Technoracle (a.k.a. "Duane's World")

A Serious Problem with Cloud Computing

2012-01-30T10:35:00.000-08:00

We've written lots about Cloud Computing and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Virtualization, defined as when the logical network topography no longer aligns with the physical topography, has been a trend in recent years. With the advent of SOA, many businesses were easily lead down the path of "who cares how long the wire is" and "does it really matter where my data is physically located". The mainstream media regards the movement as "Cloud Computing" and the tech industry has been very quick to push this as a solution on many who have not fully understood the potential consequences.

This month, a nightmare scenario has surfaced that may have lasting repercussions for cloud users. As reported from Associated Press, American prosecutors blocked access to Megaupload and charged seven men alleging the site was a catalyst for allowing illegal downloads of copy written material. When you visit the MegaUpload website, a rather ominous graphic greets you.

So why is this an issue for those who use Cloud Computing? The Federal prosecutors do not distinguish legitimate users of MegaUpload from illegitimate. The same prosecutors stated that data from users of Megaupload may be erased beginning later this week. Those users have no path to get any of their data. Furthermore, it is unclear if Federal Prosecutors will also be seizing data not directly related to the injunction. Small companies who used the services as a data backup are currently blocked from access. From the AP/CBS article:

"A letter filed in the case Friday by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said storage companies Carpathia Hosting Inc. and Cogent Communications Group Inc. may begin deleting data Thursday. Spokespersons for the two companies and for the U.S. Attorney's Office did not respond to messages Sunday night."

This should have been easy to avoid, correct? Much like the derivatives market though, several users of the services might not have even understood what they were getting into. The business model used by MegaUpload includes hiring third parties to store the data for a fee so perhaps some data is safe? Unfortunately, as reported by Associated Press, the same government prosecutors have frozen MegaUploads finances. If they cannot pay the third parties, it is seriously likely that data may get deleted, depending of course on the EULA used. According to the same sources, millions of users who use this site to store data may be affected.

The lessons learned here? We would aver that legal rulings such as the one made need to account for the impact of seizure. The whole notion of locking down a complete system due to an alleged illegal activity may have a serious and lasting impact on legitimate users. A path to recovery of legitimate data should be part of the any such future actions and by blocking access, those who do so incur a large responsibility to all users of that site to ensure no losses are suffered. Unfortunately, in cases like this, it seems no impact assessment had been done or accounted for in the contingency plans and it is akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

10 Technology Masterpieces that made it

2012-01-27T12:19:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Akweli Parkers article entitled "Ten Concept Car Success Stories: The Ones that Made it to the Production Line"

"Ever since legendary automotive designer Harley Earl created what was arguably the first concept car in 1938, the public has been enthralled to witness the ever-expanding limits of technology combined with auto designers' unrestricted imaginations.

Traditionally, concept cars were usually extreme flights of fancy. With exaggerated bodywork and wildly impractical technology (on-board nuclear generator, anyone?), concept cars of the past boldly tossed reason out the window while pointing the way to a more fun motoring future."

See the rest of his great article here.

10 Technology Masterpieces that made it

2012-01-27T12:17:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Akweli Parkers article entitled "Ten Concept Car Success Stories: The Ones that Made it to the Production Line"

"Ever since legendary automotive designer Harley Earl created what was arguably the first concept car in 1938, the public has been enthralled to witness the ever-expanding limits of technology combined with auto designers' unrestricted imaginations.

Traditionally, concept cars were usually extreme flights of fancy. With exaggerated bodywork and wildly impractical technology (on-board nuclear generator, anyone?), concept cars of the past boldly tossed reason out the window while pointing the way to a more fun motoring future."

See the rest of his great article here.

An Epic Failure to Service the Customer and Resulting Revenue Loss

2012-01-26T05:59:00.000-08:00

This is notes from a recent dialog I had with an Big company representative who utterly failed to comprehend that she lost her employer money by not escalating this. To be fair to them, I got on the phone and a person stayed with me until they solved the issue. Their phone service is awesome. I guess you could say that every barrel has its' 'bad apples'. Private info is blacked out.

**************FIRST MESSAGE FROM ME********

Hi:

For some reason, I cannot retrieve my password for duanexxx. I no
longer seem to be able to get access to emails at nickull@XXX.com or
duanexxxx@XXXXXXXXXX.com which are listed as the emails that the password
reset goes to.

Can you please reset the password for duanexxxxxxx and send it to
duane@XXXX.XXX?

I am trying to buy software.

Duane

**************MESSAGE BACK***********
Hello Duane,

It's me again, Grace. I apologize for the delay in response, I just got back from my two days off. Thanks for your understanding.

Sorry to hear about that, Duane. However, I still wanna thank you that you have been an customer. Should you have other concerns, please let us know. Cheers!

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.

**THIS IS THEIR RESPONSE WITH MY SECOND MESSAGE INLINE***
Inline:

On 12-01-18 1:38 PM, wrote:

Hi Duane,

Thanks for contacting Support again. This is Grace and I'm
taking over on Gagan's behalf. Glad to assist you today.

I understand that you need assistance in resetting your password for
"duanexxxx". I realize your eagerness to have this taken care of,
and I'd be happy to help.

Duane, I can reset the password for you. Before I can do this, I
require that you provide at least one of the following, for your
security:

- the order number of one of your purchases
DN: #120020XXXXXXX

- the last four digits of the credit card used for your account
DN: MasterCard .... XXXX

- the answer to one of your security questions

And two items from this list:

- your birth date
DN: April XX,XXXX

- the billing address listed on the account
DN: XXXX West Xth Avenue, Vancouver, BC XXXXXXX

- the phone number on the account
DN: One of these
604 XXX XXXX
604 XXX XXXX
604 XXX XXXX

Upon receiving your response, we will verify your billing address,
reset your password, and send you an email with your new password.

Take care and have a good one, Duane!

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.

*****THE MESSAGE I GOT BACK A DAY LATER****

On 12-01-18 2:49 PM, wrote:

Hi Duane,

Thank you for providing the information that was requested, Duane.
However, the credit card number and order number you provided did not
match our records. Now to have this sorted out, please respond to this
email and provide other credit card numbers you used on the account
that you are trying to access. Or, provide an order number that you recall
you made on the account "duanxxxxxx".

Thanks for your patience, Duane. Hope to hear back from you. :)

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.

*************MY RESPONSE*****************

At this point I sent her several emails showing orders made from the specific account in question
and using the credit card. All these orders were labelled with all the data she had requested.

I also asked her to please expedite this as we are trying to make a decision to go with a competitor.

*******MY (SEMI RUDE) RESPONSE**********
So screw you. We decided to buy (A competitor) instead. As I told you
yesterday, we were trying to buy software from [you]. I am
responsible for IT buying in my company and you made the decision easy.
We will now use [someone else's software] as the standard.

I am really angry at the fact I have provided you everything you asked
for below and you don't even phone me or respond.

You just lost your company $$$

GoodBye!

***AND YET ANOTHER DAY LATER I GET A CHEERFUL BUT USELESS REPLY***

On 12-01-19 10:18 AM, wrote:

Hello Duane,

I'm sorry to hear about that. It's really a pain for me as an
advisor to loose a valued customer like you. But please, allow me to
explain the other side of this issue.

If you feel that way because I am unable to reset your password right
after 30 minutes, and I am unable to phone you, I admit that it is my
complete mistake as I haven't given you a heads up. Please note that we
are receiving volume of emails and there are tendencies that we
overlooked replies. Further, [our company] does not provide
assistance via phone call so we are doing our best to provide you with assistance
through email.

Duane, please don't get me wrong about this, as much as possible I would
not want to be the reason of loosing a valued customer, so I apologize
about what happened.

Thanks for bearing with me. Have yourself a wonderful day!

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.

**************NOTES*************

OK. At this point I am now completely pissed off. WTF is she talking about 30 minutes??? I gladly would have loved if it had been done in twice that time. The "Have a wonderful day" quote is about as stupid a thing you can say to a pissed off customer. The last line "Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you." should perhaps only be used when the customer service rep actually does something. What about not being allowed to use a phone to sort this out????

But wait - there is more...

*********MY RESPONSE*************

So are you giving me access to my account or not? I sent you all orders
I have copies of, answered every question you asked etc. I also waited 24
hours now, not just 30 minutes, which would be okay. I haven't bought [your competitors software] yet so if you can do this in the next hour, maybe we will stay as customers.

Reset the duanxxxx password and or change the email account used to
retrieve the password to duane@xxx.xxx or duane.xxx@xxxx so I
can do it myself.

If not, not only will you lose a customer, I will seek any legal remedies
that are available to me against you for denying me access to my
account and previous purchases.

Since I have given you everything you asked for, you should just do this
right now. I should not suffer anymore because your company does not
allow you to pick up a phone to verify me.

Duane Nickull

************HER RESPONSE*************

Hi Duane,

Thanks for your response again. As you have requested, I reset the
password for "xxxxxx". This is the password: xxxxxxxx.

Please let me know if it still does not work. Thank you!

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.

************NOTES*************

Guess what? It did not work!! I sent another barrage of emails explaining politely that it did not work. This is where I decided to call and got a smart, capable rep who fixed the issue.

*********HER REPSONSE (24 hours later)**********

Hi Duane,

Thanks for letting me know about that. I checked your account and found
that "xxxxxxxxx" is renamed to "xxxxxxxxx". This is why
you're still unable to access the account.

Now, please sign in with "xxxxxxx" using the password I
provided. If you still can't, I will have to reset the password again for
you.

Thanks for your patience.

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.

*********NOTES*********

So at this point I had the issue solved by the very capable and heroic guy from their help telephone desk. I tried her advice again and once again, it did not work. This prompted me to send yet another email back saying "It doesn't work"

**********HER RESPONSE (A DAY LATER)********

On 12-01-20 3:41 PM, wrote:

Follow-Up: 173662775

Hello again,

I wanted to send a quick note to see if you are still experiencing any
difficulties with the Store. Resolving your issue is important to
me, so please don't hesitate to reply if you need any further assistance.

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.

*********MY FINAL RESPONSE************

???

You didn't think it was important enough to fix when I asked yesterday so
we went with [competitor] instead. We will not buy your products for our
office.

Duane

************FINAL NOTES**********

Ok - I got mad. I acted a bit unprofessional but honestly, this sort of thing should be a lesson for anyone doing customer service.

1. Don't wait 24 hours each time. Note the entire thread took place over 6 days.
2. Escalate things if you can't figure them out. I don't claim to know everything and will gladly escalate stuff to whomever can help.
3. Don't be condescending to the customer with crap like "Have a wonderful day" when you know they're frustrated at you.

and lastly...

Grace - you are an idiot!!!!

More on (Moron?) SOPA

2012-01-25T09:17:00.000-08:00

Funny thing about SOPA is that it keep my awake at night. I actually took the time to read the bill to understand it better and it seems that around 2:45 AM my brain makes random connections as to why the Stop Online Piracy Act might pose threats to people who don't event know about it.

Today a colleague wrote a post also outlining some additional thoughts entitled "10 Reasons Lots of Websites Violate SOPA and Don’t Know It". Now according to several news sources, SOPA has been shelved so no one is actualy violating it as it is not in effect. Nevertheless, it is worth thinking about from a perspective of false positives and what could happen. On the InternetServiceProviders.org blog I found the following arguments. I've reposted a few to share here but urge interested parties to go to the source to leave any comments or read the rest. These are five of the ten reasons.

"1. Vague Language – Though House supporters have claimed that SOPA is designed to protect the intellectual property of Americans from foreign profiteers that illegally distribute content in exchange for advertising and membership revenue, the vague wording of the bill makes it difficult to understand exactly what constitutes a violation and certainly doesn’t offer immunity to inadvertently-offending American sites."

My take on this is that there is certainly ambiguity and penalties in the forms of takedown notices. The innocent ones here who might be the most liable are the ad servers themselves. If the bill was put into effect as written, it is not clear how some of the enforcement mechanisms might be implemented. My stance is that most of the illegal copyright and trademark infringement has actionable paths under existing laws, many of which are not enforced. If existing laws are not enforced, who amongst us believes a new, untested bill will stop this. Not me.

2. User-Submitted Content – If a site allows any sort of user-submitted content to be posted as part of their business model, they could very easily find themselves in violation of the Stop Online Piracy Act. Under the current language of the proposed law, the owner of the site that hosts the content, the user that posts a link to the content and the website that allows the user to submit that link could all potentially be charged with violating the bill.

Our gut feeling on this is true, but once again, this is illegal under existing laws. Why do we need a new law to stop someone from selling fake merchandise over eBay? Use existing laws.

3. The “Friend-of-a-Friend” Effect – Do you remember when you were a kid, and the friend of a friend did something that got you all in trouble? Maybe you weren’t directly involved, and maybe you didn’t even like that person very much, but your mom still said that you were “guilty by association.” Under SOPA, the same principal applies: even if a link to legitimate and legal content housed on another site is shared, the site that posts the link could be punished if the hosting site is found to house illegal content as well.

Not quite correct. According to the SOPA act, as written today, a takedown notice would be issued. This would still have the effect of creating a lot of work for webmasters. Even the odds that the Technoracle blogroll points at a site that might contain an ad that is subject to SOPA laws is very high.

4. The Comments Section – One of the quickest ways to lose faith in humanity and the education system is to take a look at the comments section of a YouTube video or comedy article; comments are almost universally inflammatory and poorly spelled, but that’s still legal. Should SOPA pass and one trolling user posts copyrighted material in the comments section, the site would be in violation and could face blacklisting, blocking of revenue and DNS blocking.

This is not how I interpreted the SOPA Act but in such cases take down notices would be issued. What I am curious about is how the government intends to patrol all these comments. Even as we contemplate this today, I would argue our NTi ( an index of collective content production vs content consumption) is reaching the point where most people create more than they consume. Bots using RSS feeds and aggregators add to this menace. To enforce SOPA, one would have to patrol the web with a virtual army of police to scour all such comments.

It is more likely that peer to peer interactions are going to be more effective against such comments. I've deleted some spam from this site on numerous occasions. Google also once in a while let's me know if there is a comment up here violating the Blogger terms (which I take down). I would not voluntarily censor anything for SOPA if it was not directly violating someone's copyright or trademark against the true copyright owners will.

There are six more comments on the original article - a good read at http://www.internetserviceproviders.org/blog/2012/10-reasons-lots-of-websites-violate-sopa-and-dont-know-it/

Very Important SOPA and PIPA Information!

2012-01-18T11:29:00.000-08:00

The SOPA and PIPA acts are now at the forefront of the internet revolution.

Here is some important information about SOPA you need to know.

Do not support SOPA. Censorship hurts! Tweet this now!

DNS Provision Pulled from SOPA!

2012-01-13T15:33:00.000-08:00

I wrote some of my thoughts about SOPA down in this earlier log post. Now it appears that common sense has prevailed. After a good discussion on the O'Reilly Foo Campers Alumni list, some of the participants of which were asked to get opinions, it seems that the DNS provisions of SOPA are being dropped. This was just reported on SlashDot http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/01/13/2222203/dns-provision-pulled-from-sopa .

The Republican Chairman Mr. Lamar Smith has historically been one of the biggest backers of the so called Stop Online Piracy Act. CNET ran the story and claimed Mr. Smith announced that he plans to remove the Domain Name System or DNS-blocking provision.

"After consultation with industry groups across the country," Smith said in a statement released by his office, "I feel we should remove DNS-blocking from the Stop Online Piracy Act so that the [U.S. House Judiciary] Committee can further examine the issues surrounding this provision"

Read more at CNET

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) - aka HR 3261

2012-01-11T16:41:00.000-08:00

Several people have recently asked for an opinion on the US proposed legislation to stop online piracy of intellectual property. Rather than read the opinions of others, I decided to read the actual proposed legislation itself. For the record, the version I read is at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c112:1:./temp/~c112UufGtF:: There are many worries about limitations on freedom of speech and costs that will be born to internet service providers (ISP's) including potential legal actions to recover damages from those who find themselves participants in such transactions.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, nor am I am US citizen. I am a musician and have a vested interest in enforcement of IPR laws.

I found the bill somewhat flawed, despite what appears to be a noble attempt to correct an injustice. I initially like this section:

"SEC. 2. SAVINGS AND SEVERABILITY CLAUSES.

(a) Savings Clauses-

(1) FIRST AMENDMENT- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to impose a prior restraint on free speech or the press protected under the 1st Amendment to the Constitution."

This alone alleviated many of my worries. My first issue was section 101 (23) paragraph C:

"(23) U.S.-DIRECTED SITE- The term `U.S.-directed site' means

an Internet site or portion thereof that is used to conduct business

directed to residents of the United States, or that

<SNIP/>

(C) the Internet site or portion thereof does not

contain reasonable measures to prevent such goods and services from

being obtained in or delivered to the United States;…<SNIP/>

I am sorry but I do not believe that I should have to take measure to comply with US law. First of all, the internet is "opt in" by default. Anyone may take any publicly served file and re-serve it via another website. I can reference files and there is no clear demarcation of paragraph C that ensures I am not wrongly classified as such a site. I am also not a US citizen, I have no physical presence in the US. Your laws do not apply to me. Furthermore, I, like many other website hosts, have no way to prevent such goods or services from being obtained in the USA.

As far as the original question goes, there is little elaboration on the impact to ISP's. Section 102 C reads:

(1) SERVICE- A process server on behalf of the Attorney General, with prior approval of the court, may serve a copy of a court order issued pursuant to this section on similarly situated entities within each class described in paragraph (2). Proof of service shall be filed with the court.

DN: Inference - ISP's do not need to take proactive action, only respond to court orders. The problem is that there could be huge numbers of these court orders and most of the violating sites will be not on USA soil, hence out of reach of United States law. This concerns me since each ISP must block each site via their own system as well as potentially making the sits visible again should they not be in violation anymore.

(2) REASONABLE MEASURES- After being served with a copy of an order pursuant to this subsection, the following shall apply:

(A) SERVICE PROVIDERS-

(i) IN GENERAL- A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name's Internet Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.

DN: Filtering an IP address or domain name is very little effort but may have unintentional consequences. For example, Apache virtual servers may share a common IP address but use virtual hosting based on the http.config file. Such actions may block legitimate sites causing financial losses.

(ii) LIMITATIONS- A service provider shall not be required--

(I) other than as directed under this subparagraph, to modify its network, software, systems, or facilities;

(II) to take any measures with respect to domain name resolutions not performed by its own domain name server; or

DN: This means that ISP's are not required to perform any further work in these cases?

(III) to continue to prevent access to a domain name to which access has been effectively disabled by other means.

DN: My gut feel is as follows:

- there is a problem that needs to be addressed WRT IP theft.

- in parallel, I believe there are issues with orthogonal systems such as the USPTO/WIPO and the problems cannot be adequately addressed alone via HR 3216.

- if it proceeds to become legislation, it will take a while to establish legal precedent and find where the bill in practicality does not work.

- the criminals who sell the IP of others knowingly are likely crafty enough to use revolving IP addresses or even hacked legitimate servers to complete such transactions making it virtually impossible for an effective countermeasure.

Then again, what do I know?

Duane Nickull

The Mobile Tipping Point - Five Key Facts

2012-01-06T15:52:00.000-08:00

Contributed to Technoracle by Amielle Lake (CEO of Tagga)

We have been friends with Amielle for years and watched her take on some tough challenges in the mobile markets. She wrote this great article and agreed to let us share it with you here on Technoracle.

Tagga was launched just months before the first iPhone hit the market. Over the last four years, we have witnessed the life-transforming impact that mobile devices have in our everyday lives. Yet, brand budgets for mobile are still surprisingly small. As we leap into another year, I am optimistic that things are improving for us mobile marketers. I might even be so cliché as to say that the year of mobile is here or at least near! While brand adoption may not have been as rapid as the industry might have earlier predicted, warp speed growth is definitely in store.

