Monthly Archives: February 2008

National Geographic’s mapXchange using ColdFusion

Posted on by
Reply

When I was doing full time ColdFusion development I always got a kick out of Ben’s “Using CF” posts. It’s left an impact because to this day I find myself checking for that little .cfm extension. Today, I noticed it on the National Geographic mapXchange, a library of files that you can download into the Topo! application series and then export to a GPS unit. It doesn’t look like Ben caught this one yet, so I wanted to blog it. It doesn’t seem like they’re doing anything super-cool, but hey, if they want someone to come meet with them about what Adobe is doing, I’m more than happy to volunteer.

[tags]mapXchange, ColdFusion, National Geographic[/tags]

Get on the Adobe Reader 9 Beta

Posted on by
1

AcrobatThe Reader Team announced that they’re looking for prerelease testers for Adobe Reader 9. The new version of Reader is going to have some very cool stuff. They’ve optimized it a lot so the startup time is much, much improved and they’ve started incorporating Flash so that you can do all kinds of cool things right inside of your PDF. If you were at MAX you probably saw it during the sneaks. If you’re interested in checking it out, fill out this form. I really hope a lot of Flash/Flex devs get involved so they can have a big impact on the product and how Flash is incorporated.

[tags]Adobe Reader, Adobe, PDF[/tags]

Picnik Opens Up – Premium Features Are Free

Posted on by
Reply

Picnik ScreenshotPicnik, one of my favorite online photo editors (all Flex) just announced that they’re opening up the features in their premium service to everyone:

Now all Picnik users will have full access to our huge range of edit tools, special effects, fonts and shapes that previously were only available as Premium features. Free users will have this largess supported by ads.

Picnik still has a premium model which includes things like fullscreen mode, exclusive content, no ads, and the ability to be first in line for new features. It’s an interesting model to open up some of the premiere features to everyone but keep the premium model and even continue to offer early access to new features to those customers.

Picnik remains one of the best looking Flex applications out there. They were able to sign a great deal with Flickr (TechCrunch thinks that contributed to this) and they keep on trucking. I’ve been playing with Photoshop Express internally and I’m also really excited about that application. It’s going to be a golden age in online photo editing with a lot of people pushing each other in beneficial directions for customers.

[tags]Picnik, Photoshop Express, Photo Editors, Flex[/tags]

Go Vote for Flex/Flash/AIR On the Webware 100 Awards

Posted on by
Reply

Webware 100It’s that time of the year again. Webware is doing their now annual rundown of the coolest technology of the year in a variety of categories. There are a bunch of nominees to be whittled down to the 100 winners and as you would expect, Adobe’s RIA platform got a lot of love. Head over and vote for our friends:

Audio

Browsing

  • Adobe AIR (Ummm)
  • G.ho.st (Flash)
  • Jooce (Flash)
  • YourMinis (Flash/AIR)

    • Communication

    Productivity

    Publishing & Photography

    Social networking

    Utility and Security

    Video

    Whew, that’s a lot of entries and there were too many in the video category to list so I just picked my favorites. Very cool to see!

    [tags]Webware, Anywhere.fm, Finetune, Jamglue, Adobe AIR, G.ho.st, Jooce, Yourminis, Jott, Blist, Coghead, Empresr, Mint, Octopz, Animoto, Picnik, Pownce, Scrapblog, Scribd, Worth1000, Aviary, Gaia Online, Geni, Scrabulous, Stardoll, Flektor, Myfabrik, Jumpcut, Qik, Vimeo[/tags]

    My Thermo Session at 360|Flex

    Posted on by
    Reply

    360|Flex AtlantaI’m on my way to 360|Flex in Atlanta and I wanted to quickly talk a bit about my session on Wednesday morning. It’s officially listed in the program as CS3 and Flex 3 from 10:00 – 11:20 on Wednesday morning. The reason for that is that there isn’t enough stuff I can talk about with regards to Thermo to fill the entire hour and a half slot. In fact, the team is really busy nailing a lot of the user interface stuff and tackling a lot of the more interesting designer/developer problems for an alpha/beta later this year. But there are some things I can share and most of it revolves around how the CS3 products fit into Thermo. I’ll be talking about CS3 and Flex 3 skinning in the context of how Thermo will handle some of those problems, then I’ll talk about what our current plans for importing artwork into Thermo are and how to prepare your CS3 files for Thermo. I’ll talk about some of our “roud trip” feature between Thermo and CS3 as well. In some ways it’s going to be kind of an odd session because I won’t be showing a lot of code or a lot of concrete information (the things that make 360|Flex such a great conference). One thing I do want to do is spend a big chunk of time answering your questions and getting feedback about Thermo. I wanted to run a BoF but didn’t have time so this will be a combined session/BoF in some ways.

