I’ve created a separate blog for ChessJam-specific news.  I will continue to blog about ChessJam here on Greg’s Ramblings but only when it’s relevant to the Adobe developer community.  For example, I’m working on a new post that goes into some details on how the app was built with Flex, AIR, ColdFusion and LiveCycle Data Services that will be posted here but posts about ChessJam’s new features, etc. will now go on the ChessJam blog at http://chessjam.blogspot.com.

Not all chess players want to hear about Flex and ColdFusion and not all developers want to hear about an online chess game, so this seems to make sense.

You can also follow ChessJam on twitter – http://twitter.com/chessjam

A few days ago, I blogged about the roll-out of ChessJam, an online chess app built on Flex/AIR, ColdFusion and LiveCycle Data Services.  The roll-out has gone well but we have quickly learned that our real challenge is creating a new chess playing community!   From analyzing our logs, here is the typical experience over the past few days:

• User installs the app, creates a profile
• User clicks around looking for someone to play with but finds nobody so they don’t even get the gaming experience
• User leaves the app after spending an average of 90 seconds
• Five minutes later, another user logs in and repeats the cycle!

We discussed a few options:

1. Hiring middle-school kids to staff the room for $1/hr
2. Me take a sabbatical now and play chess 24/7
3. Employ some robots!

We went with option #3.   If you were one of the users that went through the 90 second experience described above, come back and play a bot.  Hopefully you’ll also see a few humans hanging out to play.

If your trial has run out, email us at chessjam -at- gmail -dot- com and we’ll get you going again.

To learn more about ChessJam, read my previous post.

If you are looking for information on how to add auto-update capabilities to your Adobe AIR app, start with my earlier blog post, “Adding auto update features to your AIR application in 3 easy steps“.

Most updates to software applications are optional for the user.  The typical flow is that the user is notified that an update is available and then given the choice to update now or later.  However, there are situations that warrant forcing the update.  For example, if you have made changes to server-side APIs that make existing client-side apps unusable, you obviously need all client apps to update themselves.  I recently ran into this situation with my online chess application.  I started reading through the AIR documentation to determine how to make some updates mandatory and others optional.  AIR provides an extensive set of APIs to control each step of the update process from comparing versions to downloading the update to managing the install but this was too much work for a lazy developer like me.

I typically use the ApplicationUpdaterUI version of the update framework because it’s easy to implement and the built-in dialogs that walk the user through the update are perfect.  To force an update with the ApplicationUpdatedUI, you simply disable two dialogs using the following code:

• appUpdater.isDownloadUpdateVisible = false; // Disables (skips) this dialog:
  
• appUpdater.isInstallUpdateVisible = false; // Disables (skips) this dialog:
  

With both of these dialogs disabled, the update immediately downloads and installs.   A dialog showing download and install progress is still displayed but you can turn these off too (I wouldn’t recommend turning this off).

My approach

I wrote some code that loads my server-side update.xml file (prior to initializing the application updater) and looks for a new tag I created called “FORCE”.  Once the file is loaded, I initialize the updater and toggle the dialog accordingly.   Now I can control whether an update is forced by simply updating my update.xml.

The sample code below builds on my original blog post.

Server-side xml file with <force>yes</force> added (update2.xml):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<update xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/air/framework/update/description/1.0">
<version>v2</version>
<force>yes</force>
<url>http://tourdeflex.adobe.com/blogfiles/AIRAutoUpdateSample/server/AIRAutoUpdateSample-v2.air</url>
<description><![CDATA[
v2
  * These notes are displayed to the user in the update dialog
  * Typically, this is used to summarize what's new in the release
]]>
</description>
</update>

The modified source with code added to look for the FORCE tag.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:WindowedApplication xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" width="200" height="70" creationComplete="preCheckForUpdate()">
	<mx:Script>
	<![CDATA[
		import flash.events.ErrorEvent;
		import flash.events.IOErrorEvent;
		import air.update.ApplicationUpdaterUI;
		import air.update.events.UpdateEvent;
		import mx.controls.Alert;

		private var appUpdater:ApplicationUpdaterUI = new ApplicationUpdaterUI();

		private var updateXMLURL:String = "http://tourdeflex.adobe.com/blogfiles/AIRAutoUpdateSample/server/update2.xml";

