Central, Royale... Hits or Flops ?

Central, Royale... Hits or Flops ?
Central and Royale sure sound interesting, and can't wait to get going on them, but Macromedia has had its own string of flops.

--Macromedia's video editor
--Shockmachine
--Sound Edit 16...

Though central and royale have a lot on their side, guess it is better not to overcommit resources but wait and watch how well they are supported. I personally love the idea of Central though,and am sorta certain it will become big. Meantime, keeping fingers crossed !

SCO Vs Linux

SCO Vs Linux

I am a Linux user. I feel that SCO's tactics toward an operating system of my choice are unjust, ill founded and bizarre.

"I am willing to be sued because I am confident that SCO's tactics toward Linux will fail. If I have published my email address as part of this petition it is so SCO representatives can email me and begin the process of serving me a court order."
Thousands have signed the petition above outraged at SCO's ( Read Microsoft's) blatant claims of owning Unix. SCO alleges all companies selling Unix and products built around it are violating its IP. I believe MS strongly urged SCO to do it after IBM decided to throw its weight behing Linux distribution. Linux has been gaining ground on PC's and the recent set back is Steve Ballmer losing a 14,000 PC order in Munich in spite of a discount bonanza.

The story of Unix, Linux development is interesting....

UNIX took the academic world by storm in 1974 as a simple and elegant Operating system.

But AT& T's antitrust decree effectively stopped AT&T from selling or supporting software . Their solution to meet the UNIX demand was to charge a nominal "license" fee to obtain UNIX and to distribute tapes or disks "as is. At the time, having full source code access for a useful operating system was unheard of.

After the breakup of AT&T into baby bells, AT&T had the freedom to start selling software. Source code licenses for UNIX became very expensive . Thus the era of UNIX source code hackers ended

What were UNIX hackers going to do with no UNIX source code to hack anymore? The solution was to create UNIX clones that didn't require source code licenses

One of the first was Minix, created by Andy Tanenbaum and aimed squarely at teaching operating systems . Minix lacked virtual memory and networking, as Andy wanted to keep the system small for teaching purposes. Eventually, a user named Linus Torvalds got annoyed enough that he used Minix to create another UNIX clone with these extra features. And so Linux was born.

UNIX is built on...

Write programs that do one thing and do it well.

Write programs that work together

Write programs that handle text streams, because that is the universal interface.


Caldera Systems International, the corporate entity now trading as SCO, was founded as an open-source centered company by a group of former Novell executives who were enthusiastic about Linux. Its only product was Linux distribution.

SCO linecsed Unix from AT & T and actually only owns a corner of Unix. A court case long ago decided that some parts of UNIX are free and not under AT&T’s or SCO’s or anyone’s control. In fact, it doesn’t even own the name.

As SCO also sells Linux itself and has itself contributed to the Linux distributions, should it sue itself?

Success !

Success
As Intelligence cannot be encapsulated in a single number, happiness or success can't be too ! Guess this rule holds good for all the 'nebulous" values. The traditional way to measure intelligence was through IQ testing which Howard GArdner blew apart with his influential Multiple Intelligence concept.

Similarly the traditional benchmark of happiness or success seems to be the money you make or the job you hold. Like MI, I guess it is far more logical to factor out happiness or success into different heads like the time under your control, the freedom to do wht you like etc.,

By the traditional IQ theory, the MENSA guys were the demi gods and people like Gandhi or Bach won't even be considered intelligent. Similarly, right now people tend to assume Michael DEll/Bill Gates would be the happiest/most successful man on the planet whereas a poor farmer leading a peaceful life somewhere in rural India won't even make the scale.

Spam

Spam
Spam is the price we pay for free mail. The response rates are tiny (1 in 10000 respond) but the spammers make it up with volume and manage to turn a profit. A continuous arms race is on between spammers and anti spammers. Like any arms race, the advantage keeps shifting from camp to camp and it is unlikely there would ever be a clear winner.

Keyword filtering cut out the spam with obvious keywords like Viagra, penis enlargement or Teen Sex.Spammers just stopped using these keywords.


Noe Bayesian Filtering seems to have won a round for the anti spammers. It uses probability to work out if a mail is junk or real.


First, thousands of messages are statistically analysed to extract the top 15 features that define them as spam

The list of includes some words, such as "teens", and other were less obvious stuff like formatting codes and routing information found in e-mail headers


This filtering is claimed to be 99% effective. Even if it is 90% effective, it raises spammers costs by a factor of 10, hopefully driving most from business.


Anti spammers have the courts on their side too. US states are passing laws that outlaw spam, net service firms are filing lawsuits and installing basic filters. Some are adopting Bayesian filters to spot the most obvious spam

Our Focus

Focus :
We focus on building eLearning solutions for the whole spectrum ranging from preschool, K-12 to universities, corporates, and continuing education bodies.

We also help customers create or convert courseware, Create and maintain education portals

We excel in the creation of small footprint SIABLO's (Simulation/Animation Based Learning Objects). These self-contained units of eLearning content illustrate specific concepts to students. Siablo's simulate the real world with multiple decision paths for students to apply and test their knowledge. Our Siablo's can be used as standalone modules or can be combined with other online content.
They can be extensively customised and seamlessly integrated with your courseware

We also specialise in creating customizable simulations depending on an institution's unique content or discipline specific needs.

Snippets

Snippets

People to watch in Flash

Robert Penner, Joshua Davis( PRAYSTATION.COM)


Qualcomm Inc.,wireless biggies ( User base : 147 million mobile phone users) expects 6 million Indian subscribers for its CDMA technology.

C#, .Net and Java

C#, .Net and Java

In June 2000, Microsoft announced both the .NET platform and a new programming language called C#.

C# is a object-oriented language designed for simplicity and performance. The .NET platform is centered around a Common Language Runtime (similar to a JVM) and a set of libraries which can be exploited by a wide variety of languages which are able to work together by all compiling to an intermediate language (IL).

C# and .NET are built around eachother. Some features of C# are there to work well with .NET, and some features of .NET are there to work well with C# (though .NET aims to work well with many languages).


C# is a modern, object-oriented language relying on concepts of with C, C++ and Java. Anders Hejlsberg (of Turbo Pascal and Delphi fame) wrote the specs of the language. .NETis the most well known implementation.

C# code is compiled into machine-independent (and *language-independent*) code which runs in a managed, garbage-collected, execution environment.

C# Supports all object-oriented design principles (encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism), the object-oriented design is built into the infrastructure.

C# provides predefined reference types (object and string) and value types (bool, char, decimal, sbyte, short, int, long, byte, ushort, uint, and ulong, float and double).

C# provides a "unified type system". Every type derives from object, be it a primitive type or a class.

C# provides automatic memory management (garbage-collection) like Java.
No C++ pointers, no direct memory manipulation (restricted use is permitted within code marked *unsafe*). Function pointers are emulated with a new concept called *delegates* (deeply bound to the event system).

No C++ multiple inheritance; Interfaces allow single inheritance (like in Java).

Exceptions in C# and Java share a lot of similarities.

The entry point of both C# and Java programs is a *Main* method.
C# uses C++ syntax for inheritance.

Both C# and Java support the concept of synchronized methods and multi-threading.

C# has the equivalent of Java's static nested classes (but no inner classes like in Java).

