Which scripting language is most popular?

This is a totally unscientific bit of research to answer a question about the popularity of various scripting languages posed to me by Mike Chambers. After a quick search, it appears that there was no reliable data available. I deferred to a far less than scientific methodology to find out which of the four big languages (ActionScript, JavaScript, Perl, and VBScript) I am following are leading in different categories.

I realize that there are some languages left off this list. This is because I am lazy (something which I have admitted to before).

Here is the survey as of May 2008:

Monster.com jobs keyword search

The scientist must consider that first off, it only shows that JavaScript got over 5000, not the exact number. In all fairness, I never did a search on “Flash,” which includes ActionScript Skills. I figured if I had done this, I probably would have had to also search for “AJAX,” which obviously includes JavaScript. Here are the results in order of ranking.

*Javascript > 5,000
http://jobsearch.monster.com/Search.aspx?re=130&cy=us&brd=1&JSNONREG=1&q=javascript&rad=20&rad_units=miles

Perl 4,442
http://jobsearch.monster.com/Search.aspx?re=0&cy=us&brd=1&jsnonreg=1&q=perl&rad_units=miles&pg=1&vw=b

ActionScript 778
http://jobsearch.monster.com/Search.aspx?re=0&cy=us&brd=1&jsnonreg=1&q=actionscript&rad_units=miles&pg=1&vw=b

VBScript 856
http://jobsearch.monster.com/Search.aspx?re=0&cy=us&brd=1&jsnonreg=1&q=vbscript&rad_units=miles&pg=1&vw=b

* Did not give exact number

Note that “Flash” gave 3,552 results:
http://jobsearch.monster.com/Search.aspx?re=130&cy=us&brd=1&JSNONREG=1&q=flash&rad=20&rad_units=miles

which was more than “AJAX” at 2,835
http://jobsearch.monster.com/Search.aspx?re=0&cy=us&brd=1&jsnonreg=1&q=ajax&rad_units=miles&pg=1&vw=b

Amazon.com Books

Book searches on Amazon also appear to be totally unscientific. Given that Perl has been around the longest and was powering most of the first Internet bubble, it is no surprise it topped the rankings. ActionScript came in a dismal last place.

Perl 20,317
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=perl&x=0&y=0

JavaScript 7,338
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=javascript&x=0&y=0

VBScript 2,913
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=vbscript&x=0&y=0

ActionScript 666
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=actionscript&x=0&y=0

I decided to supplement this search with additional searches on “Flash” and “AJAX” to capture more of the current AS and JS crowd books.

Flash garnered 266,572 results
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_i_0?ie=UTF8&rs=&keywords=flash&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aflash%2Ci%3Astripbooks

while AJAX got around 15,000
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=AJAX&x=0&y=0

Google results “(term) developer”

For this search, the terms were enclosed in quotes making it a string search. Otherwise I suspected all the pages that merely contained the Script type="JavaScript” element and attribute set would have come up falsely strong. In fact, most pages that have Flash use JavaScript to load them and do detection of Flash Player version etc. The results here show that there are still lot of people discussing Perl Developers however ActionScript did come in second.

Perl developer 352,000
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22perl+developer%22&btnG=Search

ActionScript developer 99,400
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=%22Actionscript+developer%22&btnG=Google+Search

JavaScript developer 75,500
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=%22javascript+developer%22&btnG=Google+Search

VBScript developer 1,210
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22vbscript+developer%22&btnG=Search

Flash Developer got just over 1,000,000
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=%22flash+developer%22&btnG=Google+Search

Ajax Developer got 94,300
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&pwst=1&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=%22ajax+developer%22&spell=1

and Flex Developer got 214,000
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22Flex+developer%22&btnG=Search

So what does it all mean? Not much really - it is an unscientific approximation of which scripting language might be more popular.

OASIS SOA Reference Architecture call for review

To OASIS members, Public Announce Lists:

The OASIS Service Oriented Architecture Reference Model (SOA-RM) TC has recently
approved the following specification as a Committee Draft and approved the
package for public review:

Reference Architecture for Service Oriented Architecture Version 1.0

The public review starts today, 9 May 2008, and ends 8 July 2008. This is an
open invitation to comment. We strongly encourage feedback from potential users,
developers and others, whether OASIS members or not, for the sake of improving
the interoperability and quality of OASIS work. Please feel free to distribute
this announcement within your organization and to other appropriate mail lists.

More non-normative information about the specification and the technical
committee may be found at the public home page of the TC at
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=soa-rm. Comments may
be submitted to the TC by any person through the use of the OASIS TC Comment
Facility which can be located via the button marked "Send A Comment" at the top
of that page, or directly at
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/comments/index.php?wg_abbrev=soa-rm.

Submitted comments (for this work as well as other works of that TC) are
publicly archived and can be viewed at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/soa-rm-comment/. All comments submitted to
OASIS are subject to the OASIS Feedback License, which ensures that the feedback
you provide carries the same obligations at least as the obligations of the TC
members.

The specification document and related files are available here:

Editable Source:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/soa-rm/soa-ra/v1.0/soa-ra-pr-01.doc

PDF (Authoritative):
http://docs.oasis-open.org/soa-rm/soa-ra/v1.0/soa-ra-pr-01.pdf

HTML:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/soa-rm/soa-ra/v1.0/soa-ra-pr-01.html

Abstract:
"This document specifies the OASIS Reference Architecture for Service Oriented
Architecture. It follows from the concepts and relationships defined in the
OASIS Reference Model for Service Oriented Architecture. While it remains
abstract in nature, the current document describes one possible template upon
which a SOA concrete architecture can be built.

"Our focus in this architecture is on an approach to integrating business with
the information technology needed to support it. The issues involved with
integration are always present, but, we find, are thrown into clear focus when
business integration involves crossing ownership boundaries.

...

"The Reference Architecture has three main views: the Business via Service view
which lays the foundation for conducting business in the context of Service
Oriented Architecture; the Realizing Services view which addresses the
requirements for constructing a Service Oriented Architecture; and the Owning
Service Oriented Architecture view which focuses on the governance and
management of SOA-based systems."


