The solution accelerator team today announced the release of 3 new solution accelerators for LiveCycle Enterprise Suite.  The solution accelerators are designed to be extended and customized by partners leading to reduced development time and increased quality.  The accelerators are packaged with a set of production-ready building blocks that consist of reusable components and technical guides. The building blocks may be used within the context of a solution accelerator or form the basis for developing new solutions.

Financial Services: Account Enrollment

Improve account enrollment while driving consistency and efficiency across channels and products. With Adobe LiveCycle ES and the Account Enrollment solution accelerator, you can minimize repeated data entry, streamline account processing and setup, and deliver tailored information to customers with ease.

• Connect presentation: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/AccountEnrollment
• Further details: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/solutions/fin_account_enrollment.html

Financial Services: Correspondence Management.

Ensure customer communications are consistent, tailored, and cost efficient by managing all of your correspondence on a single platform. With Adobe LiveCycle ES and the Correspondence Management Solution accelerator, you can automate all kinds of correspondence — from welcome packages and confirmations to proposals and claim letters — while ensuring communications are accurate, compliant, and secure.

• Connect presentation: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/CorrespondenceManagement
• Further details: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/solutions/fin_serv_corr_man.html

Cross-Industry:  Human Capital Applications

Adobe solutions can help HR teams simplify and streamline forms-based processes, as well as reduce costs by providing self service options to employees.  Adobe solutions can support secure HR processes throughout an enterprise, engaging employees and applicants whether online or offline, and integrating the employee or applicant data within your existing infrastructure. The Human Capital Applications solution accelerator facilitates new employee onboarding and offboarding. With Adobe LiveCycle ES and the Human Capital Applications Accelerator, you can streamline data collection, secure employee data, dynamically generate welcome and exit packages, and reduce compliance risks and loss of intellectual and physical property.

• Connect presentation: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/HumanCapitalApplications
• Further details: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/solutions/cross_vertical.html

Technology Building Blocks

Supporting these new solution accelerators are additional technology building blocks (Selection and Capture, Content Creation, Correspondence Generation) and updates to the existing On-Demand Assembly building block.

For further information including referencing the solution guides and technical documentation or to download these new releases, please visit http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/solution_accelerators.html.

Additional information will be posted soon on the Adobe Solution Accelerator team blog at http://blogs.adobe.com/lcsolutionaccelerators/

To learn more about Adobe LiveCycle, check out Tour de LiveCycle, a desktop application for exploring LiveCycle’s features, tools, APIs, and more.

I created tBlurb.com (original blog post) primarily as a means of sharing code snippets and other web content.  The concept is simple; you go to http://tblurb.com, enter your content, click Save Page, and get a URL that you can share.  The page remains online forever unless it gets zero traffic for 90 days.  This concept of “disposable web pages” is something I’ve needed on multiple occasions when responding to blog comments, questions on twitter, etc.   After using tBlurb for a few weeks, I realize that not having the ability to edit the content after clicking “Save” is a problem!  There were several occasions where I created a page and later needed to modify it.

tBlurb.com now provides a private URL that takes you back to the content editor.  I also create another URL that provides traffic data for your content.  No personal information is collected…not even your email address.  I simply assign a random key for the edit and reporting URLs.

So, you create your content:

When you save your content, you get 3 URLs:

Sample traffic report:

When I get time, I’ll improve the reporting and add some geo information (countries visiting, etc.).

I’ve recently been using tBlurb to share small Flex code snippets on Twitter.  Below are a few recent that have received decent traffic:

• http://tblurb.com/airidle – IDLE keyboard/mouse detection in Adobe AIR
• http://tblurb.com/airtwitter – Twitter API sample
• http://tblurb.com/airscreen – Using the screen API in Adobe AIR to manage multiple displays
• http://tblurb.com/airdatabase – Using the Adobe AIR database
• http://tblurb.com/airnetwork – Network connectivity detection in Adobe AIR

I’ve also used it for sharing agendas for webinars on twitter moments before they start and other similar content (e.g. http://tblurb.com/Y3O9fn)

Mark Szulc just posted a great summary of the new features in the next LiveCycle Designer, part of the next LiveCycle ES that just went beta yesterday.  Check out Mark’s post here.

Today, Marcel Boucher announced the first ever LiveCycle developer contest.  There are some great prizes so it’s worth taking a peek.  I look forward to seeing the entries!  Check it out here.

On the heels of the beta releases of Flash Builder/Flex 4, Flash Catalyst, ColdFusion 9 and LiveCycle Data Services 3 is….. (trumpets sound!) LiveCycle Enterprise Suite.  As you can see, the engineers at Adobe are working weekends!

Below is a brief summary of what’s new in the upcoming release of LiveCycle ES:

• Improved development and authoring tools, including many features to make team development possible and process design more intuitive.
• Improved UI development capabilities
• Improved LiveCycle ES administration including new monitoring capabilities and easier backup and restore functionality
• Improved support for document assembly of XDP-based documents including a new interface to generate DDX commands
• Improved administration and platform maturity with  improved backup and recovery support
• Expanded platform, database, and JVM support including a new turnkey installer
• Improved out of the box solutions for reviewing and commenting of processes

The list above only scratches the surface of what’s new.  You’ll find other enhancements across many of the individual services that make up LiveCycle.  We’re also saving some big surprises for later this year so STAY TUNED!

Important Links:

• Join the LiveCycle ES Pre-release program and download the beta
• Marcel Boucher’s blog post announcing the beta
• Tour de LiveCycle – a great starting point for learning more about LiveCycle ES
• Adobe LiveCycle Developer Center
• My previous LiveCycle ES blog posts
• Adobe MAX 2009 – learn TONS about LiveCycle this year.  Be sure to check out the LiveCycle @MAX Bundle

During the past two months, I’ve had the pleasure of showing off the new features of ColdFusion 9 and  ColdFusion Builder  to several ColdFusion user groups.  This was my first year doing the “ColdFusion circuit” so at first I was a bit nervous, but after I spent some time with ColdFusion 9 (Centaur) and ColdFusion Builder (Bolt), I realized that it was going to easy to please the CF crowds.  The new features were very well received and really got people excited.   It has been fun to watch ColdFusion developers drool!  Well, now you can get your hands on it yourself!

I’m not going to blog about every new features since you will find multiple sources of that on labs.adobe.com.  However, I will comment on my favorite new features in this release:

• Exposed Services Layer – ColdFusion 9 exposes many existing enterprise services that can be accessed using SOAP or Flash Remoting without writing a single line of CFML. These services include charting, document services, PDF utilities, image manipulation and email. With granular security controls, these web services can be sandboxed, permitting access only to authorized applications.  This opens the door for developers using many other technologies to take advantage of the long list of ColdFusion capabilities.  I’m already working on a blog post demonstrating how to call ColdFusion services from LiveCycle ES.  Imagine having a step in your LiveCycle process that creates a calendar entry in Exchange using ColdFusion…. or calling ColdFusion to generate an adhoc chart… or using ColdFusion’s image manipulation capabilities.  Flex developers will be attracted to this as well because they will be able to take advantages of these services directly from their Flex code thanks to the new cfservices.swc file.  Here are a few examples:

  
  // Add a border to an image using ColdFusion from Flex
  <cf:Image id="image" action="AddBorder" source="Uploaded Image server URL" thickness="5" color="Blue"/>
  

  
  //Send an email using ColdFusion from Flex
  <cf:Mail id="mailtest"
  	server="10.192.36.227"
  	to="{too.text}" bcc="{bcc.text}" cc="{cc.text}"
  	failTo="somebody@someplace.com" replyTo="somebody@someplace.com"
  	subject="{subject.text}" content="{mailbody.text}"
  	from="{from.text}"
  	attachments="{attachCollection}"
  	type="text" charset="utf-8" mailerId="CF" priority="1"
  	timeout="60" useTLS="true" wrapText="5"
  	result="handleResult(event)"
  	fault="handleError(event)"
  />
  

• CFSCRIPT grows up – now supports full function, component and interface definition.   This combined with some other CF language enhancements will allow for cleaner, easier to maintain code.
• Server Management Tool - At each of my presentations, this feature really got folks excited, especially those that maintain a lot of ColdFusion servers.  The new Server Manager is a desktop application (Adobe AIR of course) to help manage multiple ColdFusion servers from one location, simplifying administration.  You can create data sources, schedule tasks, apply hotfixes and clear caches across a cluster of ColdFusion servers as well as compare settings across servers. Since it’s based on Adobe AIR, the Server Manager can run on Windows, OSX and Linux.