Here are 5 reasons why we have reached the tipping point.

1. Smartphone adoption in the US has neared almost 50%

Smartphone adoption marches on, with 44% of mobile phone users owning a smartphone, compared with 18% in 2009, according to Nielsen. For more,

PCWorld - Adults Now Spend More Time With Mobile Devices Than With Print Media

2. Adults read more news on their mobile than print:

eMarketer released a report that found the “average adult consumer spends 65 minutes a day on their mobile device, while they spend only 44 minutes with print media--26 minutes with newspapers, and 18 minutes with magazines.”

For more, USA today - Smartphone adoption means more text, less talk

3. Global brands issuing RFPs for Mobile Agency of Record:

Perhaps this is a less observed trend, as it certainly isn’t something that industry analysts follow. However, Tagga has been party to and witnessed several formal RFP calls for Mobile Agencies of Record. If this is not a definitive sign of commitment to mobile by marketers, then I don’t know what is. Smaller brands will follow suit. In fact, Agencies are now clamoring to improve their capability-set to demonstrate a robust mobile foundation – many opening up mobile divisions. Top brands as of late signing up “MAORs” (Mobile Agency of Record) include American Cancer Society, Proctor and Gamble, Kraft Foods and a host of others.

4. Global brands are changing their DNA to launch truly integrated campaigns:

Tagga had the pleasure of participating and speaking at a conference where the Chief Marketing Officers of Visa, Citigroup North American and Samsung (LATAM) participated. Each presenter spoke of dissolving their siloed digital and traditional teams in order to combine them into a single group. Why? To effectively launch truly integrated multi-channel campaigns. These thought-leaders clearly saw mobile and social as mechanisms to add more value to their traditional media initiatives. By breaking down marketing silos, brands will be able to harness the true power of mobile - engaging with a consumer wherever they are and giving them what they want, whenever they want it.

5. Social Media is Mobile:

With social media and mobile on the scene, marketers often grappled with the notion of how the two mediums play together. Facebook CEO best settled the debate by pronouncing Facebook as on path to becoming a mobile company. According to a recent CNET article, “Facebook has more than 350 million mobile users (out of 800 million total), and that the proportion will swing to more than 50 percent within the next year. Most of Facebook's users in India, Southeast Asia, and Africa, are via mobile devices.” As the lines between social and mobile become increasingly blurry, marketers will drive towards an approach that integrates technologies that leverage all capabilities of the mobile device, from foursquare to augmented reality.

With the rapid adoption of mobile devices, in particular smartphones, the challenge of the marketer has shifted. Consumers are channel agnostic, and want to be communicated to in a relevant, transparent and timely manner - whether they are on the go or not, offline or online. With the convergence of these trends, it is not hard to see why marketers will turn to mobile to drive results. To quote Frost & Sullivan, it is not hard to see why mobile marketing will become “the most important vehicle of all time” (Frost & Sullivan, 2010).

Rooting the Galaxy Nexus with one click!

2012-01-05T14:05:00.000-08:00

Android Central is buzzing with news of Wug's new root application. Specifically, Wug's Galaxy Nexus Root Toolkit contains all the files requires to both unlock (aka "root") your nexus and also to restore it to factory settings with the OEM lock. The kit contains the necessary drivers and SDK that will also install the latest samsung drivers, extract the latest android SDK to your %HOMEDRIVE% and more.

Figure courtesy of WUGFresh and AndroidCentral

For developers, you will also be able to update your systems "Path" environmental variable to include adb and fastboot locations however the entire Toolkit appears to only run on Windows. The Toolkit can push su.zip (Superuser.apk) to your Nexus's SD card and flash the clockwork mod. The device itself will walk you through the rest of the process via on screen instructions.

Read the full feature set here.

The reality is that it seems to be pointless for handset providers to lock devices. The average time until someone can root a particular device is nearing the point where root toolkits are sometimes available before the actual device is on the market.

If you find this useful, please consider donating to the software publisher.

SEO Lesson #3: Content, Content, Content

2012-01-04T06:12:00.000-08:00

Google's search engine ranking algorithms have always been a moving target. Two significant updates occurred in 2011 that have both raised and lowered rankings of many sites. Around February 2011, engineers tweaked the system, in what became known as the "Panda update". The first update was focused on the North American markets however the changes were rolled out worldwide. So why did this update matter so much? It is very simple. Having your page show up on page one of the results is critical. Studies have been done that generally indicate around nine out of every ten clicks are on sites ranked one through ten, although I have never seen a perfect study.

The penalty is simple. Panda penalized sites with poor quality content. Google has been fairly warning SEO firms that content is king and we agree. As written on our previous posts, original, relevant and timely content always beats black hat SEO tricks in the long run, nevertheless, so many people still try to land in the top ten spot with a site that has very little content of use to the searcher. This does not help anyone over the long term other than the SEO company that made a few bucks.

As noted by the Google webmasters:

"Almost the whole year of 2011 was a series of several updates related to content. Initially observed closely by SEO practitioners talking about the decrease of ranking of various sites and asking each other in forums if there was an observed algorithmic change and was dubbed as the Farmer Update which I believe the name probably came from Webmaster World where most group named algorithm updates come from. The changes were too evident already that when Google decided to talk about it already, they said they already have a name for the update and it was the Panda Update. And then this is were the series of updates came in."

Google's Matt Cutts, an anti SEO webspam policeman, noted that in the initial rollout, only around two percent of Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERP's) were affected. Apparently many of those affected have simply been scraping content from other pages. This happens a lot with Technoracle posts.

A second update went after content farms and pages with large amounts of advertisements compared to content. This is often done in conjunction with the scraping. A good example of this can be found here:

http://www.seofacts.biz/flash-seo-more-secrets-from-technoracle/

This site takes content from Technoracle, adds tons of ads and publishes. Such pages will never beat the original page in terms of rankings unless some additional content is interpreted as useful.

Panda has been criticized, largely by those who feel their sites were unfairly ranked lower. Since the original Panda release, an update has shown promise to fight perceptions of false positive rates (FPR's).
Barry Schwartz reported that some sites actually recovered after the 2.2. rollout.

Google’s Panda update runs for all languages worldwide except for Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

The big take away from all of this? Simple. Like in real estate (Location, Location, Location), in SEO land the mantra is Content, Content, Content. Focus on good, unique content and interested parties will come.

Adobe Community Help

2012-01-02T16:28:00.000-08:00

This is a personal blog post. Since I, Duane Nickull, no longer working at Adobe, I have received a ton of emails from people asking for help on various Adobe related technical issues. I don't want to sound uncaring or unsympathetic, but the reality is that I cannot offer these services for free anymore. Adobe has made a conscious decision to cut down on the number of employees helping their community and customers. I was one of those and if I continue to offer free help, I working for free.

Please understand that this is not a personal attack, retribution or in any way something I am doing to be vengeful. It is simple cause and effect. I want to thank the 98% majority of you who respect this and understand why I am no longer offer free, unpaid consulting, development, tutorials or help around Adobe products. For the few of you who have issues with it, please bring it up with Adobe. It is their responsibility to ensure adequate support for their technologies and perhaps it will do you and them some good if they can let them know where they can be more effective.

Uberity.com is my new company and we are working on something cool and new. At the same time however, if you are really stuck and need consulting or IT services for LiveCycle ES, Flex Mobile Development or AIR development, Uberity does offer these services for a very reasonable rate. Simple email info (at) uberity (dot) com. Every Uberity employee is either a MAX Master, evangelist or top engineer from an Adobe product. We employ the best of the best and would love to help you for a fair price. We are open for business.

Once again, I also want to point out that there is no anger intended here. This is just a simple boundary that needs to be set in order to help manage expectations. I am not ruling out that I may print some tutorials in the future either but these will be done on a less frequent basis.

Best wishes to everyone for a prosperous 2012!!

SEO Lesson #2: More Guayaki Yerba Mate

2011-12-23T13:58:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we posted on a friend's company who is examining their search engine visibility. The company is called Guayaki and they sell products based on the culture of a plant named Ilex paraguariensis, commonly referred to as Yerba Mate. All the founders of Guayaki have a passion for mate but they also want to be socially responsible. They have pioneered an innovative business model that directly links their customer’s purchases to partner farming communities in their supply chain, enabling fair trade, fair wages and the ability to restore parts of the rain forests from which the Yerba plan grows.

Yesterday we explored how Google's results vastly vary based on where a search is being done from. This is largely a baseline for understanding where the results are. Today we will examine what course of action could be taken to elevate their relevancy for various searches. As always, Technoracle never recommends cheating on SEO. The rules and systems used by various search engines are very fair and have feedback mechanisms to promote relevant results. There is no point in coming up #1 for a topic like "horses" if your website is all about golfing. This serves no purpose and will annoy anyone unlucky enough to find your site.

Having said that, the first thing to do is to try and determine the actual search inventory that is available and what related searches might be useful. We ran some reports on various systems and determined the following:

The term "yerba mate" has relatively low competition and there are 246,000 global searches and 8,100 local searches per month. The term "yerba" by itself has over 823,000 global searches per month while the term "mate" has 13,000,000 plus. The latter must be heavily discounted since it is a term with a plurality of meanings. People may be trying to find a mate instead of yerba.

The company itself has done well and every month, over 9,900 searches are done for Guayaki. This indicates a good brand presence yet shows us that there is a lot of upside potential. Stated simply, being able to capitalize on close to a million new eyeballs per month on their website would be potentially lucrative.

There are also mis-spelled variants of "yerba mate" such as "yerbe mata" which are commonly used plus a third word "la" (spanish) used as an article in conjunction with the term. It is possible that capturing this traffic is something that could be of interest.

At this point we are ready to generate a report to present to Guayaki. The company is strong, has a great community and is ready to grow. There are various techniques that can be used to build search engine traffic but the most proven way is to ensure what you are serving your website visitors is what they are looking for. Our next step is to use some analytics to understand what the people searching for are hoping to find when they land on the website. Google Analytics is probably the best tool in the business for this.

On a final note - Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it! This will be our last post until after the holidays. Peace and blessings and thank you for supporting our blog.

SEO Lessons: Guayaki Yerba Mate

2011-12-22T10:52:00.001-08:00

As part of our ongoing technical work at Technoracle, we like to work with business owners to help them understand search engine optimization (commonly referred to as “SEO”) and provide better results for them. An initial step is often to ascertain the current state however this proves problematic. To explore this problem, we will use the case study of Guayaki. Guayaki is a company using a restorative business model to help provide fair wages to everybody in their supply chain and also restore sub tropical South American rain forests. in fact, it is referred to as the the "Mata Atlantica", or Atlantic Rainforest, deemed one of the top 5 priorities for biodiversity conservation in the world by conservation international. The Atlantic forest has been reduced to 7% of its original size.They sell products based on Yerba Mate, a substance commonly used and shared by civilizations for centuries and a common stimulant drink. The powers of Yerba Mate are very restorative and we have started consuming it while coding instead of coffee. On a personal note, it seems to be better for productivity than straight coffee or Coke/Pepsi.

Since most people curious about Yerba Mate seem to search for the term “Yerba Mate” or “Yerba Matte” (mis-spelled), they desire a good ranking and currently have it in some areas. The first step was to use our Google Adwords account to ascertain the most relevant search terms and search term volume for any given month. Google however, uses localization and profiling as factors in ranking search results. To illustrate this, we asked several of our networked associates and friends to help do a straw poll on the current rankings. From what we understand, most of them had never searched for this term before so the results were probably more accurate than someone who has already logged several searches for the term and has those searches linked to their profile. This blog post is a summary of some of the results we encountered. While not considered scientifically conclusive, these results may be of interest to others.

Google uses geographical location and Guayaki’s head office is in Sebastapol, CA, USA. Most of their business is in North America. The request was simple. We asked random associates to navigate to http://www.google.com and search for the term “yerba mate” and note where any guayaki.com hosted page appears in the results. Here is a random sampling of results:

This is only a small sampling but it shows a pattern of higher results in countries where the product is sold. We tried to search via google.com however google redirects the browsers to google.ca. We consider ourselves tainted as google could note that we (Yerba Mate fans) have visited guayaki.com several times and hence elevate it in my results via any personal google home pages. Nevertheless, we found it on page 2 in 12^th spot. This was shocking considering one of the principals and co-founders is located in British Columbia and does considerable business here.

So what does this mean?

Simply stated, search results seen by one person are not necessarily universally shared. The first step in SEO is to get an accurate read of where your site appears before any attempts to optimize. This, in itself, is a difficult feat. Google uses cookies, IP addresses and a host of other mechanisms to determine how to provide you with the most relevant search results. If you commonly search for your own brand, it is possible it may appear higher in search results on your computer than a computer that has never searched for the same term. Google, Yahoo and Bing have all stated this policy clearly but have not explained what that means exactly in terms of results.

What would we recommend for Guayaki?

Since the first site that appeared most commonly was Wikipedia, we found a way to link Guayaki to the Yerba Mate page in Wikipedia. This is done is accordance with Wikipedia’s terms of service and standards. The page itself claimed sources were required for verification so we added a footnote to show verification that Yerba Mate is in fact sold as an iced beverage in a can. Be careful about this however and do not try to spam others with links to your page. Some types of links are not even followed such as blogger comments. We never advocate trying to hack the system. The system is set up to govern itself via feedback and respecting terms of use is something we encourage all people to do.

Having said that, there is a potential that this blog article itself may end up elevating their ranking since it contains links to their site but that is not the intent of this post.

DISCLOSURE: David K. from Guayaki is a personal friend. He has not asked us to post this blog to help with SEO. We are merely helping him as we would with any other client to understand the SEO landscape. We have not been paid to post this article.

How does this information help you?

Before you start any SEO project, try a similar grass roots poll to understand where you currently rank and in what geographical areas your brand is ranked higher. Match this information with your goals. You may find this is a chicken and egg problem as business in one area may be slow due to the fact no one finds your website or brand via a search in Google, Bing or Yahoo. If you are trying to build business, approach SEO as a regional endeavor.

If you have any follow up questions on this topic, please don’t hesitate to contact duane at Nickull dot net. We’re always glad to help. If you want to know more about Guayaki, check out this video.

Data Mapping with Inference and Feedback

2011-12-20T06:00:00.000-08:00

We've worked with thousands of companies for most of the 1990's and early Web 2.0 era. Every Medium to large enterprise has typically struggled with data integration projects. Every new acquisition, system or IT project creates a new integration project. To make matters worse, there are no standard crosswalks for data mapping. This problem is not only epidemic, but increasingly neglected by many enterprises. David Luckham hinted at “IT Blindness” when a company makes incredible blunders that are compounded by false beliefs, often generated by a lack of real data or the inability to process events (both simple and complex). David has developed a set of patterns for solving some of these issues (Complex Event Programming or CEP), yet the events themselves still must be minable for data that can then be integrated.

The Problem:

Data mapping has historically been a rather time consuming practice, often done manually. There are multitudes of issues with data mapping, some of which are dependent upon the context in which instance data might appear. To illustrate this point, let us assume that we could create a single data dictionary of all the terms used in business. This approach has been tried many times with various EDI and XML dialects. Defining a simple data element such as one that would denote the first name of a human being should be easy, correct? The definition itself is not the issue, it is the ability to map it automatically when encountered. The logic of context often makes this hard. Take this data element for example:

Element Name: FirstNameOfPerson  
Type: String64
 Description: a string value representing the legal first name of a human being.

We could easily serialize this into an XML element as Duane. Now account for the fact that we must map this data format into a second format that has an element and semantics as follows:

Element Name: PersonFirstName  
Type: String
 Description: a string value representing the legal first name of a human being.

It might be easy to figure out that in a vacuum this is pretty straight forward. The challenge comes when the aspect of “context” is added. To illustrate this issue, consider the following data structures:

//PurchaseOrder/BuyerParty/FirstNameOfPerson

and

//PurchaseOrder/SellerParty/FirstNameOfPerson

While both use the same data element for the first name of a person, the semantics (or pragmatics rather) are slightly different based on the hierarchy and context. If both of these appear on the input side, they cannot be mapped to any instance of the PersonFirstName (the second example above) without contemplating the special nature each context brings. The meaning is the first name of a person but the two are not equal. One is the first name of the buyer party and the other is the first name of the seller party. Not immediately apparent is that the instance data set is now also bound to a process (procurement in this case).

The approach of manual data mapping has been around for a few decades. Automating this process is extremely difficult. A processor must be able to account for subtle differences in mapping rules based on a number of things. Even with the best schema and metadata support, exceptions and errors are likely to be encountered.

A Computational Intelligence (CI) approach caught my eye the other day. We at Technoracle have studied this problem for a number of years. The CI approach combines an inference engine with a graphical user interface. As input data is encountered, the user interface guides users by uggesting optimal mapping scenarios. Unlike more traditional approaches to auto-mapping that require a significant amount of preparatory work, the inference approach semi-automates some of the work.

Disclosure: we were contacted by an agent for Contivo to write about their system. No consideration was paid in exchange for this blog post. Technoracle reviews technology and does not speak for or make claims as a representative of the companies we highlight.

The approach espoused by one company in particular has caught our eye. Liaison’s Contivo (http://liaison.com/products/transform/contivo) builds reusable mappings by associating the metadata with a semantic "dictionary". The method uses an analytics model to parse incoming data, then it references that input against a dictionary that captures and stores mapping graphs. The dictionary is portable and can be leveraged by future transformation maps.

Liaison’s Contivo then establishes an integration vocabulary and thesaurus that may be fine tuned by manual methods. Contivo then leverages the vocabulary and thesaurus to automate data transformation and reconciliation tasks that are traditionally implemented using manual mapping techniques.

Figure – a snapshot of the Contivo Mapping

This approach was the basis for the long term product roadmap in XML Global Technologies, a company co-foundered in the dot com era. Their plan was use the mapping graphs built from their GoXML Transform product (now part of Xenos Group) and store these maps into a metadata Registry/Repository organized using a business ontology so they could be accessed by an entire community of users rather than one single enterprise. This approach made a lot of sense back then and makes a lot today. It also mitigates the issues of changing schemata and EDI vocabularies.

The problem has not gone away. There is a lot of great work being done my companies who can automate the mapping of integration data into known system. Using a feedback loop such as Contivo helps a system evolve over time and can facilitate a much more intelligent approach to solve this problem.

A long term architecture Contivo might consider is to use a social approach to learning via a centralized repository of mapping knowledge. Each of the users systems could continuously update and commit to a central knowledge base that uses the global trade dictionaries and various EDI and XML business dialects alongside a feedback circuit to learn the finer nuances of data translation.

We are left wondering if a standard should be developed for declaring reusable mapping graphs and if so, who should develop it. Many open data initiatives would benefit from this as would those who use the open data.

Samsung 1, Apple 0

2011-12-15T16:28:00.000-08:00

Victory! Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 was the subject of Apple's vexing for a long time. At one point, Apple even had a temporary injunction against Samsung which halted sales of the tab in Australia of all places. The good news is that according to the Android Community, an American judge has ruled in favor of Samsung and the new tablet is cleared for sale in North America.

The Android Community blog then goes on to state:

"In November a judge ruled that Samsung’s tablet might indeed violate the patents, but expressed doubt that such was a justification for granting a sales injunction. District Judge Lucy Koh made good on those statements today, saying, “”It is not clear that an injunction on Samsung’s accused devices would prevent Apple from being irreparably harmed.” (full story at http://androidcommunity.com/us-judge-denies-apple-injunction-samsung-sales-are-safe-for-now-20111203/)

Oh when will those in power learn this one simple lesson? If you try to ban or censor anything, all you do is feed it more attention. Apple in this case has probably itself to thank for the rise of this tablet's fame although Samsung was quick to taunt Apple with some very clever ads with slogans such as "The Tablet Apple Tried to Stop". Have they learned nothing since the Sex Pistols music was banned from public airwaves in the UK in the late 1970's? Have we not thought about the impact of the Spencer family trying to ban the Boomtown Rats "I don't like Mondays". Pouring gasoline onto a fire is an understatement.