OASIS and the Service Oriented Architecture Reference Model (SOA-RM) TC welcome
your comments.

Yes - I did pass out on stage at JavaOne.

Thank you for all the emails. I apparently contract the norovirus that was running rampant through JavaOne this year. While I spent most of the night vomiting (and worse), I did feel okay in the morning. I went to a medical clinic totally unaware the virus was around and they diagnosed it. I later found out via the news that a norovirus was the culprit.

I felt okay so I decided to go ahead with my final presentation on SOA, Standards and Java at 1:30 on Friday; however my co-presenter Steve Jones of Capgemini noticed I wasn't looking too good. To make a long story short, at the end of the code demo part I keeled over and apparently blacked out on stage in front of quite a few hundred people. I guess it is a good way to avoid Q&A. Goods news is we actually got the presentation done first.

The media picked up the story later that day:
CBS - http://cbs5.com/local/norovirus.moscone.outbreak.2.720481.html

SF Chronicle - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/10/BAB910JRM3.DTL&type=health

CNET - http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9940042-36.html?tag=cd.blog

Thank you to everyone who wrote in. I am still sick but okay enough to blog. Will update later.

Duane's World TV Show Launches today!

Duane's World, a new TV show focused on how technology impacts people lives and full of interviews and coding samples and tips, launched today. There are 12 episodes planned for 2008. The first show starts with a small talk on Web Services and SOA, continues with an interview with the guys from Nitobi, and concludes with a lesson on how to use the Flex Builder version 3 WSDL import wizard to build a full web service client. Andre discusses AJAX, Flex, and AIR development including fighting for Red Bull drinks with Mike Chambers and playing jokes on Grant Skinner.

Stupid JavaOne 2008 fun!!!!

I was bored so I decided to climb inside a large plastic ball and ask some guys to chuck me around. Does this thing or these guys look dangerous? See the movie below. LOL!!!

Yes Virginia - Adobe does listen to Slashdot

Today I saw a comment on Slashdot (my all time favorite online community) that made me realize just how far Adobe has come.

“The mere idea of higher ups at a previously assumed Big Evil Company paying attention to discussions on Slashdot (with critiques here often ruthless, multifaceted, and heavily biased towards consumer interests) is pretty shocking, and heartening.

If this signals a major shift in Adobe's operating culture, I think it's cause for celebration.”

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=539834&cid=23263596

Yes - it is true. In fact, we regularly peruse Slashdot to find out the latest, brutally honest opinions from the hardest to please tech-heads. I doubt we'll ever satisfy everyone but to recap, Adobe is definitely on the right track. PDF to ISO, The ActionScript Virtual Machine (VM behind Flash PLayer) open sourced via SourceForge, the Open Screen Project, The Flex Compiler open source project and BlazeDS are just a few examples of Adobe putting community and developers ahead of corporate greed. So what does this mean?

• Anyone who complains that Acrobat Reader is bloated is free to (try to) write a new PDF reader that works faster.
• Anyone who thinks the Flash Player is too slow is welcome to help.
• Anyone who wants a bug fixed in the Flex SDK can fix it for themselves and others.
• We all get to work together to build a cool technology stack that works for us.

Maybe I sound too much like an optimist or a hype. I do have faith in our company and really love working here. I love the change that is occurring and having a CEO and CTO that understand Slashdot and actually take time to read and take in what is being said.

What's next? Flash on the iPhone? Please already!!!

;-)

The Open Screen Project rocks the RIA world!!!!

Today Adobe announced the Open Screen Project, a major step forward to drive rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices and consumer electronics. The Open Screen Project is supported by technology leaders ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics, Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless, and leading content providers including BBC, MTV Networks and NBC Universal. The ASP removes barriers to adoption for all companies including:

- Removing restrictions on use of the Flash (SWF) and Flash Video (FLV/F4V) specifications

- Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player, enabling third parties to more easily embed it in devices

- Publishing the Adobe Flash Cast protocol and the Action Message Format (AMF) protocol for robust data services

- Removing licensing fees – making the next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

- Working with partners to enable the client technology to be updated over the network to maintain consistency as we continue to innovate

- Working with partners to enable open access to web content and rich Internet applications by users across devices and networks

Web 2.0 Expo San Fransisco Materials

I will be shortly uploading the materials from the following two talks at Web 2.0 Expo:

1. Flex and AIR Boot Camp
- 25 code projects with source code [Download]
- instruction guide to present these [Download]
- PPT Slides (Feel free to use and re-label) [Download]
- Flex/Air Cookbook - Feb 2008 [Download]
- Bootcamp projects in MS Word with additional instruction [Download]

2. Ontologies for the Enterprise
- PDF version of slides. Note that you must check with John Sowa and Adam Pease before re-presenting these slides. [Download]

3. Specific Flex or AIR source code
- AIR Apple Shaped Application - no chrome, runtime morphing [Download]
- AIR Backwards Countdown Timer - counts backwards until specific date [Download]
- AIR FullScreen - app to mimic PPT presentation w/integrated demos [Download]

4. Misc Stuff I promised a few people
- 6 songs from my Band 22nd Century (zipped) [Download]

Please feel free to take the materials and use them to present. I'll post the URL's here once done.

Albelli Launches Photo Book Software on Adobe AIR

I am at Web 2.0 Expo today and got a really cool surprise. Joris sent me an email and announced that Albelli launched using PhotoBucket's API. This is one of the coolest AIR applications I have ever seen. The full site is here:

http://www.albelli.com/photobucket

Their application is written in Adobe AIR and can be downloaded. You can use it to build a custom photo album using your own photos and then order it to be printed and delivered to your house. This is a great mashup and has some very interesting technology behind it.

I first ran into Joris at Web 20 Expo in Berlin last year. Watch these guys and visit the site for sure.

