Monthly Archives: February 2009

Overlay.tv Creates an AIR-based Uploader for YouTube

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overlay_tvClearly AIR Applications are hot with the Twitterati. But one other area where I think AIR applications can be incredibly valuable is with uploaders. I’d love to see a Facebook, Flickr, etc uploader so I could just drag and drop files onto my AIR app and have them zapped to that big Web 2.0 cloud in the sky. Luckily the people over at Overlay.tv have solved the problem for YouTube with a little help from Nitobi.

The app is pretty slick. It will handle all of the uploading for you. You can drag and drop videos and it will let you add an image overlay for the video to help you brand it. The Nitobi crew has even released an open source library for doing uploads to YouTube from AS3. I hope we see more of these kinds of app. This is, in my mind, exactly what AIR is great for; bridging the desktop and the web.

AdobeTV: New Flex Builder “Gumbo” Features

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My latest Tech Talk with Ryan Stewart video is up and in this one I chat with Scott Evans about some of the new features in Flex Builder “Gumbo”, how you can get features into the product, and then show a quick demo of some of the new stuff. We did this round of videos the day after MAX, so they’re definitely not the best demos I’ve ever done, and this one is pretty simple, but the best part (as always) is the interview with Scott. If you missed it, I’ve also got one on Alchemy in which I interviewed Scott Petersen.

Illustrator CS4 Effects and FXG

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fxg_logoI’m working on some Flash Catalyst samples that use Illustrator instead of Photoshop and I’m finding that Illustrator is really hard. It’s also going to be a very, very powerful way to create graphics and content for Flex applications because of FXG. For those that don’t know, FXG is an XML-based graphics format that is part of the Flex Framework and works with a lot of the CS4 tools. What makes Illustrator so great is that since it’s vector based, almost anything you do can be represented as tags in FXG. FXG supports a number of Bitmap Filters and Effects but I wasn’t sure which of those you can actually create in Illustrator and have represented as a property in FXG (as opposed to a rasterized BitmapGraphic). I asked around internally and Sanjay Kumar, an engineering manager on the Illustrator team, gave me a quick rundown:

  • DropShadowFilter: Stylize->Drop Shadow
  • GlowFilter with Inner = true: Stylize->Inner Glow
  • GlowFilter with Inner = false: Stylize->Outer Glow
  • BlurFilter: Blur->Gaussian Blur

For the most part they’re pretty straightforward, but there are a few, such as BevelFilter, GradientGlowFliter, and ColorMatrixFilter that you can’t create from Illustrator. Hopefully we’ll add more in both future versions of FXG and Illustrator. There’s a ton of stuff in the FXG spec that’s worth checking out.

Deepa And Peter Flynn Talking about Gumbo and Catalyst Tomorrow

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If you want to hear about Catalyst from the horse’s mouth and you’re in the bay area then you should swing by the Bay Area Application Developers Adobe User Group. Peter Flynn, an engineer on the Catalyst team, is going to talk about Catalyst and he’ll be joined by the venerable Deepa Subramaniam talking about Gumbo. Plus she’s giving away a copy of her book, so there are free goodies!

SlideSix Now Supports Embedding Videos from YouTube and Vimeo

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slidesixCrunchGear has a good writeup about the new features in SlideSix, which include the ability to add video from Vimeo and YouTube. Todd Sharp has been busy at work and I’m glad to see SlideSix getting more and more attention (as well as features). It’s all built with Adobe technologies from ColdFusion on the back to Flex on the front. I think a few of us on the evangelism team are planning to start using it to share our presentations with the community, so we’re going to be bugging Todd for more features.

An OpenID Login Component for Flex

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I’m a big fan of OpenID and I wish more Flex applications used it. The user experience isn’t entirely there, but they’re making progress. That’s why I was really glad to see this Flex OpenID Login Component released. Now you don’t have an excuse not to add OpenID to your Flex applications. And for those of you interested in OAuth, iotashan has an OAuth-AS3 library that works pretty well.

