Flash and the City Conference Blog

http://blog.flashandthecity.com/

Flash and the City Speakers

http://blog.flashandthecity.com/speakers/

Elad Elrom’s AIR 2.0 Cookbook recipes (thanks again dude!)

http://elromdesign.com/blog/2010/02/01/10-recipes-on-adc-cookbooks-covering-air-20-new-apis/

AIR 2.0 info on the Adobe Labs site

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air2/

Exploring the new file capabilities in Adobe AIR 2

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/articles/exploring_file_capabilities.html

StorageVolume class info

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/filesystem/StorageVolume.html

StorageVolumeInfo class info

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/filesystem/StorageVolumeInfo.html

StorageVolumeChangeEvent class info

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/events/StorageVolumeChangeEvent.html

Interacting with Native Processes in AIR 2.0

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/quickstart/interacting_with_native_process.html

AIR 2.0 New Features Overview

http://www.infoq.com/articles/air-20-new-features

AIR 2.0 FAQ on Adobe Labs

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/AIR_2:Developer_FAQ

New Features in AIR 2.0 on Adobe Labs

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/AIR_2:Release_Notes#New_Features_in_AIR_2__beta_2

AIR 2 Enhancements Complete Overview

http://www.insideria.com/2009/10/air-2-enhancements-complete-ov.html

Using the Microphone capabilities in Adobe AIR 2 beta

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/articles/using_mic_api.html

TouchEvent class info

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/events/TouchEvent.html

TouchscreenType

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/system/TouchscreenType.html

MultitouchInputMode

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/ui/MultitouchInputMode.html

Multitouch

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/ui/Multitouch.html

TransformGestureEvent

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/events/TransformGestureEvent.html

Continue reading the full interview here:

http://www.flashscope.com/blog/sean-theflexguy-inerviewed/

San Diego Flash Users Group: Flex Best Practices Presentation

To start 2009 off I gave my first presentation to an awesome group of Flash and Flex developers in San Diego. The presentation was created from the two articles I wrote in 2008 for the Adobe Developer Connection on Best Practices for Flex development. I’ve kept the Powerpoint presentation offline until now. Some of the content is a little dated but it’s probably still worth checking out. I may update this presentation with everything I’ve learned over the last year and for the upcoming changes coming in Flex 4, if time permits.

Download the Flex Best Practices Powerpoint Presentation here.

Java Programming II at UCSD

After wanting to learn more about Java for many years I decided to go back to school and take a structured class. This was the first time I’d set foot in a classroom since about 1998. It was through the UCSD Extension program but classes were held on the UCSD campus. It was pretty cool to walk around the campus and see the “college” life again after so long. In addition this was the first time I’d ever taken a class at a University, my previous college experience was at a community college. The instructor Kent Yang was really awesome and the class was killer! I learned a lot more about Java, OOP, Unit Testing and Design Patterns. This knowledge was all transferable into AS3/Flex so the experience was well worth the time and investment.

Check out the class details here.

The Flex Show Episode 71: OOP w/ Sean Moore

The Flex Show is awesome, simply stated. Jeffry Houser has done an excellent job with the podcast and I’ve been a fan for a few years now. One of my goals was to be a guest on The Flex Show and in 2009 in became a reality. I was able to put together a talk about OOP in regards to Flex and ActionScript development. The Java class helped solidify my knowledge of OOP so hopefully the talk will help others grasp some of the fundamental OO concepts. It was an honor to be on the show and I really appreciate the opportunity. Hopefully I can do another show sometime in the future. Maybe on the Mindset BCI work I’ve been doing lately.

You can listen to my talk on The Flex Show here.

Orange County Flex Users Group: Flex Best Practices Presentation

Laura Arguello was kind enough to invite me to give my Flex Best Practices preso at the OCFlex Users Group in March. This gave me a chance to visit the ASFusion office before the preso and hang out with Jeremy Saenz (aka The Flex Gangster) a bit as well. The crowd at OCFlex was really great and very patient as I got set up and had some trouble finding a room at the venue big enough for everyone. Thanks again to ASFusion and the OCFlex Users Group for inviting me to present. It was a great experience!