LiveCycle Contest

The Acrobat User Community is hosting a PDF Forms contest. Forms creation, distribution and response tracking are one of the most popular uses for Acrobat. But users need more samples of great forms and useful templates.

The purpose of the PDF forms contest is to create a public library of sample PDF Forms and LiveCycle Designer templates that other PDF creators can use. The contest is open to qualified participants in any industry. You can even use a free 30-day trial copy of Acrobat 8 Professional to create your entries.

There are two entry categories:

Category: Fillable Forms
Show sophisticated and visually interesting fillable PDF Forms created using the forms toolbar in Acrobat 8 Professional, that may include interactive form elements, auto-formatting, calculations and Javascripting.

Category: LiveCycle Designer Templates
Develop form templates that can be used in LiveCycle Designer 8, and may include graphics, interactive form elements, library elements, auto-formatting, calculations and Javascripting. (LiveCycle Designer is included with every copy of Acrobat 8 Professional for Windows)

Notable entries will appear in the PDF Forms gallery. Entries may also qualify to win Adobe software, video cams and t-shirts.

The contest runs from Mar 10, 2008 until Apr 30, 2008.

Full details at http://www.acrobatusers.com/contests/forms/

The end of the web as we know it

Sounds like an REM song doesn't it. The title is actually a white paper I co-wrote with Brady Forrest and Jack Wilber for Webinale 08 in Karlsruhe, DE. I'll be speaking at the event in May this year. Ich liebe Deutschland!!

Das Deutschen Papier ist hier:
http://createordie.de/cod/artikel/Revolution-im
-Internet-Wie-das-Web-zur-Plattform-wurde-1650.html

The English version is available online at: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/articles/web_end.html

Moss on the brain?

I caught a weird Twit from a friend who forwarded it to me. Scott Barnes, an evangelist for Microsoft, made fun of LiveCycle by pointing to a 1988 demo of a Wang document with rudimentary voice, CRUD and digsig features. In his twit, he labeled it "the best Adobe LiveCycle sales pitch i've ever seen.. well done Adobe". The twit (note: using the word "twit" to refer to the twitter entry in this case; not the person who wrote it) can be found here.

I got curious to know why he is picking on LiveCycle and followed it to the MossyBlog. Being Canadian, I know that moss usually grows on things that do not get enough direct sunlight and has a way of sucking the life out of the host. It is curious to see a blog use this metaphor as its primary moniker.

Nevertheless, after reading a bit and becoming completely bored, I have to surmise that he is getting paid to knock LiveCycle, has not seen a demo (most demos involve Microsoft technology too such as office, Win 2003 server, .NET framework 1.1 and more), and has no idea what LiveCycle ES is.

I only hope that someone at Microsoft realizes that Adobe and Microsoft have worked together very hard to bring LiveCycle to the market on the Microsoft platform. We have worked hard on the development of standards and protocols for the WS-* stack, including WS-Security, the Kerberos protocol, integration with Active Directory and much more. Most intelligent document workflows start out authoring documents in Microsoft Office so we need to work together for the benefit of the customer.

Yes - we do compete in some areas but increasingly, both companies are working towards a common good - satisfying their customers!

Makes me curious why he would willingly mock all the work Microsoft and Adobe have done together over the years. I guess when you only blog and don't spend time in real customer engagements, this cause might get lost. Nuff said!

Apple OR pear shaped AIR application?

I was challenged by a reader to build an Apple shaped application in Adobe AIR several months ago. I got an interesting email today asking if such an application could be shape shifted during runtime to change between being Apple and Pear shaped. The application is very simple yet demonstrates how to build apps that escape conventional boundaries such as rectangles. You may download the complete source code for the project here.

SPAM war deepens - am I winning?

Today I woke up to check my email and found that my email address had once again been used to spoof the "send" for buckets of SPAM.  This is due to my open advocacy of finding and physically bestowing great pain upon those parasitic individuals who plague the rest of humanity with SPAM.  The picture below shows my inbox:

This has not resulted in one single person complaining to me which is great. It means that the average recipient has enough intelligence to understand that the true spammer is using the email addresses of those who fight spam as the "sent from" address.

So what can we do now?  I am working with a few agencies worldwide to find this particular culprit.  The Chinese government is very hard on those who break laws and will likely severely punish any Chinese citizen for this.  The Russians are less accommodating however I have heard that you can easily hire "third parties" to take care of business in that country.

Distributing the AIR Runtime

Today I read a great post from Mike Chambers on how third party development shops can distribute the Adobe AIR runtime. Mike's full article can be read here. Here is an excerpt:

In order to re-distribute the Adobe AIR installer, you must first apply for, and receive permission from Adobe to redistribute it (this requires accepting a license, and submitting a form). Once you do this, you can get all of the documentation for how to distribute the runtime and integrate it with your custom installer.

We have a ton of information on this on the website (including a FAQ).

In general, the license allows you to:

* distribute the runtime installer on a closed intranet
* distribute the runtime installer on fixed media, such as CD or DVD Roms.
* distribute and launch the runtime installer as part of another native installer

In general, the license does not allow you to:

* modify the installer, or files to allow AIR application to run without having the runtime installed on the user’s system.
* distribute DLL’s or other files from the runtime directly within an application

So why is this such an important issue? Simple - it is about the entire community ensuring the end users have a good experience. While there are strong technical reasons (read the FAQ) for getting Adobe permission, consider what would happen if we had rogue companies randomly distributing modified versions of the AIR runtime without some form of central methodology and management. It could be somewhat chaotic but more importantly, for the good of the overall community, we need to all work together to cater to the end users to deliver a positive experience. This latter point cannot be emphasized enough.

While most development shops will likely just use the "get AIR" badge and rely on Adobe to incur the bandwidth costs for distribution (similar to how Sun distributes the Java Runtime Environment), you may apply for the Adobe AIR Runtime Distribution License Agreement if you have a good reason to want to distribute it yourself. Both are valid options and each company must chose the option that works best for them. Anyone can apply for that license here.