• New integration including Microsoft Sharepoint,  Microsoft Office and  Native JEE Portlet support (JSR-168, JSR-286 and WSRP).  Either of these subjects is worthy of a separate blog post.  Ben wrote a great blog post on the new SharePoint here.
• ColdFusion Builder – yes, an IDE by Adobe for ColdFusion – ‘nough said!
  

There are many other new features including Hibernate-based ORM, enhanced UI controls, multi-file uploader, Google Maps support, advanced caching, and others.

I’m sure you are ready to dig right in.

Also, Ben just posted his announcement blog post here.

Download:

• ColdFusion 9 Public Beta -  http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/coldfusion9/
• ColdFusion Builder Public Beta -  http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/coldfusionbuilder/

Docs:

• Developing Applications with ColdFusion 9 – http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Developing/index.html
• ColdFusion 9 CFML Reference – http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/CFMLRef/index.html
• Installation Guide for ColdFusion Builder – http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusionBuilder/Installing/index.html
• Using Adobe ColdFusion Builder – http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusionBuilder/Using/index.html

Online Events:

• July 13, 2009 (12PM EST) – Centaur and Bolt Uncensored (ColdFusion Meetup)
• July 13, 2009 (2PM EST) – What’s Next for ColdFusion (Adobe Government Seminar)
• July 15, 2009 (2 Sessions) – The Future of ColdFusion: A Preview of Centaur (Adobe eSeminar)

You may have noticed that we’ve been recently adding new samples to Tour de Flex to illustrate various ways to work with backend data from Flex.  I just added some new samples to expand this topic into the worlds of .NET and PHP.   The samples were provided by the guys at MidnightCoders, creators of  WebORB.

You will see two new folders under Flex Data Access named “WebORB for .NET” and “WebORB for PHP“.  If you have the Tour de Flex desktop app, simply run it and you’ll automatically get the new samples.  If you don’t have Tour de Flex, get it!  There is also a web version of Tour de Flex.

REMINDER – if you have any components or samples to share with the Flex developer community, please consider adding them to Tour de Flex.  More than 6,000,000 samples have been viewed via Tour de Flex since we launched it in November so it’s a great way to get exposure!   If you are not sure if your component, skin, technique, etc. is Tour de Flex material, contact me and let’s discuss!

During the past several weeks, we have been adding new samples in the Flex Data Access category in Tour de Flex.  All of the samples were created by either Christophe Coenraets or Holly Schinsky.  Below is a brief overview of each.

Many of the samples described below utilize BlazeDS or LiveCycle DS.  If you are unfamiliar with these products, I recommend Holly’s Quick Start.

Basic Stuff

HTTPService – Basic Example
This one is fairly obvious – it demonstrates how to use the HTTPService to consume XML and other responses via HTTP or HTTPS.  This is the most basic type of data access in Flex.

HTTPService – HTTPService Events
This sample builds on the previous sample and demonstrates how to handle result and fault events from HTTPService.  Note that HTTPService calls are asynchronous so understanding these events is key.

HTTPService – E4X
This sample also uses HTTPService but specifies that the result format will be E4X

HTTPService – Using the Proxy Service (BlazeDS and LCDS)
All of the prior samples used the out-of-the-box HTTPService component to directly connect to the data source.  Sometimes it is not practical to connect directly to the data source due to it being on a different domain (and lacking a crossdomain.xml entry) so a proxy service is needed.  BlazeDS/LCDS can provide this proxy service with a some simple configuration as described in this Tour de Flex sample.

WebService – Basic Example
Using the WebService tag, you can invoke SOAP-based web services. Objects returned by a web service are automatically de-serialized into ActionScript objects.  Going the other way,  ActionScript objects are passed as arguments to a web service operation and are serialized according to the WSDL description.

WebService – Using the Proxy Service (BlazeDS or LCDS)
Similar to our HTTPService Proxy section above, it is sometimes not practical or possible to connect directly to the service.  Once again, the BlazeDS/LCDS proxy service provides a simple solution.

Blazingly fast remoting

RemoteObject – Basic Java Remoting (BlazeDS or LCDS)
If you are connecting to a Java backend, it is possible to directly invoke methods of Java objects using RemoteObject.  In addition to the obvious benefits of being able to call Java methods directly, you also get the benefits of AMF that is used to pass data back and forth.  AMF is a compressed, binary format that is dramatically faster than verbose XML or other text formats.  Lee Brimelow wrote a great blog post on AMF here.  This Tour de Flex sample does a simple call to Flex.samples.product.ProductService, a simple Java class, a displays the data in a datagrid.

James Ward has created a great application that benchmarks AMF and compares it to several other data loading techniques.

RemoteObject – Basic Java Remoting 2 (BlazeDS or LCDS)
This sample is similar to the previous sample but also demonstrates handling result and fault events from the remote call (RemoteObject calls are asynchronous)

RemoteObject – RemoteObject Events (BlazeDS or LCDS)
Another good example of handling RemoteObject events.

RemoteObject – Strongly Typed Object (BlazeDS or LCDS)
This RemoteObject sample demonstrates how an ActionScript object is mapped to a remote Java object.  The readme contains links to the backend Java source so you can see how each data attribute is mapped.

Almost magical – Data Management

Basic Data Management  (LCDS)
LiveCycle Data Services ES Data Management Service feature provides an efficient approach to synchronizing data across multiple views and between multiple clients.  With LCDS, you don’t have to keep track of changes made to the data, nor do you have to invoke remote services to notify the backend of the changes (create, update, delete) made on the client side.  To demonstrate this, the sample prompts you to open a link in two different web browsers (the browsers can even be on different computers).

Each browser will display a data grid with a few rows of data.  As you update the data in one browser, you’ll see the changes immediately reflected in the other browser, keep the views in sync.  This type of functionality typically requires rather complex code, but as you can see in the Tour de Flex sample, it’s easy to implement using LiveCycle Data Services.

Conflict Management (LCDS)
This sample is similar to the previous sample in that you open a link in two browsers and each of the views stays in sync but this one also adds code to handle conflicts between the two users. Change data in a field on browser #1 AND in browser #2.  When you save the data in one of the browsers, the other one will notify you of a conflict.  This is another example of where LCDS can save a LOT of coding.

Managing Associations and Lazy Loading (LCDS)
This sample demonstrates how LCDS can load data on an as-needed basis (lazy).  In this code, there are multiple many-to-one data relationships defined so that LCDS loads the associated data on demand.

