Nouveau Riche Internet by Andrew Muller

Oct 02

Adobe's MAX Conference 2007, Day One Keynote

This years MAX is being held in Chicago at the maxi-sized McCormick Place with a record attendance of 4300+ attendees, well exceeding the anticipated level. As in years past with loud thumping music and giant high definition screens it was opened by Kevin Lynch, Adobe's Senior Vice President and Chief Software Architect. Kevin talked about Adobe Developer Connection the revamped Developer Centre, [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 7 comments

Tags: conference, coldfusion, max, adobe, flash, flex

Apr 26

Adobe to set Flex free

Adobe have surprised many today by announcing plans to release their Flex SDK as open source later this year. The Flex SDK comprises of a number of technologies including the Flex Framework, Flex Components, and ActionScript 3.0 libraries - they will be open sourced under a Mozilla Public License. While it's rival OpenLaszlo has been free and open source since the release of Flex 1.0, Adobe has [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 5 comments

Tags: open, source, adobe, flex

Apr 02

10 new things that I learnt about Apollo at WebDU

During WebDU I was able to learn some more about Adobe's new RIA desktop runtime Apollo. I've put together a list of interesting Apollo snippets from an interview that I conducted with Mike Downey and an Apollo "Birds of a Feather" that I hosted with Mike Chambers. The delay of the release of Flash Player 9 for Linux has meant that the 1.0 release of Apollo will not include a Linux version; [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

Tags: apollo, webdu, conference, adobe

Mar 12

Does ApolloCamp Equal Apollo Release?

Adobe will be hosting ApolloCamp this Friday night San Francisco time and the smart money is that a public alpha of Apollo may be announced sometime around that date. Apollo is a cross platform runtime that will allow developers to build desktop Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) with a variety of existing web technologies that include Flash, Flex, AJAX, HTML and JavaScript. If the rumours are [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 1 comment

Tags: adobe, apollo, flex

Nov 08

The Tamarin Seed

In announcing that they've contributed the source code for the ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2) to the Mozilla project Adobe has done something really exciting today. AVM2 is a brand new virtual machine that was introduced with Flash Player 9 to render ActionScript 3.0 code with dramatic speed improvements; this inside Firefox is big news for the Web 2.0 crowd. There's been quite a bit of confusion [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

Tags: mozilla, firefox, adobe, actionscript

Oct 27

Adobe MAX conference: Sneak Peaks, Sound Treats

To close MAX 2006 Adobe gave delegates at the conference a sneak peek at some upcoming technologies and products. With a satellite radio up as a prize for a people's choice favourite demo there were some great insights into what's happening in the labs of the Adobe product teams. Some of the offerings were additional previews of new versions of popular products in development, while others where [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 2 comments

Tags: connect, coldfusion, fireworks, max, breeze, adobe, flash, flex

Oct 26

Adobe MAX conference day 2: Cumby, Mobiles, and Winners

Today was the second day of the Adobe MAX conference in Las Vegas. While the keynote focused on mobile the show opened with a view of what's to come with Acrobat. Kevin Lynch from Adobe showed off some of the collaborative features of Acrobat 8 including how the product can manage all the routing to send PDFs to peers for review. Lynch also used Acrobat to Web conference with John Warnock, the [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 6 comments

Tags: mobile, max, adobe, flash

Oct 25

Vegas: Elvis, Blue Men and the world's biggest Flash enabled

I'm in Las Vegas this week for MAX, Adobe's annual user conference, and this morning's opening keynote went off with a bang. And a loud one at that! The music blasts from speakers either side of the stage, just like waiting for a rock concert to begin. It's Elvis and this is Vegas... but this time it's "Pump It Up" and it's Elvis Costello - I can't help but wonder if it's deliberately [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 1 comment

Tags: max, spry, ajax, vegas, elvis, illustrator, adobe, flash

Sep 27

Flash VoIP to expand

You may not have used Flash to make a call to a friend over the weekend, but chances are you could be doing that in the not too distant future. VoIP has been available in the Flash Player for some time now - the large number of Breeze (now Adobe Connect Professional) users can attest to that, but in news that was revealed over the weekend it seems that a team within Adobe have been working towards [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

Tags: voip, skype, breeze, adobe, flash

Sep 26

Photoshop, Meet Flash

It's conference season at the moment in the northern hemisphere and Adobe has been busy demonstrating some of the features of the next version of Flash, code named "Blaze". Designers are going to love this version as it has the ability to import PhotoShop files while preserving layers, editable text, shapes and effects. Also included in this new version will be a new convert timeline tweening [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

Tags: flash, photoshop, flex, actionscript

Sep 17

Has Google Crippled Gmail for Safari?

One of the true failings of Ajax is that it's a mashup of a number of technologies that relies on various versions of code to support various browsers - that it's not complimented by a single cross-platform runtime like the Flash Player. Google's popular Gmail is likely to be the most used Ajax application today, and like other Ajax applications it suffers from the inability to offer true cross [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 3 comments

Sep 08

Croc Hunting on Wikipedia

When did you hear about Steve Irwin's death, early in the afternoon? Could you pinpoint the time exactly, how about 2:13pm Sydney time - because that's when someone modified his entry in Wikipedia to say that there were rumours that something had happened to the Croc Hunter. The first I heard of it was an article on the Sydney Morning Herald site time stamped 2:22pm - out of curiosity someone [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 5 comments

Aug 30

Geocode your photos

Flickr added geocoding to their photo sharing service this week, leveraging the mapping services of parent Yahoo!. After finding a location by either searching or navigating a map, users drag a photograph onto it's map location from within the online Organizr tool that Flickr provides free of charge. The bad news is that mapping for Australia is only high level and restricted to major roads and [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

Aug 18

Just how dangerous are those exploding Dell batteries?