		// Pre-read the server-side XML file to look for <force>yes</force>
		private function preCheckForUpdate():void{
			var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
			loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, checkForUpdate);
			loader.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, onIOError); // Just in case we can't read the update.xml						

			loader.load(new URLRequest(updateXMLURL));
		}

		private function checkForUpdate(event:Event):void {
			setApplicationVersion(); // Find the current version so we can show it below

		    var myXML:XML = new XML(event.target.data);
			namespace items = "http://ns.adobe.com/air/framework/update/description/1.0";
		    use namespace items;
		    var forceUpdate:String = myXML.force;

			appUpdater.updateURL = updateXMLURL; // Server-side XML file describing update
			appUpdater.isCheckForUpdateVisible = false; // We won't ask permission to check for an update

			// If <force>yes</force> was found above, turn off the download and install dialogs
			if(forceUpdate.toLowerCase() == "yes") {
				appUpdater.isDownloadUpdateVisible = false;
				appUpdater.isInstallUpdateVisible = false;
			}
			appUpdater.addEventListener(UpdateEvent.INITIALIZED, onUpdate); // Once initialized, run onUpdate
			appUpdater.addEventListener(ErrorEvent.ERROR, onError); // If something goes wrong, run onError
			appUpdater.initialize(); // Initialize the update framework
		}

		private function onError(event:ErrorEvent):void {
			Alert.show(event.toString());
		}

		private function onIOError(event:IOErrorEvent):void
		{
			trace("Error loading URL.");
		}

		private function onUpdate(event:UpdateEvent):void {
			appUpdater.checkNow(); // Go check for an update now
		}

		// Find the current version for our Label below
		private function setApplicationVersion():void {
			var appXML:XML = NativeApplication.nativeApplication.applicationDescriptor;
			var ns:Namespace = appXML.namespace();
			ver.text = "Current version is " + appXML.ns::version;
		}
	]]>
	</mx:Script>

	<mx:VBox backgroundColor="blue" x="0" y="0" width="100%" height="100%">
		<mx:Label color="white" id="ver" />
	</mx:VBox>

</mx:WindowedApplication>
</code>

Keep in mind that forcing an update is borderline intrusive and should be done judiciously.

If you know of a better way to do this, please comment.

For the past eight months, I’ve been working with two friends, Todd Williams and Sean Carey, on a little side project called ChessJam.  This project started in February, 2009 when Sean and I decided to play a game of online chess with each other to finally resolve who was the better player.  We explored several online chess sites and to our surprise, we found all of them disappointing.  This led to a discussion about what we could potentially build ourselves.  We knew that UI design would be key, so we rounded out our team with Todd, artist, UI designer and ninja Flex developer.  All three of us have demanding day jobs so the journey has been a bit slow, but we are finally ready to show the world what we’ve built.

ChessJam is a desktop application that you can use to play live chess with other people via the Internet.  You will quickly notice that ChessJam is a bit different than the other online chess sites.  Our goal from day one was to create a user interface that is both functional and fun.

Features

• Rich graphics and sound
• Simple interface – pick a tower, pick a room, sit at a table and play on a 3D or 2D board
• Multiple game parameters available (60 minutes, 30 minutes, 10 minutes and speed chess.  More coming soon)
• Full disconnect/reconnect capabilities
• Tracking of wins, losses and draws
• Player to player chat
• Watch any game in progress
• Much more coming soon!

The Technology

The front end of ChessJam was built with Flex and deployed as an AIR application so it will run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.  The back end is ColdFusion and LiveCycle Data Services.  I am already working on a new blog post titled, “The making of ChessJam“ where I will share why we chose this particular combination of technologies and the challenges we faced.  You might be surprised so stay tuned!

How We Monetize ChessJam

We knew from the start that we would need to charge something for ChessJam to offset the operating cost, but that’s only half the reason.  If you have tried any of the free online chess sites, you know that they are filled with many people that really aren’t there to play chess.  From my personal experience, I was only able to play a decent game about one out of four attempts!  Many users leave in-progress games without warning (especially when they start losing!).  Other users tried to get me to click a link to see their webcam and other garbage.  It was not the fun atmosphere that I had hoped for!  By charging a small fee, we hope to eliminate a lot of this noise.

The ChessJam application is free for 14 days.  After the 14 day trial, there is a one-time $15 charge for the application.  There are no recurring fees.  Basically, you pay $15 and you can play chess using ChessJam forever.