Atkins Diet

The Atkins Diet

A Low Carb, High fat Diet

Instead of blaming fat for the weight problem, Atkins claims fat consumption has actually declined the past few decades. He blames the increase in refined carbohydrate consumption

His diet, the Atkins Diet focusses on the consumption of nutrient-dense, unprocessed foods and nutrient supplements. It restricts intake of processed/refined carbohydrates, like high-sugar foods, breads, pasta, cereal and starchy vegetables


Atkis claims it works because because people are generally less hungry and are less obsessed with food because

1. By cutting the carbs, you'll maintain a more even blood sugar level throughout the day. Stable blood sugar throughout the day ensures that you will have fewer food cravings or false hunger pains.
2. The food you eat (meat, fish, cheese, nuts, eggs, low sugar/starch vegetables and fruit, etc.) is less processed and more nutritious.
3. Many of the toxins you take into your body are stored in your fat cells. By getting your body to burn stored fat, you allow it to clean itself out

Atkins claims in absence of carbohydrates, the primary energy source, your body starts burning fat for energy


The Atkins diet is highly personalised and is not for everyone.A person who performs a lot of aerobic exercise and who doesn't have a weight problem has no reason to be on a low carb diet

Using multiple languages in Flash

Using multiple languages in Flash

http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/unicode.htm

Macromedia Flash Player 6 is completely Unicode and can display any language available on your OS.

http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/languages.html

MTB Notes

MTB Notes
1/2 pound of muscle turns into fat for every year you age past 20, if you do not incorporate some type of resistance strength training into your exercise routine

A pound of muscle at rest burns 50 more calories per day than fat.

So after 20, you accumulate fat istead of muscle and you burn less calories, thus building more fat. Since muscle is denser than fat and takes up less space you also look less flabby though you weigh the same as a peer

A cyclist will typically burn 2,500 to 5,000 calories on a 4 to 6 hour ride.

Calories are burned up to 20 minutes after an end of a strength training workout.

Zero Loading time for RIA's !

Zero Loading time for RIA's !

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flashcom/articles/improving_ria.html

This article by peldi gives a step by step approach to building a RIA and get it loaded in no time at all. The core logic is, the RIA checks for new content from server, but displays old content from the client machine itself, reducing loading time.

FireFly

Firefly
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash/articles/firefly_components.html

Firefly Components is a key part of Macromedia Flash MX Data Connection Kit designed help build data-rich Internet applications in minutes.

It offers a component-based architecture for retrieving, manipulating, and saving data from multiple data sources theorugh Connector, Dataset, and Resolver

Connector connects to an external data source, Data set reads and manipulate data which comes through the connector, resolver saves the data processed by dataset.

Chennai History

Francis Day's quest for for cheap cloth and more peaceful surroundings led to the founding of Madras in 1639. It grew from the fort Day and his superior Andrew Cogan built on a 5 sq km sand strip bought from the local governor of the Vijayanagar Empire. Madras was Britain's first major settlement in India and it was here that many who went on to build the Empire first learnt their trade.

A historic route to take would be : Fort St. George, High Court Complex, George Town, Corporation Complex, Patheon Complex, Valluvar Kottam, Kodambakkam, St. Thomas Mount, Guindy National Park, Kalakshetra, Elliot's Beach, Theosophical Society, the Shrines of Mylapore & Triplicane, Government Estate, the Marina and Anna Salai.

Chennai Temples

Parthasarathy Temple

Triplicane.One of three major vaishnavite temples (Other two : Sree Rangam and Tirupathi).Built in the 8th Century by Pallavas. Renovated by Cholas and later by Vijayanagar rulers ( 16th Century).

The main deity is Krishna with Rukmani on his right and Balarama on his left. Parthasarathy is depicted with Sridevi and Bhoodevi on either side. Parthasarathy's face is shown covered with scars created by the arrows of Bhiishma, trying to provoke Krishna into breaking his vow and start fighting.

Kapaleeswarar Temple


Mylapore, ( known to Ptolemy as the great port of Maillarpha). Built by pallavas in 8th century and renovated by Vijayanagara kings in 16th century. 63 nayanmars sculpted in bronze adorn the outer courtyard.

This ancient Siva temple is a delightful introduction to Dravidian temple sculpture and artitecture. Some inscriptions date back to 1250 AD. The magnificent 37 m tall gopuram is profusely carved. The Punnai tree in the temple courtyard is one of oldest trees in Chennai.

Media labs out of India

Media labs out of India
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab pulls oout of India claiming IT minister Arun Shourie is impossible to work with. Arun Shourie says "No value addition to Indian masses"

The venture's goal was to develop affordable wireless and Internet technologies aimed at the common man. Government put in 20% and corp sponsors put in the rest.

Flash remoting

http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=E79F1303C1E096ED

Use this tool to check if the remote method is able to correctly talk to the server.

Macromedia strengthening flash

http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/05/08/HNburgessint_1.html

Macromedia strengthening flash

Presedia, makers of ppt to flash tools. MM bought the company and used its tools to allow users to add narration to a PowerPoint presentation and combine the two in a streaming application runt hrough flash.

MM buys Firefly components , beefing up flash remoting.

MM launches Central, which enables users run applications on their desktops without using browsers.

MM's stated goal : "Make the Web more usable for people". Experience matters.


Royale is under development. It's essentially Flash for programmers.Flash has a primarily visual interface aimed at artists . Programmers are more comfortable with a less visual and more code-like tool .

Alta Vista now supports Flash in its search

And MM's CEo on the question "When is Microsoft going to acquire you?"

Burgess: We're good partners; we're not up for sale. There are millions of customers out there who want us to remain independent.

On flash in mobiles : It's a huge market. We're already supplying Flash technology to several key players, such as Microsoft and Sony on the handset side and, most recently, NTT DoCoMo on the carrier side. The deal with DoCoMo, which launched the world's first 3G network, is very important.

Jeremy Allaire,

Jeremy Allaire, co-creator of ColdFusion, Founder Emeritus, Macromedia.http://www.meet-the-makers.com/conversations/allaire/

Here Allaire discusses ColdFusion and compares it to competing languages like Active Server Pages, PHP and Perl. He also talks about his career, his fascination with wireless technology, the value of blogs and his role in the history and the future of the Web.


ColdFusion was created for a basic need - to enable dynamic, data-driven Web sites that were easy to build and maintain

One of our early competitors was a company called Aspect Software, a Hawaiian company. Their product, DBWeb, was a VB application that would code-generate basic Web forms and database drill-downs. It really wasn’t very flexible and so I think didn’t do that great. As I mentioned, our own research showed we were out-selling them about 10-to-1 in adoption.

They reacted to ColdFusion with a new product that they were calling iPage, code-named HotLava. It was essentially the same programming model as ColdFusion, but instead of a tag-based language, it used Visual Basic scripting using a licensed VBA engine. That company and beta-product were acquired by Microsoft in the spring of 1996, and later that year that team launched Active Server Pages.

Back in the late fall of 1995, Microsoft contacted They were looking for an acquisition. We declined to really even talk with them about the option, because we were having too much fun and it just didn’t seem like the right thing to do.

Do browsers even matter anymore when the Flash player is being transformed into a standalone application that can run without a browser?

Browser innovation has more or less stopped. That’s largely intentional for Microsoft as they gear up to move beyond the browser. The browser will remain the platform of choice for hypertext documents, document browsing and many Web applications. Over time software applications will move to rich clients, such as Flash Player, and to environments like Avalon, which is part of the Longhorn operating system release from Microsoft.

The browser is just too limited for applications, and increasingly we need content, media, applications and communications all integrated in a much more seamless way, and that’s what Macromedia set out to do with Flash Player, and what I expect you’ll see from Microsoft in a few years.


What is the next big thing on the Web?

Well, Web services are still the next big thing, among many others. Seems like a wide range of positive, reinforcing trends are creating an opportunity for a new Internet environment. A bunch of things that I’m tracking that seem very inter-related include:

Rich clients
Web services
Real-time communications
Broadband
Digital lifestyle devices
WiFi and wireless devices
Paid content
Blogsphere and syndication networks
Open source and outsourcing
So, combined, we’ve got a great new Internet to go out and build for!