Announcing the Semi-Monthly Expedition: Flash Catalyst Sneak on March 11

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Update: Hey all, I had to postpone this by a bit, so I apologize. I’ll have more info on when I’m doing the first one soon.

semimonthly_expeditionI’m looking for ways to reduce my travel a bit while still having a positive impact on the community and getting the word about what Adobe is doing out to folks. As I was talking about this with Doug, he suggested the idea of doing an online meeting every couple of weeks, which I thought was a great idea. So I’m announcing the “Semi-Monthly Expedition”, which will be a recurring online session that happens every couple of weeks. I’m tentatively planning to do the second and third Wednesdays of every month, but we’ll see how it goes and if it makes sense to keep it consistent.

So what is it? Basically I’m going to hold an online meeting using Connect on a specific topic. The presentation itself will only be about 30 minutes long but I’ll hang out for the rest of the 30 minutes to answer questions. I want to keep it short because I’ll also be recording the session for anyone who wants the info but can’t attend for whatever reason. Topics will cover basically anything at Adobe.

The first session is going to be a Flash Catalyst Sneak in which I’ll spend 30 minutes talking about some of the changes since the MAX preview build as a sneak to what you can expect in the public beta. Here are the details:

What: The Semi-Monthly Expedition: Flash Catalyst Sneak
When:Wednesday, March 11th, at 9:00 AM PST
Where: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/riamountaineer/

Hopefully it will be a good, fun way to share some info and let people ask questions directly. I’ll also be posting all of the code, presentation slides and demos for people so they can take and use or explore at will. Some of the things I want to cover in other sessions:

  • Using Adobe Stratus
  • Creating custom components in Flex 4
  • Building real time applications with Adobe Flash Collaboration Services
  • A detailed look at AMF
  • Collaborative applications with PHP and the Flash Platform
  • Introduction to Flash Media Server 3.5 for developers
  • The layout model in Flex 4
  • Building mobile applications with the Flash Platform
  • Flash CS4 for Flex Developers
  • Using .NET with your Flex applications
  • Advanced Adobe AIR techniques
  • Flex and Visual Studio
  • Dreamweaver CS4 for developers
  • Building better RIAs with ColdFusion
  • The Sprout project: Ruby and the Flash Platform
  • LiveCycle ES and the Flash Platform

A bunch of ideas and hopefully I can get to them. We’ll see how the first one goes.

Upcoming Adobe Days in Chicago and Washington DC

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Next week I’m embarking on a couple of city tour to participate in Adobe Days in Chicago and Washington DC. At the Chicago event I’ll be presenting ColdFusion and Flex with Kevin Hoyt. We’ll be covering the Flash Platform and talking about how ColdFusion and Flex go great together. In Washington DC I’ll be doing the same set of sessions and Terry Ryan, our newest evangelist is going to be helping out. Greg Wilson will also be doing a track on LiveCycle ES.

Both of the events are absolutely free and make for a great introduction, refresher, or looking glass into Flex and ColdFusion. Come take the day and hang out (lunch is included).

Register here for Adobe Day Chicago and here for Adobe Day Washington DC. Hope to see you there!

Flex Camp Miami – Hotness on March 6th

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flexcamp_miamiDoes it get any cooler than Miami? I’ve only been there once but I felt completely underdressed and lame. Well, more than usual at least. But registration is open for Flex Camp Miami so there is no better time to geek it out in the city. It looks like it’s going to be a really great event covering some good topics. The guys from the MAX-award winning Scrapblog are going to be there and Greg Wilson is going to show the future of Adobe.

Flash Player on the Palm Pre and the $10 million Open Screen Project Fund

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Adobe announced a bunch of news today before the start of Mobile World Congress. I think Robert Scoble has the best roundup. The biggest? In my opinion it’s great to see Palm join the Open Screen Project. The Pre seems like it’s going to be a big, big deal, and getting Flash on it would be great for smartphone users. The other big piece of news? The $10 million fund that Adobe and Nokia have created for developers to build applications that work on Nokia devices and use Flash/AIR.

Most of this will be available in 2010, but I can tell you that this is the year of mobile at Adobe. We’re going to be doing a number of public betas, our tooling will start having robust mobile support, and the entire ecosystem is going to move forward. But we’ve also announced the availability of a downloadable Flash Lite runtime for Nokia and Windows Mobile devices, so if you’re targeting Flash Lite 3, you can bundle your applications with the runtime so you can deploy it all at once.

Stay tuned for more mobile Flash Platform stuff this year.