UPDATE 10/24/2009:  ChessJam is now free – see http://chessjam.blogspot.com/2009/10/big-changes-at-chessjam-app-now-free.html for details!

October Promotion

We realize that it’s very important to grow a good community of users, so to encourage people to use ChessJam during these early days, we are going to give away a free copy of ChessJam to the 20 people that play the most games between now and October 31, 2009.

Dates and times are subject to change based on my work/travel schedule.  In other words, be flexible and work with me.

If you are interested in challenging me to a game of chess, email chessjam@gmail.com with one or two preferred dates.  I’ll update this blog post as the timeslots are assigned.

If you beat me, you get a free copy of the app.  If I beat you, you have to pay triple for it and blog about how great it is! (just kidding )

Links

• Download ChessJam
• ChessJam Home Page
• ChessJam Blog
• Follow ChessJam on Twitter
• ChessJam Facebook Fan Page

Video demo (view in HD on Youtube for best viewing)

My next blog post on ChessJam will provide a tour of the stack, and I think you will find that this is an excellent use case for Flex, AIR, ColdFusion and LCDS.

In August, 2008, I blogged “Adding auto update features to your AIR application in 3 easy steps“.  It gets many views every day so I spent a little time today updating it to be AIR 1.5 compatible and to include a few common mistakes that developers make when implementing auto-update.

I’ll do a new blog post in a couple of days on how to dynamically control whether an update is forced or optional.

At speaking events, I am often asked about Flex Certification.  As the demand for Flex developers increases, many employers are looking to certification programs as a means of pre-qualifying applicants.   I’m not a big fan of using a single test to pass or fail potential employees because some of us are just not good test takers  but, in many situations certification is a good indicator that can be considered along with experience, sample projects, etc., so I absolutely see the value.

Adobe has a page that explains the program at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex_certification.html

Basically, you take a test with 50 questions.  If you answer 34 or more correct, you’re certified.  Sounds easy, right?  Well, the questions are tough!

Here’s the breakdown of topics from the Exam Guide:

This is where Attest comes in.  Attest is a desktop application (build on Adobe AIR of course!) that provides mock/practice exams for the Flex certification test.  You can simulate the test to gauge how you’ll do, and if things don’t go well, you can put it in “learning mode” and access tons of resources to help sharpen your skills.

Attest Pro is available in the Adobe AIR Marketplace for $20.  There is a 3-day free trial available.

Holly Schinsky (twitter), co-creator of Attest, recently blogged about Attest Pro here.

David Flatley (twitter), the other co-creator of Attest, also blogged about Attest Pro here.

You can grab the Attest Pro trial from here.

You may have noticed that this year’s Adobe MAX has a lot of noise about LiveCycle ES and you may be wondering what it’s all about.  If you would like to see a good overview of LiveCycle along with some great demos, I recommend you grab one of the remaining seats in Marcel Boucher’s session titled, “What’s Next in LiveCycle ES?“.    The session focuses on the new LiveCycle features but it’s actually a great introduction to the platform if you’ve never checked it out.

Sign up here.

LiveCycle ES is taking a larger role this year at Adobe MAX than in previous years.  There are sessions, labs, pre-conference labs (sold out!) and tons of information about LiveCycle.

In addition to all of Adobe’s activity, I wanted to make you aware of something new from one of our partners, Avoka Technologies called SmartForm Composer that will be on display at MAX at booth #434.  I’ve seen a few demos of this new product and found it to be quite impressive!   SmartForm Composer is a web-based Flex application that makes it easy to build PDF forms. With Composer, you simply select one of our pre-defined templates, and quickly build an interactive Adobe XFA compliant PDF SmartForm that looks great and work with LiveCycle ES.

Avoka has put together a great video demo..  check it out!

Posted in Adobe LiveCycle ES, Adobe MAX 2009 Tagged: Avoka, Flex, forms, LCES, LiveCycle, LiveCycle ES, pdf form, smartform composer, xfa, xfa form ]]> http://gregsramblings.com/2009/10/02/avoka-smartform-composer-for-adobe-livecycle-es/feed/ 0 Greg http://gregsramblings.com/2009/09/10/max-lab-making-real-time-data-come-alive-with-flex-data-visualization/ http://gregsramblings.com/2009/09/10/max-lab-making-real-time-data-come-alive-with-flex-data-visualization/#comments Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:26:34 +0000 gregorywilson http://gregsramblings.com/?p=1246 ]]>

If you are attending Adobe MAX, I’d like to invite you to come to what I think will be a fun BYOL (bring your own laptop) lab that I am co-presenting with Holly Schinsky.