Samsung officials have also indicated they will bring as many units to the public market as possible. Get them while you can! I do hope to enjoy mine in Canada!

App Store SEO (Continued)

2011-12-08T13:02:00.000-08:00

Earlier we published a blog entry discussing the important emerging market of App Store SEO (read). What we are learning is that there is a disturbing trend taking place with people who publish apps. Many simply direct users to their apps by phrases like "Go to the Apple Store or Google Market and search for <term>". Of a list of several dozen of these we researched, several of the searches now reveal competing apps are showing up above the vendors' application.

So why is this emerging place so important? Simple. Users search for applications. If you do not rank high enough in any filter query or search, the potential end user will not find your application. Most developers want a wide as possible implementation base of their mobile applications. We have spent a lot of our lives working on SEO. There are several posts on this blog about this topic.

Mobile application SEO is not only an emerging market, but will likely become a large part of an enterprises digital presence. Once again, the rules that determine most of the "relevancy" in various mobile app marketplaces has not been made public leaving us to test and hypothesize. Uberity has now come to understand the evolution of such systems. So what should individuals do?

1. Don't refer potential application users to your application with non-deterministic mechanisms like "search". You have no control over AppStore SEO and it is a dynamic place with new apps being added every minute. A better method would be to use absolute mechanisms to resolve directly to your app such as QR codes or a URI.

2. If you are trying to get a higher ranking in either the AppStore or the Google Android Market, do some research to find out what terms people are actually searching for that are relevant to your application. For example, if you have a financial stock market monitoring application, you might find that people are searching for terms like "Dow Jones", NYSE, Stock Market and more.

3. Use the terms from your research in your applications title and description. Some of these words are used for building a relevancy index for mobile applications.

4. Divide and conquer. Simply put, use your existing web presence to augment the mobile app visibility by creating links to it from your blog, website or other presence. Our initial research has shown some promising trends.

5. Don't use punctuation marks in your app title. This is valuable real estate and most are ignored by the search utilities. For example, searching for a "*" reveals no applications (https://market.android.com/search?q=*&so=1&c=apps) while searching for either "!" or "+" reveal a bunch of Google applications (https://market.android.com/search?q=%2B&so=1&c=apps).

6. Ensure you categorize your mobile application properly. Misclassifying a game as a business app would confuse people.

If you are reading this and want to know more about what we are doing, please contact us at info at uberity dot com or by visiting our website at http://www.uberity.com.

Uberity.com

2011-12-01T06:43:00.000-08:00

I want to thank everyone in all my communities and networks for the huge outpouring of support and well wishes. I am once again humbled to realize I am a truly blessed individual and have great support and friends. My mood every day is less and less complacent, a trait I cannot stand. Working at a large company too long breeds complacency and bureaucratic tendencies. These are rapidly fading as our new venture starts to shape up. Invention is the mother of all genius and intuitive improvisation is the key to that genius (the latter part applies to the Richard Dean Anderson in all of us).

Many of you have asked me what I am doing next or offered me jobs. I appreciate that and the thought of entering into another job is horrifying to me. I worked eight years at a big company, learned a lot, and have to digest the good, the band and the truly ugly. Adobe has been a very important role in my life and will continue to be a company I work with. My colleagues on the Evangelism team are all great individuals and I'm sure we'll cross paths again, even if I am hopeless at video games. I honestly wish all of them the most in terms of happiness and fulfilment.

So what is next? As the blues brothers did, so has Yellow Dragon Software. We are "Getting the band back together" to work on some game changing services and software. The new company, aptly named Überity, is operating in stealth mode right now. A lot of you have requested information and we honestly are in stealth mode right now. We cannot divulge anything publicly however if you wish to be amongst the first to know what we are doing, you can sign up now at http://www.uberity.com and request to be placed on the list.

Why are we doing this? Simple. Doing what you like to do to earn a living is coolest thing an individual can have. Me, a former professional mountain biker, professional musician and tech guy understands this better now that I did a decade ago. We LOVE innovation and solving complex problems. We love delivering value to society. We love doing what we love doing. Our work has to be fun. How cool would that be? This is why Überity exists.

According to the urban dictionary:

Uberian

The adjective form of the adverb, "uber." Used to describe nouns that are "uber cool," without using the phrase "uber cool" and sounding like a lil babe. Uberious has also been known to be used, as well as the noun form, "uberity."

Dude I totes love that club it was uberian.

To us, doing what we love for a living is about as cool as it gets.

Open Data Initiatives - Growth or Failure?

2011-11-28T13:51:00.000-08:00

One of the key areas of growth I have been watching is the birth of the open data movements. The Open Data Foundation is an important group who's mandate includes helping many agencies migrate to an open data architecture. (Disclosure: I sit on the Advisory Board). As a standards guy for more than a decade, I find their mandate admirable:

"The Open Data Foundation is committed to using and contributing to international standards and is a project- and results-focussed organisation. We believe in using open standards to deliver measurable benefits in solving business problems in the collection, production, and dissemination of statistics. The aim is use and integrate these standards in a coherent and consistent way, to develop tools and techniques to make them easy to use, and thereby work towards a universal and harmonised statistical architecture."

As noble as it sounds, the devil is often in the details. I have a meeting later today with David Eaves, an Open Data guru who has worked with many governments including the Government of British Columbia, Vancouver City Council (as championed by Andrea Reimer) and even at the national level. The gist of the work is that if we, as taxpayers, are footing the bill to create this data, shouldn't we be able to use it to make informed decisions? The answer to me is an overwhelming yes. So what about the details then?

If you take a look at the data publishing done my most agencies, it is often in mixed standards (flattened PDF's, Spreadsheets, Custom CSV (both text and binary), XML and more. Some o these format are easy to work with but trying to parse a spreadsheet with a non-deterministic style to it is a daunting task.

I recently took on such work for a proof of concept for the government of British Columbia. I worked with some CSV data from this stie and created a mobile application that runs on iOS, Android and BlackBerry Tablet.

One of the things that jumps right out is that open data needs a specialized set of Message Exchange Patterns and the published data has to be deterministic, available in many formats (like JSON/XML) and that callback and notification support is required in the event the data changes. As an example, this data is published as static data. As soon as I use it by embedding it, it could be obsolete if the original copy changes.

Another issue is that spreadsheets are not deterministic. If you have a spreadsheet and output CSV such as this:

Duane, Nickull, Human, Vancouver
Bill, Gates, Human, Seattle

This is an annotation. No one knows how to account for this if it changes nor how many lines it takes. Sometimes, naturally occurring commas can also be inside an annotation. OMG - what can be done?

Second, Set, Of, Data
Third, Set, Of, Data

This is an annotation. No one knows how to account for this if it changes nor how many lines it takes. Sometimes, naturally occurring commas can also be inside an annotation. OMG - what can be done?

Second, Set, Of, Data
Third, Set, Of, Data

it can be major headaches for those trying to parse the data. XML is far better yet this XML has issues:

These are relatively small data sets too. Imagine large data sets being requested by mobile devices?

What is required in this industry is a new type of data server that can address some of these problems. Ideas are rolling in my head already.

Goodbye Adobe - We had Fun

2011-11-24T16:30:00.000-08:00

As many of you have heard, I am no longer with Adobe Systems as a Sr. Technical Evangelist. While on the 3rd day of my vacation in Mexico, I got the call with the explanation that Adobe is doing a major refocus and as part of that, many of us "enterprise" types are no longer required. "Überflussig" I guess is the correct German word for the situation. Keep in mind that I now speak as an individual, not as an Adobe employee.

I missed most of the official story due to the timing of my vacation but caught up with a few news outlets to get the rationale. Techworld News reported the following:

"In order to drive increased Digital Marketing bookings, which are recognized as recurring revenue, the company will reduce its investment, and expected licence revenue, in certain enterprise solution product lines," it said in a statement.

Its enterprise products include Adobe Connect and Adobe LiveCycle, as well as web content management software it acquired last year when it bought Day Software."

On top of this, another statement from Infoworld confirmed that Adobe has indeed thrown in the towel on Flash for mobile browsers. The headline reads "Adobe ends mobile Flash Player, reveals enterprise pullback" and subtext reveals a focus on AIR and HTML5 for mobile.

Confused? I guess being known as the enterprisey guy for so long has now sealed my fate. Although there was a minor shock as I got this news just a week after finding out that my Adobe MAX AIR Mobile Code Camp (one of the areas of major focus for Adobe) scored an all time high for the AIR track of 4.96/5 with over 70 responses. My Flex Mobile Code camp also scored the same (4.96/5). This makes me a MAX Master for the second year in a row although I somehow doubt I will be there for the next MAX.

Nevertheless, the words I once heard from friend and fellow mountain bike racer Alison Sydor rang in my head. Any time you have been doing something for longer than five years, it is time to re-evaluate and re-think. Perhaps it is time to move on to a new opportunity. I loved working at Adobe and appreciated everything I learned there. The people are great, awesome company and the next generation of tools are things I will be working with. It is too easy though to become complacent if you stagnate for too long a time.

I also want to thank the Evangelism Team publicly for working through a lot of hard challenges and say it was truly amazing. Adobe - thank you and best of luck!!

So what is next? Can't tell you but watch this space for a new announcement on Uberity!

Adobe Continues Its Move into Online Advertising

2011-11-20T10:56:00.000-08:00

Adobe announced this past week the acquisition of Auditide Inc., a provider of video advertising technology, in its third advertising industry purchase in the last couple years.

The purchase reflects both Adobe’s interest in branching into the industry and the increasing sophistication of online advertising in the first place. During the early years of widespread Internet use, online advertisements were generally basic and unrefined compared to advertisements found in print and television media. Internet ads, often displayed in the form of blinking banners, unrelated gimmicks, and direct textual appeals, represented a crude and fast-growing business – one that grew rapidly alongside the web but displayed little tendency for innovation. As hosting companies evolved to offer services like Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint Hosting, many marketers used these platforms as the basis of more advanced and holistic adverising.

These ads still proliferate online these days, but site managers and developers more and more often look to create ads that are more professional, unobtrusive, and better targeted towards an intended audience. Businesses can create these targeted ads by tracking information about a person’s browsing habits, and the ads can then be easily disseminated through services such as Google’s AdSense. If an Internet user spends a lot of time searching Google for old high school friends, for example, they may soon thereafter see an ad for classmates.com or Anywho.com. These ads now more likely mirror advertisements made through other media channels in both content and construction.

More recently, online advertisers have turned their focus to newer frontiers. Prime among them are advertisements inserted into internet video. With people increasingly watching not just short clips but also full-length movies and television shows online, internet video advertising is an increasingly specialized and lucrative business.

Which brings us to Adobe’s recent purchase of Auditude. Auditude, which has raised funding from a variety of venture capitalist firms, provides a service for putting ads into online videos and works with publishers to create a standardized advertising approach across various video types. The company will be bringing its clients, software, and expertise into Adobe’s fold, which promises to quickly spur Adobe’s quest to enter and excel in the online advertising industry.

Adobe’s intentions to branch into advertising are nothing new. Over the past couple years the company has acquired several businesses to help achieve this goal, most notably Omniture in 2009 and Demdex, a business that manages audience data, earlier this year. The purchase of Auditude was only the most recent development in this quest.

In a statement released by Adobe, the company said that its technology fits well with Auditude’s advertising platform, which it will integrate with the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite. While the terms of the sale were not disclosed, the deal has an estimated value of about $120 million.

In conjunction with the Auditude acquisition, Adobe also announced the launch of a service it calls Project Adthenticate, which will use IAB’s Rich Media Creative Guidelines to test and optimize online advertisements. The service, the company hopes, will draw clients to its burgeoning ad business and make it a leader in more sophisticated marketing technologies, such as those behind the growing use of interactive ads.

It is yet to be determined whether Abode will become one of the leaders in the booming online advertising market, especially in the realm of video ads. But with its recent moves and acquisitions, there is little doubt that it is moving in the right direction.

Adobe Edge - My First JQuery/HTML5 Application

2011-11-01T11:08:00.000-07:00

So I downloaded Adobe Edge a few days ago and installed it yesterday. Within ten minutes I was able to create a simple animation with almost no coding. Adobe Edge Preview 3 literally blew us away in the first few minutes by allowing the creation of JQuery and HTML/CSS animations using a WYSIWYG editor environment.

To see this again, just hit "reload". Note that the JavaScript files are located on a remote server. This could result in a slower loading. The total size of all files to build the animation above is only 191 KB. The source code for this is clean, elegant and nicely formatted.

The Edge Preview release APIs are also documented online at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/resources/jsapi.html. I feel like I need a good project now to fully test Edge in a production environment. Any ideas?

App Store SEO

2011-10-31T14:25:00.000-07:00

I've been toying around with mobile application SEO for some time now and doing some structured research. The field is focused on the study of how applications are sorted and ranked when a generic search term is utilized within a mobile application marketplace. I believe the field of app store SEO will be a large area of focus for developers in the years to come. The practice of optimizing mobile application listings within the dominant application stores in addition to the search engines will be an essential survival skill. Basically, if your application is not found, it will not be installed and used.

Here is a use case. I built an application called Magic Screen Pro. It is a drawing application yet when I search on "drawing", my application does not show up in the first 100 search results.

There are currently only a handful of dominant mobile application stores such as Apple's App Store, the Google Android Market and BlackBerry's App World. Additionally, to add to the complexity of SEO for Mobile applications, many app stores exist with variants of the major app stores and are filtered by criteria such as ratings, downloads, languages, countries, and paid vs. free apps. In a coming series of articles, I will build off previous SEO articles and write about some of my preliminary findings.

One of the first things to note is that the models used by Apple, Google, and RIM all seem to have both similarities and major differences. Unlike web searches, app store results are presented as a combination of filter query and rankings algorithms. The filters have several normalized components such as "most popular" and "price". The problem seems to arise when a generic mobile application is sought via the search tool in an app store. For example, searching on Google's Android Market for "Stock Market" results in over 1,000 results on the first set of results (over 21,000 in total as of the date of this post - https://market.android.com/search?q=stock+market&so=1&c=apps). The results are ordered the same whether you search from the Google Market application itself vs. a web search.

This similarity also appears within the Apple App Store.

So how do the results get ranked? Let's look at Google first. The Android Market uses three specific filters - price, safe search (presumably to ward off adult content), and a "sort by" filter. The latter has "relevance" selected as default. They are shown below.

The "Sort by Relevance" is the key filter to understand. The exact mechanism by which it works is private, similar to Apple's App Store. So how does Google determine "relevance"? At first I had assumed it was the size of the install base however this turned out to be a dead end. In fact, at a meta level, the first five results are not correct. Fox Financial News has the first application. I find it hard to believe it is the most relevant for the term "Stock Market". The second highest ranked app is actually a link to the "App Brain Market". When a user clicks through to https://market.android.com/details?id=com.appspot.swisscodemonkeys.apps&feature=search_result and looks, there is no mention either in visible text or source code of the search term "stock market". The third result is by Snapworks Technologies and has an install base of between 100,000 to 500,000.

By Google's own admission, the following criteria is available to search for apps:

Featured: great apps hand-picked by the Android Market team
Top Free: popular free apps of all time
Top New Free: popular free apps less than 30 days old
Top Paid: popular paid apps of all time
Top New Paid: popular paid apps less than 30 days old
Top Grossing: applications and games generating the most revenue, including app purchases and in-app payments
Trending Apps: apps showing a hockey stick growth in installs in the last 24 hours
Editors' Choice Apps: Some of the very best apps available for Android, chosen by the Android Market team
Top Developer: Some of the very best developers on Android Market, chosen by the Android Market team

On top of this, some variants of Android markets allow users to filter results based on the version of Android. There are some additional criteria for allowing applications to be found.

Priced applications availability: Priced apps are only available to buyers in these countries. If you are not in a buyer-supported country, you will be unable to view priced applications.

Location: You may only view the version of Market for your country. For example, UK users may only view the UK version of Android Market from their devices. If a developer has not targeted his app to your home country, you may be unable to view it.

Mobile service provider: In addition to targeting for location, a developer may also target their application to specific mobile service providers. If a developer is not targeting your mobile service provider, you will not be able to view the application.

Note that Google declares that no application may appear in a top spot as a result of paying to be featured. Could it be that they intend to let the market dynamically choose the top results as is done with normal search engine results? I believe that this is in fact the case. The pattern is very simple - the first search result page contains code that tracks which applications users select. The system itself is not perfect and will need to be augmented with ontological classifications, however it is the only logical path to take.

So what works? For starters, the title of the application seems to be worth its weight in gold. Recall the earlier example of my Magic Screen Pro application not showing up for the term "drawing". When I search for "Magic Screen", it appears in the #7 position out of 805 applications.

Google also seems to track the clicks on a search result, hence the more people that click through on each app counts as votes towards raising the ranking in the overall application store.

What seems to not affect mobile application SEO? I have found that the choice of technologies used to build an applications seem to be irrelevant. Even in the App Store where one could suspect that Apple might be prejudiced against applications built using Adobe Flash Builder tooling, it seems to make no difference.

What needs to be researched more? I plan on conducting further research into the exact mechanisms used including external links, links from other mobile applications, keyword usage in app descriptions, and more. This aspect of technology is relatively new and requires proper research to help developers understand the basics. Stay tuned for more as information becomes available.

Adobe Edge Explained

2011-10-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

Adobe's push into HTML5 has been around for a long time. On top of participating in the actual standards development effort to move the web forward, Adobe has been building some of the first major implementations of HTML5 authoring tools. Given the adoption of any technology is inversely related to the complexity to use it, Adobe Edge represents a great potential for people to author complex HTML5/JQuery/CSS and AJAX applications.

This blog explains the recent changes of the newer release and some great tips on how to use it. As a former standards guy, I love this direction!

Don't take my word for it. Try it for free by downloading it here:
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs_edge

Very Cool AIR Mobile Application

2011-10-18T05:58:00.000-07:00

Burhan Bozkurt has built a mobile IM and Video Chat application with Adobe AIR.

The name of the application is B-Messenger. Thanks to AIR 3, both Android and iOS versions are very stable and functional now.

iOS version iTunes links:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/b-messenger-private-video/id464791873?mt=8

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/b-messenger-lite-private-video/id464773864?mt=8 (Lite Version)

Android version Android Market links:

https://market.android.com/details?id=air.com.bilye.b_messenger

https://market.android.com/details?id=air.com.bilye.b_messenger_lite (Lite Version)

Silicon Valley Code Camp Materials

2011-10-17T13:10:00.000-07:00

The 2011 Silicon Valley Code Camp rocked! Peter and the other organizers have really put on a first class event and it is great to watch it grow year over year. The high point of this event is that it is all free and covers so much disparate technology. I plan to be there next year.

For those who attended my sessions, here are the files I promised.

1. Customer Experience Management (CEM) for Architects - this is a look at an emerging architectural discipline surrounding multi-channel user experience. The key relationships between running a successful enterprise and having a good user experience over disparate channels are discussed.

CEM-SVCC_Oct2011.ppt.zip - PPT format (18 MB)

2. Hands on Mobile Development using Flash Builder for iOS, Android and BlackBerry Tablet OS - during this course you will learn how to set up your development environment, architect and build a mobile application, use arrays, switch-case statements, while loops, data binding, remote data handling, Accelerometer access, Camera and Microphone access, GPS Receiver and all basic gestures. Anyone can take this course with a little XML syntax knowledge and basic programming experience.

BL3453-ALL.zip - ZIP archive of source code, icons, preparation guide and courseware

Enjoy!

