Caleb
Flex Elections Analytical Tool
Jan 4th
Today CafePress Meter™, a quick project I have been working on that kicked off just weeks ago has gone live. You can check it out for yourself at: http://www.cafepress.com/cp/buy/elections08_meter.
It’s a tool built in Flex that allows you to view a “real-time look at what’s selling at CafePress, the colorful marketplace brimming with millions of user-created products that express your passions and points of view.”
This project, which is conceptually very simple, is testament to the rapid development one can achieve with relative ease using Flex and the Flash Platform. There’s not much eye candy, but nevertheless it’s launch is a feat that shows how quickly a large company can get cutting edge projects out the door using Adobe® technologies. The tool is totally customizable due to it’s content model which is largely XML based and thus can be customized by non-technical people w/ ease. Also, I think it’s cool that this project will continue to take shape over the next year as the elections progress.
A big thanks to all the folks at CafePress who helped make this happen 
Happy New Year …
Jan 1st
My New Year’s resolution is simply to once again become an active blogger.
So in 2008, you can expect to hear the following from me:
- Of course, whatever Flash/Flex/Silverlight trickery I find worthy of public mention
- The latest and greatest news from my adventures working at Metaliq, and getting my RIA consulting business “Fire, Inc” off of the ground (2007 was a great year)
- Job/project offers to aspiring RIA engineers and/or designers (full-time or contract)
- Updates as to my speaking engagements
- Random Bullshit
I’m looking forward to it, and I hope you are too…
Peace
Do you Twitter?
May 14th
If you haven’t yet experienced the online phenomenon known as Twitter, then by all means check it out at Twitter.com.
On the other hand, if you’re an avid Twitterer, check out my profile and add me!
Cheers
The easiest way to view Flex/Apollo trace output
Apr 4th
I have been messing around with Apollo and Flex quite a bit lately (actually, I fell in love with it … but that’s another article). Unfortunately, the solutions for viewing trace output that I have found were less than satisfying. They were either too cumbersome to implement, or caused my system to slow to a crawl.
The solution that I’ve found is simple, elegant, and totally familiar with anyone who has ever had to view a typical server log output.
Basically, I used “tail -f” and pointed to the local flash log. Unfortunately, this has the same problems as viewing any server log output using tail; it’s not very pretty, and it can be hard to read at times. However, it hauls ass and is easy to implement, and that is all that I really want.
It was easy to take it a step further in order to make it an easy to access command. Basically I just edited the “.bashrc” file found in my home directory, and input the following line:
alias flashTrace='tail -f /Users/USERNAME/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash\ Player/Logs/flashlog.txt'Obviously, you’ll want to replace “USERNAME” above with your local machine username (If you don’t know how to get this, just open Terminal and type “cd; pwd”. The part right after “/Users/”is your local machine username).
After that, you can open a terminal from anywhere and type “flashTrace” to see the output (hit ctrl-c to return to the command line).
If you are a Windows User and don’t already have a shell solution, do yourself a favor download cygwin to access a unix-like shell and then you can also implement the above.
Simple, easy, and effective… at least it works for me
Cheers
Pimp Yahoo! Mail
Mar 29th
Yahoo! Mail now has a publicly accessible API! Check it out at: http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2007/03/mail.html
Not only that, Yahoo! is actually offering a monetary incentive for developers who manage to sell their premium accounts.
The following is taken from the official announcement on Yahoo Developer Network:
Yahoo! Mail Web Service developers can earn referral commissions by building compelling applications targeted at our premium email users. For a trial period, Yahoo! Mail is offering an incentive for developers to build applications using the full functionality available for premium Yahoo! Mail accounts. Specifically, Yahoo! Mail is currently providing a commission of $10.00 for every new Yahoo! Mail Plus account referred by approved developers
What it DU? (WebDU report back)
Mar 29th
Recently, I was fortunate enough to speak at WebDU (Web Down Under), “A rock concert for geeks”. WebDU is an Australian based web conference which boasts the highest speaker to attendee ratio of any major RIA/Web 2.0 conference. The conference itself was exceptional. I had the pleasure of speaking alongside some of the most recognized and inspirational personalities in the industry, including Jesse Warden, Mike Chambers, Mike Downey, and Ted Patrick, to name a few of my American counterparts who attended. Of course, I also had an opportunity to meet some awesome Aussie developers. I was most impressed by Scott Barnes, Lachlan Hardy, Collis Ta’eed, the guys from Nectarine, and the entire team from Daemon (whom also happen to be the conference organizers). It was also nice to see and meet Brandy Fortune, the first woman that I’ve ever seen speak at a conference (I’m excluding Lynda Weinman, the woman behind FlashForward because she is in a class of her own ). Brandy gave a great presentation on usability for designers and developers, you can read a great review of it here at flashmagazine.com.
I spoke on using Yahoo! APIs in Flash. I ran through the latest and greatest offerings from the Yahoo! Developer Network, including the recently revamped search SDK , the awesome AS3 additions by Alaric Cole (Alaric, if you have a blog please let me know, I couldn’t find it), and the latest book to make it to press by Yahoo’s Charles Freedman. I also covered security, best practices, and some real-world implementations of using web services. I also made mention of VUVOX, an awesome startup I have been working with for the past few months alongside a slew of other media & web rock stars. I’ll be blogging in greater detail about VUVOX later.