Note: Installing the Adobe AIR Runtime silently, deploying via SMS or Group Policy Objects is currently not a supported option. If you require installing the runtime silently please send an email to license-air-silent@adobe.com so that we can notify you when that feature becomes available.

Some useful online security advice

Last week I spoke at the Massive Tech show on a security panel. During the talk, I quickly realized how far in the dark many consumers are as to the dangers of online behavior. Many people, via sheer ignorance, expose themselves to unnecessary risks. The following are some quick tips I want to share to help raise awareness.

1. Always log out. When you log into an online application (such as your online banking or brokerage account), a session is created. If you simply close the browser without logging out, the session may remain open for a short time leaving it vulnerable to replay style attacks. In these types of attacks, someone could send a request or hit the back button on your own browser and be able to access your account as if they were you. Closing the session properly by logging out removes a huge amount of risk.

2. Use at least 3 different passwords for all your online activities. I use 3 - one for low value logins (such as a user group), one for medium risk and one password for high risk, high value applications such as online banking, paypal and our corporate network. NEVER use your highest value password for low risk accounts. It is very conceivable that someone could socially engineer an attack against you by finding out your interest and sending you an offer you cannot refuse (free iPod Touch with each new account on "someAttractiveWebsite.com"). A clever webmaster and hacker could spoof a password text field and trick you into providing your high value password for some offer when you set up a new account. USE MORE THAN ONE PASSWORD!!!

3. Be very suspicious of emails at work asking you to log in to a remote site to do something work related using your intranet credentials. I recently got an email purporting to be from our legal department telling me that I had to take some training to comply with US laws and to use my normal credentials. The URL was a remote site. While this one was real, this could have very easily been a trick (spoofed email, fake site) to compromise my corporate credentials.

4. ALWAYS check the certificate of a site and that HTTPS is working properly. Most newer browsers have technology to help alert unsuspecting consumers of fraud however it is still possible that a CRL has not yet picked up an expired certificate or the webmasters themselves have made mistakes with secure and non-secure items on the same page.

5. Set your email to not automatically download pictures from HTML email. This is an attack that a person can use to get your IP address. If you load up the HTML email and any referenced image, a trickster could easily send you an email with a unique file name and use the incoming HTTP Request envelope to get your actual IP Address. Being behind a firewall helps.

6. When logging in to high value sites, type the URL manually. Some clever tricksters have used the International Domain Name (IDN) support in Konqueror 3.2.1 on KDE 3.2.1, which allows remote attackers to spoof domain names using punycode encoded domain names that are decoded in URLs and SSL certificates in a way that uses homograph characters from other character sets, which facilitates phishing attacks. These are very hard to detect unless you know exactly what to look for.

7. DO NOT BUY PIRATED SOFTWARE ONLINE! The email ads you get advertising "special web deals" on top software brands are 100% pure fiction. If you try to buy the software, you will accomplish nothing other than giving a criminal your credit card information. Think about it - the criminals are already breaking the law by selling pirated software. Why would they comply and give you software? All they do is capture your Credit Card information leaving you wondering when your download key is coming. By the time you wise up, they have compromised your credit card. These types of attacks are often not reported as the victims themselves are often reluctant to make statements they broke the law. This can lead to further confidence tricks such as.....

8. Do not answer questions on the phone. Here is a scam that is difficult to detect. You get a call from your "credit card company". They ask you if you are the owner of credit card # and ask you to confirm. Since they already have given you your own card number, you might be satisfied that they are the bank (after all - who else would call you and be able to give you your own CC number). They ask you if it has the same expiry date as your real expiry date. Then they tell you that your card has some suspicious activity on it and they are monitoring it and want to capture the thief in the act. At this point, you are 100% convinced they are the bank but what they are really after you will give to them willingly. The next thing they do is state that they need to verify you are in fact in possession of your card. They tell you that they need the three digit special ID number on the back of the card. If you do not suspect anything, you read it back to them.

What to do? When someone calls you telling you they are your bank or some other organization of trust, tell them you'd like to call them back to validate this. If it really is your bank calling, they will probably appreciated your vigilance. If they balk, it is probably not your bank.

9. If a deal is too good to be true it is. This rule is so old and should be the guiding principle for every person. New cons are being thought up every day. Confidence games, ID gambits and other tricks are invented to take something from you. Even if a company is borderline legitimate, ask yourself "why?". Why will someone give me a free iPod for simply looking at online ads?

10. Share your experiences. If you do get conned, tell others to save them from the same fate.

I hope this helps at least one person. If anyone reading this has any others to add, please drop a comment below to help spread the word.

JavaScript vs. ActionScript

Today on the Google LiveCycle Developers list, a message came across which requires some additional clarification. The message claimed the following:

Hello all,
I don't know if this has been discussed before but thought I'd bring
it up. The JavaScript in LiveCycle isn't ECMA script it's actually
Action script like with Flash.

While the claim is errant, it does deserve some attention to discuss the differences. LiveCycle ES itself is a server product and is Java. If referring to
the LiveCycle clients, there are two main types of clients that can be used
with LiveCycle, although there are no limits as LiveCycle ES is a service bus which facilitates the consumption of services and does not constrain clients use of the services in true SOA manner (note: any service policies still must be observed). The two most common types of clients are Flex/AIR clients and Acrobat/Reader.

Acrobat and Reader implement a virtual machine based on JavaScript version
1.5 of ISO-16262 (formerly known as ECMAScript), JavaScript in Adobe®
Acrobat® software implements objects, methods, and properties that enable
you to manipulate PDF files, produce database-driven PDF files, modify the
appearance of PDF files, and much more. You can tie Acrobat JavaScript code
to a specific PDF document, a page, field, or button within that document,
or a field or button within the PDF file, and even to a user action as you
an with HTML pages. This is fully documented in the supporting
documentation. See:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/AcroJSGuide.pdf

Flex and AIR applications are in fact compiled into SWF's (commonly known as
Flash). These do implement the Actionscript Virtual Machine based on
ECMAScript. The current version was added in Flash Player 9 as ActionScript
3.0 with the advent of a new virtual machine, called AVM2 (ActionScript
Virtual Machine 2), which coexists with the previous AVM1 needed to support
legacy content. Although a bit different, it is very close to being ECMA
262 compliant.