Very Cool SAP & Adobe Train Race Event

2011-10-08T10:21:00.000-07:00

My colleague Doug Massa is organizing a three-day pre-SAP TECHED training and contest designed to help you develop an enterprise application based on the SAP NetWeaver Gateway platform and related SAP partner technologies. The SAP Train Race will start in Paris with a one day, immersive training event focused on SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Adobe technologies . After the training teams will have the opportunity to get hands-on with the technology with the help of SMEs from SAP and partners, before joining us for a ride on the Elipsos Train Hotel to the SAP TECHED conference in Madrid. On the train, teams will develop an enterprise app using NetWeaver Gateway and Adobe Flash Builder. On the train will be SAP and Adobe resources to help with design and implementation questions and offer best practices for Gateway and Flash Builder, which includes FAQ and registration information.

Who Should Participate:

We are looking to have four Adobe teams with 2-4 people per team. The overall team should have working experience with SAP ABAP and be comfortable with Flash Builder 4.5. Ideally teams are attending Tech Ed Madrid. There is no cost for this event but it is encouraged for people attending Tech Ed Madrid to participate.

Sign Up Deadline: We would like to have all teams registered by Oct. 11th.

More information:
SDN (SAP Developer Network) posting: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/26738
SAP Train Race site: www.saptrainrace.com

Gateway Beta Program: If anyone wants to be part of our pre-release program please send Doug Massa an email (dmassa@adobe.com). Developers interested should be familiar with SAP and comfortable using Flash Builder.

Google Android Development with Flash Builder - Preparation Guide

2011-09-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

This is the third in a series of articles explaining how to set up your development environment to prepare for attending my Adobe MAX preconference hands-on code camp. The previous articles covered setting up Flash Builder and devices for iOS Application Development and BlackBerry Tablet OS development with Adobe Flash Builder.

In this post, you will learn how to set up Flash Builder and your Google Android device (running Android 2.2 or later) to get ready for development.

1. The first step is to install Adobe AIR on your device if you have not already done so. Simply visit the Android Market on your device, search for Adobe AIR, and complete the free install. Here's a link: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.adobe.air&hl=en

2. Next, you need to enable USB debugging on your device. From the Home screen, tap Settings, and then select Applications > Development. Enable the USB debugging option. If there is an option to stay awake while charging, enable that too. NOTE: This cannot be set while your phone is tethered to your computer. Unplug the mini-usb cable before setting this.

3. If you're running Windows, you'll need to set up a USB device driver for your device. For more information on this, see Connect Google Android Devices. Depending on which version of Windows you're running and what Android device you have, the device driver set up can take some time.

This AdobeTV video by Platform Evangelist Bhakti Pingale walks through the setup steps for a Samsung Galaxy Tab: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adc-presents/mobile-device-debugging-using-usb/.

4. Plug your phone into your computer and open Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 or later.

5. Choose New > Flex Mobile Project and give your application a name. Ensure that the defaults are selected as shown below.

6. Click Next and ensure that under Mobile Settings the Google Android checkbox is checked. If you are only developing for this one platform, deselect the others. Click the Permissions tab and ensure you have the appropriate permissions selected for each item you want to use. For example, if your app needs to use the Internet and access the camera on a Google Android device, you must select the permissions as shown below.

7. If you are building for both Tablet and smart phones, your application will have to be scaled for different screen densities and sizes. I usually select the Scale Up From 160 dpi checkbox. Click Finish.

8. Build your application. If you want to see how easy this is, open the file created under the Views package, switch to Design view, and add a button. Double-click the button to change the name to something unique (like "Hello Technoracle"). If you are looking for some easy tutorials for mobile application development, please download the course from http://www.22ndcenturyofficial.com/MAX2011/BL3453-ALL.zip

9. Once your application is complete, you may wish to release it to the Google Market. To do this, you first need to make a proper certificate. This process is described in this blog post on generating a P12 certificate for the Google Market using the Adobe AIR SDK.

10. When your application is complete, choose File > Export. In the dialog box that appears, select Flash Builder > Release Build and click Next.

11. Ensure that the correct project is selected in the next screen along with the proper path location at which you wish to place your APK file. APK files are the install packages for Google Android. Also ensure that the Signed Packages For Each Platform setting is checked and click Next.

12. A screen will appear asking you for the location of the certificate and password that you created in step 9 above. Fill these in and click on the deployment header and ensure that Install And Launch Application on Any Connect Devices is checked. Make sure your Android device is connected and click Finish.

That is it! Your application will compile into an *.APK file and install itself on your Google Android device. If your application was built with a simple button it will appear and run as shown below.

Your application can be placed in the Google Market by creating an account and following the instructions at https://market.android.com

iOS Development and Programming with Flash Builder - Preparation Guide

2011-09-20T17:08:00.000-07:00

Many people have wanted to get into iOS development to build applications for iPad, iPhone, and iPods. Developing in Objective C is one option but this would require you to have different projects if you also wanted to create mobile applications for Android and other operating systems. With Adobe Flash Builder 4.5.1, you can write a code base once and compile it for iOS, Android, Desktop, Adobe AIR and BlackBerry Tablet OS without substantial modifications. This is the second in a series of articles explaining how to set up your development environment. The previous article was for BlackBerry Tablet OS development with Flash Builder.

In this post, you will learn how to generate a digital certificate and a provisioning file, both required to install and run a mobile application on an iOS device. If you're to attending my Adobe MAX preconference hands-on code camp and you plan on using your iOS device, you'll need the certificate and the provisioning file before you arrive.

The instructions below are geared towards Mac OS. If you're developing on Windows or if you run into problems with the Apple Development Provisioning Assistant I recommend following the steps in Holly Schinsky's thorough guide.

1.   Navigate to the Apple developer center and apply for an account. This will cost approximately $99 and may take up to two business days. The URL is http://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/index.action

The next step is to obtain a Development Certificate. (Again the steps below are for Mac only. If you're on Windows you'll need to use OpenSSL or something similar.)

2.   To generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) with a public key, start by opening your Applications folder, then open the Utilities folder and launch Keychain Access.

3.   Choose Keychain Access > Certificate Assistant > Request a Certificate from a Certificate Authority.

4. In the Certificate Information window, enter or select the following information:

In the User Email Address field, type your email address
In the Common Name field, type your name
In the Request is group, select the Saved To Disk option

Click Continue.

5. The Certificate Assistant saves a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) file to your Desktop. I use a folder in the Flash Builder workspace named Apple with two subfolders, CSRs and Provisioning.

The public/private key pair will be generated when you create the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) if you use the Key Chain Assistant to create the CSR.

6. Submit the CSR through the Provisioning Portal at https://developer.apple.com/ios/manage/overview/index.action.

After logging into the iOS Dev Center, click iOS Provisioning Portal.

7. Click the Certificates link on the top left hand side.

8. Click the Development tab.

Note: To deploy an application to a device, you need a development certificate. To deploy the application to the Apple App Store, you need a distribution certificate. For the purposes of this session, you can use a development certificate.

9. Click Request Certificate, and then upload the certificate request by choosing the CSR file and clicking Submit.

When the status on your certificate request is "Issued", you can move on to getting a provisioning file.

10. Click the Home link on the top left hand side to return to the iOS Provisioning Portal's main page.

11. Click Launch Assistant to start the Development Provisioning Assistant.

12. The assistant will launch and provide an overview of the steps required to create a provisioning profile. Click Continue.

13. When the Assistant asks you for the App ID Description, type MAX2011 and click Continue.

14. Specify the device you are going to use. (If you have previously set up a device, you can select it from a drop down list.)

Type a description of your device (for example, John Smith iPad) and type its Unique Device ID.

Apple provides the following guidance for locating your Unique Device ID:

To locate your UDID, connect your device to your Mac and open Xcode. Navigate to the "Window" drop down menu and select "Organizer". The 40 character string in the Identifier field is your device's UDID. Copy and paste this string into the field above.

You can also find the UDID in iTunes.

Click Continue.

15. You will be prompted for a certificate. The certificate you created earlier should be visible. Click Continue.

16. On the next screen, type a Profile Description (for example, MAX2011) and then click Generate.

17. This will generate a provisioning file named something like MAX2011.mobileprovision. Download it and save it under your Flash Builder workspace. For convenience, I save mine under a folder to hold all Apple iOS related assets used by multiple applications.

18. As a final step, you'll want to convert your development certificate to a P12 certificate file. See Converting a developer certificate into a P12 file for detailed instructions on generating this file on Mac OS and Windows.

That's it...you have finished the preparations for your iOS device and Flash Builder.

To build an iOS app in Flash Builder you'll need:

Your iOS development certificate in P12 format
Your Application ID to insert in the application descriptor XML file
Your developer provisioning profile

If you have any problems with the steps, email me at dnickull at adobe dot com.

BlackBerry Tablet Development with Flash Builder 4.5.1

2011-09-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

If you're attending the Adobe MAX preconference hands-on code camp that Garth Braithwaite and I will be delivering, you'll need to do some preparation in advance.

In this post, I outline the steps for BlackBerry Tablet preparation, which should be done well in advance if you want to run the code-camp application on the device.

Below is a depiction of the steps required.

Figure courtesy of Research in Motion.

0. Request BlackBerry code signing keys, and obtain RDK and PBDT CSJ files from BlackBerry at https://www.blackberry.com/SignedKeys/. According to RIM, it may take up to two hours to receive the keys in via email. (You may want to leave a bit of leeway here, mine took about three hours to arrive.)

1. Once the emails arrive, save both of them to your local file system. For convenience, I set up a folder inside my Flash Builder 4.5.1 workspace named BlackBerryDev and saved both of the CSJ files to that folder.

Note: If you want to know what these files are, check out the additional documentation at this URL: http://docs.blackberry.com/en/developers/deliverables/23959/Signing_your_application_1422721_11.jsp

Basically the file with the PBDT is a PlayBook Debugging Tool. The RDK one is not easy to find information about.

2.       Start Flash Builder 4.5.1.

3.       Choose Flash Builder > Preferences (or Window > Preferences) to open the Preferences dialog box.

4.    In the Preferences dialog box, select Flash Builder > Target
   Platforms > BlackBerry Tablet OS as shown below.

5.    Click the "download and install the SDK" link.

6.    When you click the link, your default browser will open and load the page at http://us.blackberry.com/developers/tablet/ . Click the "BlackBerry Tablet OS for Adobe AIR" link in the bottom left.

7.    Then click either Download BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for AIR for Windows or Download BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for AIR for Mac.

8.    Shut down Flash Builder during the next few steps.

9.    When the download is finished, click the installer and install the SDK. There are several steps to pay close attention to.

10.    When asked if you want to integrate with Flash Builder, select Yes as shown below.

In the next step you will be asked where Flash Builder is installed. By default, this will be /Applications/Adobe Flash Builder X.X (on OS X) and c:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash Builder (on Windows). DO NOT confuse this with the location of the current workspace used by Flash Builder.

11.    Next you will be prompted for a location to install the BlackBerry SDK. As with the CSJ files above, I chose to use the folder BlackBerryDev under the Flash Builder workspace in order to keep all assets in one place.

12.    Click Next, and then click Install. Before the install completes you may see a message notifying you that you'll need to upgrade the SDK plug-in. The steps for doing this are as listed in step 13a below.

13.    You should see the final screen indicating success. (If anything went wrong, please consult the Research In Motion (RIM) developer site.) Click Done.

13a. If you were instructed to upgrade the SDK plug-in after installation completed, then follow the steps you were given on the screen, which I've summarized below. NOTE: Make sure you run Flash Builder as administrator when performing these steps:

1. In Adobe Flash Builder, choose Help > Install New Software.
2. In the Available Software section, click Add.

3. In the Add Repository section, click Local, navigate to <BlackBerry_Tablet_OS_SDK_Install_Directory>/update_site_for_FB and click OK.

4. Back in the Available Software section, select BlackBerry Tablet OS Support, and click Next.

14. Re-open Flash Builder, open the Preferences dialog box, and again select Flash Builder > Target Platforms > BlackBerry Tablet OS.

15. Click the SDK Path Browse button and navigate to the folder in which you just installed the BlackBerry Tablet SDK. Select that folder and click Save.

16.    Click OK to close the dialog box.

17.    Open the Preferences dialog box once more.

18.    Select Flash Builder > Target Platforms > BlackBerry Tablet OS > Signing and click Register.

19.    To register with the RIM Signing Authority, you must provide the following information:

RDK CSJ Path:        Specify where you installed this file
PBDT CSJ Path:      Specify where you installed this file
CSJ Pin:                  Type the PIN you used when you registered to receive the CSJ files on the BlackBerry Website.
CSK Password:       Type a password.
Confirm CSK Password:    Retype it.

Also, select the Save Password option. If you see an option labeled Automatically Generate Development Certificate, select that as well.

20. Click OK once you have entered this information. Flash Builder will register with RIM.

21. You are now ready to create a certificate. Back in the Preferences dialog box, click Create Certificate.

22. In the Create Developer Certificate dialog box, fill in the required information.

Certificate Path: This is the path you want to store the new certificate in. Once again, I chose to use the <Flash_Builder_Workspace>/BlackBerryDev/ folder, but I added a new subdirectory named Certs to store the certificate. I like to keep all the BlackBerry assets in a single location.

Author: For some reason, this setting seems to work best with no spaces. Use your name or company name.

Keystore Password: Create a Keystore Password you will remember. You will be prompted for this each time you use this certificate.

Save Password: Select this option.

Click OK.

23. You are now ready to add devices. Turn on your BlackBerry Playbook tablet and click its Settings icon (the gear icon in the upper right).

24. Within the settings screen, select Wi-Fi, ensure Wi-Fi Connectivity is enabled, and join the same network as your development machine. In the example shown below, this is duanenet.

25. Next, click About in the top left corner and then select Network from the drop down menu to find your IP address. In the example shown below, it is 192.150.23.8.

26. You will need to upload a debug token to the device. Select Security on the left and click Development Mode.

27. In the Development Mode screen, toggle Use Development Mode on, and then click Upload Debug Token. Note: When you turn Development Mode on, you'll need to set a device password if you have not already done so. Remember the password you set, you'll need it again in Step 29.

28.    Back in Flash Builder, open Preferences and select Flash Builder > Target Platforms > BlackBerry Tablet OS > Test Devices.


29.    Click Add to add a test device.

In the Add BlackBerry Tablet OS Test Device dialog box, enter the following information:

Device Name:   Type a descriptive name for your device.
Device IP:         Type the IP address you obtained above.
Password:         Type the password for the device.
Save password: Select this option.

30.    Click Create A Debug Token And Upload It To This Device.   This will bring up a warning that says you have to put your device in debug token upload mode.

You've already done this in previous steps, so just click OK. If the device times out of upload mode, you may have to repeat these steps.

31. If all goes well, you should see your device listed as a Test Device. Click OK.

32. You should also see your device indicate that the Debug Token has been installed.

33. Congratulations! You have finished the preparations for your BlackBerry tablet and Flash Builder.

If you have any problems with the steps, email me at dnickull at adobe dot com.

ColdFusion Developer Week - Sept 12-16 and FREE!

2011-09-08T01:23:00.001-07:00

ColdFusion Developer Week is a series of free, live webinars hosted by seasoned ColdFusion experts who will cover a wide range of topics from what ColdFusion is, how to code it, all the way through to more in depth topics such as ORM and ColdFusion Builder Extensions. If you are a new developer, someone with little or no ColdFusion experience, or even if you have been using ColdFusion all your life, this event is ideal for you. The ColdFusion Developer Week provides something for everyone, so sign up now! http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1489920

WOOT!

Adobe MAX 2011 - Developing cross-OS mobile apps with Adobe Flash Builder, Flex, AIR & ADEP

2011-09-06T01:42:00.000-07:00

At Adobe MAX on Sunday (preconference), Garth Braithwaite and I will be delivering a very cool hands-on code camp. This is a 480-minute session and a bring-your-own computer session so if you register for it, you will need to do some preparation. Some of the preparations will be posted on this site but they will also be pushed to all registered attendees.

In this lab you'll get up and running building a mobile application with Adobe AIR. The lab will focus on the smartphone form factor, so bring your Android phone, BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, or iPhone. We'll do an introduction to AIR for mobile and then dive into the Flex framework to see how it makes building standalone applications easy. You'll learn how to use native device features like the camera or GPS, plus how to create and manage views, data, and layout within your application. You'll also get a hands-on look at how to debug, optimize, and deploy to devices using Flash Builder.

Part of this course will be focused in on using the Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform (ADEP) and connecting to it using Flash Builder.

Here is a rough sketch of the session:

Lab 1: Building a new Mobile Application Project
Lab 2: Pushing Data Between Views
Lab 3: Packaging and Deploying the Application
3.1 Android Release
3.2 iOS Release
3.3 BlackBerry Tablet OS Release
Lab 4: Getting System Details
Lab 5: Adding a Back (Home) Button to the ActionBar
Lab 6: Zoom Gestures
Lab 7: Pan Gestures
Lab 8: Rotate Gestures
Lab 9: Accelerometer

LUNCH
BREAK

Lab 10: Install the Flash Builder ADEP Plugins
Lab 11: Starting and learning the ADEP Server
Lab 12: Installing the ADEP SDK and Samples packages
Lab 13: Extract, Set up and Run the sampledb
Lab 14: Enable Remote Data Services via the Felix Console
Lab 15: Retrieving and Installing the ADEP SDK into Flash Builder
Lab 16: Setting up a new Flash Builder ADEP Project
Lab 17: Building the Flex Client Application for ADEP
Demonstrating the Application
Lab 18: Adding Nodes and XML Content to ADEP
Lab 19: Building a Flex Mobile Project that consumes ADEP Services
How to build the ADEP_XML View
Getting Details about each wine
Lab 20: Advanced ADEP mobile services
Lab 21: Building a RESTful mobile application with ADEP
Lab 22: Learn how to use cross-platform push messaging
Lab 23: Learning how to use local notifications
Lab 24: Adding two-factor authentication

CAVEATS:

There is no guarantee this is the final list of labs however it should be relatively close.

Requirements:
- comfortable with XML syntax
- some coding experience would be good

There are still some seats left for this session. You can register at:
https://max.adobe.com/schedule/by-day/
Preconference session 403-A

My rock life in Tech

2011-08-31T12:13:00.000-07:00

22nd Century just released the 2nd video featuring the title track from Where's Howie!? 24,000 views in the first two weeks! Hope you enjoy the alter-ego Duane Nickull aka Duane Chaos

A FREE Adobe Flex/AIR Mobile Code Camp

2011-08-25T12:38:00.000-07:00

In advance of Adobe MAX 2011 - Monday, September 26, 2011, 9:00 AM in Vancouver, BC

REGISTER NOW - LIMITED SPACE!

SFU Segal School of Business

500 Granville Street, Vancouver, BC (map)

Rooms 1200-1500 on Main Floor

SELECTED BY: PATTY LEE

Adobe Sr. Technical Evangelist Duane Nickull will lead a FREE full-day hands-on development class to teach all attendees how to build mobile applications that run on iOS, BlackBerry Playbook Tablet OS and all Android 2.2 or later devices. This course is meant to be taken hands-on, code-camp style with your own computer.

What you will learn:

- how to set up your mobile development environment on your own computer (a preparation guide will be sent out in advance)

- how mobile applications are architected and run in cross-platform scenarios

And then nothing but coding!!

Learn how to create mobile applications to target iOS, Android, and BlackBerry PlayBook operating systems via hands-on development. Topics will include architecture of portable code (code that runs on more than one platform); setting up your mobile application project; using and sharing data between views; accessing and using smartphone and tablet features such as cameras, microphones, and accelerometers; native application integration; file system browsing and storage; graphics and layout; deploying to your devices; and more.

You will also learn how to install and use the Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform (ADEP), a services (OSGi) platform written in Java, and how to connect to it to build enterprise class applications.

When you leave this session, you will be immersed in knowledge and have the ability to create your own mobile applications for your company or new startup.

Adobe MAX 2011 - Rock and Roll!

2011-08-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

In case you've been hiding under a rock for the past decade, you should know that Adobe MAX 2011 is going to be the best tech event of the year. This year, Adobe MAX 2011 will be held at the Los Angeles, CA convention Center for the third straight year. I will be on hand to present tons of new materials, concentrating on only hands-on code camps with Bring-your-own-computer sessions.