Data Paging (LCDS)
This sample demonstrates automatic paging of large data sets.  Rather than loading the entire query result set, the data is loaded on demand while keeping up with the latest changes to the data.  Data paging speeds application response times and minimizes memory requirements client-side.  The sample displays a simple datagrid that loads 100 rows at a time.  As you scroll through the data, you will see brief delays as the next 100 rows are loaded.  This is yet another example of LCDS saving the developer from having to write a lot of complex code.

Backend Persistence Options (LCDS)
At the end of the Data Management category is a subcategory demonstrating 3 different ways to manage data persistence used by the data management features.  There is a sample that uses SQL, a sample that uses Hibernate and a sample that demonstrates how to build a more complex custom assembler.

Real-time publish/subscribe messaging

Chat (BlazeDS or LCDS)
This sample demonstrates how to build a simple chat client that utilizes the publish/subscribe messaging provided by BlazeDS or LCDS.

Collaboration (BlazeDS or LCDS)
This sample uses publish / subscribe messaging to build a simple collaborative application.  The sample prompts you to open a link in two or more browsers.  When you click the button to switch the graph from company one to company two, the other clients will also switch.

Real-time Dashboard (BlazeDS or LCDS)
This sample shows how to subscribe to a real-time data feed produced by the Tour de Flex server.  The data is real and is produced by the Tour de Flex server.  Each row in the data grid is produced when a sample is viewed in Tour de Flex.   This is the foundation for the much more graphical dashboard found at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/tourdeflex/planetary_dashboard

More samples will be added to the Flex Data Access category very soon to demonstrate how to connect Flex applications to ColdFusion, .NET, PHP and other backends.  Stay tuned!

UPDATE:  .NET and PHP samples added by MidnightCoders – http://gregsramblings.com/2009/06/24/using-weborb-to-connect-flex-to-net-and-php-backends/

I’m speaking this Thursday, June 25th at the Tampa Bay ColdFusion User Group meeting at the offices of Kforce.  I will be giving extensive demos of the upcoming release of ColdFusion, code named Centaur and the new ColdFusion IDE, code named Bolt.  There are some amazing new features to show so you don’t want to miss this.

I’ll also be bringing some great door prizes to giveaway at the end of the meeting.  For more information, go to the Tampa Bay ColdFusion User Group Home Page

I’ve received several request to extend the end date for the Flex Data Visualization contest.  The blog post has recently received a bunch of traffic so a lot of people are late getting involved.

The new deadline is Tuesday, July 7th at noon EDT.

Contest details at http://gregsramblings.com/2009/06/08/flex-data-visualization-contest/

During the past few months, I have often needed to share a small code snippet or other content that is impossible or impractical to paste into a tweet, blog comment or email.  On several occasions, I created a temporary page on my blog or on one of my public servers.  I also tried out a few services such as pastebin.com, txtb.in and snipt.org but all of these wrapped their own content around mine.

I decided to spend a few hours building a simple service for creating single page HTML content.  I also integrated Alex Gorbatchev’s SyntaxHighlighter to  make code look great.

To see the results, go to http://tblurb.com, enter your content, choose a URL (a random string is used by default) and click save.   Content can be entered via a rich text editor or entered as raw HTML.  The code paste feature can be used to paste in ActionScript, C++, C#, ColdFusion, CSS, Delphi, Flex, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, SQL, VB.NET and XML/HTML.  You can even mix and match languages with other content.  Your content remains online unless it goes for 90 days without being accessed.

Here’s an example that has some simple text combined with an ActionScript code snippet and a block of XML. – http://tblurb.com/Bfmb77 (sample of how to use LiveCycle Data Services data paging feature)

The service is free and now available for your use.  There is no charge but I do reserve the right to eventually add some light-weight ads at the bottom of the page.  Suggestions are welcomed.

Thank you Todd Williams for converting my terrible home-made 1996 UI design into something much better looking!

I’m heading to Nashville  to speak at the following events:

---

• Thursday, 06/18/2009 7PM CDT – Nashville ColdFusion User Group – I’ll be showing some amazingly cool features in the upcoming release of ColdFusion.
  



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• Friday, 06/19/2009 7PM CDT – 615 Flash / Flex camp & Flex Adobe Tour – Cool Flex 4 and Catalyst demonstrations as well as some other coolness.  If you have the time, come earlier and join the half-day Flash/Flex Camp
  

I’ll be giving away some great software and other items.  BE THERE!

We just rolled out 8 new samples in Tour de Flex in the Data Visualization category from Axiis, an open source data visualization framework. These are some great looking charts! Thanks to Tom Gonzalez for adding them to Tour de Flex!  Check them out.

Two weeks ago, I blogged about the Tour de Flex Live Planetary Dashboard, an example of taking a simple real-time data stream and making it into a cool dashboard.  The guys from the ILOG Elixir team did a fantastic job! (see their dashboard here).

Now it’s your turn to impress!  Today we are announcing a contest for the coolest dashboard using the real-time data feed from the Tour de Flex server.

Contest rules:

• The contest starts today and ends on Tuesday, July 7th at noon ET (was originall 6/26/09)
• Submissions will be judged myself, Christophe Coenraets, James Ward and Ben Forta
• The winner will receive a copy of ILOG Elixir and a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium.
• All source code must be submitted with the sample.  We plan to showcase the winning entry along with the source code so others can learn.  We might also include several entries in the Tour de Flex Data Visualization category.  Feel free to include a brief paragraph about yourself in the comments of the source code.
• All 3rd-party dependencies must be clearly identified.  In other words, I need to be able to build and run your project.  I will mask out any included API keys, etc. from your source before posting.  Feel free to mask it out yourself.
• Commercial product dependencies (e.g. ILOG) are acceptable as long as a trial version is available to users that want to try the code.
• The project must be built using Flex 3.x.  It’s ok to also include non-Flex SWFs as well, just be sure to include the FLA.
• The application can either be a web app or a desktop app deployed on AIR.
• Judging will be based on creativity and the cool factor

All submissions and questions should be emailed to gregsramblings at gmail.  Submissions should include the following information:

• Your name, company name and daytime phone number
• A brief description of what you submitted
• Any special instructions on building and running the application
• List of any 3rd party dependencies or libraries
• Flex project ZIP file

Making it all work

We have created two sample applications for you to use as a foundation:

• Simple real-time data grid – http://tourdeflex.adobe.com/remotesamples/DataAccess/dashboard/tdfdashboard.html – VIEW SOURCE is enabled
• Simple historical data grid – http://tourdeflex.adobe.com/remotesamples/DataAccess/tdfhistory/tdfhistory.html – VIEW SOURCE is enabled
• Once you receive the sample ID, you can look up the sample name and other information from http://tourdeflex.adobe.com/download/objects-desktop.xml

Key source code

Below are the key elements of the source code that you’ll need to have in your application.  You should be able to copy/paste the code directly into Flex Builder and get started.  There are no dependencies unless you enable the RTMP channel which requires fds.swc.