Technical Authoring for O’Reilly InsideRIA

2008 was a big year for me and authoring. I wrote articles for Adobe, Flash Magazine and O’Reilly’s InsideRIA. I continued the trend in 2009 by writing three featured articles for InsideRIA. Rich Tretola is one of the coolest guys I know and such a pleasure to work with. He helped me a ton with the articles I wrote this year through the good and the bad. Another person I really have to thank is Matt Chotin. His feedback on my Flex 4 article was a huge help and I really appreciate his time and input! You can check out the articles I wrote for InsideRIA below:

Round up of ActionScript 3.0 and Flex optimization techniques and practices

Overview of Flex 4 (Gumbo)

Decorator Design Pattern

Technical Reviews for Manning Publications

Reviewing books is great for a lot of reasons, it helps your writing skills, you get a preview of the books before they’re published and you get to contribute to the quality of the books being published. I do the reviews on a volunteer basis and really enjoy and appreciate the opportunity to do so. In 2009 I had the privilege of reviewing three books for Manning. They are all great titles and I encourage you to check them out.

Hello! Flex 4

Flex On Java

Flex 4 In Action

Present.ly AIR Client Development

This is one of the larger apps that I worked on completely by myself. Dave at Intridea got in touch with a request to help them refactor an existing AIR application to best practices. This project was one of the best projects I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on. The app was cool, the concept was cool and the client was cool. The Present.ly service is a private Twitter like service for businesses, if you haven’t already taken a minute to check it out I encourage you to do so. Another really awesome aspect of this project is that the codebase for the AIR app is totally open source and available for download on GIT Hub. I was able to use Cairngorm and Flex Unit on this project which I feel really helped the codebase and application’s stability and scalability. You can check out the codebase and the finished app by following the links below:

Present.ly AIR source code at GIT Hub

Present.ly AIR Client

Game Consulting and Development

A game development company contacted me for some assistence with consulting and development for a Flex and Flash based game. This was my first experience doing any game dev and it was really great. This was another awesome client. They are not public yet so there aren’t any links to share. I did want to note that game development is something that I’d like to do more of and hopefully 2010 will present more opportunities to do so.

Parsley

Learning Parsley was been on my radar for quite some time. I’ve been able to work with the framework quite a bit over the last few months and really like it so far. It’s quite a bit different than Cairngorm development but it offers more flexibility and is the preferred direction by many developers. IoC frameworks are all the rage and I am glad to be learning how to use them.

Presentation Model

This design pattern is great. It enables better unit testing for your applications and helps to decouple logic from views. Using the Presentation Model wasn’t totally clear at first but after working with it for a while I’m really beginning to like it. Having a bunch of code in MXML files wasn’t really ever all that appealing to me and using the Presentation Model really helps to separate this code out into pure AS3 classes.

ThinkGear Brain Computer Interface API

In an effort to end 2009 with a bang I released my ThinkGear API. This API enables the Neurosky Mindset Brain Computer Interface to communicate with AS3 based applications. So far I’ve been able to build a rough dashboard that uses my brainwaves as its data source. In addition I was able to tie my brainwaves into some AS3 based particle visualizations. You can see my demo video and learn more here. Control ActionScript with your mind!!!

Well here’s looking to 2010. I can’t believe it’s already been a decade since Y2K. It’s been a great decade for the Flash Platform we’ve all come a long way.

UPDATE: please contact me to add anyone I missed. I’m open to expanding this directory/list for sure!!! Sooo many great Flash Platform devs out there and they’re all so helpful and nice!! It’s an awesome community for sure!!