I’ve always been fascinated with data visualization, especially data that needs analysis as it is generated.  For example, financial transaction data can contain immediately useful trending information that is invisible without some visualization.  Credit card transaction data can contain data indicating fraudulent use.  I once worked on a project where we analyzed cellular call data in real-time looking for indications that a phone had been cloned (old-school cellular phones could easily be “cloned” before things went digital).

I thought that this type of data visualization would make for an interesting lab at MAX and invited Holly (Flex and Data Services guru) to help me put it together.  Holly and I have been working hard to make sure that this is both an informative and fun 90 minute session.

Here’s the description from the MAX site: Discover how the real-time messaging capabilities of BlazeDS and LiveCycle Data Services ES can be combined with the data visualization capabilities of Flex to result in some very interesting applications. In this lab, you will learn how to produce and consume a real-time data feed and how to pass that data to various data visualization components to create an interactive dashboard.

We’ll explore the basics of publish/subscribe messaging with BlazeDS and LiveCycle Data Services as it applies to real-time data feeds and learn how to take that feed and turn it into something very visual and compelling.   We will first employ some of the Flex charting capabilities and then look at how to plot data on interactive maps.

The session times are Monday, Oct 5th at 2:30pm and Wednesday, Oct 7th at 1:30pm.   Both sessions are filling quickly.  The Oct 7th session is already 70% full – maybe I need to show you with a bar chart? 

Click here and sign up!

See ya at MAX!

We just rolled out the first 22 samples in Tour de Flex for Flex 4.  Holly Schinsky wrote a blog post describing this initial wave of samples.  We plan to roll out more every few days over the next several weeks.   Once Flex 4 ships, we will merge the samples into the main Tour de Flex tree.

The samples are best viewed using the desktop version of Tour de Flex.

Are you interested in contributing Flex 4 samples?  If so, contact me!

If you live near Atlanta and have any interest in Adobe Flash, Flex, AIR, etc., you should go to http://flashcampatlanta.eventbrite.com and grab one of the remaining tickets for tomorrow’s event.  I just confirmed that they have less than 10 tickets left!

Check out the sessions at http://events.universalmind.com/page.cfm/flash-camp-atlanta-2009/speakers-and-sessions

I’ll be doing the keynote and showing some new stuff, including our upcoming Composite RIA Framework.  If you are involved in building enterprise Flex applications, I think you’ll find this very interesting.

See ya there!

If you are near San Jose, CA and are curious about the Adobe Flash Platform and/or Adobe LiveCycle, please join me Wednesday, August 19th at Adobe Corporate Headquarters for a 5 hour demo-filled, action-packed free event. It’s a great opportunity to get introduced to what Adobe has going on in both client-side and server-side technologies. Topics include:

• Flash Player, including cool new features of Flash Player 10
• Developing applications for the Flash Platform using Adobe Flex
• Exploring the types of applications possible with Flex, including data visualization examples, real-time data push apps and more
• Deploying applications on the web and on the desktop with Adobe AIR
• Wiring Flex to various back-end applications using LiveCycle Data Services and BlazeDS
• Adobe’s ultimate server-side SOA platform, LiveCycle ES – process management, data collection, rights management, PDF generation and much more
• Discussing how all of these technologies fit together in “real world” applications
• Sneak peeks at several upcoming products

The event is free but requires registration. Click here to register now.

Ok, here’s what marketing told me to say: Learn how top companies are improving their business bottom line by lowering operational costs, increasing productivity and driving revenue growth using the Adobe Flash® Platform and Adobe LiveCycle®. Join us in San Jose  for this complimentary event.

I’m presenting at CFUnited (August 12th-15th) on a topic I think many will find interesting – “ColdFusion 9 & LiveCycle ES: SOA Development“.  I’m hoping to spark some interest in how ColdFusion and LiveCycle ES (LCES) can be combined to do some really unique and amazing things. I had the idea for this session the day I learned about the new “ColdFusion as a Service (CFaaS)” feature in ColdFusion 9, which exposes capabilities of cfchart, cfdocument, cfimage, cfmail, cfpop, and cfpdf as web services and Flash remoting endpoints.

