and extrapolating that over a couple of months is a fun exercise in thinking of Flash adoption. Now, there may not be any new video features in Flash 8.5, but I hope that it’s something the Flash team is thinking about. I think this could have a significant impact on future Flash Player propagation.
TweetI just registered for Seattle Mind Camp 2.0 and the things I said I wanted to talk about are the Flash Platform and Rich Internet Applications. I think Hans is also planning to go so hopefully between the two of us we can show people the cool stuff Flash can do. Who knows, by the end of it we might even have enough support for a Seattle Flex User Group. (I walked around the Adobe campus here in Seattle on Saturday, and I have to say, I think it would be a pretty good place to have FUG meetings.)
Who else is going to Mind Camp? It looks like Scoble is going and Dave Winer is too. Are any other Flashers thinking of going?
TweetI finally started collecting things again this week for the week in review, but this will probably be smaller (and in more random order) than the others.
I think the biggest news was that Forbes announced Verizon is using Flash enabled phones. This is huge as it finally opens up the coveted North American market to FlashLite developers. Some other commentary here and here.
Also on the mobile front, FlashPlayer 7 is available for PocketPC. I’m still not sure on the details, but this is a very cool step.
Mike Chambers is doing a Flash/Flex podcast which has started out really well. I think it’s going to be a great resource for the new Flex developers who are discovering the platform for the first time.
This got a lot of attention on digg, but it may be old news. gotoAndLearn.com has some great Flash tutorials.
Sho released source code for a Flex auto complete text input control which is pretty nifty.
Mike Potter put together a good tutorial for anyone wanting to use Flex 2.0 and PHP over on labs.
I saw over on Metah’s blog that there are a couple of new Flash books that deal with ActionScript 2 and Flash 8.
Christophe Coenraets has an absolutely SICK Google Maps collaboration app using Flex Enterprise Services. I get really exited about FES because of stuff like this. Awesome example.
IFBIN is looking for 3 new Flex authors so if you want to show your Flex off and get paid for it, the application is pretty quick.
Flex Jobs Galore. If you want to be on the Flex team, there are a lot of chances here. I must say, if you get one of these positions, I’m going to have to ask you to start a blog. There are also some positions in India.
Finally, Jennifer Larkin is looking to start a Bay Area Flex User Group. It’s cool to see that kind of enthusiasm and it makes me realize how fast things are growing. If anyone else is in the process of starting, or thinking about starting a Flex group, let me know. Best of luck to Jennifer.
TweetWe finally have a Flex/Flash podcast, and this isn’t just any podcast, this is one straight from the mouth of Mike Chambers. I didn’t catch it until now because my newsreader is being very slow lately, but he posted it this morning.
Mike has been absolutely on fire lately in the Flash/Flex/Apollo community, and I hope he keeps up with the podcasting because I think it’s very valuable. He has a good thumb on what’s interesting and important and talks about them in a way that is going to be helpful for anyone doing Flex development. He also talks about the things he’s developing and anything interesting or challenging he finds during that process
According to the ColdFusion Podcast guys, once you get past the 4th episode you’re over the hump, so Mike, here’s to getting past that 4th episode!
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