ActionScript is run inside the Tamarin Virtual Machine. It is a just in time compiler intended to implement the fourth edition of the ECMAScript standard, commonly referred to as JavaScript 2. Tamarin was initially developed by Adobe Systems for its ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) used in Flash. The code was donated to the Mozilla project on November 7, 2006. The contributed code is tri-licensed under the GPL, LGPL, and MPL and will continue to be developed in Mozilla CVS, as the rest of Mozilla source code.

The contributed code is approximately 135,000 lines of code making it the largest single donation of code to Mozilla project besides Netscape itself. Tamarin will be included in future builds of Mozilla and by default, FireFox. There is a separate project to integrate Tamarin and SpiderMonkey is called ActionMonkey. Tamarin will also continue to be used in the future versions of Flash.

Adobe wrote LiveCycle before acquiring/merging with Macromedia, there was
no ActionScript support in any product to my knowledge.

LiveCycle 8.2 Pre-release program

For cutting edge LiveCycle developers, Adobe is inviting a select group to test the latest build (8.2) prior to the official release. You can register here:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/

Here are the new features:

• Improved development and authoring tools, including process record and playback, and validation of process definitions
• Improved end-user experience including 508-Compliance, single sign-on support, and many LiveCycle Designer enhancements
• Improved process management tools such as business calendars, out-of-office support, and customized e-mail notifications
• Improved installation with two turnkey options (JBOSS and WebLogic) as well as command-line installation
• Improved administration and platform maturity with improved backup and recovery support (hot backup), expanded platform, database, and JVM support
• Improved Web Service support within XFA-based forms
• PDF/A Support

Greg Wilson has posted a great introductory video here.

Adobe MAX 2008 Call for speakers

Adobe has launched a call for speakers and topics for MAX 2008. You can submit here:

https://adobemax.dabbledb.com/page/callforsessions/NLXYueHm

Adobe is seeking to have top quality, cutting edge presentations submitted for MAX 2008 in North America, Europe, and Japan. Adobe MAX 2008 dates are as follows:

MAX 2008 North America
San Francisco, California
November 16-19, 2008

MAX 2008 Europe
Milan, Italy
Dec 1-4, 2008

MAX 2008 Asia
Tokyo, Japan
TBA - 2009

Remember - MAX 2007 sold out. Remember to check back here for early bird registration. Also - if you are interested in sponsoring MAX in 2008, please go here. There are limited opportunities available. Likewise, the MAX 2008 mailing list can be subscribed to here.

Arc90 Lab : The RESTService Flex Library

This just in. The folks at Arc90 Lab have created a Flex REST service AS3 (ActionScript 3) library. I haven't downloaded it yet but be assured I will. You can get it here.

Basement.org states:

"We're also big fans of Adobe's Flash and Flex platforms. Unfortunately, AS3 isn't exactly REST-friendly out of the box. There's some HTTP support, but we needed more robust support for REST. To remedy this, we've built our own AS3 library: RESTService. It's a "class that makes fully aware HTTP service calls. Fault and Result events contain all response headers and status messages, as well as the response body." It even supports HTTPS by leveraging the AS3 Crypto Framework"

Adobe Flash Lite Shipments Pass Half Billion Mark

According to SDA Times, Adobe's Flash Lite mobile shipments have surpassed the half billion mark. This means over 500,000,000 devices worldwide from manufacturer's including LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson have now been shipped carrying the mobile version on Flash. Adobe’s Flash Lite Player runtime specifically designed for mobile devices. According to Adobe, Flash Lite has seen over 150 % growth over the last year.

Flex Builder Free for Education!

Adobe recently expanded the free Flex Builder offering for Education. The information below describes the details.  If you're a student or staff at an education facility, get this offer!!

The offer:

Effective March 3, 2008 all education customers, including staff, faculty and students can now download Flex Builder 3 Professional for free. This offer is for download-only product and requires a valid serial number to activate the trial version of Flex Builder. Education customers will need to register to receive their free Flex Builder serial number at www.flexregistration.com . All applications will be processed within one week. This registration site and serial number distribution is managed by a third party vendor for Adobe.

Eligibility

All education customers are eligible for free pricing. WOOT!!

Customer Service

If you don't receive a serial within one week of  submission, contact customer service by emailing info@flexregistration.com

What you need to know about SPAM

I am not sure if this is a badge of honor to be worn or not, but it appears that one or more of the spammers I have been threatening have been busy spoofing my name as the "sent from" field in their latest spam campaigns. Needless to say, if you have received a message purporting to be from me which is spam, I can assure you I did not send it. Expand the headers and read and you will see this is true. Yours truly has been targeted by spammers, likely as retribution for my actions against the spammers.

I hate spammers. I will hunt them down and punish them whenever possible. They are responsible for more lost time (including writing this blog article) and more waste of network traffic than any other form of life on the planet.

Spammers are the lowest form of life on our planet to boot. Most of them are only the second generation in their bloodline to walk upright and have relatives who still live in trees.

Spammers - too bad you are too chicken to stand in front of me and tell me you are a spammer. You'd find out very fast that some of the advantages of NOT spamming include never having to use the phrase "I have no teeth left".  OK - I am not advocating vigilante justice, but I like to fantasize.

Until then my fellow brethren, keep fighting against spammers. Together we can eliminate this menace from our society. Some points of interest:

1. Know what the anti spam laws are in your country. Keep a record and find out if you can pursue these idiots financially.

2. If your country does not have laws, start some or get involved in the process.

3. Contact companies that are the source of spam and threaten them. Tell them you will NEVER do business with them. Report them to the authorities in their country and tell them what their actions have done to tarnish that nations image. Set up an "advertising" contract such as the one on the comments page for this blog and send them invoices threatening to sue if you don't get paid. Take legal action and garnish the money owed to the spammer.