The first one I want to tell you about is the 480-minute long session PB1300 -

Deploying cross-vendor, cross-OS mobile applications with Adobe AIR

The description of this session is not really on track but here is what you will learn in this full day lab session. The title should be Developing cross-OS mobile applications with Adobe Flash Builder, Flex, AIR, and ADEP.

- Setting up your development environment. Note that we will send out a full preparation guide in advance that will explain how to set up Flash Builder with the new Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform (ADEP) and the plugins and tweaks to build applications for BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet OS, all Android devices, and iOS.

Rather than the session title of "Deploying", at Adobe MAX 2011 you will be "Building". This means a full day of hands-on coding with two instructors (myself and Garth Braithwaite) as well as some great TAs such as Matt MacKenzie and Stacy Young who we hope to entice into teaching some of their expertise.

In this MAX 2011 lab you'll get up and running building mobile applications with Adobe Flash Builder, using both the Flex Framework and Adobe AIR. The lab will focus on the smartphone form factor, so bring your devices. We'll do an introduction to AIR for mobile and then dive into the Flex Framework to see how it makes building standalone applications easy. You'll learn how to use native device features like the camera or the accelerometer plus how to create and manage views, data, and layout within your application. You'll also get a hands-on look at how to debug, optimize, and deploy to devices using Flash Builder and connect to remote services from ADEP.

This special Adobe MAX 2011 preconference session is only run once on Sunday 9:00 to 5:00 PM!
https://max.adobe.com/schedule/by-day/

Free multi screen mobile app - Magic Screen Pro

2011-08-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

After working on this for a few hours more I decided to release it into the wild. It is available in the Android Marketplace as "Magic Screen Pro". The application is basically a freehand drawing application that allows the user to select line thickness and color. This is a sample screenshot of the app:

This app has several new features not seen on many other Flex/AIR mobile applications. First, it features the ability to save work as *.jpg files. For some reason this sometimes sticks on the iPad. Secondly, it has a unique color picker custom component for mobile. I published this component separately here. It also accesses the camera roll so you can add background images.

There is no way I have found to flatten two layers when one supports a transparency channel though, so you can only save the drawing.

The source code for this app is hosted on my band's website at
http://www.22ndcenturyofficial.com/ForBlogDoNotDelete/MagicScreenPro.fxp

LiveCycle ES3 is now released as ADEP, lists open for business!

2011-08-15T13:16:00.000-07:00

I have been debating how to write this message for a while and finally decided to make a brain dump to this blog and on the Google list.

As many of you know, Adobe has decided to retire the name LiveCycle for what would have constituted the ES3 release. The new release is called the Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform (ADEP). The Document Services side of the product itself will be very familiar to LiveCycle developers and components such as the server, WorkSpace and WorkBench/Designer are all present and well built.

The great news is that it is available for download now!!!

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/enterprise-platform.html

This leaves a quandary for the user group lists and I am going to make a suggestion. There are two relevant lists for LiveCycle ES developers that will be affected as well as a new list for ADEP developers.

The first is the official Adobe LiveCycle Developer list. This has well over 10,000 posts and is a great group. For the last 5 years, a second list, the LiveCycle Developers List on Google's platform has been a community owned list and helped introduce thousands of new developers to LiveCycle. We set this up originally as a community list based on a suggestion during a "Meet the Team" event at Adobe MAX in 2006 when it was disclosed that the then current LC lists were not working well for everyone. There are hundreds of code samples and file downloads, all of which will available until August 31, 2011 (Google's limitation, not ours). Please understand that this group is not an Adobe group, it is owned and run by the community. It is not any single person's decision to kill the group or move it. I have moderated it and tried to keep spam from reaching members but it is not my list. To re-iterate however, the official Adobe LiveCycle ES list at http://www.adobe.com/support/livecycle/ is also a wealth of knowledge.

Adobe has placed a huge emphasis on the developer knowledge exchange experience and has already set up a new list for ADEP users. The ADEP Developer program is now open for business at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/enterprise-platform.html. It also has a brand new list (URL below).

While it is not my decision, here is what I will recommend.

All developers moving on to ADEP (a.k.a. LiveCycle ES3 and beyond) should sign up for the new developer center. You can sign up at http://forums.adobe.com/community/adep (I made my first post today!). We want to avoid duplication and make sure there is a single consistent place to ask technical questions and be informed of new events etc. PLEASE: do not use the existing LiveCycle lists to discuss ADEP topics as this will lead to fragmentation of knowledge and duplication of effort.

While not my decision, I believe we should leave the existing LiveCycle Developers list on google until it becomes unnecessary based on low traffic or low membership. It is important to recognize that not all customers will move on right away and I am not going to suggest we close the list as it still provides an important function. While this list does somewhat duplicate the official Adobe LiveCycle lists, I know many of you have found it to be a great resource and nothing will change. I will personally remain on that list as well. It might be prudent to move over to the official Adobe list to consolidate the knowledge base into one area.

The last item I want to encourage you all to do is to consider downloading ADEP from the http://www.adobe.com/devnet/enterprise-platform.html site and attend Adobe MAX this year to learn all about the new features in various hands-on sessions. We have put a lot of work into this release and it also communicates with the software formerly from Day Software. There are architectural documents at the new ADEP developers center to explain how this all works. I have a new course on ADEP that will teach you how to get started, which will be shared on the new ADEP list.

The Adobe official LiveCycle ES lists are going to operate as normal to service existing LiveCycle ES developers.

Thank you for all being part of this great ride and I hope you will jump on board with ADEP and continue to learn more! Sometimes it is hard to let something you have grown and nurtured wither over time. I urge you to look at the bigger picture and the fact we are all part of the coolest tech community on the planet. Long live the "LiveCycle/ADEP" developers!!

Duane Nickull

Video - discussing the importance of geo and mobile

2011-08-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

This is an interview I did last year about the importance of geo-tagged data and mobile devices. It is interesting to look at these later to see how the predictions stack up against reality. In this case, it was particularly accurate. Enjoy!

More great blogging about Adobe from Bangalore

2011-08-02T09:23:00.001-07:00

After spending a week in Bangalore India, we capped off the Adobe Flash Platform Summit with a great Bloggers Social night at the Biere Club. Maybe is was the lure of a micro-brew or dangling evangelists out to be asked any question (seriously - nothing was forbidden to ask), but this event was my favorite. I had the immense pleasure of meeting Balachander Balu, one of India's more influential and prolific bloggers.

I just caught wind of another well written article from Balu at Tech Bit N Byte. Here is a small snippet. Read the rest at http://www.techbitnbyte.com/adobe-flash-platform-summit-2011/

"Two Adobe evangelists Duane Nickull and Renaun Erickson, Took over from there, They had demonstrated the capabilities of 3D, The cool thing was they had designed it through FLASH, The Best part is they had designed it within 40minutes, Isn’t it amazing, would you believe designing a software within an hour, I know you can’t but it’s the fact. Adobe ROCKS everywhere. I know there are lot of 3D tools available in the market, Myself I use one private 3D tool to design anything which I want it in 3D, but designing in Flash is something really Cool, They had shown Split screen CANOE moving across multiple devices, Even that was also Astonishing. Really I had no words to explain it; it was really privileged for me to be in the Adobe’s party."

Compiling Flash Builder Projects for iOS

2011-08-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

Despite our massive messaging effort, many people are not aware that they can use our tools to develop applications for iOS devices. Flash Builder 4.5.1 works so well for this that even I have built a few.

Holly Schinsky has written up an awesome explanation of how to do this. Rather than repeat it again, take a look at her excellent work. Apple thing that includes provisioning / cert info -- http://devgirl.org/2011/06/20/flexair-for-ios-development-process-explained/

Yes - you can now compile your Flash Builder applications to iOS!!

Fantastic new book out by Paul Trani et al

2011-07-31T03:03:00.002-07:00

My friend Paul Trani has recently cowritten a new book called Pro Android Flash. In fact, not only do I know the authors (Stephen Chin, Dean Iverson, Oswald Campesato, and Paul Trani) but I helped Oswald with several technical bits while he was writing his contributions to this book.

Pro Android Flash is likely to be a definitive guide to building Flash and other rich Internet apps (RIAs) on the Android platform. It covers the Flex and Flash frameworks for Android developers and shows you how to target both Android smartphones and tablets. You'll learn how to incorporate multimedia, animation, and special effects into your apps for maximum visual appeal. You'll also learn advanced topics, including input methods, hardware inputs, deployment, and performance optimization.

If you are looking to get up to speed on the latest and greatest ways to use Adobe Flash in a pro environment, this book is a must have.

On a related note, I plan to release a 45 page Flex Mobile Code Camp this fall that teaches developers how to build Flex and AIR mobile applications for multiple targets including iOS, BlackBerry Tablet OS and Android.

A Great Article on Adobe

2011-07-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

I saw this recent article about Adobe and wanted to share it. This is well worth a read. Deep Sherchan has written a brilliant perspective on the huge paradigm shift we are experiencing in IT. A small excerpt:

"You can call it post-PC device war or rise of mobile devices, the fact is that PC is no longer the dominant device among consumers. Mobile devices (both smartphone and tablet) are equipped with powerful operating systems such as iOS, Andriod, Blackberry and Windows 7, enough to deliver the same rich experience as PC.

So the main question is not which OS is going to win. The future is going to be the age of variety of platforms with different standards and different value proposition. Therefore, the right question is how developers are going to leverage all these variety of platforms with efficiency. The answer lies in the emerging developing platform with cross publishing ability, for sure.

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to attend the bloggers meet up hosted by ADOBE to showcase their new developer platform and the future ahead. "

Read the rest here: http://www.buzzom.com/2011/07/adobe-strong-initiative-to-boost-development-of-india-centric-mobile-apps/

Build a multi-platform mobile RSS reader with Flash Builder 4.5

2011-07-27T03:44:00.000-07:00

In one standard 8 hour day, from start to finish, I wrote a SlashDot RSS reader that works on multiple platforms. This is an attempt to share how easy it is to make a cross platform mobile application. Using Flash Builder 4.5.1, you can build this entire application for almost any RSS feed in a few hours and it will run on iOS, BlackBerry Playbook and Android powered devices.

License: You may reproduce, modify, and use these materials for just about any purpose as long as you respect the copyrights of the owners involved (including Slashdot and Adobe). You may use this to teach courses in mobile development.

In order to complete this tutorial, you will need Flash Builder 4.5 or later.

Setting up the project and the service calls

In this section, you will learn about the various components that comprise a Flex/AIR Mobile application as well as how to:

• Set up a new mobile project
• Test the project in various views
• Set up a service call
• Set up a remote data connection, parse RSS (XML format), and bind it to a visual component
• Configure the service call return type

Flash Builder 4.5 is an efficient IDE for developing mobile Flex applications. As opposed to coding native mobile applications for each platform, the portable coding approach allows developers to keep one code base and target multiple mobile and desktop platforms. The applications themselves are AIR applications compiled to look like native applications. This tutorial will show you how to target the Google Android platform but using the new builder, you can target iOS and BlackBerry too.

The following steps should take about 8-10 minutes to complete.

1. With a browser, navigate to http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot. View the source of the RSS feed to inspect the complex raw source of the RSS format. View the source to see the XML structure.

2. Copy the URL from the browser window.

3. In Flash Builder, choose File > New > Flex Mobile Project and type SlashdotRSS for the name.

Figure 1. Flex Mobile New Project Wizard.

4. Click Next and the mobile project wizard will provide a multitude of choices for your project as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Configuring the new Flex Mobile Project.

5. Under Target Platforms, by default you will have iOS, BlackBerry Playbook and Android selected. Note that within each of these platforms, you also have multiple devices supported. For example, if you select iOS, it supports the iPhone 3G, 4 and tablet.

Keep the application a View Based Application and leave Automatically Reorient selected.

6. Click on the Permissions tab to bring up the permissions screen.

Figure 3. Flex Mobile applications must request permissions they require.

7. To build an RSS reader you must ensure that the Internet permission is selected for each platform you target. Ensure the Platform selector is set to Android and that the Internet access permission is requested. Click Finish.

8. Flash Builder will create a new project. The SlashdotRSS project has a different structure than Flex 4 and earlier versions and is worth exploring. The SlashdotRSS.mxml file under the default package is the main entry point into the application. The views package contains the first default view, which is shown as SlashdotRSSHomeView.mxml below. The application descriptor file contains metadata about the project.

Figure 4. Flex Mobile application structure

9. To begin setting up the data service, ensure you are working on the SlashdotRSSHomeView.MXML file and choose Data > Connect to XML.

10. In the Connect To Data/Service dialog box, ensure URL is selected as the XML Source, and then paste the Slashdot URL (http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot) in the URL text box. Click Invoke.

Figure 5. The Connect to Data/Service dialog box.

11. After Flash Builder introspects the service, select item as the Node. You may have to scroll down quite a ways to find it. You should see that Is Array? is checked and the default service and package names have been provided as shown in Figure 5.

12. Click Finish.

13. After Flash Builder creates the service, open the Data/Services view (Window > Show View > Data/Services) and locate the newly created service getData() function. Right-click it and select Configure Return Type (see Figure 6).

Figure 6. Selecting Configure Return Type for getData().

14. In the Configure Return Type dialog box, ensure Auto–detect The Return Type From Sample Data is selected and click Next.

15. On the next screen, select Enter A Complete URL Including Parameters And Get It. Paste the Slashdot URL in the URL To Get box (see Figure 7) and click Next.

Figure 7. Specifying the URL to use in configuring the return type.

16. On the next screen, type Item as the name of the new data type and select item as the Root node (see Figure 8). Note: If you are using another RSS feed, you will need to figure out which property is the root node.

Figure 8. Selecting the root node.

17. Click Finish.

18. Back in the Data/Services tab, right-click getData() again, and this time click Generate Service Call.

19. In Source View, add a List component and with the following properties: top=”0”, left=”0”,right=”0”,bottom=”0”.

20. Alternatively, you can add the List component in Design View. Then, select it and scroll to the bottom of the Properties tab until you see the Constraints controls. Set them as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. Binding the List control to the four corners.
Constraining the List control in this way ensures that the application has a consistent appearance when switching between landscape and portrait orientations.

21. Inside the <list> element set the labelField value to "title". Then add <s:AsynchListView list="{getDataResult.lastResult}" /> as shown below.

<s:List left="0" right="0" top="0" bottom="0" labelField="title">
<s:AsyncListView list="{getDataResult.lastResult}" />
</s:List>

Note: The list property of the AsyncListView instance, which holds the data to be displayed in the List, is set to the data returned from the service call. Using lastResult will cause the list to expand to match the number of items returned.

22. Add a call to getData() on the viewActivate event in the root element.

23. In Design View, change the Chrome (#666666) and Content Background (#336666) colors to match the Slashdot home page. These settings are found on the Appearance tab.

24. Test your application by running it! Right-click the project in the Package Explorer and select Run > Run As > Mobile Application. When you first run it, you will be asked if you want to launch it in an emulator ("On Desktop") or on a remote device. Use the emulator for now. If you get asked if you want to auto-deploy the model to the server, select No and click OK.

Figure 10. Launching the application (top) and the application running in the emulator (bottom).

In Figure 10, notice the entity reference (—) that appears in the third element in the list. To get rid of this you’ll have to write some code to handle entity references, which is explained in the next section.

Working with List data
In this section, you will learn how to:
• Set up an event handler for a CollectionChange event and pass the event in
• Use labelFunction to call a special function that accepts a custom data type (Item[]) and returns a String.
• Set up a regular expression variable
• Use the String replace() method to replace an entity reference with another character
This section should take about 10 minutes to complete.
1. If it’s not already open, open the SlashdotRSSHomeView.mxml file.

2. In Source View, set the List control’s id to myList.

3. Position the cursor within the element. Add an event handler for the collectionChange event that invokes a function named fixEntityReferences() when the list values change.

4. Next, add the following code to the <fx:Script> tag to implement the event handler:
import mx.events.CollectionEvent;
import valueObjects.Item;

protected function fixEntityReferences(event:CollectionEvent):void
{
   myList.labelFunction = replaceEntity;

   function replaceEntity(item:Item):String
   {
      var p1:RegExp = /(—)/ig; // perhaps add more here later
      var thisString:String = item.title.replace(p1, "-");
      return thisString;
   }

}

The event handler function accepts the event of type CollectionEvent. It adds a labelFunction to the list. Named replaceEntity(), this function accepts an object of type Item. (Item[] is the array that is returned from the getData() service.)
The replaceEntity() function sets up a regular expression variable (p1) that detects the entity reference —. After creating a String variable named thisString, it calls the replace() method on the item.title, substituting a dash (-) for the entity reference —. Lastly, it returns the string thisString, which will be reflected as the new item label.
5. Run the program and you will see that any — entity references no longer exist (see Figure 11).

Figure 11. The application before the entity reference fix (left) and after (right).

Note: The technique used in this section to remedy the entity reference problem is a quick hack, not a best practice. The best practice would be to handle this in the value objects.

Adding the Details view

In this section you will learn how to work with views and the ViewNavigator component, which manages the views in your application as the user navigates through it. Specifically, you will create a new view that shows the details for a single RSS item. This section should take around 20 minutes to complete.
1. To add a new view, right-click the Views package in the Package Explorer and select New > MXML Component. Type DetailsView as the Name, leave the other settings at their default values, and click Finish.
2. Back in SlashdotRSSHome.mxml, position the cursor just inside the end of the <s:List> element in Source View and start typing "change". When Content Assist highlights the change event, select it and then select Generate Change Handler (see Figure 12). This will set up your event handler.

Figure 12. Generating a change handler for the list.
The newly created change handler function will push a new view that shows a detailed view of the specific item that the user clicked in the list. In Flex mobile projects, views can be pushed and then popped (see Figure 13).

Figure 13. Pushing and popping a view.

3. Update the list change event handler code as shown below.
protected function myList_changeHandler(event:IndexChangeEvent):void
{
   var RSSItem:Object = myList.dataProvider.getItemAt(event.newIndex);
   navigator.pushView(DetailsView, RSSItem);
}
The pushView() method takes two parameters: the view you want to push and a data object to pass to the view. In this case, the RSSItem variable is the data that will be passed to the DetailsView view.
4. Run the application. When you click on an RSS item, the new (and currently empty) details view will be displayed.

Configuring the Details view

In this section you will learn how to access the data object passed when the Details view is pushed by the Home view and display various attributes of the RSS item.
This section should take about 20 minutes to complete.
1. Open the DetailsView.mxml file in Source View.
2. Create an <fx:Script> block and add variables for the title, date, creator, link, and description of the selected RSS item.
<fx:Script>
   <![CDATA[

      [Bindable] private var rtitle:String;
      [Bindable] private var rdate:String;
      [Bindable] private var rcreator:String;
      [Bindable] private var rlink:String;
      [Bindable] private var rdesc:String;
   ]]>
</fx:Script>
3. Switch to Design View, and ensure the details view colors are the same as the home view colors. Use #336666 as the Content Background color and #666666 as the Chrome color to match the Slashdot.org colors.