Samuel Agesilas
Designgineer. Creator of Saffron UML editor.
http://twitter.com/samuelagesilas

Aral Balkan
Designer, developer, author, teacher, entrepreneur, and performer; a Renaissance Geek with a passion for designing user experiences and a desire to make the world a better place through technology and oratory.
http://aralbalkan.com/

Luke Bayes
Since early 1998, Luke Bayes has worked with companies such as America Online, Microsoft, Applied Materials, Entertainment Arts, Hewlett Packard, PowerBar, RockShox, Levi’s, Macromedia and Adobe to deliver an expansive set of distributed applications, business tools, and instructional content. He is the coauthor of the Certified Macromedia Flash MX Developer Study Guide and two Macromedia Flash Developer Certification Exams. He is a frequent speaker at industry events, has served on the steering committee of the San Francisco Macromedia User’s Forum and is cofounder of both AsUnit, a tool set for Flash Application Developers, and the San Francisco Design Patterns Study Group.
http://www.lukebayes.com/

Jens Brynildsen
Jens has been working with Flash since version 3 came out. Since then, he’s been an active member of the Flash community. He’s created more than a hundred Flash games (thus the name of this blog) but he also makes web/standalone applications, does workshops and other consulting. With the help of some good friends in the community, he maintains the site Flashmagazine.com.
http://www.flashgamer.com/

Thomas Burleson
Thomas Burleson has been building consumer and e-Commerce software solutions for more than 20 years. During the last 4 years, Thomas has provided product development skills and senior leadership for Universal Mind; one of the largest RUX and Web2.0 consultancy firms. In Oct 2008, Thomas joined Ustrive2
http://www.thomasburleson.biz/

Christian Cantrell
Christian Cantrell is a Product Manager and Application Developer on the AIR team. Really nice guy and an awesome developer.
http://blogs.adobe.com/cantrell/

Mike Chambers
Mike Chambers has spent the last eight years building applications that target the Flash runtime. During that time, he has worked with numerous technologies including Flash, Generator, .NET, Central, Flex, and Ajax. He is currently the Principal Product Manager for developer relations for the Flash Platform at Adobe. He has written and spoken extensively on Flash and Rich Internet Application development and is coauthor of the Apollo for Adobe Flex Developers Pocket Guide, Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) for JavaScript Developers Pocketguide, Flash Enabled: Flash Design and Development for Devices as well as Generator and Flash Demystified.
http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/

Andre Charland
Andre Charland is the co-founder and CEO at Nitobi Inc. He’s been at the forefront of Web 2.0 software development for almost a decade and is an expert on the next generation web. Andre is an advocate for usability and user experience and speaks regularly about how to keep users engaged and active on websites or web-based application. Most recently Andre presented on the Adobe AIR Tour throughout Europe. He’s also been a speaker at the Voices That Matter web design conference, Adobe MAX, JavaOne and AjaxWorld. Andre is the co-author of “Enterprise Ajax”, published by Prentice Hall last summer and is the lead blogger for O’Reilly’s InsideRIA.com.
http://blogs.nitobi.com/andre/

Christophe Coenraets
Senior Technical Evangelist at Adobe Systems. Really nice guy!
http://coenraets.org/blog/

Critter
Creator of SeesmicAIR. Tattooed and pierced developer. Down to earth and keepin it real.
http://critterscode.com/

Jen DeHan
Jen deHaan was raised by wolves in the deep woods of the Canadian north. Later in life, Jen worked with Flash as a deseloper, then wrote about Flash for five versions, and then worked on stuff that didn’t include much Flash. She came to her senses in 2007 by rejoining the fabled Flash team at Adobe as a QE, focusing on the good stuff—Motion (on timelines). Jen enjoys long walks in the rain pondering how many times she can use the word Flash in a bio, and admits that after numerous years in California she is no longer addicted to Tim Horton’s coffee.
http://blogs.adobe.com/jdehaan/

Peter DeHan
Peter deHaan currently works for Adobe on the Flex SDK QA team. Peter also contributes to the Flex Examples blog. In my opinion Peter has one of the best jobs in the world!
http://blogs.adobe.com/pdehaan/

Eric Dolecki
Old school Flasher. Currently works at Bose, in the R&D Design Center. Interested in: AS3, AIR, Flex Builder 3, Spry, Dojo, SVN, Eclipse, MTASC.
http://www.ericd.net/