Plugging into the data:

    <mx:ChannelSet id="channelSet">
        <!-- RTMP channel (requires fds.swc, part of LiveCycle Data Services) -->
        <!-- Uncomment out the following line if you have fds.swc, otherwise, simply leave the next line commented -->
        <!-- <mx:RTMPChannel id="rtmp" url="rtmp://tourdeflex.adobe.com:2037"/>   -->
        <!-- Long Polling Channel -->
        <mx:AMFChannel url="http://tourdeflex.adobe.com:8080/lcds-samples/messagebroker/amflongpolling"/>
        <!-- Regular polling channel -->
        <mx:AMFChannel url="http://tourdeflex.adobe.com:8080/lcds-samples/messagebroker/amfpolling"/>
    </mx:ChannelSet>

Subscribing to the feed:

    <mx:Consumer id="consumer"
        channelSet="{channelSet}"
        destination="tdf.sampleviewingfeed"
        subtopic="flex"
        message="messageHandler(event)"/>

Handing each new data event:

            private function messageHandler(event:MessageEvent):void
            {
                items.addItem(event.message.body);
                // Do your magic here!  This will be called upon each sample viewed in Tour de Flex
            }

Getting historical data

IMPORTANT:  No more than 7 days of historical data may be retrieved in any one call.  Please don’t make unnecessary repeated calls to our server (for obvious reasons).

Creating the RemoteObject:

    <mx:RemoteObject id="srv" destination="sampleRequestDAO" channelSet="{cs}" showBusyCursor="true">
        <mx:method name="find" result="resultHandler(event)"/>
    </mx:RemoteObject>

Passing dates and handling resulting rows:

            [Bindable]
            private var items:ArrayCollection;

            private function find():void
            {
                // A MAX of 7 days can be requested.  More than 7 days will throw an exception
                srv.find(dateFrom.selectedDate, dateTo.selectedDate);
            }

            private function resultHandler(event:ResultEvent):void
            {
                items=event.result as ArrayCollection;
            }

You can find more information about the existing dashboard in my previous blog post and Christophe’s recent blog post.

GOOD LUCK!!

Right on the heels of Tour de LiveCycle comes LiveCycle Cafe, a desktop tool to help you stay in touch with the LiveCycle community, receive news, find information, and aggregate content related to Adobe LiveCycle ES (Enterprise Suite).  Targeted at developers and technical staff, LiveCycle Café is the one tool you need to search across the entire community knowledge base and stay in touch with the Adobe LiveCycle teams.

Between Tour de LiveCycle and LiveCycle Cafe, you will be hooked up with LiveCycle goodness.  Check it out at http://www.adobe.com/go/cafe.  It only takes a few seconds to download and provides immediate value.

Now that you have downloaded the new Tour de LiveCycle tool and became an instant fan of LiveCycle ES (Enterprise Suite), you are probably wondering where you could learn even more, right?  Well, earlier this week, we announced a new program at Adobe MAX 2009 called the “LiveCycle @MAX Bundle”.  Designed for enterprise developers, this program combines 1.5 days of introductory pre-conference training with a full MAX conference pass.

Pricing and additional details are available here.   I suspect that this will fill up quickly so signup!

As members of the Adobe Evangelist team, we are often asked, “What is LiveCycle Enterprise Suite (ES)”? That’s not an easy question to answer! The challenge is that LiveCycle ES is not a typical product with a typical list of features.  It’s an extensible platform that offers a wide array of services, each with its own set of capabilities. In addition, LiveCycle ES provides the infrastructure to manage and deploy these services as well as the ability to combine them into a business process where they can be integrated with other technologies as well as with people.

After the success of Tour de Flex, we decided that a similar interface could be useful as a means of exploring the features of LiveCycle.  We combined forces with Avoka Technologies’ LiveCycle gurus and created a vast collection of content including samples, videos, whitepapers and more.

You can grab Tour de LiveCycle from http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/tourdelivecycle. (BACKUP LINK: http://tourdelc.adobe.com/badge). It is built on Adobe AIR and will run on Windows, Mac and, Linux.  All of the content is hosted so the installer is only about 1.5MB.  We do plan to offer more content locally as part of the application in future versions so that it will be available offline and load faster.

If you are curious about LiveCycle ES, this is a great first step.  If you are an existing LiveCycle ES customer, you will find that Tour de LiveCycle is a valuable reference tool. And if you are a Flex developer who thinks that LiveCycle ES is only about data services, I’m betting that you’ll be surprised to find that LiveCycle ES is much, much more.  It goes well beyond <mx:RemoteObject>!

If you blog frequently on topics related to LiveCycle ES, please share the install badge by adding the following HTML:

<iframe width="216" height="182" frameborder=0 scrolling="no" src="http://tourdelc.adobe.com/badge/"></iframe>

Ok, it’s technically not “planetary” since only one planet is involved… but… this is still pretty cool.   Check out the new ILOG real-time activity dashboard here (screenshot below).   What you are seeing is LIVE data from Tour de Flex.  Every time someone views a sample, a new dot appears.  Chances are if you go view a sample, you will see yourself on the map almost instantly!  Keep in mind that the geolocation is not perfect, but it’s pretty good!  See below for the scoop.

History

When we first launched Tour de Flex in November 2008, we built in a simple HTTPService call to a tiny backend PHP file that uses a database to log which sample was viewed.  We did this so that we could rank Tour de Flex search results by popularity and so that we could keep track of how many samples our application was serving up (see my recent post about reaching 5 million!).

In early March, I was looking at the latest ILOG Elixir components in their 2.0 release and I was especially fascinated by their heatmap visualization component.  That’s when I had an idea!  What if we could plot who was using Tour de Flex on the heatmap?!  Christophe Coenraets and I started talking about the potential and quickly determined that it was indeed possible.  We had to first find a way to convert IP addresses to latitude and longitude in real-time.  After a little research, we found MaxMind’s GeoIP technology and purchased their GeoIP City Database.

At this point, we had a source of constant data and a means of converting it to something that the heatmap component could use.  The next challenge was to figure out how to distribute the data so that multiple clients could subscribe to it and process it.  That’s where the publish and subscribe messaging features of  LiveCycle Data Services (or BlazeDS) come into the picture.

Christophe configured LiveCycle Data Services and created a Java servlet to handle the backend messaging.  He then created a simple Flex app that subscribes to the message topic and displays the data in an auto-updating datagrid that shows a new line every time a new sample was viewed in Tour de Flex.  Every second or two, I saw a new line of data appear.  The coolness was already starting to show.

I then sent the data grid code to our friends at ILOG with a short note that said, “Would you guys like to try and make a cool heatmap or other visualization of this data?” (the bait!).  A few days later, they sent us the dashboard that is linked above.  I was totally impressed!  Not only did they implement the heatmap, they also included other visualizations to really put it over the top!  I shared the link with a few internal folks and the reaction was fantastic; although a few people complained that they spent too much time staring at the dashboard instead of working. 

How it works

The diagram below provides a high-level description of how everything fits together.

• Christophe Coenraets provides all of the details including source code related to the messaging in his blog post.
• Damien Mandrioli from ILOG provides the source code in the dashboard itself (right-click the application and choose “View Source”)

Future possibilities

As you can see, this application was fairly easy to build.  There are some intriguing possibilities created by combining pub/sub messaging with data visualization.  I’m already thinking about building a similar dashboard to monitor traffic to Flex.org as well as my blog and other sites!  I’m sure that you are already thinking of other applications.

A big THANKS to the guys at ILOG for building the dashboard!  We are already working with them on adding historical data analysis to the dashboard.

Another THANKS goes out to Christophe for building the backend infrastructure and helping me quadruple my knowledge about pub/sub messaging!  (By the way, a good starting point on pub/sub messaging is Christophe’s Adobe TV video)

A few of the guys that helped us build Tour de Flex and several other projects have entered the world of iPhone applications and have just released a cool, addictive game called “Box of Sox”.  It’s fantastic for kids and adults.

Check it out on iTunes here or at their home page http://www.reallymedia.com/

They are also working on a lot of cool new Flex and AIR projects at http://hdinteractive.com.