4. Back in Source View, set up the Details view by adding the following MXML to the content area of the view (below the </fx:Declarations> tag).
<s:BorderContainer top="0" bottom="0" left="0" right="0"
                   backgroundColor="#336666">

   <s:Label left="10" top="20" width="70" fontSize="18" text="Title:"
                textAlign="right"/>
   <s:Label left="90" right="20" top="15" height="45"
                backgroundColor="#FFFFFF" color="#666666" fontSize="18"
                paddingBottom="5" paddingLeft="5" paddingRight="5"
                paddingTop="5" text="{rtitle}"/>
   <s:Label left="10" top="75" width="70" fontSize="18" text="Date:"
                textAlign="right"/>
       <s:Label left="90" right="20" top="70" height="40"
                backgroundColor="#FEFDFD" color="#666666" fontSize="18"
                paddingBottom="5" paddingLeft="5" paddingRight="5"
                paddingTop="5" text="{rdate}"/>
       <s:Label left="10" top="125" width="70" fontSize="18" text="Creator:"
                textAlign="right"/>
   <s:Label left="90" right="20" top="120" height="40"
                backgroundColor="#FFFFFF" color="#666666" fontSize="18"
                paddingBottom="5" paddingLeft="5" paddingRight="5"
                paddingTop="5" text="{rcreator}"/>
       <s:Label left="10" top="175" width="70" fontSize="18" text="Link:"
                textAlign="right"/>

   <s:Label left="90" right="20" top="170" height="45"
                backgroundColor="#FFFFFF" color="#1C05FB" fontSize="18"
                paddingBottom="5" paddingLeft="5" paddingRight="5"
                paddingTop="5" text="{rlink}" textDecoration="underline"
                click="navigateToURL(new URLRequest(rlink))"/>
   <s:Label left="10" top="230" width="70" fontSize="18" text="Item:"
                textAlign="right"/>
       <s:Label left="90" right="20" top="225" bottom="304" color="#666666"
                backgroundColor="#FFFFFF" fontSize="18" paddingBottom="5"
                paddingLeft="5" paddingRight="5" paddingTop="5"
         text="{rdesc}" maxDisplayedLines="10" />

       <s:Button left="50" right="50" bottom="101" label="Go see on Slashdot"
         click="navigateToURL(new URLRequest(rlink))"/>

       <s:Label left="15" right="15" bottom="23" fontSize="11"
         text="All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc."
         textAlign="center" verticalAlign="middle"/>

</s:BorderContainer>

In addition to several Label elements that display the RSS item details, this view includes a button that loads the full RSS item URL in a browser when clicked. This is done using click="navigateToURL(new URLRequest(rlink))".
5. Switch to Design View. In portrait mode, the components fit nicely in the view (see Figure 14). Change to landscape mode. The components adjust to a new layout.

Figure 14. The details view in portrait mode.
Since raw RSS feeds often have HTML markup and entity references, the application will have to replace some characters in the RSS feed data. Architecturally, it would be better to handle these substitutions in the value objects package. However, for this application it will be done in the view, even though it is not a best practice.
6. Create a new function in the DetailsView called getDetails() and add the following code.
   import valueObjects.Item;
   private function getDetails():void
   {
      var p:RegExp = /(—)/ig;
      var h:RegExp = /<p(>|(\s*[^>]*>)).*?<\/p>/ig;
      var thisItem:Item = data as Item;

      rtitle = thisItem.title;
      rtitle = rtitle.replace(p, "-");
      rdate = thisItem.dc_date;
      rcreator = thisItem.dc_creator
      rlink = thisItem.link;
      rdesc = thisItem.description;
      rdesc = rdesc.replace(h, "");
      rdesc = rdesc.replace(p, "-");

   }

The keyword data is a variable reference to the data passed to this view.
The title, dc_date, dc_creator, link, and description attributes of the RSS Item object are used to set the variables. The calls to replace() use the regular expressions to replace entity references in the title and the description, as well as to eliminate HTML markup in the description.
7. Add viewActivate="getDetails()" to the root <s:View> element. This will invoke getDetails() when the view is activated. While you’re there, insert a space between "Details" and "View" in the title attribute.
8. Run your application. Click on an item to see the Details view (see Figure 15). Click the button to launch the Slashdot story in a browser.

Figure 15. The completed details view.

Fixing an architectural mistake

In this section you will learn a best practice for mobile development. This section should take around 10 minutes to complete.
Although you may not have noticed it as you used the application in the emulator, each time the home view is shown, a new call is made to the RSS service. This consumes CPU cycles (and battery charge) and also incurs unnecessary data bandwidth charges for the user. Needless to say, this is not the best way for the application to behave.
To get a better understanding of this architectural mistake, it helps to enable the network monitor.
1. In Flash Builder, choose Window > Show View > Other and then select Flash Builder > Network Monitor to open the Network Monitor view.
2. Enable the Network Monitor by clicking the Enable Monitor button (see Figure 16). (It is disabled by default.)

Figure 16. Enabling the Network Monitor.

3. Run your application again in the emulator and watch the network calls as you navigate between the Home view and the Details view. (To return to the Home view from the Details view in the emulator, choose Device > Back or press Control+B.)
As you can see, there is a service call each time the Home view is displayed. Luckily, this is easy to fix.
1. Open the SlashdotRSSHomeView.mxml file.
2. In the root element, remove the call to getData() on the viewActivate event (see Figure 17). Set the destructionPolicy attribute to "never". While you’re there, set the title attribute to "Slashdot RSS".

Figure 17. Remove the getData() function call on the viewActivate event.

The destruction policy defines the policy that the view's navigator will use when this view is removed. If set to "auto", the ViewNavigator component will destroy the view when it isn't active. If set to "never", the view will be cached in memory. For items such as an RSS feed that do not update very often, it is best to allow the user to manually refresh the list or to update the list periodically.
You still need to call getData() at the launch of the application. This can be done from the main application file.
3. Open SlashdotRSS.mxml, the file for the main entry point into the application. This is located in the project’s default package. In the Package Explorer it has a blue dot and green triangle beside it (see Figure 18).

Figure 18. Locating the main application file.

4. Add applicationComplete="getRSS()" to the root element of the application (<MobileApplication>). After the application has been initialized, the applicationComplete event is dispatched and getRSS() will be invoked.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<s:ViewNavigatorApplication xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
                               xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
                               firstView="views.SlashdotRSSHomeView"
                               applicationComplete="getRSS()">
5. Now create the function that will make the initial service call to get the RSS items. After deleting the empty <fx:Declarations> element, add the following code:

<fx:Script>
   <![CDATA[
   private function getRSS():void
   {
    Object(navigator.activeView).getData();
                  }
]]> </fx:Script>
The code Object(navigator.activeView).getData(); can reference the getData() function directly if it has been made public. If you generated the function, it will be protected by default and that will have to be changed. Since this only gets called once, we do not have to test to see which view is active.
6. Back in the SlashdotRSSHomeView.mxmlfile, change the access modifier for the getData() function from protected to public as shown below.
    //service call
   public function getData():void
   {
      getDataResult.token = slashdot.getData();    }

7. Run your application. Verify that getData() is getting called when the application launches.

Adding a manual refresh capability
Now that you have removed the service call that was invoked each time the Home view was shown, it’s a good idea to give the user a way to refresh the list of RSS items manually. In this section you will learn about:
• Action content
• Making calls from the application to functions contained in views
• How to embed icons within buttons
There are basically four main areas for a Flex mobile application built for the Android OS: navigation content, title content, action content, and the view (see Figure 19). Action content is usually on the right-hand side, and that is where you’ll position the icon that will be used to refresh the list.

Figure 19. The main areas of a mobile Flex application.

1. To create a refresh icon, you will need an icon approximately 48 x 48 pixels with a transparent background in PNG format. Locate the refresh48x48.png and info48x48.png files in the icons package of the starter project for this tutorial.
2. Right-click the src folder of your application and select New > Package. Type icons as the package name and click Finish. This will set up a folder for your icon images.
3. Copy the refresh48x48.png and info48x48.png icon files into the new package.
4. Open SlashdotRSSHomeView.mxml and insert the following code, which adds an action content area to the Home view (the File should be named “SlashdotRSS.mxml”) with a button that embeds the refresh icon image.
<s:actionContent>
<s:Button icon="@Embed(source='icons/refresh48x48.png')" />
</s:actionContent>
5. Run the application to verify that the button is displayed (see Figure 20).

Figure 20. The new refresh button.

6. Switch back to Source View and add the following function:
private function refreshList():void
{
if (navigator.activeView.name.slice(0,19) == "SlashdotRSSHomeView")
{
      Object(navigator.activeView).getData();
}
}
7. Within the button declaration, add click="refreshList()" to capture the click event and make a call to the newly created refreshList() function.
   <s:actionContent>
      <s:Button icon="@Embed(source='icons/refresh48x48.png')"
                click="refreshList()"/>
   </s:actionContent>
8. With the Network Monitor on, run the application. Each time you click the refresh button it should invoke another service call. Ensure that this only happens while in the view where the list is.
The application no longer automatically refreshes. Instead, the addition of a user controlled Refresh button places the power into your users’ hands, which is a best practice. They know their data plan and battery life, and it is a good idea to enable them to control this functionality.

Adding the Info view

Now that the architecture is solid, it is time to add another view to allow users to see information about the application. The Info view will be relatively simple to add, and it will give users information about getting the source code for the application (pay it forward!).

This section will take about eight minutes to complete.
1. If you have not already done so, copy info48x48.PNG from the starter project to the icons package of your project.
2. Since this icon should be visible from all views in the application, it can be added to the entry point into the application, in this case the SlashdotRSS.mxml file. Add the following code to set up the button and a click event handler named showInfoView() (yet to be written).
<s:actionContent>
   <s:Button icon="@Embed(source='icons/info48x48.png')"
                 click="showInfoView()" />
</s:actionContent>
3. To create the new view, right-click the views package in the Package Explorer and select New > MXML Component.
4. In the New MXML Component dialog box, type views as the Package and InfoView as the Name. Make sure that the new component is based on spark.components.view (see Figure 21) and click Finish.

Figure 21. Adding the InfoView component.

5. Open InfoView.mxml in Source View and change the title attribute in the <s:View> element to "About RSS Reader". Then add the following code.
<s:Label left="0" right="0" top="0" bottom="0" textAlign="center"
        paddingBottom="175" paddingLeft="40" paddingRight="40"
               paddingTop="30" backgroundColor="#336666"
                text="This application was built to demonstrate how easy it is to create mobile applications using Adobe Flash Builder and Adobe AIR. Slashdot was chosen as a site because it has complex RSS formats and offers an open feed for all to consume. Please consider supporting Slashdot!
The source code for this application is freely available and can be found at http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2010/12/mobile-slashdot-rss-reader-tutorial.html."/>
   <s:Button left="50" right="50" bottom="140" label="Get Source Code" click="navigateToURL(new URLRequest('http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2010/12/mobile-slashdot-rss-reader-tutorial.html'));"/>
   <s:Label left="15" right="15" bottom="23" fontSize="11"
                text="All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc."
                textAlign="center" verticalAlign="middle"/>

Note: The text and navigateToURL link can be changed for each project.
6. Open the Home view file (SlashdotRSSHomeView.mxml) and add a function named showInfo() in the <fx:Script> block. This function will be used to push the InfoView.
   public function showInfo():void
   {
      navigator.pushView(InfoView);    }

7. Repeat the previous step for DetailsView.mxml.
8. Open the SlashdotRSS.mxml file (the entry point into the application) and add a showInfoView() function, which calls the showInfo() function from the active view.
   private function showInfoView():void
   {
        Object(navigator.activeView).showInfo();
   }

If you run your application now, you’ll notice the Info button in the InfoView, where it is not needed.
9. To remove the Info button from the Info view, open InfoView.mxml and add an empty <s:actionContent> element.
<s:actionContent/>

10. You'll also notice that the Info button does not appear on the list view where it belongs. This is because the actionContent element in view overrides the one in the main application file. Open SlashdotRSSHomeView.mxml and add the following to the actionContent element:

<s:Button icon="@Embed(source='icons/info48x48.png')"

click="showInfo()" />

Adding a splash screen

You’re almost done building this Flex mobile application. One final thought is that on some devices it might take the application a while to load. A splash screen will let the user know something is happening as the application starts up.
In this section you will learn:
• What a splash screen does and why it is a good idea
• How to add a splash screen
Mobile applications must always strive for efficient use of the CPU and battery. When an application takes time to load, it can give the user the impression that the entire application is sluggish. One way to show the user that the application is reacting quickly to user actions is via the view (in this context, view refers to the MVC pattern concept of view). Adding a splash screen is fortunately quite easy. The splash screen is shown while the main parts of the application load and disappears as the main application has finished initializing.
This section will take less than five minutes to complete.
1. Create a new package under the src folder of your project and name it splash.

Figure 22. The slashscreen.png file in the splash package.

2. Copy the splashscreen.png file from the starter project into the splash package (see Figure 22).

Figure 23. The splash screen image for RSS Reader is 400 x 400 pixels square.
Keep in mind that a user might open your application in landscape mode. To account for this, you can either restrict the application to open only in portrait mode, or set the width and height of your splash screen image so it will not matter; for example, use 400 x 400 pixels (see Figure 23).
3. Open SlashdotRSS.mxml and add splashScreenImage="@Embed('splash/splashscreen.png')" to the root <s:ViewNavigatorApplication> element of the application, as shown below.
<s:ViewNavigatorApplication xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
                            xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
                       firstView="views.SlashdotRSSHomeView"
                            applicationComplete="getRSS()"
                 splashScreenImage="@Embed('splash/splashscreen.png')">

4. Run your application. The splash screen image will appear momentarily while the application is loading.

Packaging your application for the Android Market
Now that you have a fully functioning application, there are a few remaining tasks to complete before you can publish your application to the Android Market. If this is your first time publishing an application, visit http://market.android.com/publish/signup to set up an account.
After you register, you will find list of requirements for publishing your application. Complying with these requirements will help your application look more professional and will also allow people to find it easier. Among the most important requirements are the icons, which are required in multiple sizes from 512 x 512 pixels to 16 x 16 pixels. It is best to develop the largest size first, and then scale down the rest.
Once you have developed a base icon, save it in the following sizes under the /src/icons/ folder in your project:
• icon32x32.png
• icon36x36.png
• icon48x48.png
• icon72x72.png
• icon128x128.png

Ensure you keep the 512 x 512 pixel PNG original as you will need it for the Android Market. Example versions of these icons can be found in the starter project.
Additionally, you will need a PKCS12 digital certificate that is valid until after October 22, 2033. This may surprise you, but it’s not hard to create one. For details on creating your own digital certificate, see Generating a PKCS12 certificate for Android Market.
Follow these steps to place your application in the Android Market.
1. Locate the application descriptor file, which you will find in the project’s src folder (see Figure 24). For this project, it is named SlashdotRSS-app.xml. This XML file specifies parameters for identifying, installing, and launching AIR applications. You will need to make a few modifications to this file.

Figure 24. The application descriptor file.
2. Do not open the file by double-clicking, that would open it with the XML editor. Instead, right-click the file and select Open With > Text Editor.
3. Provide a valid name and version for your application. The name can be changed by editing the <name> element near line 25.
4. Type some descriptive text that identifies your application. For example, you might type Slashdot RSS Monitor or something similar (see Figure 25). Note: The exact line number and comment text may differ from those shown.

Figure 25. Changing the <name> element.
5. Next set the version number for your application. If you decide you are a great coder and there is no chance of any bugs, you might choose version 1.0. Set this value in the <versionNumber> element near line 30 (see Figure 26).

Figure 26. Changing the <versionNumber> element.

6. Next, you’ll want to define where the main application can locate the proper PNG application icons. Near line 109, find the <image16x16> element, which begins a set of six similar elements (see Figure 27).

Figure 27. The icon elements before editing.
7. Insert the name of the appropriate icon file in each element (see Figure 28).

Figure 28. The icon elements after editing.
There are many other items that may be set in the application descriptor file including descriptions, copyright, and more. For more information, refer to the Adobe AIR documentation.
8. Save your changes.
9. If you have not already done so, copy the necessary icon PNG files from the starter project into your project’s src/icons folder.
10. Right-click the project in the Package Explorer and select Export.
11. In the Export dialog box, select Flash Builder > Release Build (see Figure 29).

Figure 29. Exporting the release build.
12. Click Next.
13. On the next screen, ensure you’re exporting the correct project and leave the other options at their default values (see Figure 30). Click Next.

Figure 30. Specifying the export folder.
14. On the next screen, specify the location of your digital certificate and type the password. Make sure that the certificate you created complies with the requirements of the Android Market. Again, for instructions on creating such a certificate, see Generating a PKCS12 certificate for Android Market.
15. Click Finish.
That’s it! When you see the success confirmation (see Figure 31) you will have a new *.apk file (which is the native installer package for Google Android devices).

Figure 31. Confirmation of a successful release build export.

Where to go from here

Congratulations! You are now a mobile developer!
I encourage you to try your hand at developing your own mobile applications using Flash Builder and the techniques you’ve learned in the article.
For more information on Flex mobile development see the following resources:
• Flex Test Drive for Mobile: Build a mobile application in an hour
• Mobile Application Development with Flex
• Video of this tutorial: Part 1 Part 2

Announcement: Adobe’s biggest CEM event of the year

2011-07-21T10:29:00.000-07:00

In conjunction with Adobe MAX 2011, there will be a new event. The Adobe Digital Enterprise Summit 2011 will take place October 3-4, 2011 at both the JW Marriott and L.A. LIVE in
Los Angeles, California, USA. The Adobe Digital Enterprise Summit is the first dedicated Customer Experience Management (CEM) conference where attendees will learn about new architectural disciplines and product innovation, as well as understand the latest industry trends and core principles of CEM. We have filmed an earlier bit on CEM to describe it from an architectural perspective. This is a new discipline of EAI that will affect every Fortune 1000 company in the next decade.

Top reasons why you should attend
· Learn from industry thought leaders on delivering multichannel experiences using cutting edge technologies.
· Understand Adobe's roadmap into the next era of enterprise architecture and why it matters.
· Gain exposure to new product innovation, insights into the latest industry trends, and access to key personnel from Adobe including CEM experts.

What you will take away
· Insight into the new world of the digital consumer and how to engage them
· An ability to understand how to generate ROI based on great customer experiences
· Understanding how to create an army of positive advocates for your brand by delivering the best experiences for your employees, users, and customers.

To learn more about ADEP and CEM, follow these twitter accounts:
http://twitter.com/#!/eptechies
http://twitter.com/#!/duanechaos
http://twitter.com/#!/AdobeCEM
http://twitter.com/#!/ADEP_Developer

Early-bird pricing is available ONLY in July, 2011 (Expires July 31).
· Contact me (dnickull at adobe dot com) and register by July 31st and you can attend for only $1,195, which is $300 off the price of a full conference pass and an additional $100 savings off of the published Early Bird price.
· Return registrants (Loyalists): A Loyalist is any Digital Enterprise Summit attendee who has attended a previous Adobe MAX, Day Ignite, or Omniture Summit. Loyalist pricing is the lowest available for any attendees.

Education, government, and international attendees can attend for an equally low rate. Oh yes - I will be there!

Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform

2011-06-21T10:44:00.000-07:00

There are two new announcements from Adobe that are the most exciting products I have ever seen us release. Flash Builder 4.5.1 brings a new model for portable development for mobile, meaning you can use a large portion of the same code base for desktop, laptop, tablet and smart phone targets. This tool along with the Flex 4.5.1 framework is a complete game changer.

Flash Builder 4.5.1 outputs applications for Android, RIM PlayBook, and Apple iOS devices, including the i(Devices). All of us have been busy writing several applications and will roll some out in the coming weeks as well as leading a large hands-on mega lab at Adobe MAX this October in Los Angeles, CA. Last year, two instances of this class sold out in advance so if you want to immerse yourself in mobile development, strongly consider reserving your spot ASAP. Several other evangelists from Adobe including Greg Wilson, Michael Chaize, Ryan Stewart, Kevin Hoyt, Serge Jespers, Ben Forta, Mihai Corlan, Anne Kathrine Petteroe, Mike Jones, Paul Trani and more will be diving deep into all the subjects. See the blog roll for a list of all evangelists.

We are also introducing the new Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform (ADEP), which embodies multiple functionalities formerly offered by Adobe LiveCycle ES, Day Software, and more. ADEP is a bold platform, which solves a major issue emerging in modern enterprise architecture. The architectural discipline of Customer Experience Management (CEM) is important for modern enterprises to grasp and act upon. CEM is described from an architectural perspective within the blog post and video here.