Why would a company like Google be interested in having a hand in the blog industry?

Google has a vision to become a central utility for all users of the Internet. If they believe that asynchronous communications and self-publishing is a central utility, then it makes a lot of sense.

Do blogs add value to the Web? Are they the next big thing or just an easy way for any idiot to become a publisher?

Weblogs are the natural evolution of personal publishing, and their emergence has driven standards like RSS that are now becoming central to professional journalism Weblogs recast the Web into a two-way medium, which to many people is as fundamental to the Internet as browsing. I think they’ll play a big role in a couple of ways.

First, Weblogs and Weblog standards will evolve to accommodate basic personal publishing, the equivalent of a personal home page and a vehicle for sharing life experiences with a personal network of friends and family. I see this aspect converging with digital lifestyle devices, rich media and communications-centric applications.

The second trend, and the one that most people seem to be watching most closely, is the role of true one-to-many public Weblogs as a sort of journalism for the masses. While I think that second trend is true, I believe it will be far less significant than the use of Weblog technology for personal publishing for friends and family.

A final note on this topic is about the role of RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. RSS is taking on a big role in the emerging semantic Web. I’d like to see RSS and related standards play a larger role in data-centric syndication applications, rather than it’s current role as a news and headlines syndication format. Stay tuned.

Flash in the can 2003 presentation summaries

Flash in the can 2003 presentation summaries
http://www.flashinthecan.com/details-presentations.html

Macromedia Keynote - Experience Matters
Kevin Lynch

The internet is now becoming a worldwide operating system with distributed data storage, distributed computing, and real-time communications. This calls for a new generation of applications.These personal interfaces would provide great experiences across platforms and devices.

Exploring Flash Video
Robert Reinhardt

Flash Video usage in Flash movies. Covers client-side issues such as encoding and playback options, but also server side stuff line controlling and recording video recorded with Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX. Also covers Flash Video for Pocket PC devices.

Designing for my mum
Brendan Dawes

Most Flash developers design for other Flash developers - projects that are done purely to demonstrate how big your Flash balls are. What we should be doing is designing for the audience, designing applications and sites that are simple for the end user to actually use and more importantly WANT to use. Bren talks about his passion for uncomplicated, simple to use design and how that can create better experiences, not just for the user but for clients and brands.


MX AUDIO FX
Craig Swann

Adding audio can greatly enhance flash projects. Craig talks about utilizing audio in Flash to the fullest extent with dynamic and interactive audio development, including: navigational based audio, interactive music mixers, sequencers, MP3 players and samplers. Also covers integrating audio from the Flash Communication Server.

Object Oriented Concepts for Flash Applications
Grant Skinner

Using object oriented approach to coding Flash applications makes localizing errors and changes simpler, and allows you to develop a library of modular, reusable code to utilize in future projects. This session will discuss and demonstrate OOP concepts as they apply to Rich Internet Application development, with an emphasis on analysis & design, and best practices. Topics covered will include diagramming (UML and Garett IA), reusability of code, encapsulation, abstraction, polymorphism, programming interfaces, and the use of classes, prototyping, inheritance, and events. Aims to give participants gain a better understanding of how to plan and implement an Object Oriented RIA through discussion and real-world examples.

Flash Remoting
Kevin Towes

Describes different ways Flash Remoting can be used to transfer data between the server and client. Covers how Remoting works, general issues and concerns surrounding the technology, and how to develop relevant applications.

Harmony Among Users: Multiuser Flash Development
Colin Moock

Colin Moock, author of "ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide" showcases his latest work with Unity, moock.org's socket server for creating multiuser Flash content. After some multiuser demonstrations, Moock will show off Unity 2.0's new client-only development API that let Flash developers create multiuser applications without writing any server-side code.

Strategies for Scripted Animation
Robert Penner

Robert explains how to make ActionScripted animation work for you. He literally "wrote the book" on the subject. Penner will explore the key areas of Tweening, Easing, Coloring, and Recorded Motion, explaining both the "why" and "how" of dynamic animation. Robert will showcase his popular easing equations and discuss their advantages over other techniques such as the "standard exponential slide." He will demonstrate how to use his custom code libraries, including his Tween and MotionCam classes, in your projects, providing a solid OOP framework for dynamic motion in Flash.

3D Cameras in MX
Glyn Thomas

Wouldn't it be nice if MX had 3D capabilities? We do have the ability to position and move movie clips and sounds in 3D space. This opens the door for displaying 3D artwork from different camera angles, navigating inside a virtual environment, doing dynamic flythroughs, simulating camera following, recreating cinematic camera effects, or just experimenting with 3D cameras/views. Glyn Thomas will explain techniques and for displaying 3D artwork and teach how to build a 3D camera that can be applied in experiments, navigation, animation, motion graphics, and games.


Beyond the desktop: Macromedia Flash on Mobile devices
Phillip Torrone

Mobile devices are surpassing PC sales and marketshar. Flash is a powerful tool to provide rich content and applications to mobile. Phillip will showcase what's possible, what the industry is looking for and give a glimpse into the future.

Flash Remoting Simplified
Mike Chambers

Flash Remoting simplifies the Flash application development process by providing a powerful yet simple programming model and runtime enabling Macromedia Flash MX to connect to remote services exposed by application servers and web services. Mike explains how Remoting can be used to create powerful Flash applications that are closely integrated with the server. Mike will also show how to creating client / server ActionScript libraries in order to create modular, resuable client / server code. Mike will dissect a number of applications that show how these Flash Remoting based libraries can be used to quickly created client / server applications with advanced functionality.

Flash & PHP : An introduction for ActionScripters
Gregg Caines

PHP is the 100% free, most popular and fastest growing server-side scripting language on the web today. It has a very similar syntax to ActionScript, and integrates with Flash nicely to allow dynamic content. If you have a moderate amount of ActionScript experience, you are probably ready to take your web development skills to next level, and open up the world of possibilities of serverside integration. Topics covered will be forms, databases, HTML output, and Flash integration.

Flash Gaming
Glen Rhodes

Glen has been a game designerr since 94. He found that Flash was being underused and so he made Flash his primary platform for game development. Since then, Glen has created several flash games for clients. He gives an intro to the exciting world of flash gaming.

Connecting to the Future of Flash
Craig Swann / Glen Rhodes

What exactly is this Flash communication server MX technology? And what can we do as developers with this new tool? This session answers these questions and covers topics such as using rich media in interactive projects and planning and developing multi-user environments and experiences. From video based applications, colaborative environments and multi-user gaming, this session strives to inspire flash developers to use this exciting new technology in interesting ways with their own projects.

FlashCommunication Server
Kevin Towes

Kevin Towes, Author of the book, Flash Communication Server MX, will step you through the basic principles of the development workspace, getting started, and building your first application. A focus on Streaming Video will make up the core of this presentation. The Communication Server's ability to stream live or pre-recorded video and audio is just one of its very powerful abilities. Learn and experience the difference between embedded video objects and streaming video using the Communication Server. Kevin will also cover the basic principles of Server-Side ActionScripting, and put some context around Flash Remoting and the Flash Communication Server.

Rich Internet Applications : Behind the Hype
Branden Hall

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) has become the buzzword of choice for people talking about the future. This session will explain how to architect an RIA from the ground up.

This session will study some of the actual implementation of the RIAs and trace how it went from a design to a reality. While this session is by nature quite technical, only intermediate knowledge of ActionScript is required.

Making Effective Use of the New Communication Classes
Brian Lesser

Creating new and interesting Flash communication applications requires working with and adapting to a whole new zoo of classes: NetConnection, NetStream, SharedObject, Client, and others. Brian Lesser will walk through three demonstration applications while showing how to make use of some of the new classes. A lecture/presenter application will be used to show how streams can carry audio and data. An online meeting scheduler demonstrates how shared objects can provide instant feedback and a video conference application demonstrates one way you can adapt Macromedia's communication components to your own applications. The applications are all simplified examples from ongoing work at Ryerson University where FlashCom applications are being developed to enhance the University's online learning and teaching resources.