Since we launched Tour de Flex at MAX last November, we’ve had fun watching the count of samples viewed climb to unforeseen heights.  Now we are quickly approaching 5 million views so we’ve decided to have a little fun.

Recently, I added a live sample counter to the quick start page  (We will blog about how we used LiveCycle DS publish/subscribe messaging to create the counter very soon).

Here’s the deal:  If you are one of the first three people to email  a screenshot of the counter at exactly 5,000,000 to the email address below, you win a Mino HD Flip Camera!  Depending on the time of day we reach 5,000,000, this might be tough!  The rate of samples being viewed peaks at about 80 per minute!  The winning number may only display for a fraction of a second.

Rules:

• The screenshot must be made of the desktop version of Tour de Flex.  Screenshots of the web version will not be accepted.
• The screenshot must contain the entire application window.
• NO photoshopped fakes!  We’ll know!  We have secret technology! 
• The screenshot must be emailed to tdfcounter@gmail.com within 5 minutes of being captured.  After prizes are awarded, we will delete all received emails from the gmail account to protect your email address.  Your email address will not be used for anything other than award notification.
• If you capture a perfect 5,000,000, the email subject should be “5 million”
• If you capture something very close, the email subject should be “So close!”.  We will ignore these unless nobody captures the perfect 5,000,000.

Prizes:

• The first 3 emails received with a screenshot of 5,000,000 win a MinoHD Flip Camera! ($200USD value!)
• If nobody captures the 5,000,000th view, the prizes will be awarded to the next closest attempts, so if you miss the 5 million mark but capture something really close, submit it.
• If the counter malfunctions or goes offline, no prize will be awarded.  We’ve worked hard to make sure that the counter can handle a large number of viewers but the load is unpredictable, so who knows what will happen!

Why are we doing this?

• For fun of course!
• To promote Flex and show off publish/subscribe messaging with LiveCycle DS and BlazeDS.  Just wait and see what we are going to do with the data feed next week!

Good luck!!

This morning, the New York Times launched a new desktop application for reading their newspaper built on Adobe AIR.   At first glance, you may ask, “What’s the big deal? – I can read the New York Times online already”.  When I first heard about this application, I asked the same question!

I’ve seen a few applications that have been deployed as AIR applications that honestly should have been deployed as a web app.  I’m much more particular about who I let in my programs menu than my bookmarks list. I blogged about this a few months ago when Pizza Hut launched their new AIR application – http://gregsramblings.com/2008/05/28/to-air-or-not-to-air-pizza-hut/

I’m happy to report that the New York Times reader is great example of an AIR app built for AIR for the right reasons.  The best reason can be illustrated in a quick screen shot from the new app’s settings page:

As you can see, the New York Times Reader application works offline.  I can store up to 7 issues of the New York Times on my machine and read them anytime I want, even when I don’t have an internet connection.   For example, you can download the application now and start reading yesterday’s issue of the paper.  The crossword puzzle also works offline and remembers your progress.

The application itself is fantastic.  It utilizes the new Text Layout Framework available in Flash Player 10 and AIR 1.5 so it can do much cleaner text display than a regular web page.   The page is dynamically formatted specifically for your screen size.  If you have a large screen, you get more columns and larger pictures.  If you have a smaller screen, it compensates very nicely with fewer columns and smaller images.  Download it and view some news and re-size the page a few times.  You’ll be amazed.

Don’t forget to check out the crossword puzzle – it has some interesting features of its own.

Because it’s built on Adobe AIR, it works on Windows, Mac OS and Linux.

I hope we see more applications like this soon.  You can download a copy from here.

Two months ago, I blogged about my new Panasonic DMC-LX3 camera.  Since purchasing the camera, I’ve taken it on multiple trips and use it almost daily.  After two months, I’m happy to report that I’m still loving it.

My favorite features are still the same:

• The 24mm f2.0 lens is fantastic
• The sturdy construction has held up well so far as I toss it into my bag during every trip
• The controls are intuitive and well placed
• The optical image stabilization is awesome
• The image quality is superb

My complaints are also still the same:

• I don’t like the separate lens cap.  It’s a miracle that I haven’t lost it!
• Battery life is not great, but it’s acceptable.  I purchased an extra battery that travels with me
• I wish it had more zoom, but for me, it’s worth the sacrifice to get the 24mm equiv wide angle
• The high-ISO performance is not great… BUT… it’s still a fantastic low-light camera.  See below

Shooting in low light and ISO

The DMC-LX3 allows the ISO to be set as high as 3200, however I would not recommend it.  With the amazingly fast f2.0 lens and the lens stabilization feature, I’ve never needed anything above ISO 800, even in very dimly lit scenes.  I don’t hesitate to shoot at 1/15th of a second shutter speed (although, I’ll take a few extra shots just in case).   If you own this camera, I highly recommend that you make the following setting change:  Go to the ISO LIMIT SET menu option and change it to 800.  This will prevent the camera from going higher than ISO 800 which will keep your photos looking great.  I’ve personally had better luck avoiding the “iA” mode on the camera.  I mostly shoot on either “P” or “M”.

Here’s an example. The following shot is at ISO 80, hand-held at 1/8th of a second. Click the image to see the high-res version.  I consistently get good low-shutter speed shots with the LX3.

On a recent trip to Seattle, I made a quick stop at the Seattle Aquarium.  I had my trusty Nikon D300 with both my 18-200mm lens and my 50mm 1.4 lens.  The 18-200mm lens was too slow (3.5-5.6) to get any good shots of the dimly lit aquarium life.  The 50mm 1.4 lens was more than fast enough but it has no macro capabilities so I found myself without a good lens for the situation!  I suddenly missed my old 55mm micro lens.  So, I put away my D300 and pulled my LX3 from my jacket pocket and found that it was perfect for the task.  Since aquariums have a wide range of lighting, I set the camera to manual (”M”), tweaked the exposure a bit and started shooting.  Below are a few results from the visit:

Below are a few more shots I’ve taken with the LX3:

All of the above photographs as well as tons of other shots are on my SmugMug site at http://gregorywilson.smugmug.com

Flash Camp Orlando is now open for registration!  If you register in the next 29 hours, you can get in at a discounted rate.  The event is Friday, May 29th, 2009 at the University of Central Florida Live Oak Event Center.  Registration details can be found at http://www.flashcamporlando.com

For those of you that attended Flash Camp Miami, you know that these are great events!  I’ll be speaking myself and will be bringing some good swag.

Load up the family, drop them off at Disney and then come play with Flash, Flex and AIR!

More details on speakers, etc. will be posted soon.

A few weeks ago, Holly Schinsky (one of the developers of Tour de Flex and other cool projects) did some research on becoming “Flex/AIR Certified”.  My first reaction was to roll my eyes because I’ve never really believed in certification programs.  I’ve always felt that they measure someone’s test-taking abilities rather than their ability to write solid code (two very different skills!).  However, Holly’s experience with it has changed my perception a bit.

• Holly wrote a blog post titled, “Adobe Flex/AIR Certification?” that had some interesting comments on the topic that helped me understand people’s motivation to get certified
• She then blogged about Attest, a tool she discovered for taking practice exams.  She actually jumped in to help build the latest version (which is free by the way)
• A few days ago, she took the test herself and is now certified

Holly provides some useful feedback on the experience that is a must-read for anyone considering taking the test.