4.Do whatever you can to make their lives miserable. I have sent several messages to the central Chinese Ministry telling them about Sunjun (see bottom of comments here), one spammer Falun Gong activities. This is highly illegal in China and some have even been put to death for this. This sounds drastic however these people hurt the entire world. We all make less money as a result of their actions which in turn hurts people in developing and transitioning economies. If words like "Nigeria" get stripped as spam, how the heck can people in that country who are trying to use the internet to develop their economies able to survive? It hurts us all. Note that according to State Department reports, people who have responded to “pay in advance ” solicitations have been beaten, subjected to threats and extortion, and in some cases, murdered.

5. If you know a spammer, make them stop. Let them know exactly what you think of them and how others will react. There is a small percentage of spam that appears to be generated by otherwise well meaning people who are just unfamiliar with internet etiquette.

6. If the spam is illegal, report it to the authorities. For example, child pornography, Nigerian Scams, illegal ripped software can all be reported. Most software companies have an anti piracy team (Adobe's is piracy@adobe.com). If it is a phishing scheme or other illegal scheme, report it to the government. The USA has several places set up to handle this including the FBI, the Federal Trade Commission and others.

7. Specific to Nigerian or 409 scams:

If you receive a letter from Nigeria asking you to send personal or banking information, do not reply in any manner. Send the letter to the U.S. Secret Service, your local FBI office, or the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. You can also register a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel.

If you know someone who is corresponding in one of these schemes, encourage that person to contact the FBI or the U.S. Secret Service as soon as possible.

Be skeptical of individuals representing themselves as Nigerian or foreign government officials asking for your help in placing large sums of money in overseas bank accounts.

Do not believe the promise of large sums of money for your cooperation.

Guard your account information carefully.

There is so much more I can write but I am going to spend my time trying to track down the filth who used my email address to spoof spams this weekend. I will find him and punish him.

8. If the deal is too good to be true, it isn't true! You may think you are buying a discount copy of Windows Vista or Adobe Photoshop, but you are not. What happens is the criminals who advertise this simply take your personal information and GIVE YOU NOTHING IN RETURN. Think about it. They are already breaking the law. Why would they even bother to send you a link to download the software. Why not just take your personal information and use it to punish you. After all, you cannot report it to authorities if you are involved in perpetuating a crime too (buying bootlegged software is illegal in most countries and punishable by jail time and fines). These spammers simply take your credit card and personal information and sell it or use it to hurt you more.

This post may seem like a bit of a rant, but spammers would not spam if it didn't work. Hunt them down and punish them.

LiveCycle ES wins Dr. Dobbs award.

LiveCycle Enterprise Suite has been announced as a "Productivity Winner" for the "Enterprise Tools" category
of the Dr. Dobb's 18th Annual Jolt Awards. Winners will be featured in the June issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal.

The full list of winners is published here:
http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/portal/archives/2008/03/jolt_award_winn.html


SOA the real winner?

What is interesting is that this really represents the business value of SOA to the enterprise. While not specifically discussed in terms of SOA and BPM, the Jolt awards really emphasize products that have "jolted" the industry in the past year. LiveCycle Enterprise Suite is a clear choice as it represents the third major evolution of Adobe's enterprise platform. While most people were only "talking" of "registry-repository" back in 2003, Adobe had one in LiveCycle 6.0. While people talked about Service orchestration and aggregation (composition), Adobe LiveCycle 7.0 delivered. While people talked about SOA Governance, LiveCycle BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) delivered the goods again.

Winners of the Jolt awards are selected by judges consisting of industry insiders, columnists, and technology leaders. It does not surprise me that our enterprise suite captured another award and recognition. Adobe has been heavily involved in SOA standards, web services work, and business process management standards for a while.

With that said, if anyone out there wants to give it a go, I have a few LiveCycle ES developer DVDs left. Ping me (dnickull at adobe dot com) with your mailing address and I'll send one out.

Adobe Reader beta program open to you!

Interested in participating in the Adobe Reader Beta Program? It's the best way to get an early peak at future versions of the product and provide valuable feedback into the development process.

We're accepting participants now. Just CLICK HERE to sign up. Thanks!

6 Adobe AIR Apps Worth a Look

Adobe's AIR platform allows developers to create web applications that run on your desktop without the need of a web browser. Now that AIR has dropped the beta tag (see our previous coverage), it's time to look at some of the AIR apps you can use today.

read more | digg story

Adobe joins SQLite! More Open Source/Standards moves!

As reported at http://opensource.adobe.com, Adobe has joined with Mozilla and Symbian to support the work of the SQLite Consortium to help ensure free, open access and development of SQLite. Adobe uses SQLite within many of its products and recognizes the importance of providing support for technology and tools that are open source because of its value to the entire developer and software communities.

This follows on the heels of a rash of Open Source and Open Standards initiatives by the software company in the last few years. Adobe donated the PDF standard to ISO which is now ISO standard 32000. Adobe has open-sourced the core Flex SDK and Blaze Data Services under various GNU based licenses. It was less than 24 months ago when we also donated core Actionscript Virtual Machine code to the Mozilla Tamarin project. We have also pledged to contribute back to the Webkit HTMl engine project when we work on that code base.

All of this makes me proud to work for a company that understand the importance of the software community.

Important notes about Adobe AIR

Yesterday, Adobe officially launched version 1.0 of the Adobe Integrated Runtime or AIR. As anticipated, the press have given it justice however there are a few facts that need to be illustrated to help developers who want to give it a try.

What I encourage developers to do.

Download both the latest version of Adobe AIR and the latest version of Flex Builder from Adobe labs to ensure you are up to date.


Why AIR code samples might not work.

All AIR applications use a descriptor XML file to describe the application and link resources. During the last few beta drops of AIR, the schema for this file changed a bit. If you try to build someone's code samples with a newer version, the project might not actually build. In fact, the observed behavior is that nothing happens.