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi

Where is WiFi going?It might evolve very much like the Net.There was a long list of reasons ten years ago for why the Web would never make it
security, scalability, reliability, business model, etc.

The same list of shortcomings is being attributed to WiFi today.Like like the Web, WiFi is grass roots, standards based, and very decentralized. Just like with the Web, there is no stopping WiFi from becoming mainstream. The benefits are too compelling.

WiFi is promising an always-on Internet and extending it to more people and more devices at more locations. So more people would do more transactions fueling growth, boosting more spending, providing more productivity to the economy.

WiFi will have a major impact on the telecommunications industry. The increase in Internet usage made possible by WiFi will mean more bits on the wire. WiFi chips will soon be in handheld devices of all kinds including cell phones.

The telecom companies, they still think that the Internet is one of the many services that you can get via a telecom service. Unfortunately, they have it backwards. Telephony is one of the many things you can do with the Internet! Voice is just another Internet application.

Macromedia Central

Macromedia Central
Macromedia Central doesn't support files is because Central is built upon the Macromedia Flash Player. As flash player is tiny, portable renderer, and it support more stuff like Director. The larger Director can hold the smaller Flash, but not vice-versa

Macromedia Central uses a three-tier installtion:

The first layer installed is the Flash Player 6, which is the actual rendering engine for Central. This is the core, the center of Central. As flash is already present on 98% of client machines, Macromedia is leveraging on this strength.

The next layer is the Macromedia Central shell. the core tool set, the standard UI components, the discovery/transaction engine and the rest. This provides an expanded services layer atop the Macromedia Flash Player.

The last layer is the set of applications people create. No extra playing code required because flash handles it. No UI components or connectivity code required because layer 2 handles it. No data needed because these are pulled as live web services.

Each layer builds upon the previous installations.

User Comments :

User comment : ".NET is .better"

.NET can do some things the Macromedia Flash Player cannot. And Macromedia Central can fill some needs that .NET cannot. A pocket tool is useful because it can be used in more situations than a fifty-pound toolchest can.

"Macromedia wants too much money"

Macromedia Central will host freeware for free. For paying work, most developers have found the Macromedia Central discovery and transaction services to be a better deal than anything else out there

"Everyone will always be connected" So why need OCC ?

Eventually, you'd have a live connection from anywhere on the planet. No one knows how long it will take.

Now that we're moving away from the desktop, there will be many years when our devices move in and out of range of a hub. We need to take advantage of connectivity when it's there, and to provide the same user experience when there's no connectivity.

We shouldn't need to change what we do just because of where we are... we need to buffer the connectivity. At some point this will be superfluous, true, but this will be an important feature for a good number of years.

The road ahead for mobile phones

The road ahead for mobile phones

Level 1: Have grey LCD screens and support GSM or CDMA. Some models support WAP, but these are mainly used for calls/SMS. Advantage: Simplicity, Size.
Example phone: Nokia 3310/3330.

Level 1.5: Level 1 plus some cool stuff, but not enough of them.
Example : Siemens C55 has GPRS, but only a monochrome screen and no MMS.

Level 2: "Multimedia Mobiles".

These have
Color Screen
Camera: Integrated or Attachment
MMS - Multimedia Messaging
J2ME - Java games
WAP 1.2.1 (needed for MMS)
Tri-band/GPRS/Higher speed CDMA
Polyphonic Sound
Are generally heavier than the Level 1.

Level 2.5: "Multimedia Plus". Add the following to the level 2 package

Bluetooth
MP3/FM Radio/Stereo Playback
WAP2/XHTML-MP
Email Client
PC Sync / SyncML / iSync
3G Connection

Level 3: Intelliphones. These are no different from small computers. They have almost all the capabilities of Multimedia Phones. In addition, they normally have an few hundred Mhz processor, a real OS (Symbian, Palm, Linux, M$), a real file system and more memory and/or expansion slots. You can install custom software on these phones like on your PDA, and do everything from play multi-player Bluetooth 3D video games to using a real web browser or viewing streaming video.
Example phones: Nokia 3650, SonyEricsson P800.

Level 3.5: "Intelliphone Plus". None in the market yet, but will be Intelliphones plus the higher bandwidth of 3G or WiFi or with GPS or with megapixel cameras, etc. Samsung's coming Symbian-based 3G phone will fit this category.

Level 4: "Future Phones". The phones some ad's show. Don't exist and not likely to exist for atleast 5 years.

802.11 is the name of a standard for computer communication over radio waves, commonly called Wi-Fi

Bluetooth is a lower bandwidth, shorter ranger version of 802.11b

3G (3rd generation) - technology is based on the packet-based transmission of text, data - such as audio, video and digital voice - at a very high speed. It will greatly enhance the mobile communication services, providing always-on connectivity to phones and other wireless devices, no matter where they are in the world.

WCDMA( Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) is the leading 3G standard. It is designed to operate in a different frequency band from those used for GSM networks.

General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) halfway mark on the journey to 3G. Over GPRS, data is transmitted via IP based networks in short bursts thus allowing users to have an always on data stream for their favourite services, faster than on current GSM networks.

EDGE (Enhanced Data for Global Evolution), delivers data at rates up to 384 Kbps and enable the delivery of multimedia and other broadband applications to the mobile users.

J2ME is a version of Java designed for Mobile Devices

1G:first analog cellular systems, which started early 1980s
2G (GSM, cdmaOne) : first digital cellular systems launched early 1990s
2.5G (GPRS, cdma2000 1x) : enhanced versions of 2G networks. Upto 144kbps.
3G (WCDMA, EDGE,) Upto 384kbps

Web Services and Broadband

Web Services and Broadband

eBay generates $681 per second. It is now the now 31st largest commerce provider, bigger than GAP, ToysRUs.

They're seing 6.5 million web service API calls per day! Sending 21 million emails a day, conducting 80 million searches a day. 30% of inbound products are coming in through virtual supply chain --- e.g. web services.

Broadband would help their ability to have an immediate, notification driven relationship with buyers and sellers. From a bandwidth perspective, they can really improve the richness of the product views and details with broadband focused content. And broadband empowers more individuals to create eBay-based businesses.

They'd want to to become an alternative distribution channel for any manufacturer or retailer, and using multiple pricing models, including fixed price increasing dramatically.

Broadband Killer Apps ?

Broadband will surprise us. The apps that take off were never predicted. Examples --- eBay and commerce; SMS and Mobile; ring-tones and mobile. Nobody knows what the killer apps will be. Must be able to launch services quickly and inventively, and fast experimentation.

Today TV is more like browsing and you get data on the fly. Increasingly, machines in the home wil pull content over the network and assemble programming for you on the fly, when you want it....from being a browser app to a data service, and more and more of its apps communicating with the the server for data.

Effecitvely, what the user sees are specific apps/services that are local on their machines, with communication and data happening in the background using XML web services. So this is the real change and trend, this new distributed computing infrastructure.

iMode a silent revolution

iMode a silent revolution

Takeshi Natsuno, Managing Director for DoCoMo Strategy talks about iMode.

NTT dominates world wireless Internet.Europe, US are tiny in comparison.

" The game software industry for phones is becomming as big as older game industries "

NTT just announced the series 505 phones. He considers Macromedia Flash would be a big breakthrough for their phones. Smooth Flash stuff would certainly score over pixelated Java apps.

NTT has 38 million active iMode subscribers, which makes them the biggest ISP in the world, bigger than AOL. They have 2,300 official commercial content/service providers in their network, with over 62,000 voluntary iMode sites.