We released new content on the Adobe Developer Connection covering the migration from ActionScript 2 to ActionScript 3.  If you are still using ActionScript 2, take a look at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/migration.html

This new content includes “ActionScript 3 migration cookbook“, available online or as a 40 page PDF that is full of tips and tricks.

I spent some time today pulling statistics for the usage of Tour de Flex in the last 16 days (4/5/2009 – 4/20/2009).  The results were pleasantly surprising:

Last 16 days of data:

• 556,133 samples viewed (34,000+ per day!)
• Total of 4,213,937 viewed since we launched at MAX on 11/16/2008!
• Tour de Flex application was executed 68,096 times
  • 75% of the usage was from the desktop AIR version
  • 25% was from the recently released web version
• 1,368 installations of the Tour de Flex Eclipse plugin
• 500+ new downloads of the desktop version every day

We’ve been adding new samples every few days.  Many more are coming, including a ton of new samples that illustrate how to use Flex with ColdFusion, PHP, .NET, Ruby, and other popular server platforms.   We are also working on extensive samples around BlazeDS and LiveCycle DS, including the more advanced data management capabilities of LiveCycle DS.

Keep your contributions of samples and components coming!

A few weeks ago, I decided to challenge myself and start a side project that involves a Flex front end with a ColdFusion backend.  This was not only my first Flex+ColdFusion project, it was my first hands-on experience with ColdFusion!

Like most folks, I created a new Flex project in Flex Builder and selected ColdFusion as the “Server technology” in the New Flex Project dialog box.  This triggered another dialog which prompted me for information about my local installation of ColdFusion.  Afterwards, I was staring at a blank main.mxml file that magically had the ColdFusion connectivity taken care of.  That’s fine, but I’m the type of guy that wants to understand what has been done behind the curtain.  Also, I wondered how I would handle things when I moved my application to a server that was running a different configuration, etc.  Since all of the configuration is “baked in”, I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle it.

I had recently read Christophe Coenraets blog post title, “Externalizing Service Configuration using BlazeDS and LCDS” which addresses the same issue with configuring Flex applications to use BlazeDS or LiveCycle DS.  After reading Christophe’s blog post, I was able to quickly convert my Flex application to integrate with ColdFusion without any special compiler options or any knowledge of my local file structure, and so on.  After a little trial and error, I am now able to create a plain Flex project with the “Application server type” set to None and handle all of the remoting/messaging setup directly in my code.

My application uses simple remoting to call a ColdFusion components (orderManage.cfc).  It also utilizes LCDS messaging so I need two channel sets.

I start with a global variable for each of my channel sets:

   private var messagingChannelSet:ChannelSet;
   private var remotingChannelSet:ChannelSet;

In my MXML, I setup my remote object and my consumer/producer:

   <mx:RemoteObject id="cfsvc" destination="ColdFusion" source="orderManage">
	<mx:method name="makeOrder" result="makeOrderResultHandler(event)" />
	<mx:method name="getOrder"  result="getOrderResultHandler(event)" />
   </mx:RemoteObject>

   <mx:Consumer id="chatConsumer" destination="appComm" message="chatListener(event)" />
   <mx:Producer id="chatProducer" destination="appComm" />

In my init(), I setup my channels, add them to the channelset and then setup my consumer and producer:

   remotingChannelSet = new ChannelSet();
   var rChannel:AMFChannel = new AMFChannel("my-cfamf", "http://localhost/flex2gateway");
   remotingChannelSet.addChannel(rChannel);
   cfsvc.channelSet = remotingChannelSet;

   messagingChannelSet = new ChannelSet();
   var mChannel:AMFChannel = new AMFChannel("cf-longpolling-amf", "http://localhost/flex2gateway/amflongpolling");
   messagingChannelSet.addChannel(mChannel);

   chatConsumer.channelSet = messagingChannelSet;
   chatProducer.channelSet = messagingChannelSet;		

   chatConsumer.subtopic = instanceID + ".CHAT";
   chatConsumer.subscribe();

The rest of the application code continues as normal.   I still need to externalize the URL that is hardwired into my code.  I’ll probably use a technique similar to Christophe’s example.

I can now call functions in my orderManage.cfc component like this:  cfsvc.makeOrder(….), etc.

Today, I found a blog post by Mike Nimer that covers this same topic from a slightly different perspective.  Mike also has some great tips, including how to externalize the context root and other settings.

I’ll blog more about my application as it nears completion.

PS:  This is my first ColdFusion blog post.  I hope my boss, Ben Forta is proud! 

Since we launched  Tour de Flex 1.2, several bugs have been reported and fixed.  Version 1.2.1 is now available that contains the following fixes and changes:

• BUG FIX – Flex SDK samples didn’t work offline.  All Flex SDK and AIR samples now work offline
• BUG FIX – The icons were broken in list view when offline
• BUG FIX – The quickstart screen would re-display every time you click the icon to refocus the application
• BUG FIX – The quickstart screen would vanish if you clicked a folder in the tree leaving a blank split screen
• BUG FIX – When expanding the sample, the content in the bottom tabs would vanish until you chose another sample (AIR App only)
• NEW – The maximize button now takes the application true full-screen
• NEW – The “Expand” button has been renamed to “Toggle Layout” and additional layouts are included.  Click it a few times to see
• NEW – Localization for Japanese is now in the Web and AIR versions of Tour de Flex
• NEW – New ILOG Elixir Japanese samples  added (Data Visualization, ILOG)

I’ve seen several tweets, emails and comments about people using Tour de Flex for presentations, etc.  The new full-screen feature and new layouts should help.  We’ll work on better full-screen, chrome-less modes soon.

We’ll be rolling out new Flex and AIR samples soon, some of which will take advantage of the new layouts.

The web version of Tour de Flex is already updated to version 1.2.1.

Your desktop version will prompt you for an update.  If you have problems, you can download it from http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/tourdeflex

We have finally released Tour de Flex 1.2.  Below are the highlights:

• New improved skin (thinner chrome)
• Splash screen has been replaced by a quick start screen that we can update frequently with news of new samples, resources, etc.
• Fixed a memory/CPU issue  (see previous post)
• Comments are now hosted in the Adobe forums.  You can post questions, subscribe to responses, etc.
• Now requires AIR 1.5 (so we can include new AIR 1.5 specific samples and Flash Player 10 specific samples)
• Localization for Japanese – the language reference tabs are now pointing to the Japanese content.  More localization is planned in the near future.  Localization was actually part of the 1.1 release that we launched in Japan.  We did not force an auto-update since most existing users would not benefit.
• The download size is now 35% smaller thanks to RSLs.
• Categories are all tree-based instead of a mix of dropdown and tree (confused a few people)
• Minor improvements to Eclipse plugin

You can download the latest version from http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/tourdeflex.  If you already have Tour de Flex, your version will auto-update.

New Web Version!

In addition to a new desktop version, we’ve also launched a new web browser-based version of Tour de Flex.  Obviously, it doesn’t include the AIR desktop samples but most of the remaining samples are included.  Holly Schinsky did most of the “magic” to make the web version possible.  She will be blogging about the experience shortly.

Check it out at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/tourdeflex/web

The web version supports deep linking so the browser back/forward buttons work as expected.  You can even bookmark specific samples!

The primary purpose of the web version is to provide an easier on-ramp for those exploring Flex for the first time.  It also provides the ability to view samples from environments that don’t allow applications to be installed.

The SAP Community Network website now points to the web version introducing a whole new crowd to Flex!