What can you do?

To mitigate this, in Flex Builder (available for free trial 60 day download on Adobe labs), simply set up a new project by clicking "File -> New -> Flex Project". To make an AIR project, make sure you select the correct type of project by selecting the AIR option in the second screen. Make sure you are on the latest builds.

Open up the source code of the project you want to try in an ordinary text editor and cut and paste the code into your MXML base document for the project. Be sure not to write over the top level XML element until you are sure that the project is using the same namespace value and root element consistent with your version of Flex Builder. Pay close attention to the root element. In most up to date (1.0) AIR applications, it should look like this:


<mx:windowedapplication mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" applicationcomplete="init()" backgroundcolor="0x003030" focusrect="false">
<mx:script>
</mx:script>
</mx:windowedapplication>

Once this is done, try saving your project and eliminate any duplicate root elements etc until all errors go away.

Note: for pure AS3, HTML and other projects the process is a bit more complicated. Consult the documentation.

Alternatively:

If the project you want to install is a zip archive, try importing it by using the "File -> Import -> Flex Project". This should allow you to import the project and FB3 should correct.

How I feel about Adobe AIR with a Flying Vee!

Sometimes, words are not enough....

Flash on the iPhone?

As reported by the Alley Insider, Flash is coming to the iPhone. An article posted today reads:

"More than half a year after its launch, Apple's iPhone is set to get an app it should have had from the beginning: Adobe's Flash plug-in." You can read the whole article here:

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/2/adobe_flash_coming_soon_to_apple_iphones

Gearbox also reports the same but I am skeptical having not seen either Apple nor Adobe issue any statement. The rumor buzzmill is running at half capacity. Once again, we have to wait and see if there is any truth behind it.

Flex, AIR samples migrating to Adobe Flex Cookbook

I have decided to move many of my Flex and AIR recipes from the Flex Cookbook to the official Adobe Flex cookbook site. The first two are posted there now. If there is interest (comments, users) I'll post the rest over the next few weeks. You may also request the cookbook as a standalone document commented with instructions by emailing dnickull at adobe dot com.

1. Building an Apple shaped, chrome-less application as per the photo below. This application has been updated from previous versions to be compatible with the latest build of Adobe Flex Builder 3, beta 3.

2. Simple Demonstration of Binding to a Camera using flash.media.Camera. This sample is all about quickly binding to a camera stream and displaying the video image on your application using an object. Screenshot below.

Coolest Flash site ever?

Ben Forta sent me this link. The use of Flash is really cool.

http://producten.hema.nl/

Yahoo! Maps — Releases the AS3 API

The new Yahoo! Maps API is now entirely built in ActionScript 3.0. The Maps API now gives you an incredibly powerful map engine and the ability to create custom components, overlays and markers while consuming different webservices provided by Yahoo!, or your own. Flash/Flex your heart out!

read more | digg story

Microsoft faces third EU probe over OOXML!

Andy Updegrove has written:

"The Wall Street Journal and Information Week reported this morning that EU regulators have announced a third investigation into Microsoft's conduct on the desktop. This latest action demonstrates that while the EU has settled the case against Microsoft that ran for almost a decade, it remains as suspicious as ever regarding the software vendor's conduct, notwithstanding Microsoft's less combative stance in recent years. The news can be found in a story reported by Charles Forelle bylined in Brussells this morning. According to the Journal, the investigation will focus on whether Microsoft "violated antitrust laws during a struggle last year to ratify its Office software file format as an international standard." The article also says that the regulators are "stepping up scrutiny of the issue." The Journal cites the following as the type of activity it will look into."

My take:

Dear Microsoft:

Why not just adopt ODF like the rest of us? If it falls short, you can participate in a well established standards process and explain to all of us why ODF needs to change. We'll listen and maybe we'll learn from you. OOXML is going to make the Office XML of era 2000 look elegant by comparison.

PLEASE: work within the community, not by yourself.

Adobe Tech Summit

I wish I could talk about all the cool things going on at the 2008 Adobe Tech Summit.  Unfortunately, this is largely an internal show and a chance for Adobe engineers and inventors to mingle and share ideas.  To me, this is probably the single largest gathering of really intelligent people I have ever witnessed.

More later.

Flex, AIR teams at Adobe Rock!!!

I have been using the latest build for Flex Builder 3 beta 3 (available for free download here) for my latest set of speaking engagements and personal development. I want to publicly acknowledge that this is by far the greatest version of Flex Builder ever made. The Adobe team responsible for this, including such greats as Matt Chotin, Mike Potter, Luis Polanco, Robert Christensen, Adrian Ludwig, and all the developers have done an outstanding job.

Just making a great product isn't the whole story. The team I work on (Technical Evangelism) is probably the most nit-picky group for any product team to cater to. On top of that, they have around 50 beta testers who are regularly dishing out feature requests, bug reports, and a host of other demands on their minds.

There are hundreds of others who I cannot name here on my blog who have worked on Flex Builder 3. To honor their work, take the Flex Builder 3 public beta 3 for a test drive. If you want a mini-cookbook of Flex and AIR projects, with full source code, please email me (dnickull at adobe dot com) and I'll send it over. It also has a script to show you how to take full advantage of the new features in Flex Builder 3 and the latest AIR 1.0.

Glowing review of Web 2.0 book

Scott Mark has offered a glowing review of our upcoming O'Reilly book "Web 2.0 Design Patterns".

"Duane, James, and Dion captured a high-speed drive by of all things 2.0, carefully deconstructing all of the cool tools we’ve been having so much fun with recently. They setup the book with a dissection of some flagship Web 2.0 properties, and contextualization of key memes. Next they define applicable models for capturing Web 2.0 in a pattern language. One my favorite aspects of this chapter was the use of “low end” modeling techniques - such as concept maps, and HTML tags as a form of WSDL for simple HTTP services. Being an Agilist and a practicalist, I like to see less well refined techniques legitimized. In true 2.0 style, the authors use what works, not just what is academically proscribed."