Consumers are ready to pay for devices and net access because they get content they value. NTT has made it easy for third party content providers to offer their services into their network. As subscriber growth happens more content companies and higher quality content comes online.

They shot up to 38 Mn subscribers from zero, on the winds of the strategies below :

1) Technology. Use best available content technology -- real HTML (cHTML), MIDI, Java, Flash.

2) Business model. Design business model around content service providers, not around telecom operators or handset manufacturers. Micro-payments model, user friendly portal for content selection, makes it easy to install and use .

3) Marketing to normal people, not just to techies.

Japan's centralized control enabled the rapid and easy establishment of standards, and Japan's advanced network technology enabled them to move much faster than US and European markets.

As in Internet, Voice has continued to decline while data has made up for that decline.

Two years ago, they added Java to the phones. They now have 17.4 million active Java subscribers, with over 600 Java app suppliers. There is also a market for Java-based corporate applications. There are 6,000 independent Java content/app sites available over iMode. Despite Sun, they made Java in devices successful.

He expects that with the introduction of Flash in their phones, they'll witness a jump in usage.

Digital content market on iMode is about $1B in 2002, and over half the subscribers pay for digital content

He says iMode is all about a service designed around content and users. In other markets, fragmentation in operator, handset vendor and content value chain makes coordination difficult.

On their 3G platform, they offer MPEG4 video, and it's evolving into being a multi-point video phone and better platform for content. 384Kbps currently. But they only have 380,000 users of 3G today because not enough applications have been developed for it.

He predicts,

1) US/Europe would follow iMode model with content-centric value chain model.
2) Big migration from 2G to 3G starts in Japan in 2004.
3) Deeper convergence between Internet and telco


Will new devices come up that combine stereo music, DV/camera and video communications, eventually displacing portable music and camera markets?

They will in the long run, but it's no where near making this transition today. The music and camera capabilities are very far behind, and are really mostly applied in the special context of mobile communications. That will change over time.

RIA Success stories

RIA Success stories

MINI USA brought in more than half of all car leads, with more than 73 percent of site visitors configuring a car and sending it to friends. MINI USA also exceeded both its goal for registered users by 52 percent and its sales goal by 25 percent.

The Dai Nippon Printing Group (DNP) is the world's largest manufacturer of thermal transfer ribbons. It developed a RIA called Ribbon Runner, which uses pull-down menus and a one-screen interface to connect customers to the right ribbon. This app decreased search time by 25 percent. It uses three files and fewer kilobytes to replace 25 PHP files for the HTML version.

Ihotelier
89% increase in reservations
Nearly doubled the conversion rat
66% increase in room nights booked

Using a travel agent can cost a hotel 15.30% of the revenue in commissions. When the travel agent provides no more service than help customers navigate through complex booking rules, RIA can help cut them out.

Within an enterprise, RIAs can provide an integrated, single-screen view into legacy systems, business data visualization, elearning, and information portals, or they can serve as a presentation layer to Web Services-based applications.

What's happening to 'Computer Companies?"

What's happening to 'Computer Companies?"

Apple launches iTunes music service, becoming a music retailer. Dell is dropping "computer" from its name. Why is 'computer' becoming a not so nice word ?


Because PC is on its way out. What's in is uncertain. Is it the Internet appliance, interactive TV, Airboards, Tablets, handhelds, or SPOTS or smart phone? No one knows. But everyone does know that the day of the PC's is gone.

Noone talks anymore about ' putting a PC on everyone's desk' or about connecting every PC to the Net, giving everyone a email ID or a browser.

The ground is shifting and non-PC devices are breaching the castle doors.

As Apple demonstrates, there might not be PC companies anymore, just services companies.

Sony sells computers, but it is not a PC company. It aims to create unique platforms and experiences, and market the hell out of them. It is more a services company than a product company.

Bigger, faster, more features get no selling points anymore .Smarter, simpler, more efficient, and more flexible are the cool things.

Technology no longer matters. What matters is what people and companies can do with technology.

The new focus of tech is not creating faster gizmos but making it easier for companies and individuals to share data and work together using industry standards.

IT now accounts for 10 percent of the economy and nearly 60 percent of business capital.This behemoth is getting rewired from ground up.

HBR argues IT is becoming invisible like the railroads, the telegraph, electricity and the internal combustion engine.

All of these technologies aged from their boom-time youth to become "commodity inputs," That is exactly what is happening to IT

When IT becomes a commodity input, all proprietory standards vanish and power shifts to customers. They now demand a utility-style service in which they pay only for as much as they use.

Software standards enable the programmers to build new applications almost as if snapping together Lego blocks, reducing the amount of code that has to be written by hand.For example, the software for, a new credit card offering or a fraud-detection feature can be built and put into use in about two weeks; five years ago, this might have taken six months.

Enterprise technologies are also becoming commoditized and so democratised because of this on-demand computing enabled by the Internet

The PC is dead. Long live computing !

SVG or SWF ? Which is cool ?

SVG or SWF ? Which is cool ?

http://www.carto.net/papers/svg/comparison_flash_svg/

Offers a detailed comparison. ( SVG - Scalabvle vector graphics is a standard pushed by W3c )

Moving Video Scrrenshots as SWF files

Flashcast, a cool tool which caputres motion on screen and outputs it as a .swf file. Think of it as a moving video screenshot instead. screen recording tool that outputs recordings in flash format. It does ppt to flash conversions too.

http://www.eboxonline.co.uk/mdm/software/trial/flashcast_trial_setup.exe

Building Rich Internet Applications Book Summary

Building Rich Internet Applications Book Summary
http://www.mxbook.com/v1/toc.htm


Chapter : Flash MX : The Interface creator
Building RIA Book summary
Robert Reinhardt

Every RIA needs something to justify 'Richness of looks" Flash does itt well.

Macromedia earlier use shockwave engine top play flash. But this was a 1Mb plus download whereas flash was a 200 Kb download ( Now 500Kb).From here they parted ways.

Shockwave is available only for windows and Mac whereas flash has emerged as truly cross platform tool.

Flash is more powerful than ever due to...

Flash UI components make it easy to drag drop and assemble user interfaces (scrollbars,window panes, push buttons, and radio buttons) on stage.

Unicode support makes flash multilingual. For more inmfo on unicodes,
www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/unicode.htm
www.macromedia.com/support/flash/languages/unicode_in_flmx

Flash MX can connect to a wide range of server-side applications,
from Macromedia server products to standard J2EE or ASP.NET servers.

Flash movies can be made device aware. Flash 'knows' whether it is playing on a PC or mobile phone and can change stuff accordingly.

ActionScript’s XMLSocket object can handle XML data transfers between an application server and a Flash movie. This lets you create multiuser games and shared environments. Multiple users can connect through a
Flash Communication Server MX (aka FlashCom). Everything from shared whiteboards to text chats to videoconferencing can be accomplished with the integration of Flash MX and FlashCom.

The Flash Player supports SSL (Secure Socket Layer)
transfers using the https:// protocol allowing credit card info transfer.

A movie of a course can be sent to several students at once. You can create an interface that allows a student to send the audio and video from a microphone and webcam to everyone connected to the discussion as well. As a FlashCom server, and not the Flash Player, manages the connections, the enduser only needs to have Flash Player 6 installed. Almost all microphone or videocameras are recognized by Flash Player 6

Flash MX allows you to publish stand-alone projectors
that do not require the use of a Web browser with the Flash Player
You can distribute these projectors on floppy disks, CD-ROMs, DVDROMs,
or as downloads from your Web site.

Types of flash files

.fla is the file you create in flash.

.SWF file is an optimized version of your Flash document (FLA file). SWF stands for Small Web File.