ADEP offers customers many choices (such as HTML5 or SWF), which I believe is best decided on a per requirements basis. A further explanation from the Adobe website reveals some of the problems ADEP solves:

"Companies that want to differentiate themselves from the competition realize that they must deliver applications that engage customers as they access information and interact with the business and its frontline employees. And customers want access on
any device or across any channel. Central to accomplishing that goal is simple, yet engaging, interfaces that enable customers to access information and processes, even if they are contained in corporate systems. Efforts to merely extend access to such systems have not proven successful due to the complexity of user interfaces that have been designed for specialists, not customers and the frontline employees who serve them."

The obvious enrichment a platform can deliver is a common pipeline for data and processing, designed from the bottom up with Cloud and Social Media DNA. The data modeling capabilities also offer enterprise developers some really cool new features.

Over the next few weeks we will continue to post articles to expose bits of the platform and explain what it means in terms of existing LiveCycle ES customers.

Hope to see you at Adobe MAX 2011!

Tutorial: Accessing Microphone on Android in Adobe AIR

2011-06-16T14:37:00.000-07:00

This video is the latest in a long series of tutorials on how to use the new Flash Builder for Flex Mobile Development. This particular exercise targets Android however the same code can be run on iOS (cross compiled using 4.5.1) and BlackBerry Tablet OS. Here is the video:

The project will be released shortly to the Android marketplace along with the full source code and some great new graphics thanks to my brother Paul Trani! If you want the project source code for Flash Builder 4.5.1 + in the meantime, please email me direct dnickull at adobe dot com.

This will be part of the AIR Mobile Code Camp at Adobe MAX 2011 in October! Sign up now!

Intro to programming with ActionScript 3

2011-06-06T11:56:00.000-07:00

Are you a designer or just curious and want to learn programming? Already a coder but would like to learn about ActionScript 3? Could your team benefit from this workshop?

The approach will be relaxed and fun (and effective): attendees will build a simple game from scratch in this ONE DAY INTENSIVE WORKSHOP, and will learn several advanced concepts and useful tricks along the way. No previous coding (or even Flash) knowledge needed at all. No scary technical jargon will be used to make things sound complex, because they are not.

ACTIONSCRIPT 3 is the ideal language to learn how to program, thanks to how easy it is to use and manipulate images and graphic elements, and add interactivity. The approach used will be very accessible, actually without computers in the first hour, using attendees on stage to explain in a practical way how a program works and enact concepts like variables, objects, functions, loops and conditions. Then, it's hands-on and the pace will progressively get more and more interesting.

Everything you will build can be deployed on your computer, the web, and even on MOBILE DEVICES (iPhone and Android). You’ll take all that code with you so you can experiment further on your own. And you’ll be guided on how to go further and presented with a lot of useful resources.

Duration: About 9 to 11 hours, depending on the group rhythm, no-one is left behind. Everyone will learn A LOT about Flash & Flex, and of course, coding, which can be applied to other languages apart from AS3.

Preparation Guide for Hands on Workshop

2011-06-03T10:12:00.000-07:00

Flash and the City is next week in New York. If you are registered and taking the course to learn Flex/AIR mobile development, you will need to do some preparation in advance of walking into the room. This blog post outlines the steps necessary to be ready on Thursday, June 9.

If you have any trouble with the setup, please send an email to me at dnickull at adobe-dot-com. I also plan to be in the lab room 20 minutes before the session to answer any questions or help out.

See you there! This is going to be the best workshop I have ever had the pleasure of teaching! An expanded version of this course will be taught at this year's Adobe MAX in Los Angeles.

Sincerely,
Duane Nickull
Adobe Senior Technical Evangelist

System Requirements for BYOL lab

Mandatory:

1. Bring your own laptop. Operating System: Windows or Mac OS X.
2. Bring a power cord.
3. If you have a Google Android Device running the 2.2 or later operating system, please bring that and;
4. A cable to tether it to your laptop. It is not required that you bring your Android Device but it is highly recommended.

If you have more than one laptop, please bring one with a touch pad that supports transformation gestures (most newer Macs support this) and a camera and microphone.

Mandatory Software required.
Flash Builder 4.5 - http://www.adobe.com/go/try_flashbuilder

Flash Builder may be installed as a trial. This will also install the AIR runtime and SDK.

Optional Software
If you plan to build for the BlackBerry Tablet operating system, please follow the instructions here: http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2011/02/getting-your-flash-builder-ide-set-up.html

Mandatory Courseware:
All courseware will be distributed at the venue itself. If you have time in advance, please download the zip archive from http://www.22ndcenturyofficial.com/ForBlogDoNotDelete/FATC.zip

Notes:

Windows
• 2GHz or faster processor
• Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 3, Windows Vista® Ultimate or
Enterprise (32 or 64
bit running in 32‐bit mode), Windows Server® 2008 (32 bit), or Windows 7 (32
or 64 bit running
in 32‐bit mode)
• 1GB of RAM (2GB recommended)
• 3.5GB of available hard‐disk space for installation; additional free space
required during
installation (cannot install on removable flash‐based storage devices)
• 1024x768 display (1280x800 recommended) with 16‐bit video card
• DVD‐ROM drive
• QuickTime 7.6.2 software required for multimedia features
• Eclipse 3.4.2 or 3.5 (for plug‐in installation)
• Java™ Virtual Machine (32 bit): IBM® JRE 1.5, Sun™ JRE 1.5, IBM JRE 1.6,
or Sun JRE 1.6

Mac OS
• Multicore Intel® processor
• Mac OS X v10.5.7 or v10.6
• 1GB of RAM (2GB recommended)
• 4GB of available hard‐disk space for installation; additional free space
required during
installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case‐sensitive file
system or on removable
flash‐based storage devices)
• 1024x768 display (1280x800 recommended) with 16‐bit video card
• DVD‐ROM drive
• QuickTime 7.6.2 software required for multimedia features

Video Tutorial: Using Transform Gestures in Mobile Development

2011-05-31T10:56:00.000-07:00

This is a quick video that shows the code to control zoom gestures when developing mobile applications with Flash Builder 4.5. The source code is available if anyone wants it. Just ping me at dnickull at adobe dot com.

Code Explained:

Line 9: The init() function is called on the viewActivate event for this example as it is a mobile application based on views. You could queue it from other events.

Line 11: the Variable myBC is a Spark BorderContainer.
Line 16: The BorderContainer is cast into a sprite and the event passed to the onZoom function is used to scale the sprite on the X and Y planes on lines 19 and 20. If you want to keep the user from shrinking the sprite below a specific size, the test is done on line 17 to detect the scale. You only need to test either X or Y and the proportions are constrained. The best practice for most cases will be to put some sort of minimal scale on such items as it will be possible the user scales it too small and can no longer use a two finger zoom gesture.

To learn more about this topic, make sure to attend Adobe MAX 2011 in Los Angeles and register for the Hands on Mobile AIR camp I will be leading. Registration is open now and even though we had two mega-labs last year, they both sold out very early.

I am also teaching a similar course next week at Flash and the City in New York City June 9 from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PMN local time. There are some spaces still available. Mobile developers are in high demand. Increase your skills!

Free Adobe CS 5.5 Web Premium (Flash and the City 2011)

2011-05-28T09:07:00.001-07:00

Buy tickets to Flash and the City and win Adobe CS 5.5 licenses (retail value of $1,799),

VIP seating at the #FATC keynote! http://bit.ly/mzSswF

FlashAndTheCity is only two weeks away and they are giving

something back to all attendees registering for the event in the next

three days, starting from today, May 25, 2011 through Friday, May 27,

2011. It is a free Web Premium Master Collection CS 5.5

(retail value of $1,799), courtesy of Adobe.

This is the full retail version and you can select either the license

for PC or for a MAC. Additionally, the winner will receive a premium

VIP seat at the FATC keynote.

Rules

I will pick a number, between 1 and whatever

number of tickets have sold, and announce the number on Twitter.

To win you have to follow all three of us on twitter. We

will match that number with the person who bought the winning ticket

number and give away the free license that day. The winner will be

announced on Twitter. HURRY UP and REGISTER NOW!!

http://fatc11.eventbrite.com/

Remember, once the event sells out you will miss a chance to attend

one of the most exciting events this year, so do not delay, purchase

your ticket now!

My Twitter is @duanechaos

Adobe MAX 2011 - A Special Deal for Loyalists!

2011-05-20T14:41:00.000-07:00

Have you attended Adobe MAX in years past? If so, you should know about this special promotion for our loyalists (defined as people who have attended MAX previously). Until May 31st, 2011, you can use this special URL and token to register for Adobe MAX 2011 here.

Please help us spread the good word via twitter too! Here is a cut and paste tweet (below) or just use the tweet button on this page. We need help to reach all the loyalists.

Previous #AdobeMAX goers, register before 5/31 for a discount! http://adobe.ly/maxloyal

What is cool about Adobe MAX this year is the fact there is a second event running in parallel with MAX. The Adobe Digital Enterprise Summit 2011 will take place October 3rd and 4th. Why should you attend? For starters, I will be speaking at this event. Second, staying at the forefront of enterprise architecture requires constant exposure to new technical innovations and an understanding of industry trends. Come to this event and connect with a thriving ecosystem of thought leaders, partners, and technology solution providers. If you are a business decision-maker, technology leader, or marketing professional interested in deepening customer intimacy and extending brand value within your organization, this event is for you.

See you there!

ciao!

Club Intrawest Points for Sale

2011-05-18T16:12:00.000-07:00

This blog post has been removed to reflect a status of an impending offer. Sorry for any inconvenience.

I love my Galaxy S Android Phone's Battery Life!

2011-05-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

At Technoracle, we regularly test out devices for long term reliability, performance, and durability. Mobile devices often vary dramatically from the manufacturer's claims and real world tests reveal the true nature of a specific device. For example, some smartphones have claimed 4-day standby time. No device I have ever used has ever met such a claim while we were using it. Most users we know are happy to get 24 hrs out of their devices with real world uses.

Four days of use from a single charge might be possible if you disabled all functions other than sitting idle and left the phone in a cool room with no magnetic interference. For most users, add in email account monitoring, some web browsing, navigation and a few calls and the time goes down significantly. The major reason I went from iOS to Android is that I hated the idea of someone sealing my battery into the phone. I want two batteries and the ability to swap them out as they get tired. Nevertheless, the Samsung Galaxy S has amazed.

The above screenshot clearly shows that the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone has amazing battery life very close to what the manufacturer claims. The approximate 65% charge is after 1 day 3+ hours between charges with cell standby and use. What I have noted is the following tips work well on Android for saving battery life:

1. Reduce screen brightness. Do this manually. The auto-detection itself uses energy when woken up.
2. Configure email not to push automatically or synch. Do this manually. What point is there for you to have email pushed to you that you will not read? Wait until you want it, then fetch it.
3. Disable GPS when not in use.
4. Disable Bluetooth when not using.
5. Regularly check the application and memory manager and clean out programs that you are not actively using.
6. Disable notifications from applications (Twitter, Facebook, news, weather, etc.) that you do not need. When I go on my boat, I do require that severe weather be pushed to me.
7. Disable auto-orientation. The listener that detects position changes runs the accelerometer, a piece of hardware that consumes battery life. Luckily the feature can be disabled from the pull down menu.

End result?

Flex/AIR Mobile Color Picker

2011-05-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

I have been writing a new application the last few days and ran into an issue. The old mx color picker has no counterpart in Flex Mobile Development. After some quick research, I decided to make a view that can be reused by others.

The source code can be downloaded from http://www.22ndcenturyofficial.com/ForBlogDoNotDelete/ColorPickerView.mxml
(right-click on PC, Control-click on OS X and select "Save Target as..." or something like that). PS - this is my band's official web site so while you're there take a listen to our music!

The controllers are simple Spark Horizontal Sliders that have ranges from 0-255. Each slider has a change event handler registered to the same function.

The logic is included to lay these out for both portrait and landscape modes. A visual reference to the current color is represented within a Spark rect. The Button calls a blank function to be used to take whatever action you want to set a color.

As you move the sliders, the color changes.

The setColor function does not return anything. All it does is grab the values and convert them to be used either as Hex (for example, "0X0f3eff") or uint formats. A click handler is registered against the button to set the color, which can be done from the setLineColor() function.

A small utility class is used to prevent incorrect values from being written when ranges are less than one character long. The checkLength() function has comments and is self explanatory. This is to prevent '0f0f0f' from returning "fff" if the values are all 15.

If you use this and find any way to improve it, please consider sharing via this blog post.

Duane's World #33 - Ben Watson on CEM/CX

2011-05-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

This episode of Duane's World was filmed in Barcelona, Spain with Ben Watson. The talk focuses on Customer Experience Management (aka CEM) which is an emerging architectural discipline focusing on a customer experience view. While previous user experience (UX) work has been done by architects in the context of a single application, Customer Experience Management spans the experience over the complete lifetime of a relationship and over multiple channels of interaction (examples: telephone, email, web, in person etc).

If you are not yet convinced that CEM matters, here is some great additional reading on the topic:

"How to Approach Customer Experience Management". Gartner.com. 2004-12-27.

Debor, Jessica (2008-02-20). "CRM Gets Serious". CRM Magazine.

Peppers, Don and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. (2008), Rules to Break and Laws to Follow, Wiley, pp. 24, 164, ISBN 978-0470227541

Strativity Group (2009), 2009 Global Customer Experience Management Benchmark Study, Strativity Group, Inc.

Peppers, Don and Rogers, Martha; Don Peppers, Martha Rogers (2005), Return on Customer, Doubleday, division of random House, Inc., ISBN 0-385-51030-6

Shaun Smith and Joe Wheeler.; Shaun Smith, Joe Wheeler (2002), Managing the Customer Experience: Turning customers into advocates, Financial Times Press, ISBN 978-0273661955

Rae, Jeananne (2006-11-27). "The Importance of Great Customer Experiences". Business Week.

Bernd H. Schmitt.; Bernd H. Schmitt (2003), Customer Experience Management: A Revolutionary Approach to Connecting with Your Customers, Wiley; 1 edition, ISBN 0-4712-3774-4

Lopez, Maribel D. (2007-11-12). "Operators Thrive by Building and Enabling Experiences". Forrester.

Adobe MAX 2011

2011-05-02T09:03:00.000-07:00

The new site for Adobe MAX 2011 is now live at http://max.adobe.com/. You can already register and will get a substantial break by doing so this early in the game. The early bird pricing ends July, 2011.

Adobe MAX awards:

If you have done something really cool in the last year using Adobe technology, consider applying for an Adobe MAX award. The MAX Awards provide an opportunity to gain industry visibility for you or your clients' projects. The contest will open on Wednesday, June 1, 2011 and close on Friday, July 29, 2011, at noon (Pacific Time).

The categories for 2011 are: Advertising and Branding, Digital Publishing, Enterprise, and Entertainment. Finalists are selected in each category by the Adobe Judging Councils. The top three finalists in each category will be invited to showcase their work prior to and during MAX 2011 to support online voting for the category winners. Online voting will open one week prior to MAX, and the category winners will be announced live at MAX. Award entrants are also eligible for Honorable Mention recognition.

The information you provide in your MAX Awards application will be used internally by Adobe for purposes of judging the awards and may be reproduced, publicly displayed, or used in press releases by or for Adobe for the sole purpose of promoting the MAX event and MAX Awards. Your contact information will be used by Adobe only and will not be distributed or shared.

There is also a Community Pavilion this year again.

Community Lounge

The Community Lounge offers a comfortable forum where designers, developers, and others in the Adobe community can mingle with peers, share ideas, and network. This is your opportunity to spend one-on-one time with these product experts.
Unconference discussions

Unconference discussions are participant-driven presentations and discussions centered on a theme that are open to all. Attendees have the opportunity to sign up and present on topics of their choice. Last year these discussions were very popular. From project post-mortems to open panels, these discussions provide an opportunity for sharing and receiving information and connecting with your community. Multiple discussion themes similar to last year are in planning stages — stay tuned for more details on the Unconference discussions.
MAX Playground

Hang out in the MAX Playground and try your hand at the latest video games. If you prefer classic games, check out the retro area featuring cool games from the past.

I'll be there! See you there!

What is Customer Experience Management?

2011-04-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

Customer Experience (CX a.k.a CEM) is the sum of all experiences a customer has with a supplier of goods or services, over the lifecycle of their relationship. This covers several phases including awareness, discovery, attraction, interaction, transaction, use, service, cultivation and advocacy.
These are not simply sequential, but rather a continuum of phases existing within the context of CX.

CX is not something you just bolt on to your existing enterprise architecture.

So why does CEM/CX matter? The simple answer is for retention of your existing business customers. Your competition is a click away and studies show people are 3 times more likely to tell others about a bad experience than a good one. People declaring a bad experience with you are ripe for your competition to steal.

With social media, bad CX stories can escalate virally and ruin the reputation of a business in weeks or even days. People notice BAD experiences and get emotional! They want a good customer experience.

Adobe Resource Synchronizer CS5.5

2011-04-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I installed the 5.5 version of Creative Suite Master Collection. To my dismay, there was no 5.5. version of Soundbooth, which I had uninstalled as per the instructions. To recap, on Mac OS X it is very important to use the Uninstall feature for earlier versions of CS instead of merely dragging them into the trash.

After installing CS 5.5, I grabbed the media to re-install the previous version of Soundbooth (CS 5), which I use regularly for Duane's World. During the installation, an error message came up stating something like "Unable to continue - close the following applications: AdobeResourceSynchronizer". I searched for a while and did not find any application with such a name but did find the process.

If you run across this issue on a Mac, launch the "Activity Monitor" (it is under /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app). By default, the activity Monitor will only show Active Processes and you will not see the AdobeResourceSynchronizer. In order to stop it, you have to select "All Processes: (Step 1 below), then highlight the process "AdobeResourceSynchronizer" and then hit Quit Process (Step 3 below).

After that you should be able to resume the installation of Soundbooth. When done, restart your Mac and the AdobeResourceSynchronizer will heal its wounds and restart.

Flash and the City - NYC Better than Ever!

2011-04-19T06:10:00.000-07:00

This year once again I will be speaking at Flash and the City in New York, June 9-12. This year I will be teaching a 6-hour hands on code camp for anyone wanting to become a Flex or AIR developer.

The event website is here. Please register early to ensure you get a space.

In addition, Flash and the City will be part of Internet Week NY, a very popular and highly marketed festival that attracts citywide attention. Internet Week is a week-long festival of events celebrating New York's thriving Internet industry and community. Internet Week New York is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences in cooperation with the City of New York and The Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment.

Extending LiveCycle ES 2.5 for Java Developers

2011-04-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

The full courseware that Scott MacDonald, Gary Gilchrist and I delivered during MAX 2010 is now available online. Anyone may use this material as a self-paced tutorial to understand how Java Developers can extend the native capabilities of Adobe LiveCycle ES.

The course is available as a ZIP file here (right-click and then select Save target as ...")

http://www.web2open.org/courses/LCES4JavaDevs-CourseArchive.zip

This course covers the following topics:

Extending LiveCycle ES for Java Developers

TABLE OF CONTENTS
OVERVIEW
EXERCISE 1: UNDERSTANDING CUSTOM COMPONENTS

EXERCISE 2: DEVELOPING THE CUSTOM COMPONENT .
Task 2‐1: Start Eclipse and create a new project
Task 2‐2: Add the required Java library files
Task 2‐3: Defining the service interface
Task 2‐4: Defining the service implementation
Task 2‐5: Defining the component XML file

EXERCISE 3: DEPLOYING YOUR COMPONENT
Task 3‐1: Package your component into a JAR file
Task 3‐2: Importing the component using Workbench ES2

EXERCISE 4: USING THE COMPONENT WITHIN A PROCESS
Task 4‐1: Create the EncryptManyDocuments/EncryptManyDocuments process and invoke it from
Workbench.
Task 4‐2: Programmatically invoking the EncryptManyDocuments process.