Mike Downey
Mike Downey is Director of Platform Evangelism at Microsoft where he focuses on platform adoption of Microsoft Silverlight and related technologies.
http://madowney.com/blog/

Brandon Ellis
Flash/Flex/RIA/web/.net/SQL developer, 45, married, kids. Likes: C#, Flash, Flex, AIR, web standards, punk rock, beer, hot peppers, vegetables, cycling, skateboarding, cartoons. Dislikes: people who don’t use their turn signals, people who have something to say about everything, empty beer bottles.
http://www.brandonellis.org/

Yakov Fain
Managing Director at Farata Systems. Adobe Certified Instructor. Java Champion. Author. Leads the Princeton Java Users Group.
http://flexblog.faratasystems.com/

Eric Fikes
Internets, Skateboarding, Ice Hockey, and the family. Lead Technologist for Atlanta based design firm Wiretree.com
http://ericfickes.com/

Dan “polyGeek” Florio
Dan Florio – aka polyGeek – is a freelance Actionscript Flex/Flash/AIR developer living fulltime in a 35′ RV with his wife. Creator of RunPee.com
http://polygeek.com/

Jesse Freeman
A homeless Flash Developer from NYC.
http://flashbum.com/

Eric Garza
Technical Architect at Adobe Consulting.
http://www.questioveritas.com/

David Gassner
Owner at Bardo Technical Services. David also did the Flex training for Lynda.com. He’s a really great guy and a great trainer. I learned a lot from his videos.
http://www.bardotech.com/

Ely Greenfield
Ely has been a developer at Macromedia / now Adobe for over 10 years, with an extended vacation in the middle working for the best little startup you probably never heard of, E-Quill. Over the years he’s worked on a variety of different products and technologies, from Desktop authoring tools to multimedia engines, Web Applications to browser add-ons, Workflow engines to Platform technologies. He currently works with a bunch of very smart engineers designing and developing the Flex SDK — the core compiler, framework , and MXML language for Adobe’s next generation RIA technology.
http://www.quietlyscheming.com/blog/

Chris Griffith
Flash developer at Qualcomm, Inc. Also co-manager of the San Diego Flash Users Group and an author for InsideRIA.
http://chrisgriffith.wordpress.com/

Romke de haan
Devloper focusing on Cocoa Touch, Flex, AIR, Flash technologies. Romke also does Motion, Design, Art & Music.
http://www.romkedehaan.com/

Alex Harui
Principal Engineer at Macromedia/Adobe. He runs the great blog Alex’s Flex Closet.
http://blogs.adobe.com/aharui/

Shannon Hicks
Cold Fusion and Flex developer.
http://www.iotashan.com/

Jeff Houser
Computer programmer, a business owner, a musician, an author, a recording engineer, and loves old school style adventure games.
http://www.jeffryhouser.com/

Scott Janousek
Scott Janousek is a Flash and Flash Mobile developer currently working in the Boston area of the United States. In addition to his experience with mobile development, Scott has an accumulated ten years of diverse software engineering and Web consulting background, and several of those years were dedicated to the creation of interactive multimedia, including CD-ROMs, DVDs, webcasts, kiosks, RIAs, and web sites.
http://www.scottjanousek.com/

Lawrence Job
Founded an international new media startup known as GridFusions.
http://twitter.com/lawrencejob

Chafic Kazoun
Chafic Kazoun is the founder and Chief Software architect at Atellis, and is widely considered one of the world’s top experts on Flex (outside of the Adobe Flex engineering team). He has worked with Flash technologies since 1998 and with Flex since its inception, and he has a deep understanding of the internals of the Flex framework. He maintains a busy speaking and consulting schedule. When he’s not busy developing solution-based applications, Chafic is actively involved in the Flash community, delivering presentations at numerous conferences including Adobe’s MAX, Flashforward, FITC, Spark Europe, and MXDU. He is also the contributor of numerous published works and is the author of Programming Flex 2.0, a book recently released by O’Reilly Publishing. He is also an Adobe Community Expert, and shares his thoughts on his blog http://www.rewindlife.com.
http://rewindlife.com/