SWD file is created by Flash MX when you choose Control > Debug Movie to test your movie

.EXE and .APPL are projector files. Here the Flash movie and the Flash Player engine are combined into one file: an EXE file for Windows playback, or an APPL file for Mac.

.flv files are precompressed video and audio files.

.SOL and .FSO are local and remote SharedObject data files.FSO files are same as SOL files, except that FSO files are created and saved by Flash Communication Server MX (FlashCom).

.as are ActionScript code files

Remote Data

Flash MX movies (SWF files) can retrieve remote data in several
ways,using

XML and XMLSocket objects to load XML data.
LoadVars object to retrieve URL-encoded
local SharedObject object to save and retrieve data from a Flash 6 movie on the end-user’s machine.
Remote SharedObject to save and retrieve data on a Flash Communications Server MX enabled domain.
LocalConnection for accessing data in other SWF files that are running concurrently
Flash Remoting for exchanging data with remote services like ColdFusion components, Enterprise JavaBeans, Java classes, and .NET components

Flash MX has also expanded the range of movie events that ActionScript can detect.

Listners: A powerful addition to AS. ActionScript can now
detect when the user has resized the flash Player window (or browser window containing the Flash movie). Listeners allow you to develop application-programming models that respond to events, rather than check for them.

Components:
AS files allow you to reuse code from one Flash document to the next. components let you drag and dropping complete functionality (from the GUI to the ActionScript code) right onto the stage

Flash MX ships with seven user interface (UI) components that you can use to quickly create elegant and user-friendly applications. Checkbox, combo box, list box, pushbutton.

Chapter summary : Web Services

Problem :

Calculate postage of courier costs to show the customer what he'd pay for shipping.

Solution:
Give weight of package
Company's Zip
Customers Zip

A third party web service will automatically fill in the cost column.

Locate web service, Understand what it does, use it

XML is English. SOAP is english usage in Military.

WSDL ( Web Services description language ) lets other computers understand what a web service does. WSDL is generated by machine, for machines.

UDDI lets machines find web services.

Using web services with Dreamweaver:

Copy the URL of the WSDL file and paste it into a dialog box accessed from Dreamweaver’s Components panel. Dreamweaver then examines the WSDL, essentially finding out everything there is to know about the Web Service by looking at the WSDL file that was generated when the Web Service was written.

Dreamweaver uses this information to create a proxy. This is a file of
machine-generated code that acts as a middleman (or proxy), making it simple for your page to connect to the Web Service without knowing the specifics of how it was implemented.

With ASP.net
Install ASP.NET Software Development Kit (SDK) . Dreamweaver MX makes use of the tools in the ASP.NET SDK to generate the proxy classes that interface between your page and the Web Service.

With Flash:
Flash MX can communicate with Web Services using Flash Remoting
Flash Remoting makes it easy for Flash to connect to Web Services and to other server-side components and databases.

An additional add-on, the Flash Remoting Components, installs several components and panels into the Flash MX authoring environment to make it easier to use and debug Flash Remoting applications.

Chapter Summary : Flash Remoting

Flash remoting lets flash talk to coldfusion, .net, Java, XML web services.
Has two parts Client side and server side.
Flash remoting server gateway : This is installed on the server.
Free for Coldfusion servers and charged for .net and J2ee servers.
Flash remoting authoring tools : This is installed along with Flash MX and gives additional functionality to Flash MX. These can be downloaded for free from Macromedia site

Earlier you used Loadvariables to talk to databases. Data was passed from server as long strings. To allow this, you had to load lot of stuff at server side. These made exchanging arrays or objects very tough.

Now, you can handle complex stuff like arrays, objects easily.

FR ( Flash remoting uses it own

How it works:

FR uses AMF ( Action Message Format)a binary format, to send data over http. It can handle complex data types like arrays, objects
etc.

You can use FR in Actionscript the same way you use Date objects, arrays or movieclips. But you need to add Flash Remoting components first. ( CAn be downloaded from www.macromedia.com/software/flashremoting/downloads/components/)

To use FR, First frame of movies would start with
first frame of your movies with
these lines of ActionScript:
#include NetServices.as
#include NetDebug.as

NetServices.as contains the core ActionScript
used to make connections to server-side services. Including this allows you to create and use three new objects that are
essential to Flash Remoting: NetServices ( connects to FR server) , NetConnection( Helps in debugging), and Recordset( handles recordsets).

.NetDebug.as allows sophisticated debugging abilities.


How to make a connection ?

Specify the Flash Remoting gateway on the server.

Connect to the gateway

Use the NetConnection object to link to a remote service.


Use the service to call a remote method.

Handle the data returned from that method.


Sample:

COnnecting to gateway:
NetServices.setDefaultGatewayUrl("http://localhost:8100/flashservices/gateway");
gateway_conn = NetServices.createGatewayConnection();

Connecting to a web service ( say a cold fusion component called testCFC)
myService = gateway_conn.getService("testCFC", this);
Any available function within that CFC can then be called.


FR and Java

FR supports calling methods in several types of Java objects,
including:
Java classes
JavaBeans and Enterprise JavaBeans
Java servlets
JavaServer pages

FR support .net connections too. Using Flash
Remoting” document available from Macromedia at www.macromedia.com/support/flash_remoting/documentation.html. This document contains details on using Flash Remoting with specialized ASP.NET features, such as code-behind, ADO.NET, and state management options.

Flash Remoting MX is available as a free 30-day trial from www.macromedia.com/software/trial_download/

Searching, bookmarking and printing in Flash

Searching, bookmarking and printing in Flash

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1116

How to let people search your flash site when it has no html content ?
Ans: Separate the Website content from the Flash movie. Load content from external sources ( database table/ XML file / plain text file ) and direct the searchbots to these external sources.

Bookmarking also can be done by using Named Anchors. These allow different frames and scenes in a movie to be bookmarked, without reloading the entire movie.

http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/open/webprinting/download/

Contains downloads to enable printing from flash. You can have a separate layout for printing and a separate one for online viewing.

snippets

Browser Cam

For a dollar a URL, Browser Cam lets you see a screenshot of your site on any operating system or on any browser.
http://www.browsercam.com/default.aspx


Presentations of RIA'a at the Emerging Technology Conference
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/22/track_internetapps.html

Web Services and RIA's

Web Services and RIA's

All biggies ( Microsoft, Macromedia, Apple, Amazon.com Google) are hard at work to mesh Web services in their products.

Central is Macromedia's offering for building and managing Web Services.

Central helps create desktop applications to automate web basedtasks. These Flash apps do things like getting news from various sources, tracking cricket scores, prices etc.

Kevin Lynch demoed a price-tracking application that alerts users if something they're interested in suddenly goes on sale. Even if the user is offline,the app will cache the Web data in the background, and continue to work even when disconnected.

Clutter, a small web app, automatically pulls images of CD covers from Amazon.com's website and displays them your desktop. You can then just click on the CD cover to play. (http://sprote.com/clutter/index.html)

How about developing a similar app which will pull up top bestseller covers from Amazon and download sample chapters automatically ?

Many companies provide a lot of data about the goods they sell through XML feeds, including price, availability, reviews , images of CD and book covers. XML feeds are being deployed more and more on the Web.

Many people depend on these free feeds for a living. Some run services like book-price comparison service, ISBN.nu, which relies on XML feeds detailing prices from a dozen online book stores, including Amazon.com.

If the XML feeds stop, these people go out of business.

These people worry the explosion of rich Internet applications may prompt sites to start charging for their XML feeds, or providing them only to favoured parties. At present, most XML feeds are experimental and freely available.

The Net is delivering !

The Net is delivering !

Andrew S. Grove, "Everything we ever said about the Internet is happening."