UPDATE:  Tour de Flex 1.2.1 released – bug fixes and new features

Tour de Flex Desktop

Tour de Flex Web Version

About three weeks ago, I wrote an article describing a DVD that our team created for you to explore Flex and related technologies.  We’ve been handing these DVDs out like candy at events and I’ve been receiving tons of email requesting copies.

As an evangelist, one of my jobs is to acquire new Flex developers and this DVD seemed like a great way to aid in that effort.  My goal was to scatter these DVDs across the planet but I’ve run into a bit of a hurdle:  To make a very long story short, let me just say that before this DVD, I didn’t really know anyone in our legal department, but now, I’m on a first name basis with several of them (they are all very nice and working hard to make this work for us).

So… what does this mean?  If you have already requested a DVD from me, it’s on the way unless you live in a restricted country.  If you want a DVD from me and you live in the USA, please contact me.  If you want a DVD and you live outside of the USA, you will need to wait a few weeks until we get a process in place to handle the request.  I am working hard to get this done so we can distribute this DVD and future DVDs we have planned.

Good news:  In the meantime, you can download everything on the DVD from the following links:

• Tour de Flex
• Flex Builder Pro Trial (Windows and Mac, Standalone and Eclipse Plugin)
• Flex SDK
• Flex Documentation including ASDocs (similar to Javadocs)
• Spring / Flex Test Drive
• BlazeDS Turnkey and Binary Distribution
• BlazeDS Developer’s Guide
• LiveCycle Data Services Developer
• ColdFusion 8.01 Developer Edition (Windows)
  

So, although I can’t send you a DVD containing these bits, you can download the bits yourself and even make your own DVD!  I know what you’re thinking… and I agree with you… but it is what it is.

Summary:  If you live in the USA and want the DVD, ping me.  If you live outside the USA, standby or download your own.

Thanks!

3/24/2009 – CLICK HERE FOR AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

I have a huge stack of DVDs containing the following:

• Tour de Flex – click here to learn about Tour de Flex
• Flex Builder Pro Trial (Windows and Mac, Standalone and Eclipse Plugin)
• Flex SDK
• Flex Documentation including ASDocs (similar to Javadocs)
• Spring / Flex Test Drive
• BlazeDS Turnkey and Binary Distribution
• BlazeDS Developer’s Guide
• LiveCycle Data Services Developer
• ColdFusion 8.01 Developer Edition (Windows)

As you can see, we’ve put together a good collection of stuff to get anyone started with Flex, especially if you are a Java developer.  If you want one of these DVDs, please contact me by emailing gwilson at adobe (com).  Use the subject “Flex DVD” so I can find it in the daily flood of email.  You can also message me on twitter at http://twitter.com/gregorywilson.

If you are planning to attend a Java user group or any other audience of potential Flex developers, let me know how many you need.  This will deputize you as an Adobe Evangelist! 

Also, if you are a college student, faculty of staff, your trial license of Flex Builder Pro can be turned into a full license FREE.  Read this for more info.

Lastly, if you have been recently unemployed, I can potentially hook you up with a full Flex Builder Pro license too.

For the past few days, I’ve been trying to figure out why Tour de Flex’s memory and CPU utilization increases every time a new sample is viewed.  Today, I had a breakthrough that explains the bloat and a simple workaround:

Summary:  If an mx:HTML control loads a page with flash content, the control cannot be freed, even if you remove it from the container, de-reference the object, etc.  The flash content continues to play!  However, if you first set the control’s htmlText attribute to an empty string (”"), it will be garbage collected as expected.

Below is my evidence.

Here’s my test code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:WindowedApplication xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="vertical" width="800" height="600">
<mx:Script>
	public function killIt():void {

		//browser.htmlText = "";	commented out for the 1st profiler graph below.	

		this.removeChild(browser);
		browser = new HTML();
		browser.location = "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Vw5r7-vgs";
		this.addChild(browser);
	}
</mx:Script>
<mx:HTML id="browser" location="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Vw5r7-vgs" width="100%" height="100%" />
<mx:Button label="Kill the HTML control" click="killIt()"/>
</mx:WindowedApplication>

The code displays a simple HTML control that loads a YouTube page.  When you click the button, the HTML control is removed from the container, recreated and set to the YouTube page again.  The original object is de-referenced and replaced by the new one so the old one should get garbage collected… that’s how I expect it to work anyways.  However, you can hear the original video playing in the background AND the newly loaded video playing at the same time.  If you click the button a few more times, things get a little crazy sounding! (my apologies to Kenny Drew Jr.!).

When I do this with the profiler running, I get the following:

Notice that each time I click the button creating a new HTML control, the memory consumption increases.

However, if I un-comment the line that reads, browser.htmlText = “”, I get very different results.  I only hear the latest YouTube page as expected, but I also see garbage collection doing what I originally expected it to do:

So, my conclusion is that if the HTML control has loaded a page with Flash content, the resources are not released and the Flash content continues despite my previous efforts.  However, if I simply turn off the Flash content by giving it an empty string to load, everything works nicely.

In Tour de Flex, each sample is a simple HTML wrapper with a SWF.  Therefore, if you view 50 samples, all 50 SWFs retain their resources until you quit the AIR application, so you eventually start having issues.  By adding a single line of code, things are much better.   We will be posting a new version of Tour de Flex in a few days with this fix and many other goodies.

If you have seen different results or if you have a better workaround, let me know!

Jeremy Grelle, Senior Software Engineer at SpringSource and technical lead of the Spring BlazeDS Integration project will be talking about building Spring-powered Flex applications at next week’s meeting of the Tampa Flash, Flex and AIR Developer’s Group. Jeremy is a frequent conference speaker and noted expert on building next-generation Java web applications with Spring. Christophe Coenraets, fellow enterprise evangelist, recently blogged about this in detail and did a segment on Adobe TV about it.

So, we have quite the lineup and something for everyone! Ben Forta, Kevin Hoyt and now Jeremy Grelle. Basically, this means that I can just sit back and relax instead of presenting. Woot!

See ya in a week!  Don’t forget to RSVP.  Details at http://www.tffadg.com

As I’ve mentioned before, I do a LOT of photography (including aerial) and typically shoot a Nikon D300.  However, lugging around the D300 is sometimes not practical, so I like to have a nice compact camera to slip into my computer bag.  For the past few years, my favorite compact has been the Nikon P5000 followed by the Nikon P5100.  After accidentally leaving my P5100 in the seat back pocket of a Delta red-eye (I don’t want to talk about it!), I needed a replacement.  My first instinct was to get the new Nikon P6000 but then I started hearing about Panasonic’s new high-end compact camera, the DMC-LX3.

Here’s my informal review:  I love this camera because:

• f2.0-2.8 lens (lets a LOT of light in which allows the shutterspeed to remain high at low ISOs)
• 24mm equivalent wide angle lens, the best I’ve seen in a compact.
• VERY good low-light capabilities compared to the others I’ve seen.
• Shoots RAW with very good dynamic range.
• Great construction, convenient controls and solid feel.
• The optical image stabilization is the best I’ve ever used.
• High-def video is very good.

Negatives:

• Better zoom (only goes to 60mm equiv, 2.5x zoom) – but it’s tough to have a f2.0 lens with better zoom in a small package.
• Lens cap!  Amazingly, it has a snap-on lens cap.  I’m amazed that I haven’t lost it yet!  UGH!
• The battery life is a little lacking compared to my P5000 and P5100.  Not horrible though.
• The high-def video is very good for a compact camera but the sound is a little disappointing.

Why not the Canon G10?