Colin Loretz
Colin is an entrepreneur, web developer, designer, thinker, dreamer and cyclist. Project Manager and Force.com Developer at Twelve Horses. Co-founder of Reno Collective.
http://colinloretz.com/

Joey Lott
Joey Lott is a founding partner of The Morphic Group, a Flex and Flash consulting company. At The Morphic Group Joey serves as a technology director, building some of today’s most innovative Flex applications and advocating for the use and adoption of agile software development methodologies. He has written many books on Flex and Flash-related technologies, including Programming Flex 3, ActionScript 3 Cookbook, Adobe AIR in Action, and Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns.
http://www.themorphicgroup.com/

Peter Martin
Senior Technical Architect at Adobe Systems. Senior Technical Architect at Adobe Consulting. Senior Technical Architect at Adobe (formerly Macromedia).
http://blogs.adobe.com/pmartin/

Sean McCracken
Head of Research and Development at Influxis, AS3 coder, Flash Media Server dude, Dad of 2 coders2be, Husband, Dog and Cat owner!
http://themindofseantron.blogspot.com/

Josh McDonald
Twitterer, Flexcoder, Maroon, Designer, Java lover, That loud-mouthed Aussie yob, Blogger, Problem solver, Contributor, Cricket Fan, Lousy photographer, Great cook.
http://flex.joshmcdonald.info/

Grant Michaels
CAD and CAM engineer, dj, producer, 2nd shooter, & solo web developer.
http://grantmichaels.wordpress.com/

Ali Mills
ActionScript programmer with solid experience using the technologies that power rich internet experiences.
http://www.alimills.com/

Jonathan Moore
With a strong focus on innovation, technology, and customer experience Jonathan utilizes a broad skill-set spanning strategic marketing, art direction, interactive design solutions, motion design, and innovative development to bring projects to life. Jonathan is passionate about emerging and fresh methods to creatively communicate a client’s message. Jonathan has worked closely with clients such as Activision, Disney, Lexus, EA, Ford, Infiniti, Chevrolet, Adobe, Motorola, Warner Brothers, and Mattel over the past eight years. Through direct involvement with the projects, Jonathan’s work has been recognized by AIGA, Adobe, ADDY Awards, FWA – Favorite Website Awards, Flash In The Can, STEP Inside Design, SXSW Interactive Festival, Webby Awards, and numerous books and magazines.
http://www.newezra.com/

Stacey Mulcahy
The one and only Bitch Who Codes. Old school Flasher. Super cool developer!!
http://bitchwhocodes.com/mt/

Rober Penner
super talented ActionScript developer. Author of Programming Macromedia Flash MX. Original author for many of the easing equations used in ActionScript.
http://www.robertpenner.com/

Juan Sanchez
Experience Architect for EffectiveUI. Graduated from California State University, Chico, with a B.A. in Communication Design. Juan’s background is primarily in print design, branding, and advertising, however, his skills have quickly expanded to include Web technologies like HTML, CSS, Flash, and eventually Flex. Creator of Scalenine and founding member of Degrafa.
http://scalenine.com/

Ryan Stewart
Rich Internet Application Evangelist for Adobe. Colorado Avalanche fan. Backpacker, rock climber and hiker.
http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/

Ben Stucki
Ben Stucki is an independent Flex developer and consultant with a background in standards-based web development. After a long love affair with Flash experimentation, Ben got his hands on Flex and created some of the first custom Flex components available on the web. Today Ben continues to post sample code through his blog and contributes to many well known open-source Flex projects including FlexLib, Degrafa, and OpenFlux.
http://blog.benstucki.net/