It's interesting, the exploding Dell battery story is a good one. Naturally the last thing that any of us want is any kind of physical damage or harm caused by an exploding laptop battery. First one, then a second - it took some time before Dell acknowledged the problem and issued a battery recall, coincidentally straight after Michael Dell was grilled about the problem in a Sydney press conference. What [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 2 comments

Jul 27

Watch Out For More Fanboys

With every release of a new laptop you hear a collective sigh from the knockers, they're waiting for the reaction on various lists from the Apple devotees that they love to call "Fanboys". Is there an equivalent term for the Windows defenders? Apple reported in their Q3 earnings last week that they've had a twelve percent growth in sales over the previous twelve months. They estimate that [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

Jul 20

Adobe Releases More Details on Apollo

Adobe is exploring new ways of enabling developers to develop and deploy Rich Internet Applications (RIAs); most notable is the recent release of Flex 2. A new direction that they're working on currently is the ability to put an RIA on the desktop - something that Microsoft has shown interest in as well, their solution Expression is tied to the ever-delayed Vista operating system. Expression has [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

Jul 11

ATTN Google, Spam is Spam!

I just don't understand it, my Google Mail (Gmail) spam folder overflows. What you say, lots of it - well, their spam filters must be working. While that may be true, I'm expecting more for what they have to offer. Gmail is a great tool, while I don't use if for personal mail I do run all my mailing lists through it - I consequently have a searchable archive of questions and answers for those [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 2 comments

Jun 29

Flex 2, ActionScript 3, Flash Player 9 Released

Last week was a big week for Adobe. Flex 2 - the major revision of their RIA tool was released. Flash Player 9 and Flex Data Services were also released at the same time with a preview release of the next version of the Flash Professional 9 IDE made available on Adobe Labs as well. Trial versions of Flex Builder and Flex Data Services are available for download. Remember that you can author, [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

Jun 25

Adobe Developer Week

Adobe recently ran a series of online conferences via Breeze under the banner of Adobe Developer Week. There was a great and diverse range of topics on offer; including Flex, LiveCycle, ColdFusion, Apollo, Model Glue, RIAs, Ajax, ActionScipt 3 and security. The good news is that all the sessions were recorded and are readily available – I'd recommend that you spend the time going through them [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

May 17

Is that a Moket in your Pocket?

Nokia will be bundling content from Flash Lite developers Moket when they release the new Nokia 6131 in Singapore. A Series 40 clamshell, the 6131 like an increasing number of new models from Nokia has the Flash Lite player pre-installed. The Brisbane-based developer's game, "Whack Attack", was originally developed for Series 60 handsets – one of the most popular downloads for some time at Adobe's [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

Mar 23

One Competition for the Rest of Us

Adobe is celebrating the release of Flex 2 beta 2 this week with a developer competition offering some tasty prizes. While that's good news for a few customers, entries are only being accepted from residents of the USA and Canada (except Quebec). That was not true in the past for Macromedia, now part of Adobe, who two years ago gave first prize to a Brisbane developer in a Flash competition [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 1 comment

Mar 17

Ubiquitous presentation technology

As things go, the use of online presentations and meetings are on the increase, the technology is getting more bandwidth efficient, the minimum user hardware and software requirements are easily met. As an example of bandwidth efficiency I recently witnessed first hand someone using Adobe Breeze Live to deliver an impromptu online meeting from an international flight equipped with airborne internet. From [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

Mar 10

It's the hallway meetings that count

I was able to spend a bit of time at WebDU here in Sydney last week, attending a keynote and presenting a session as well. This internet technology conference started its life off in 2003 as MXDU and while originally Macromedia focussed it's grown quite a bit over time with sessions this year including, CSS, JavaScript, source control and Ruby on Rails. I've been lucky enough to attend and speak [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

Mar 08

Getting on the Beta Bandwagon

While a lot of us today seem to be too busy to stop and think about the next version of technology X, there are still a lot of developers who are keen to get involved in beta programs, and Adobe is doing something to make that easier. Macromedia and Adobe have both previously run closed beta programs, with NDAs often requiring participants to deny that such betas even existed. But that changed [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

Feb 20

Serving Mashed Trailers, No Waiting

We've all got a mate that emails us the latest viral video piece. You've seen a lot of them, right? Chopper doing the weather; some amazing car chase; the latest beer commercial. The ones that have grabbed my attention lately are the movie trailer mashups. There are a couple out there, and they're really clever. The first that I saw was the trailer for "The Shining" re-edited as though it [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

Feb 20

Flash on Mobiles Down Under

Have you tried Flash Lite on your mobile yet? With the number of supported handsets on the rise, and Nokia and Adobe currently giving the player away free to developers, perhaps now's the time. Due to the large variety of operating systems and CPUs, licensing and hardware support has always been beholden on the handset manufacturer; this has meant that Nokia has been the only brand for some time [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments

Feb 10

If the Riya RIA had a Flash UI, you wouldn't need this

A video piece on CNET caught my interest recently - a search engine that could recognise faces and text in images. When I decided to check it out I discovered that because the developers had chosen Ajax for their UI there were issues with cross browser/OS compatibility - Safari users need not apply right now. Browser detection locked me out of a front page that on face value doesn't contain anything [...] Read more »

-- posted by Andrew Muller | 0 comments