• Panasonic lens does f2.0-f2.8.  Canon does f2.8-4.6.
• Canon is too bulky for my computer bag.
• The image comparisons at DPReview.com’s site favored the Panasonic, especially at high-ISOs.
• No high-def movie.  Panasonic does 1280×720.  Canon does 640×480
• Panasonic does 24mm.  Canon does slightly less wide at 28mm.  Canon does do 140mm on the zoom-side which would be cool to have.

Important links:

• DPReview.com’s review – includes a lot of comparison shots with other high-end compact cameras
  
• Camera Labs Review (YouTube Video)
• HD Video Demo (not my video – YouTube video) – click “watch in HD”
• An amazing gallery of DMC-LX3 shots from multiple photographers

Summary:  This camera is not for everyone but it fit my needs very well and  I highly recommend it.  You’ll find tons of other photographers that feel the same way.

Below are a few pictures that I shot while in Tokyo a few weeks ago for Adobe MAX Japan.  The full gallery can be found here (the full gallery also contains shots from my D300).  If you click on any of the images below, you’ll be taken to a full gallery where you can see the EXIF data as
well as view the original high-res image.

Tokyo - Rainbow Bridge

Tokyo Subway Station

Tokyo Subway

Flowers in front of Tokyo hotel

Tokyo Night Shot

Getting ready for MAX - indoor shot, no flash

Hotel lobby

Colorful Tokyo Taxis

Low-light shot, getting ready for MAX Japan

The second meeting of the Tampa Flash, Flex and AIR Developers Group will be held on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 6pm in the Atrium of the Art Institutes of Tampa. The Art Institutes of Tampa is located at 4401 N. Himes Avenue, Tampa, Florida.

Google Map: http://tinyurl.com/aitampamap

Speakers:

I am happy to announce that Ben Forta, Director of Platform Evangelism (and my boss!) will be speaking at this event. Anyone that has traveled with Ben quickly discovers that he is practically a celebrity, especially in the ColdFusion world… so… we’ve also invited the local Tampa ColdFusion User Group to join us!

Also joining us will be Kevin Hoyt, Adobe technical evangelist extraordinaire. Kevin is a very frequent speaker on multiple topics including AJAX, Flex, AIR and many other topics. You’re guaranteed to see something cool from Kevin.

Between the three of us, we plan to cover a lot of topics, including the following:

• Flash 10 – what’s new, what’s cool
• ColdFusion Future Sneak Peek
• Flex 3.2
• Flex 4 preview
• Catalyst (formerly Thermo) preview
• AIR 1.5
• Connecting your Flex/AIR applications to the backend
• LiveCycle Data Services
• BlazeDS
• BlazeDS and Spring Integration
• Much much more

We plan to start promptly at 6pm, so be there! There is no cost to attend, but an RSVP is requested to rsvp@tffadg.com. For more information, please visit www.tffadg.com.

What’s the temperature at your house today?  It’s 72 degrees in Miami.  Sound good?  Give yourself something to look forward to and register for Flex Camp Miami on March 6th.  I’ll be presenting the Keynote.

Below is the agenda as of today – check http://www.flexcampmiami.com/ later for the final version.

Whether you are a bicycle racing fan or not, this is a very cool use of Flex and Data Services – http://tracker.amgentourofcalifornia.com/.  Press release excerpt:  “The Tour Tracker was developed using Adobe Flex® Builder™ and Adobe® LiveCycle®, and is meant to be an immersive Web application that incorporates live video, audio, and real-time data streams of the event. Tour viewers can select from multiple live, high-quality video streams delivered in Flash technology; view multiple picture-in-picture video streams; chat live with other fans; access live updates of photos and video clips during the race, and enjoy live commentary from cycling experts.”

You can read the full press release here.

Christophe Coenraets blogged about this during the 2007 race where he describes how LiveCycle Data Services was implemented to bring this cool site to life. This year’s site has some new features but the basic architecture is the same. You can read Christophe’s article here.

The race is underway now so check it out!

At today’s keynote at MAX Japan, Kevin Lynch announced that Adobe AIR has reached 100 million installs!   That’s some serious momentum!  He also announced that Flash Player 10 has already reached over 55% adoption in only two months.   This is dramatically faster than any prior version.

More coverage of this will be available shortly.

I ran across a report today titled, “PDF seen gaining on paper as storage medium“.  In the article, the author states, “The study found that 90 percent of organizations are already using the PDF file format for long-term storage of scanned documents, and 89 percent are converting Microsoft Office files to PDF for distribution and archiving. According to the report – “Content Creation and Delivery-The On-Ramps and Off-Ramps of ECM” – 43 percent of organizations still use microfilm or microfiche for archiving documents. However, that is projected to drop to 28 percent in five years.“

If your organization is starting to consider PDF as part of your enterprise technology stack, you will likely run into  the following questions :

• How do I generate PDFs from Microsoft Office files and other formats?  How about in mass quantities?  Can we automate this?
• How do I convert PDFs for archiving so that every aspect of the document is preserved perfectly?  Will these documents look the same in 10 years?  What if a future user doesn’t have the fonts I used to create the PDF?
• How do I secure PDFs so that only authorized users can access them?  Can I set an expiration dates?  Can I revoke rights?  How secure is it?
• How do I enable more interaction with PDFs so my customers and partners can interact with them?

Most people are familiar with Adobe Acrobat and know it as Adobe’s tool to do lots of PDF stuff.  However, you might not be as familiar with Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite.   LiveCycle ES  software is a server solution that brings together data capture, information assurance, batch document output, process management, document conversion, integration and content services.

Here are some links to get you started with understanding LiveCycle ES:

• Adobe LiveCycle ES Home Page
• LiveCycle Developer Center (I suggest reading the Quick Starts first)
  
• Adobe LiveCycle ES – an intro video for developers – a 14 minute video overview that I recorded a few months ago
• Technical Whitepaper
  
• Financial Services Demo
• Government Demo
• Manufactoring Demo
• Life Sciences Demo
• Customer Stories
• Inside PDF Blog – tons of great articles about PDF
• PDF/A – PDF as a standard for archiving (PDF Document explaining PDF/A)
• LiveCycle Rights Management
• LiveCycle Digital Signatures

Want to learn more?  Let’s chat!

For the past few weeks, I’ve been uploading some of my older digital images to SmugMug, one of several great online destinations for digital images.  (To learn why I chose SmugMug, read my earlier article here).  Even though I have multiple backups of my image library, I don’t have any offsite backups, so if my house ever burned down, I’d loose over 40,000 files, many of which are priceless.  Anyways, while uploading the pictures, I got to the 2004/2005 collections and was surprised at how good these images look despite that they were shot with an early model Nikon D70 (click here for a great review published when this camera was released).   The Nikon D70 was the first “affordable” Nikon digital SLR and had a whopping 6 megapixel sensor.  Since the D70, 13 new models have followed.

Since these shots were taken, I’ve upgraded twice, once to a D200 and recently to a D300 (I recently wrote an article discussing the entire Nikon D-series lineup).  Although the D300 has tons of features not found in the D70, there is no doubt that the D70 is still a VERY good camera. This shows that specs aren’t everything.  You can find a used Nikon D70 on Ebay for just over $200 (without lens), an excellent value!

Click on any of the images below to go to it’s SmugMug page where you can view multiple sizes, including the full-resolution images.  You can also view the EXIF data.

Hawaii	Hawaii
Hawaii	Hawaii
Sunrise at home (Lithia, FL)	Sea Turtle shot from submarine
Key West	Theater
Tulip Festival - Ottawa, Canada	Speedy bird (heavily cropped)