The conference was freakin’ amazing. The food was spectacular, the accommodations were immaculate, and the general vibe of the community was electric. It was fun (re)connecting with familiar (and some not so familiar) faces from Adobe. The guys from Nectarine sort of took me in and we hung out like we’ve known each other for years. Lachlan and I also spent quite a long time just conversing and sharing ideas… what a blast. After the show I hung out with an engineer from Yahoo! AU, which was cool. We conversed on ways to help Yahoo! embrace and harness the power of Flash and related platforms, which hopefully he can succeed in achieving or at least influencing. My flights to and from Sydney also stopped over in Honolulu, so I had to spend a few nights in Waikiki (hey, it’s a tough job … but somebody’s got to do it 
)
I’ll be posting my WebDU presentation materials and code shortly, and writing the blog posts that my audience demanded soon … so stay tuned. Sorry for dropping off of the blog thing for a while, I was just too busy to have time to think. However, I’m back and better than ever, and look forward to sharing my ideas and humble perspective with the community for a long time to come.
Peace.
!Adios, Yahoo!
Dec 6th
I haven’t blogged in a while, with good reason – I have more things going on than I care to mention. But let’s just say I’ve been terribly busy
This past Monday was my last day at Yahoo!
I really can’t say enough about Yahoo!, the people there have made my time there one of the most interesting and fun time periods of my life. I’ve met some of the most brilliant minds, worked on some interesting products, got some perspective on how a gargantuan company operates, and walked through doors that only a large company can open. I will forever be grateful for the opportunities that Yahoo! has provided me, and for the privilege of working with such talented people.
Thank you to all my friends at Yahoo! and other Yahoo! Alumni who have supported me and my ideas, tolerated my craziness, and most importantly, been my friend. It has been an honor working with you, and I am looking forward to remaining friends and colleagues.
I’ve had a great at Yahoo!, and now I’m excited about the opportunities my new career path is providing me. If you happen to be a Yahoo! employee reading this or someone I met while at Yahoo!, by all means send me a linkedIn request and make note of my personal email address (me at caleb.org). Also, if you happen to be a Flash/ActionScript engineer or designer, please join my Flash Peers mailing list too
I can’t exactly say where I’m going to be working next, as we are still in stealth mode, but I can tell you that it is a San Francisco Bay Area startup with awesome potential. Not only that, but the team itself is comprised of some of the most talented people I have ever met, including every Flash coders hero: Quasimondo – Mario Klingemann. If you’re really interested, check out the demo conference in January/Feb, we’ll be there.
Full Sail – A factory for professional talent
Nov 17th
I spent the majority of last week in Orlando evaluating 2 different Bachelor of Science degree program offerings from an interesting school named Full Sail. At present, Full Sail has degrees in Computer Animation, Digital Media, Entertainment Business, Film, Game Design, Recording Arts, and Show Production & Touring. I was invited to evaluate the new degree pertaining to Web Engineering, but also participated in the Digital Arts and Design curriculum evaluation as well.
I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by and entirely impressed with Full Sail. They are working hard to create a unique, energetic environment that supports creativity and encourages participation. The staff, equipment, and curriculum are personalized and professional, with a substantial amount of focus placed on independent development and self-determination. The school has a very distinct mandate, graduating professionals who are capable of hitting the ground running and positively influencing whatever company has the wherewithall to offer them industry positions. Perhaps most impressive is their job placement rate, which amazingly is above 80%!
Full Sail is definitely a viable option for someone looking to learn cutting edge, well rounded skills for today’s media industry … and no, I was not paid to say any of this
Flash Video gets an Emmy
Nov 7th
Macworld has reported that Adobe will receive a technical Emmy for their development of Flash Video:
Adobe Systems noted that it has won a Technical and Engineering Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for the development of Flash Video.
The award for Streaming Media Architecture & Components was announced this week, but it will be formally delivered to the company during a ceremony planned for January’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Flash Video enables users of different computer platforms, including Mac OS X, to view streaming video over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player software, which the company claims is installed on more than 700 million Internet-connected computers and handhelds.
Flash Video is used by Web sites like YouTube and MySpace, and is also utilized by companies including ABC and NBC to deliver video via the Web, according to Adobe President and COO Shantanu Narayen.
“Flash Video is fundamentally changing the role of video on the Internet, and this prestigious award is further proof of this technology’s profound impact on how broadcasters deliver their content,†said Narayen.
Thanks to Jeffery Bennett for the link
More Yahoo! Search ActionScript Examples
Nov 5th
Firdosh, a developer from the ydn-flash group put together a Yahoo! search demo using the YahooAPI classes I authored, you can check out his example here: http://seas.mgmt.purdue.edu/~firdosh/YahooAPI/bin/CustomItemRendererExample.html
His app totally reminds me of an AS2 Yahoo! Search example i put together a while back when YDN was still forming, you can check it out here: http://caleb.org/yahoosearch-as2.php
Firdosh also created a YahooImageSearchResult class that extends YahooSearchResult and provides access to the thumbnail and filesize properties of the result. Thanks Firdosh! 
I’ve updated the YahooAPI code available here and your class is included.
It reminds me of a conversation Ted Patrick and I had a Yahoo! hackday. Ted mentioned how easy it would be to make ActionScript abstraction layers for all of our web services, and trust me … if it was my job, it would be done by now. However, it is not my job (i work on the Media Innovation Group for Yahoo!, all of the YDN stuff i do is done on my own time, under my own accord).
The YahooAPI code was originally checked in to sourceforge, under the project name ‘actionscript’. I also have SVN available on caleb.org, but I haven’t checked any code in as of yet. If anyone is interested in collaborating and making this code stronger, please let me know and i will set up the repositories. I would just do it now, but i’m moving this weekend, thus i’m too busy packing and whatnot to nerd out too hard.
At any rate, thanks for the contribution Firdosh … holla if you’re looking for a job