Solution code is provided as well as extra notes on the code for the programmatic invocation:

New Open Source Mobile Application

2011-04-15T09:23:00.000-07:00

This mobile application demonstrates how to retrieve XML data from a server, return the results, and work with the data objects and display them. There will be a video posted on this blog post very shortly with the instructions for building it along with best practices. In the meantime, you may download the source code directly from http://www.web2open.org/adc/XMLService.fxp (On a PC, right click and select "Save link as..."; on a MAC, control-click and select "Save link as...").

Now for some words of caution. First, loading XML into a mobile application is generally a bad idea. It is far better to use AMF with a 3-tier architecture (hello LiveCycle Data Services!!). Nevertheless, small XML files can be worked with in this manner! Enjoy.

One Most Excellent book on Ontology Science

2011-04-12T11:21:00.000-07:00

It is a pleasure to be able to write to announce what I consider to be the premier book on
the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO). I also wrote the forward for this book and thought I would share it via this blog. This is a great practical guide to applied ontology projects. Click on the book to see the TOC and to purchase!

Normally within the forward of a book, writers use generic terms like “fascinating” and
“intriguing” coupled with an array of positive compliments. After all,
the purpose of a good introduction is to set the stage for the reader in
a manner that the reader is highly motivated to read the rest of the
book. While tempted to follow this scripted behavior, I found myself
wanting to take an alternative route for the forward.

Before talking about the book itself, I would like to introduce the
author. My first personal experience with Adam Pease was at an industry
event around 2003 where we sat together on a panel and discussed the
impact of semantics on various industry standards. I was intrigued by
Adam’s knowledge and his enthusiasm to share with others yet there was
something else that made him easy to listen to. He carried with him
wisdom, yet he did not force it upon those in the room. He merely
revealed the knowledge, bit by bit, as the conversation allowed it to
enter. This is very unique in a computer science discipline where
zealotry prevails. He modestly imparted his opinions on the roomful of
people only to the degree it answered the specific question before. This
inevitably brought up another question that Adam usually had an answer
for too.

The result of this behavior was quite infectious. Adam, Kurt Conrad and
I ended up in a late night sushi restaurant somewhere near Menlo Park,
CA discussing how to map SUMO concepts to Mandarin, Japanese and
Cantonese, how WordNet can reference SUMO and why First Order Logic
(FOL) constraints are generally a cool concept to have in advanced
computer systems. An upper-level ontology, such as SUMO, is a common,
shared conceptualization of a domain. SUMO itself, being an upper
ontology, conceptualizes our existence in our three dimensional,
sequentially temporal lives largely bound by gravity upon one major axis
(I think the geographical and geo-spatial extensions to SUMO actually
acknowledge the moon’s secondary axis of gravity which can be seen
manifesting itself as tidal behavior in large bodies of water). During
this discussion, the simple and beautiful truth came to me. SUMO, or
something akin to it, is one of the missing pieces of a large segment of
technical work I have done in my life. If it had been explained any
differently, I would have missed it. Adam’s delivery was the key for
understanding and seeing the value in ontology work. This missing piece,
the shared conceptualization, was the cause of many a failure to design
a proper XML dialects or the resultant mess the old Electronic Data
Interchange (EDI) formats represented. It was not specifically the SUMO
format that was lacking, it was the general lack of an upper ontology
that could provide the basis for mid level ontologies and other domain
specific metadata dictionaries or lexicons.

Up to that point, I had largely worked as a software systems architect
who inevitably ended up dealing with the meaning of some XML dialect.
Defining XML dialects for just about everything under the sun had been a
relatively popular activity in our industry for the 5 or 6 years leading
up to my meeting with Adam. During the entire time I had been in
standards meetings either creating a dialect, analyzing someone else’s
or thinking about software that could work with it, I had never seen
anyone approach the problems from a place of a common shared
conceptualization of the domain prior to embarking on writing the
language. In retrospect, the advent of XML has both benefited humanity
as well as stifling it by allowing people to create specific XML based
languages who could instead benefit from the discipline required to do
the formal modeling work using an upper ontology.

Before my work at Adobe, I had founded such a company, XML Global
Technologies, in 1997. This company proceeded to work with a wide
variety of XML languages and it was evident that reconciling the
semantics between data elements of those languages was a monumental
task. When XML Global was acquired by the Xenos Group in 2003, some of
the original founders and I began a new company called Yellow Dragon
Software in Vancouver, British Columbia. This company had a metadata
registry-repository where we attempted to work again on the
reconciliation of disparate semantics in XML languages. This effort was
Herculean and the need for an ontology was apparent. SUMO was the
logical choice due to its compact size and the fact it has been reviewed
and tested by multiple experts. When Yellow Dragon was acquired by Adobe
Systems in late 2003, I went to work for Adobe (where I still work today!) and have been able to
continue my research into ontology, semantics and enterprise
architecture in that capacity. SUMO has given me the basics for seeing
logic in a multitude of applications and the gaps where software vendors
like Adobe can benefit from the adoption of an upper ontology. Adobe’s
XMP (XML Metadata Platform) is in fact extendible by nature and could
embrace SUMO at some future stage. This is but one example of the
application of SUMO that would potentially be then used by those who
work with common software applications such as Acrobat and Photoshop.

SUMO gives those who use data modeling techniques a common footing to
stand on before they undertake their tasks. It provides a level setting
for our existence and sets up the framework on which we can do much more
meaningful work. SUMO provides order for one level of our chaos.

In 2008 I finished writing a book for O’Reilly Media on Web 2.0
Design Patterns with co-authors James Governor and Dion Hinchcliffe. We
wrote some material about the impact of semantics and ontology within
that book. One such part discussed the phenomena of folksonomy, a loose
and informal set of declarations about resources using largely natural
language tags. While professors and other academic types toil in the
abstract world of ontology, the general population races to set tags to
things. While not a formal approach to creating a semantic web, it has
seemed to work well amongst the multitude of sites implementing the
Collaborative Tagging (folksonomy) pattern

We felt that SUMO could potentially offer a huge amount of guidance to
folksonomies. Imagine folksonomies coupled to an upper-level ontology to
classify tag terms that represent multiple concepts? By mapping SUMO to
terms in WordNet, ambiguities are avoided in cases where words have
multiple meanings. Imagine searching for the term Washington. You would
get results for George Washington (a president), Denzel Washington (an
actor), Washington, DC (a city), the Washington Monument (a large
monument), Washington State University (a school), and more. If
folksonomies can be mapped in a similar manner it might be a valuable
mechanism to advancing semantic web interests. Of course, disambiguation
is only one of the benefits of using SUMO and there are hundreds of
other applications that can embrace it.

Now that I have covered the bases, it is time to bring about the
compliments for the book. This is going to be short by contrast!

Chances are if you’ve already picked up this book, you have an immense
interest in the topic. This book represents the finest body of knowledge
on SUMO and will be a valuable reference for decades to come. It is a
pleasure to be chosen to introduce the book and it will remain one of my
nearest reference materials while I continue to work in the field of
computer science. I hope you share this view and become involved in the
official SUMO list server (at http://sigmakee.sourceforge.net) where
discussions on SUMO continue. Enjoy the book and keep it nearby for
reference for once you have crossed the chasm of knowledge, you will
start relating everything to ontological terms.

My final word? If you are interested in this subject matter, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of the book and consider the sheer genius of Adam Pease. You will not be disappointed.

Security Breach!

2011-04-08T13:38:00.000-07:00

Today, I applaud Marriott for sending a notice that stated:

Dear Marriott Customer,

"We were recently notified by Epsilon, a marketing vendor used by Marriott International, Inc. to manage customer emails, that an unauthorized third party gained access to a number of Epsilon's accounts including Marriott's email list.

In all likelihood, this will not impact you. However, we recommend that you continue to be on the alert for spam emails requesting personal or sensitive information. Please understand and be assured that Marriott does not send emails requesting customers to verify personal information.

We take your privacy very seriously. Marriott has a long-standing commitment to protecting the privacy of the personal information that our guests entrust to us. We regret this has taken place and apologize for any inconvenience."

Data breaches are inevitable. This was not Marriott but a third party used by them. I applaud Marriott for being timely and honest with their news. This is what I call good customer service. I will continue to use Marriott. In fact, I just left one this morning in Mexico City and have another one booked for next month.

Flex Mobile Development - Transform Gestures

2011-04-04T10:14:00.000-07:00

The example code below provides a quick look at how to register an event handler for TransformGestureEvent.TRANSFORM_ZOOM.

Line 11 adds the event listener to the BorderContainer (line 41). The Transform event is passed to the onZoom function on line 14, which has a member variable of type Sprite. By reading the scale of the event's scaleY property, you can enforce a minimum size as shown by the if-else statement on lines 17-26 and assign the new values. Note that the minimum scale size this can go to is 1. This is to prevent users from scaling the Sprite too small to place both fingers on it to zoom again.

The code may be downloaded from here. You will need Flash Builder 4 and AIR 2.5 or later to run this.

Adobe Launches new CEM Software!

2011-04-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

After being under the embargo until Mar 31, I can finally talk publicly about Adobe CEM! Part of the next evolution of enterprise architecture, Customer Experience Management (CEM) is a principle that applies to the user’s experience over the complete lifecycle of their relationship with an enterprise. Opposed to UX (User Experience), CEM covers more than one system. Architects who apply UX principles often only work with one system or process at a time, hence are not able to gauge a customer's overall experience. This covers a continuum of phases, which may be non-sequentially or even concurrently in effect including awareness, attraction, interaction, transaction, servicing, collaboration, and advocacy. The result of a great customer experience is a positive advocacy while the result of a negative experience is a negative advocacy.

The underlying technology is built on a new markup declaration named UXML (User Experience Markup Language, a markup based on the W3C XML format. UXML is also built off a new First Order of Logic (FOL) model that helps companies recognize where overlap in interactions occur. Using this data-centric modeling approach, you might notice, for example, that your web-based forms are sometimes asking customers for information you already possess on them. Not asking the customer for the same information twice again means a better experience for your customers. This in turn makes them more likely to be positive advocates for your enterprise.

Another aspect of the core technology behind CEM is the SCHISM engine. The Social Content Holistic Index Sharing of data and Metadata (SCHISM) helps enterprises reconcile data from several disparate systems or even non-system silos such as call center metrics. The context engine helps preserve the true semantics of the data so that knowledge workers using the Complex Binary Shell (Complex-BS) have the correct data to serve customers in a way that will make them smile.

While this sounds all very confusing and abstract, the software is easy to install. You simply insert the first DVD shown below and hit “install” and CEM will do everything for you. Your customers will become rich, famous, and instantly good looking and thank you for it. You will be rich, famous and featured in People Magazine as a direct result. Everybody will be happy.

To find out more about this exciting product visit by the end of today, April 1: http://blogs.adobe.com/experiencedelivers/about-us/

Adobe MAX 2011 - Crowdsource Request!

2011-03-30T14:09:00.001-07:00

Adobe MAX 2011 will probably once again be the best place and time you can be all year long to learn about Adobe LiveCycle ES. We've already started assembling ideas for topics internally but I would really like to seek input from the LiveCycle Developer Community. Specifically, please send me an email to dnickull at adobe dot com and tell me what topics you would like to see taught at Adobe MAX in Los Angeles, October 1-5, 2011.

Adobe MAX 2011!

2011-03-28T06:05:00.000-07:00

Adobe MAX - Save the date!

This year's MAX will happen October 1-5, 2011, once again at the Los Angeles, CA convention center. I will be there!

If you are not familiar with Adobe MAX, it is a once a year dream to be up close and in person with those who drive Adobe, from product management to engineers to sales & marketing. Adobe MAX showcases the latest tools and technologies that are shaping the future of digital experiences. Learn directly from industry leaders and Adobe experts and connect with peers. Make sure you get MAX updates as they are announced and sign up for the mailing list today.

Other action items:

Follow @AdobeMAX on twitter

Hit us up on Facebook

Follow @duanechaos on Twitter - (Hint - there may be some exclusive offers coming from my account!)

Government 2.0 Architectural Patterns

2011-03-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

Having co-authored a book for O'Reilly titled "Web 2.0 Architectures", which largely focuses on patterns of things deemed to be "web 2.0", I have turned my mind towards specializing many of these towards government.

The scope for this work would be IT systems that provide services to citizens. There are several concepts that seem to be no-brainers when you look at them at a high level. However, there may be red tape or other legislative or legal reasons why they cannot be simplified.

A white paper is in order, however here are some preliminary thoughts:

1. Please don't ask me for information you already have! Governments should avoid asking their users for information they already have. Practical: I fill out income tax forms every year in which I have to enter data that is used to calculate my personal taxes. The reality is that my government already has most if not all of this information. My employer has to file my income with them, charities already have filed copies of receipts and the government knows exactly how much money they have deducted already for federal and provincial taxes. Why am I being asked to enter that information into a form again? Perhaps figuring out a confidential way to send me my completed tax return and then allow me to file "adjustments" would be more efficient from a user perspective?

2. Open Data. The Government of Canada has recently made several sets of data open for the people who paid for the data (citizens) to access. (http://www.data.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=F9B7A1E3-1). I applaud this move and now we have a responsibility to help them specialize the way data is published at the next level.

3. Allowing multiple channels of communication to be reconciled. The Canadian government again had a great program for electronic passport applications and renewals, which reconciled electronic forms data and "in person" interviews. More government departments need to be savvy and adopt this sort of system.

4. Use of Social Media! I've seen some government departments shun social media. Sometimes this is based on a fear or perception that the conversations will be antagonistic towards their department. Guess what? It is far better to be part of a conversation than to be defined by it. Get over your fears and get involved with social media. Use it as a tool to figure out where the common practices are that annoy end users and how to best fix them. Find out what is working well and what is not. Find out what the public does not know and use social media to help convey solutions to us. Use social media to get citizen input and ideas. Vancouver City council has done this! (http://talkgreenvancouver.ca/). This involves letting go of ego and recognizing that good ideas can come from anyone.

5. Electronic records. The Ministry of Health in BC has started moving to EMR (Electronic Medical Records). This is a huge step in the right direction. I trust this far more than having all my records sitting in a single doctor's office in paper format.

6. Use SOA! Services to citizens are core. If you can take services and allow 3rd parties to provide them, this could make all our lives simpler. With this comes great responsibility for things such as ensuring records are not breached or files compromised, however I believe this can be done in a manner that serves the greater public interest. The use of services could be applied to many contexts including Government to Government, Government to Citizen and Government to Industry (Business).

7. Protect my data! Please take steps to protect my personal data from hackers or accidental leaks. Adobe makes a great product called "Rights Management" (part of the LiveCycle ES platform), which can mitigate the impact of disasters, even after they have occurred.

8. Use technology to become more open and transparent. Allow the decisions made, data available and rationale being closed voting to be publicly accessible. This would be easy to implement by using a Robert's Rules XML schema to mark up data that would allow anyone to find out who attended meetings, who voted on various topics, and categories and more. The public would love it more than finding out later or worse, being critical based on false beliefs. Transparency should be a cornerstone. Isn't this what democracy is all about anyways?

9. Accessibility by Joe Average. Typically, access to senators, heads of state and other high ranking public officials has been perceived as impossible for the average person. Using the collaboration tools available via the Internet, governments can easily allow citizens to have better access to information and individuals charged with the fiduciary duties of public office or as public servants. Products like Adobe Acrobat Connect could be used to have a citizens briefing once a week to allow individuals a platform to engage with government on various topics. Obviously this wouldn't work in a general setting (e.g.: Obama allows any citizen to discuss any topic), however scoping this to narrow issues such as local municipal politic issues could have a huge impact.

Anyways, these are some initial ideas I had. If you think they are bunk or have others, please leave a comment.

WebVisions Hands on Mobile Android Code Camp!

2011-03-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

If you are in Portland, OR on May 25-27, you must come to the Oregon Convention Center for the WebVisions Event. WebVisions is a nationally recognized conference that explores the future of Web design, technology and business strategy.

I have been invited to give a hands on development course that will lead people through the process of building a mobile application that deploys to the Android and BBos platforms.

Title: Hands-on AIR 4 Android Development

Desc: This hands-on Boot Camp is for developers to build an applications targeting the Google Android O/S. Adobe Sr. Technical Evangelist Duane Nickull will prepare attendees ahead of time to complete this course using their own laptops. Attendees will learn the basics of AIR 4 Android/BlackBerry O/S such as:

- basic application architecture
- creating a new application project and how to use the emulator
- invoking services and binding result formats including some best practices
- switching between multiple views
- invoking system actions via intents
- touch screen gesture control
- packaging the output as *.APKs to publish to the marketplace

Due to the short time of this session, all attendees will be given source code samples and resources to take away for self paced learning.

Android 50% Faster than iPhone on the Web?

2011-03-17T09:57:00.000-07:00

Today I came across a blog post that tested load times between iPhone and several Android devices. As written: (see original post on Wired)

"Android phones whisk users across the web more than 50 percent faster than the iPhone, according to a study that compared the two top mobile OSes performance when downloading web pages.

The study, conducted by mobile website optimization company Blaze.io, involved more than 40,000 downloads of web pages belonging to the Fortune 1000 companies. Android loaded pages 52 percent faster when rendering full web pages than the iPhone. On average, Android phones took 2.1 seconds to render non-mobile optimized web pages, while the iPhone took 3.2 seconds.

Android bested the iPhone on site loading time a whopping 84% of the time."

Having run Gingerbread (a.k.a. Android 2.3) for two weeks now on a Nexus One, my general observation is that it is indeed faster that both FroYo (Android 2.2) and iPhone iOS for loading pages but I am pragmatic. I would urge everyone to be pragmatic about these results. They only show a single test (loading a web page) and the environment did not appear to be properly controlled. The headline is hence somewhat misleading and sensationalistic. What would be better is to do these sorts of tests in a closed environment and break the results down into HTTP request creation, transfer time, request bandwidth, server processing time, response transfer time, response bandwidth and client side parsing and display (assuming HTTP get). Isolating the actual HTML/JavaScript parsing, processing and presentation is the real critical factor in making such claims in my opinion. This test should not be done by loading a Fortune 1000 company's website on the open web as this represents a large an uncontrolled factor for the tests. A counter argument would be that 40,000 loads does establish a fairly reasonable chance that the test results are somewhat accurate but no one can guarantee that the server itself was not busier when the iPhone requested the pages. Let's look at what is behind each side of this competition.

iPhone's Safari also uses the WebKit open source browser engine, the same code base as Google Chrome and the Android browser (according to Wikipedia). To me this seems somewhat relevant information. WebKit's JavaScript engine, JavaScriptCore, based on KJS, is a framework separate from WebCore and WebKit, and is used on Mac OS X for applications other than web page JavaScript. Unlike iOS, Android is open so anyone can add a browser to the marketplace. I can write a basic web browser that supports CSS, AJAX, JS, and some HTML5 features in about ten lines of code using Adobe AIR, which in turn uses the Webkit implementation so if I choose, I can have the same browser as the iOS more or less. Nevertheless, Android offers many different browser choices. Some of these are:

Dolphin (hardware acceleration for Honeycomb (Android 3.0+))
Opera Mini (claims to be fastest)
Skyfire (supports Flash, 2,000,000 downloads)

and many more. Here is an article on an Android browser shootout.

My second phone, the Samsung Galaxy S, runs Android 2.2 and is very stable. The ability to view Flash is an important factor for me for both of these devices, which is why I gave my iPhone to my sister. The one item I do miss is the iTunes Synchronization however I am debating getting out of the iTunes/Appstore altogether and find a replacement. Any recommendations for OS X music management software would be appreciated (please leave a comment).

The long and short of this is that while my perception is that Android is indeed faster at loading web pages, the key thing that wins my approval is multiple choices. YAMMV! *

* Your actual mileage may vary