Jeff Tapper
Jeff has over a decade of experience developing Internet applications for a myriad of clients, including Harley Davidson, Toys “R” Us, IBM, Dow Jones, American Express, and Morgan Stanley. As an instructor, he is certified to teach all of Adobe’s courses on Flex, ColdFusion, and Flash development. He has been working with Flex since the earliest alphas of Flex 1.0. Jeff has worked as author and technical editor for several books, including Adobe Flex 3: Training from the Source and Breaking Out of the Web Browser with Adobe AIR, and sits on the editorial board of Web Developers & Designers Journal.
http://blogs.digitalprimates.net/

Andrew Trice
Andrew Trice is the Principal Architect for Flex & AIR for Cynergy Systems, based in Washington, DC. He specializes in data visualization, client-server architectures, object-oriented principles, and rich application development. He has been developing for the web for over 10 years, with over eight years development for the Flash platform
http://www.tricedesigns.com/

Josh Tynjala
Josh Tynjala discovered Flash in late 2004 as an intern working for a marketing company in Duluth, Minnesota. Flash Player provided the perfect way to combine his degree in Computer Science with his lifelong interest in visual arts. In 2005, Josh moved to California and established his first blog, Zeus Labs, to begin sharing his ideas and experiments. Around the same time, Macromedia released the first public previews of Flash Player 9 and Flex 2. Excited and driven to jump immediately into the future of Flash, Josh earned some recognition with one of his early AS3 experiments, a Flex app that used binary sockets to connect Flash Player to AOL Instant Messenger.
http://joshblog.net/

Chad Udell
Currently employed at The Iona Group, a multimedia agency located near Peoria, IL. There he designs, develops and manages web and interactive projects and the client relationships that go along with them. Chad has developed web presences for Caterpillar, Tyson Foods, Rawlings, Worth Sports, Maui Jim Sunglassess and many more B2B and B2C web sites along with creating interactive experiences for museums like the Museum of Science and Industry and Shedd Aquarium and numerous other tradeshow and kiosk installations. In Chad’s free time he is an instructor in web and multimedia for Bradley University, focusing mainly on standards based web design. Many of Chad’s students have gone on to become successful designers or developers in their own right and he’s proud to have been part of their success.
http://visualrinse.com/

Simon Wacker
Simon is 21 years old and loves working as a freelance (web) developer. Simon is studying computer science and mathematics at the university in Karlsruhe, Germany. His main interests are programming, juggling and reading.
http://www.simonwacker.com/

James Ward
James Ward is a Technical Evangelist for Flex at Adobe and Adobe’s JCP representative to JSR 286, 299, and 301. Much like his love for climbing mountains he enjoys programming because it provides endless new discoveries, elegant workarounds, summits and valleys. His adventures in climbing have taken him many places. Likewise, technology has brought him many adventures, including: Pascal and Assembly back in the early 90’s; Perl, HTML, and JavaScript in the mid 90’s; then Java and many of it’s frameworks beginning in the late 90’s. Today he primarily uses Flex to build beautiful front-ends for Java based back-ends. Prior to Adobe, James built a rich marketing and customer service portal for Pillar Data Systems.
http://www.jamesward.com/blog/

Steven Webster
Director, Technology and Innovation at Adobe Systems Incorporated. Technical Director at Adobe Consulting. Practice Director, Rich Internet Applications at Adobe Consulting.
http://blogs.adobe.com/swebster/

Aaron West
For the past eight years Aaron has been heavily involved in the Web development space building enterprise-level, database-driven Web applications and leading technology teams. Aaron is incredibly passionate about what he does and attempts to inject his enthusiasm and love for technology in everyone around him.
http://www.trajiklyhip.com/

John Wilker
Community Evangelist for EffectiveUI. Organizer for Ignite Denver, an O’reilly Ignite event. Co-host of The Flex Show. John is a really, really nice guy!!
http://johnwilker.com/

Dan Wilson
Principal partner of DataCurl LLC, Dan Wilson runs the consulting practice and TheHealthChallenge.com, a health and wellness product for organizations. Before launching DataCurl, Dan held numerous senior program and development positions in such industries as Technical Consulting, Health Care, Online Publishing and Government Contracting.
http://www.nodans.com/