Archive for Tech
April 30, 2008 at 11:52 pm · Filed under AIR (Apollo), Actionscript 2, Adobe, Flash, Flex, Mobile Development, OSFlash, Remoting, Tech
Life just got a lot more interesting for those who make a living working with Flash:
http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2008/04/the_open_screen_project.html
As a part of the announcement, Adobe is publishing exactly how the SWF format works without restrictions, and removing all other barriers to getting Flash on the widest range of devices. Set top/cable boxes, all mobile phones, televisions, your appliances... anything technical, really. Even those devices without a screen and/or user interface. Bill Perry does a great job of going into more detail on the implications for devices on his blog.
Ryan Stewart has a great post explaining all the implications of this announcement, for devices and desktop computers alike. He goes into more detail on the several parts of the announcement, so it is worth the read.
As someone who makes their living from the Flash ecosystem, you should care greatly about this announcement. It may not seem like it to a non-developer, but this is huge for anyone who knows how to use Flash. The thought of having Flash everywhere is finally a reality for those who want to include it in their products as a user interface layer, or even to allow developers to control the product using ActionScript. And this means that your capabilities to design, develop, and then deploy your Flash experiences just became more marketable and useful.
Lastly, as a member of the Flash community, you should also be excited about the implications this has on open source projects such as SWX, AMFPHP, and the like. The more open the specifications surrounding the various parts of the Flash ecosystem, the easier it is for members of the community to create tools and open source projects which contribute to the growth and prominence of said ecosystem... and make all of our lives as participants in that ecosystem that much more interesting and fun.
March 19, 2008 at 2:23 pm · Filed under Adobe, Apple, Flash, Mobile Development, Tech
Mike Downey, a Platform Evangelist at Adobe, just posted the entire, correct story of Flash on the iPhone. As mentioned in his post, a lot of people have been blogging about how Flash is coming to the iPhone. However, the reports of Adobe CEO's comments about Flash support on the iPhone yesterday were not necessarily complete and accurate, so Mike has taken upon himself to clear the air.
Worth the read, if nothing else, to help guide you through the hype to what the real story is...
Update: Bill Perry, also from Adobe, has also posted an even a more detailed account of the facts on his Flash Devices blog.
March 3, 2008 at 11:59 am · Filed under FITC, PHP, Tech, Web Apps
Created by the guys (or Pirates, as they prefer to be called) over at Substance, Logobama lets you upload a photo to create a custom Barack Obama logo in sizes to fit user icons for Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, LinkedIn, Flickr, and others.
This is a great example of how to use various services, such as Flickr, to fit your simple mashup needs -- just like David and Shaun spoke about at FITC Hollywood a few months ago. Great idea, fellas!
December 9, 2007 at 7:31 pm · Filed under Apple, Tech
For a while now I have kept a list of small projects that I'd like to do when I have time. I call these "weekend projects" because they should take me no longer than a weekend to get them up and running. Last weekend I _finally_ got to knock one of those off the list: http://www.quicklookplugins.com.
QuickLook Plugins List is a directory of Quick Look Plugins for Apple’s OS X 10.5 Leopard. If you are unfamiliar with Quick Look in OS X 10.5, you can read more about it here. Basically, Quick Look in Mac OS X Leopard lets you play, view, and page through your files without opening them. And this new site aims to keep a directory of plugins that developers have written for this new technology, allowing you to use this feature with a much greater set of file types such as ZIP, XML, FLV and more.
This all started from a blog post Keith Peters did last month when he mentioned ColorXML which adds color formatting to XML files in Quick Look. I did some research and found several plugins, but they were all scattered around the internet on various blogs and forum postings. Hopefully this new site will help to avoid that scavenger hunt.
If you see that any are missing on the site, I encourage you to use the contact form and send them along. Also, you can help the site out by 'Digging' it on Digg.
Enjoy!
October 17, 2007 at 4:09 pm · Filed under Flash, Mobile Development, Tech
A few days ago I received an email that it was finally my turn to order a Chumby as part of the insider's launch, and today I placed my order.
What is a Chumby? It's a really small wi-fi networked computer that looks like an odd bedside alarm clock. It has a LCD touchscreen, is almost completely open source, can be extended/customized, and you can make Flash Lite 3 apps to run on it. The Flash Lite 3 was one of the big sellers for me - I'm excited to see what I can do with it, especially since I haven't spent much time developing with Flash Lite before. Oh, and it'll work perfectly with SWX!
Engadget has a nice hands-on post from a pre-production model with lots of photos, but here are some stats from the Chumby website:
Wi-fi connectivity • access to the free Chumby Network • 3.5" LCD color touchscreen • two external USB 2.0 full-speed ports • 350 MHz ARM processor • 64 MB SDRAM • 64 MB NAND flash ROM • stereo 2W speakers • headphone output • squeeze sensor • accelerometer (motion sensor) • leather casing • AC adapter included
I'll be sure to post more details and photos once it arrives.
July 25, 2007 at 11:03 am · Filed under AIR (Apollo), Actionscript 3, Adobe, PHP, Remoting, Tech, Web Apps
The more I code in AS3 the more I want to be able to use it as a server side programming language - mainly as a replacement for PHP. I might be missing something, but at first glance, I don't see any reasons this wouldn't be possible with a little effort from Adobe.
Let's look at the current manifestations of ECMAScript 4, the standard on which ActionScript 3 and the new version of JavaScript are based. There is Flash/Flex (SWF) with delivery to the web browser via a plug-in, JavaScript for direct interaction with the web browser, and AIR (Apollo) for desktop delivery. The only missing piece is server-side deployment, a fact of which I'd bet Adobe is well aware.
PHP is a great server-side language which I use very often, but every language has its own nuances, and switching continuously between PHP and AS3 often opens the door for several small bugs due to the syntactical differences.
As a framework for how much effort it would take to port AS3 for server-side usage, let's look at how PHP5 and AS3 compare on key web development factors. These core features are supported in both PHP5 and AS3:
- MySQL/database integration (PHP built-in, AS3 through classes)
- Open source and free
- Extendable (PHP through plugins, AS3 through classes)
- Large developer community
- Class-based development possible (Full OOP in AS3)
So with most of the features needed already included in AS3 or written by the community, why not take the extra step and port it to the server side? I'm sure Adobe doesn't want to sell Coldfusion 8 short, so there is that corporate hurdle. I could see it being integrated with Coldfusion in a similar manner that ActionScript can be included in MXML through the usage of a code/cdata block.
All said, nothing is stopping the community from developing an open source project based around this concept. A quick search of Google reveals that at least one other person is having similar thoughts.
Would you use AS3 if it was ported for server-side usage?
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