    Here’s what you shouldn’t expect:

    • A new demo
    • An in-depth feature list
    • Any kind of Thermo bits

    Here’s what you should expect:

    • Information about CS and Thermo
    • How to start thinking about getting your artwork in Thermo for the beta down the road
    • CS3/Flex 3 Workflows that you can use today
    • A chance to ask a lot of questions and get most of them answered.

    It’s a nontraditional session, but I really wanted to give you guys a chance to talk about Thermo. 360|Flex is a collection of the best our community has to offer so I felt like it was important to have some Thermo representation there.

    [tags]Thermo, 360FlexAtlanta, CS3[/tags]

    AIR Linux Coming Later This Year

    Posted on by
    2

    Paul Krill from InfoWorld has a post about AIR Linux and some quotes about both our strategy and the Linux version. We saw a demo of the AIR Linux running on Ubuntu today and got to see the Parleys.com site. The performance was a little off, but the application ran just fine on our alpha, totally unoptimized bits. I’ve been using the Linux version for a while and it’s amazing how things like Twitter and Finetune (and more of these applications) have brought my Linux experience up to par with everything else. It makes me wish every application was built on AIR because it’s so damn easy to switch between operating systems. Mike Chambers has a great video up of the session and AIR running on Linux. Remember, we need beta testers!

    [tags]AIR, Linux, Adobe[/tags]

    Engage 2008 – First Part of the Day

    Posted on by
    Reply

    Engage is off to a great start. It’s a very different vibe than last year but it’s got a lot more people and and a much bigger production value than last year as well, which has been good so far. We saw from a bunch of customers that are building Flex and/or AIR applications. Scoble has a bunch of videos up so if you can’t be here, that’s a great second bet. I’m impressed with Qik.

    [tags]Engage2008, Adobe[/tags]

    Tracking Engage 2008

    Posted on by
    Reply

    We’re busy at Engage 2008. We did Engage last year and this year it’s bigger and better. We basically bring a bunch of people into a room, show them what our customers are doing, then let the press/bloggers/analysts ask questions. There are a number of ways to follow along if you aren’t here but are interested in our customers or the questions:

    [tags]Engage2008, Adobe[/tags]

    02.25.2008 – The Day the Web Got Much Bigger

    Posted on by
    Reply

    Adobe AIR LogoToday is a pretty big day. To be totally honest, today is the reason I joined Adobe. Today is the release of Adobe AIR and Flex 3. The New York Times has a great article about what AIR enables and why it’s going to have an impact on the technology landscape. AIR is a product that will help bridge the gap between the web and the desktop. The web is incredibly exciting but the desktop is far from dead. And Adobe is in the thick of a movement that will help bridge the gap between web and desktop. Adobe loves the web. The goal with AIR is to take the good, tried and true from the web, and help enhance the desktop. The web is a powerful platform and building on top of it is something beneficial to all web developers. AIR provides that extra functionality to bring the web and the desktop together.

    The fantastic response is a validation of the platform in my mind. We’ve got applications from the New York Times (great interview with the ShifD folks), eBay, FedEx, AOL, and startups like Aviary, uvLayer, and numerous others. It’s exciting to see what people can do when the boundaries of the web expand.

    This is also about the future of Adobe. Adobe has helped create a very powerful platform that combines the web and the desktop. The goal is that our customers will create some really compelling applications on top of it. But it also gives Adobe room to grow. We’ve always built great software and we want to enable developers to create on top of that platform. But now that the groundwork has been laid, think of the other things Adobe can do. We now have a very rich, interactive platform to deploy applications. We can start offering helpful capabilities like we do with online/offline synchronization and LiveCycle Data Services. Think about how we can offer additional features on top of our platform. Look at how Buzzword could be enhanced. Look at what we could do with Share and CoCoMo. All of those depend on the Adobe platform and AIR opens up those features on both the web and the desktop. There are some exciting things in store.

    [tags]Adobe AIR, Flex, Flash, Rich Internet Applications[/tags]