+

LiveCycle ES not only provides 100+ out-of-the-box services, it also provides the ability to combine or orchestrate these services using LiveCycle process management (workflow) capabilities.  These newly created processes become new services.  The LCES invocation layer exposes all of these services to the outside world through various endpoints including SOAP, Flash Remoting, EJB, watched folders, email, and in the upcoming new version of LCES, REST!

So, you have ColdFusion services and LiveCycle ES services; each set of services offers its own unique capabilities, and all of them are callable using common means.  What can you do when you combine them?

When does LiveCycle ES need ColdFusion?

LiveCycle ES offers a ton of out-of-the box features, but it doesn’t include many capabilities that ColdFusion provides such as Microsoft Exchange integration, image manipulation, dynamic chart creation, and numerous other CF-abilities. If what you need is not provided by the  new CfaaS in CF9, you can easily create your own services by writing custom ColdFusion components (CFCs), and as you would expect, these CFCs can also be exposed as web services or Flash Remoting endpoints.

When does ColdFusion need LiveCycle ES?

CF  includes neither the workflow/process management capabilities nor most of the extensive document-related services included in LCES.  CF does provide some PDF creation capabilities and in CF9, you can now add headers and footers, optimize images, and more.  But when when you look at  the PDF capabilities of LCES, you’ll find a long list that includes rights management, digital signatures, 2D barcodes, and much more.  LiveCycle also brings human workflow features to the table for things like approval processes and collaboration, which many CF developers will likely find useful in a variety of applications.

I’m still working out the details of my session, but here’s a rough agenda:

• Introduction to ColdFusion as a Service (CFaaS)
• Introduction to LiveCycle ES
• Calling ColdFusion services from LiveCycle ES (including calling a simple CFC)
• Calling LiveCycle ES services from ColdFusion
• Exploring various use-cases where this madness actually makes a lot of sense
• Brainstorming what a new custom ColdFusion component in LCES could/should look like

This is all subject to change based on how successful my demo preparation goes, but so far, it’s looking good, and I think it will be a fun session.  If you have never looked at LiveCycle ES, this is a great way to get started.

Sign up here – http://cfunited.com/2009/topics#topic-367

During the past several weeks, I’ve been cramming on ColdFusion 9.  Like many of you, I rely on blog posts from key CF’ers, Adobe TV and other key resources.  During this journey, I kept notes of where I found useful information.  I thought that others might find these notes useful.

I have posted my long list to the following page – http://gregsramblings.com/cf9

There are other good resource lists out there, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to post my own.  Let me know if you find this useful. I plan to do one for Flex 4, LCDS 3, Catalyst and other products soon.

THANK YOU to all of the fantastic ColdFusion bloggers out there that help the rest of us get our heads around this stuff!  I’ve been super impressed by the CF community!

If you are near Atlanta and are curious about the Adobe Flash Platform and/or Adobe LiveCycle, please join me next Wednesday, July 29th at the Hotel Palomar in Atlanta, Georgia for a 5 hour demo-filled, action-packed free event.  It’s a great opportunity to get introduced to what Adobe has going on in both client-side and server-side technologies.  Topics include:

• Flash Player, including cool new features of Flash Player 10
• Developing applications for the Flash Platform using Adobe Flex
• Exploring the types of applications possible with Flex, including data visualization examples, real-time data push apps and more
• Deploying applications on the web and on the desktop with Adobe AIR
• Wiring Flex to various back-end applications using LiveCycle Data Services and BlazeDS
• Adobe’s ultimate server-side SOA platform, LiveCycle ES – process management, data collection, rights management, PDF generation and much more
• Discussing how all of these technologies fit together in “real world” applications
• Sneak peeks at several upcoming products

The event is free but requires registration.   Click here to register now.

Ok, here’s what marketing told me to say: Learn how top companies are improving their business bottom line by lowering operational costs, increasing productivity and driving revenue growth using the Adobe Flash® Platform and Adobe LiveCycle®. Join us in Atlanta on July 29th for this complimentary event. 

Kevin Hoyt is doing a similar event in New York, NY on July 30th. 

I’m also doing the same event in San Jose, CA on August 19th.  The registration link above has all of the events.

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:

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• 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.