1999 Ecom projections : $1.3 trillion by 2003
It is now actually $2.4 trillion.

Forrester's in 1999 predicted that U.S. consumer e-commerce would reach $108 billion by 2003. Despite recession, terrorism, and war, the number projected to close at $95 billion this year.

Earlier prediction : Productivity gains from e-commerce was predicted to pump as much as $250 billion a year into the economy by 2005.

Prediction now : Gains from businesses using the Net to sharpen forecasting, keep inventories lean, and communicate instantaneously with suppliers could reach $450 billion a year by 2005. This adds $4,500 annually to the average U.S. household's income.

Nearly half the public dot coms that survived the shakeout, some 40% were profitable in the fourth quarter of 2002,

A second dot com bubble might just form.

$100 billion was pumped into 6,000 Net startups over the past decade. 2,000 have gone under or merged with other companies.

450 dotcoms went public ended,ost od whose stocks fell by 90% or more.

35 billion song files are traded , shaking the recording industry. Expedia ( Now the No.1 leisure-travel agency, online or off ) closed over 13% of traditional travel-agencies.

Dell Computer Corp. has rebuilt its sales and manufacturing around the Internet.

Vinod Khosla "Runaway tech projects don't work. You need the revolution by 1,000 small cuts, not one big dramatic change."

Chambers, predicts that as the U.S. progresses toward e-business, productivity will rise from the current 1% to 3% annually, to as high as 5% -- potentially doubling the U.S. standard of living within 14 years.

At eight years, the Web is the same age color TV was when it turned profitable in 1962. And when color sets really got TV rolling, we all know what happened: New industries sprouted from it that were a complete and utter surprise.
BusinessWeek's 1962 story telling readers "Why Color TV Makes Money Now" contains not a word about cable, pro sports, or Presidential campaigns, and not much about advertising

Developing User Friendly Flash content

Developing User Friendly Flash content
Summary of Macromedia white paper

Flash is a tool, not a solution. How you use the tool depends on you.

Flash apps may just be called as solutions .

Wrong view:
Use flash as eye candy, cool animations

Right view
Use flash as a display device for cross platform, interactive web apps.


Make it easy for user, not developer

Most cases flash can exist alongside html pages or replace unstable Java applets

The bigger the button, the easier it is to click. Buttons can grow as mouse approcahes them

Don't let animation hinder user experience

Onscreen tet is tough to read. So use fonts like Verdana, Trebuchet, Geneva georgia, sans serif

Make different versions of content available to suit all bandwidths. For low nbandwidths, avoid audio/video/ hi res bitmaps etc

Processes like Alpha blend, scaling drain processor power.

Use preloading to load content as it runs. To cut download time, use vector images obet bmp's. Avoid Complex fonts. Stick to ones which load fast.

Check movie with the built-in Bandwidth profiler ( View menu of Test movie mode). Show progress as % loaded.

When launching flash in pop up window, you can use Java script to control size and location of window, presence/ absence of window elements ( scroll bars/ resizeability etc). Javascript can determine the resolution of the monitor. Use this to tailor pop-up size.

The speed at which flash plays is determined by speed of the processor and size of window. Flash in 640x480 will play faster than 1600x1200.

Sound:

Use sparingly
Allow user to turn it off
Optimize sound files. They significantly increase size.

Allow user controls to let them stop, rewind or play animations as they desire.

Use cookies
For using cookies in flash, see www.flazoom.com/news/cookie_08212000.html

Use cookies to
1. ensure same intro is not played again to the same user
2. Find users bandwidth and send appropriate content
3. Find version of flash player and tailor content accordingly

Search Engine Optimisation
1. Create synopsis pages, submit this URl to searchengines
2. the html page which hosts flash should have metatags and a text link to synopsis page

User Testing
Set parameters and test movie with potential users

Thumb rules
The initial screen download should be no more than 40k, including all Macromedia Flash files, HTML, and images

Start telling a story within a second or two of streaming download, by carefully limiting initial text and graphics. ( playback rate is slower than download rate)

Always provide some sort of preloader, an 'opening act', keeping clients occupied while the main show loads.

( Flash skins can be produced for virtually anything, from Winamp to browsers to GUI's)

Soft Tweening

Tweening is possible through equations. Robert Penner has created a set of equations highly acclaimed by the flash community. I downloaded the equations , but yet to discover how they work. More examples using these 'easing equations' are at

http://proto.layer51.com/d.aspx?f=804

Full code is at the URL above

" The main feature on this prototype is that it only takes one swift mc.tween
command to add tweenings to objects. You don't have to set onEnterFrame or
similar events.

It also has several "shortcut" functions, so it does it all: sliding,
fading, changing colors, etc. You can use this tween method for all types of
tweening.

.tween(property, pEnd, seconds, animType, delay, callback, extra1, extra2)

Only the two first parameters are needed."


Some examples, explained:

// Moves BALL to _x = 10, in two seconds, using an easeOutExpo (default)
ball.tween ("_x", 10);

// Moves BOX to (100, 100) in 4 seconds, using linear easing (normal tweening)
box.tween (["_x", "_y"], [100, 100], 4, "linear");

Google Through Flash

Flash Google
Mike has created two classes that let you search Google through a flash interface.Take a look at the code here
http://www.markme.com/mesh/archives/002074.cfm

Data connection Kit

It provides prebuilt connections to web services, XML data, databases, and application servers so you can easily access, save, and display data in Macromedia Flash MX.

More information on the Data Connection kit at

http://www.macromedia.com/go/dck

Summary of past 10 days talks

Summary of past 10 days talks
Flash on mobiles, Handhelds
RIA ( Ihotelier, weather, Petshop, iokio, miniusa, vwasia, mortgage calculator)
Flash and VB
Flash and PHP dynamic address book
RSS with flash
Flash 99% bad
Usability report and what happened next
Flash with GPS
Flash with SMS
XML and flash
Firefly components in Flash
Audio and Video in flash
Flash to any database connection logic

Macromedia Central Logic ( Instant delivery, Occasionally connected, Co-operative apps, Open data, Context, Enable Colloborative work)

Web Services

1. Dynamic CD supplement creation
2. Powertest in Flash, to be submitted to Macromedia
3. New Jigsaw
4. Shuffling objects in Drag n drop games
5. application (Like excel) as RIA in flash
6. Network games in flash
7. Creation of a pet store type interface for CD supplements
8. Formula based flash proto
9. SM site as RIA

Full sites with RIA

Full sites with RIA

What if ....

The full flash front end for a site is stored on a client machine with only the updates and images(if any) coming from the server?

Any changes in the site sent as alerts to mobiles/mails immediately

The new changes in site appears in a diff color in the client machine for a while

The client can change skins, images etc in the front end anyway he likes.

It will support a whole host of other RIA

1. Weather, Stock quotes, sports news etc.

Any of you want to take it on ?

Rebooting Music...contd

Rebooting Music

Users always win !, If not legally, then illegally

It is futile to fight technology with lawsuits. If you try to prevent users from having a better experience, they'd break laws to get it.

Why ask users to buy entire CD's when each track can be easily delivered?

Why treat users as criminals and restrict users to use the album they buy for the fear they'd share it?

WHy can't record companies learn a lesson from the fact that normal law abiding citizens gleefully become law breakers, just because a better experience is denied to them ?

Madonna resorted to flooding file-sharing services with bogus files to confuse pirates and increase sales of her album "American Life". Hackers promptly posted a free copy of the album on her website

Napster used central directory computers to keep track of the music each user was making available online so that other users could find what they wanted fast. The courts shut it down accusing it of " being an accessory to murder" ( Well.. an accessory to copyright infringement actually !)

Technology morphed to find a loophole. Now, requests for a particular file are passed from one user’s computer to another.
Grokster and Morpheus, two popular file-swapping programs who enabled it, were sued but courts found them not guilty of contributory infringement, just as makers of video recorders are not responsible for the use of such machines for piracy.

Record industries fought back by trying to scare individuals that they'd be sued and by offering subscription based services ( Rhapsody, pressplay and MusicNet)

Subscription based services never picked up because :

Music is'nt sold. It is rented for a duration.
Moving downloaded music to Mp3 players either prohibited or cost extra.

Apple's iTunes Music Store, uses a simpler model: each track from its 200,000-track library costs $0.99. Once purchased and downloaded, a track can be copied to three computers, burned on to CDs, and transferred to Apple’s iPod portable music-players.

The new service is available only in America, to users of Apple’s Macintosh machines, ( under 5% of personal computers). PC version would be launched later this year.

John Chambers

John Chambers speech

" Productivity increases will drive economic growth in the future, and technology will be the driving force behind those gains"

"....wave after wave of applications will deliver productivity gains to businesses. And Cisco practices what it preaches. When the economy went south, Cisco continued to invest in applications that now saves us $2 billion per year"

Through these networked applications, companies can become "networked virtual organizations" that focus on their core competencies and rely on partners and technology for other tasks.

We save $275 million per year by using systems to "out-task" manufacturing and order fulfillment while maintaining control through tightly integrating applications and networks with suppliers. Maintaining that control distinguishes "out-tasking" from simple outsourcing .

In-house, Cisco now handles 73 percent of customer support requests through Web-based applications, bringing the cost per transaction down from $250 for a human-assisted technical support call to about $7 per incident.

Music will never die. It is being rebooted !

Music will never die. It is being rebooted !

Interview with Steve Jobs

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,448048,00.html

"Rip.Mix.Burn" was never not legit. "Rip.Mix.Burn" never meant "go steal music." It meant "Rip.Mix.Burn" exactly what it said.

You can now buy music from Itunes music store, Manage music with iTunes Jukebox, Listen to music with iPod. So we've got.... a complete solution for digital music. We're the only people in the world to do this, so we feel great about it.

Subscription services have completely failed. Nobody wants to rent their music

Commenting on low downloads at Listen.com :
Downloading sucks on their service! You download a track and you can't burn it to a CD without paying them more money. You can't put it on your MP3 player, you can't put it on multiple computers.. it sucks! So of course nobody downloads! You pay extra to download even on top of subscription fees. No wonder they have hardly any download traffic ..they hardly even have any subscribers

".... most everybody in the music industry uses a Mac and they all have iPods....they see Apple as the most creative of the technical companies, a very artist-friendly company, very credible. So.. we were able to negotiate landmark deals with them that no one else has ever come close to in terms of offering the user really broad rights to the music they buy.

Free dot net hosting

http://dotnetplayground.com/
We offer FREE .NET webhosting for ASP.NET developers!
DotNetPlayground.com is a test environment for the ASP.NET expert and a learning center for aspiring ASP.NET developers

Flash in mobile devices

http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashplayer/resources/devices/smart_demo/

Classy demo on Flash in mobile devices

Mobile devices set to explode
Flash can deliver games, maps, TV clippings etc
Flash saves time and money by fast downloads, rich interfaces leading to more
views

Rich grafix delivery with/w/o 3G
Real time data display

also see
www.laszlosystems.com
Framework for building RIA plus a cool demo

A behind the scenes look at Web Services.

A behind the scenes look at Web Services.

http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a//webservices/2002/02/12/webservicefaqs.html

Web services help build distributed applications

A Web service is a software that makes itself available over the Internet and uses a standardized XML messaging system

A Web service can have a public interface, defined in a common XML grammar. The interface describes all the methods available to clients . The interface definition is accomplished via the Web Service Description Language (WSDL).

Once you create a Web service, you should be able to publish this fact. and for others to locate it This is done through UDDI, or Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration

Web services are now used for news syndication, and stock-market data to weather reports .

So what is new ?

People have been using Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) for some time now, and they long ago discovered how to send such calls over HTTP.

So, what is really new about Web services? The answer is XML.

XML lies at the core of Web services, and provides a common language for describing Remote Procedure Calls, Web services, and Web service directories.

Prior to XML, data sharing among applications was still possible, but XML makes this so much easier to do.


Through the IBM Web Services Browser, available on the IBM Alphaworks site you can access a series of Web services demonstrations. Behind the scenes, it ties together SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI to provide a simple plug-and-play interface for finding and invoking Web services. For example, you can find a stock-quote service, a traffic-report service, and a weather service. Each service is independent, and you can stack services like building blocks. You can, therefore, create a single page that displays multiple services--where the end result looks like a stripped-down version of my.yahoo

Web service protocol stack is an evolving set of protocols used to define, discover, and implement Web services. The core protocol stack consists of four layers:

Service Transport protocol handles transport of messages between applications. Currently, this includes HTTP, SMTP, FTP, and newer protocols, such as Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol (BEEP).

XML Messaging protocol encodes messages in a common XML format so that messages can be understood at either end. Currently, this includes XML-RPC and SOAP.
(XML-RPC is platform independent and so diverse applications can communicate with one another. For example, a Java client can speak XML-RPC to a Perl server. SOAP focusses on Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) transported via HTTP. Like XML-RPC, SOAP is platform independent, and therefore enables diverse applications to communicate with one another.)

Service Description protocol describes the public interface to a specific Web service. Currently, service description is handled via the WSDL.Using WSDL, a client can locate a Web service, and invoke any of the publicly available functions. With WSDL-aware tools, this process can be entirely automated, enabling applications to easily integrate new services with little or no manual code

Service Discovery protocol centralizes services into a common registry, and provides easy publish/find services for Web services. This is handled via the UDDI

You do not need to understand the full protocol stack to get started with Web services. If you know the basics of HTTP, it is best to start at the XML Messaging layer and work your way up.


The Web services architecture is implemented through the layering of several types of technologies. These technologies can be organized into the following four layers that build upon one another.

Macromedia 4th Quarter results summary, 30 Apr 2003

Macromedia 4th Quarter results summary, 30 Apr 2003
http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/ir/macr/quarter/presentation/

Experience Matters

Annual revenue : $ 337Mn, Margin 8%

Revenue comes from

Studio : 1/3 ( 31%)
Dreamweaver : 1/5 ( 20%)
Flash : 1/12 ( 10%)


US accounts for 60% of revenues. Europe for 25% and Asia 15 %

Gross margin : 90% of revenues
Sales cost 43% of revenues
R & D : 27%
Net margin : 8%

Forrester research says :
Presently web has crappy user interface and poor user experience

Just 1% of 300 sites pass evaluation

over 60% of users ready to switch sites if not served well.

Demos
www.microsoft.com ( Demos SPOT - Smart personal object technology)
thewatergatehotel.com ( Same interface as the ihotelier application)
iokio.com ( Camera finder demo. Hone in on a model from 99 models absed on weight, cost, resolution etc)
miniusa.com ( Dress the car application)

Half a billion users have flash player. Thats 98% of online users.

Compared to this
91% have Java
80% have acrobat reader
60% have shockwave
60% have media player
55% have realplayer
40% have quicktime

Expect rich displays on mobiles soon

Flash ads growing exponentially 3 Bn impressions '02 to 30 Bn impressions in '03

10x more rich media ads are served than traditional ads

Director and flash can work well together

Flash communication server for virtual classrooms( A Hong Kong Baptist University created a rich online learning application allowing simultaneous teacher-student interaction using Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX.
) , Flash communication server for streaming video

Central :
Centralized, United, Unplugged
Info across applications aggregated, Applications work together, works offline and online

Track record:
93-2003 : Revenues grew from $25 Mn to $330 mn .
Cash : $5 mn to $ 225 mn