Read more here.

Canada at War: History repeats itself

Warning: This is an intensely political post!

Within Canada, there has been a lot of debate on whether Canada should be in Afghanistan after 2009. For the record, I 100% support our troups being deployed in this country with the goals of keeping the Taliban from re-surging and helping build a free an independent Afghanistan. Our army is made up of professional soldiers, not people being drafted. I am proud of what they represent as peace keepers. The only Caveat is that what has been reported in the general media about the conditions pre and post invasion are roughly true, which I do believe in this instance they are.

For those of you who do not think Canada is a force to be reckoned with militarily, look back to WW2 and WW1. Canadians have a long history of running to the aid of those who are in the most dire needs. Most of my friends and others who I know here are willing to give up their lives for something we see as crucial to world peace. In WW1 and WW2, Canadian forces played a crucial part by taking on the toughest of the tough challenges that others either wouldn't do or had failed at. In World War One, Canadians succeeded in taking Vimy Ridge despite catastrophic loss of life. To portray the adds, here is the text from the official Canadian government archives:

Vimy Ridge was a key to the German defence system. Rising 6l metres above the Douai Plain, it protected an area of occupied France in which mines and factories were in full production for Germany. It was a linchpin covering the junction of the main Hindenburg Line and the defence systems running north to the coast of the English Channel. Since capturing the Ridge in October 1914, the Germans had been building fortifications to add to its natural strength and dominance.

The slopes of Vimy Ridge favoured the defenders. Because the incline on the west was gradual, many of the Canadians would have to attack over open ground, where they would be prime targets for artillery, machine-gun and rifle fire. They would face three main defensive lines, consisting of a maze of trenches, concrete machine-gun strong points that had hedges of barbed wire woven around them, and deep dug-outs, all linked by communication trenches and connecting tunnels. As well, there were vast underground chambers, some capable of sheltering entire German battalions from Allied shells.

The Commander of the Canadian Corps, Lieutenant-General Sir Julian Byng, planned an assault on a front of seven kilometres by all four of his divisions abreast. To reach their final objectives on the far side of the Ridge, the Canadians would have to capture the commanding heights of Hill 135 and Hill 145, which formed its crest. By April 12, 1917 the Canadians controlled the entire ridge, at a cost of 10,602 casualties (3,598 killed and 7,004 wounded).

During the Second World War, Canadians again suffered heavy losses for a nation that was young and not part of the original conflict. We were there!

Ross Munro of The Canadian Press, assigned to cover the Canadian troops in Britain, went ashore with allied shock troops storming the Dieppe beach on August 19, 1942, to get this first-hand story of the war's biggest commando raid.

"For eight hours, under intense Nazi fire from dawn into a sweltering afternoon, I watched Canadian troops fight the blazing, bloody battle of Dieppe. I saw them go through the biggest of the war's raiding operations in wild scenes that crowded helter skelter one upon another in crazy sequence. There was a furious attack by German E-boats while the Canadians moved in on Dieppe's beaches, landing by dawn's half-light. When the Canadian battalions stormed through the flashing inferno of Nazi defences, belching guns of huge tanks rolling into the fight, I spent the grimmest 20 minutes of my life with one unit when a rain of German machine-gun fire wounded half the men in our boat and only a miracle saved us from annihilation."

Now we are at a third cross roads of our military history. Once again, Canadian troup's have been deployed to the worst areas of a military conflict. In this case it is South Afghanistan. As reported by Reuters:

"European allies' refusal to deploy to Afghanistan's dangerous south and east has opened a rift with Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and others which, along with the United States, have borne the brunt of Taliban violence."

So far, 78 Canadian soldiers and a diplomat have died since Ottawa deployed troops to Afghanistan in 2002.

SO WHAT IS OUR MISSION?

Simple - a society can be judged by how it cares for the weakest members who are unable to care for themselves. Throughout world history, Canadians have generously donated their resources to people from other countries in times of peril. It is a cultural norm to help your neighbor in Canada. Many of us see the global community as an extension of our own communities. When people who cannot defend themselves against tyranny need help, we are there. If the cause is just, we tend to pitch in. Note that we carefully avoid Iraq due to it being deemed an illegal war by the majority of Canadians.

WHAT WE WANT:

First - world peace. Yeah - this is an idealistic goal but it isn't that what everyone wants? However, to get there, evil must be confronted. The Taliban cannot be allowed to murder with full impunity. The citizens of Afghanistan must be given the right not to be killed. The Clash song "Know your Rights" is relevant here. If I may quote "Number 1: You have the right not to be killed! Murder is a crime!"

NATO nations - please help us here. We helped you in two world wars. Millions of young Canadians lost their lives in the cold, icy Atlantic waters, on the slopes of a foreign land and wherever we were called. We answered your call for help. No we need you.

Our mission in Afghanistan runs out in 2009. Our government has asked for other nations to help in rebuilding the country. We need to help women achieve the rights they deserve there. We need to provide people hope and a future. Peace and prosperity cannot be achieved if the Taliban return.

Talks for WebManiacs 2008!

I have agreed to do two talks for WebManiacs 2008 in Washington, DC this spring (May 19-23).

The WebManiacs 2008 conference schedule has been finalized and registration is open. Early bird pricing ends Jan 31. Consisting of a two-day ColdFusion conference ("CFManiacs") coupled with a three-day Flex conference (FlexManiacs), hosting over 70 speakers and 130 distinct topics (some of which are hands-on), WebManiacs promises to have the most comprehensive coverage of Flex, AIR, and ColdFusion at the lowest price. Seating is limited, so folks should register early in order to get into the more popular sessions.

My sessions are architectural in nature:

1. SOA and BPM, a practical approach to business automation

Abstract: This session will discuss Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as
an architectural paradigm then pose some interesting architectural questions
about the pragmatic relationship with Business Process Management (BPM).
While many consider BPM a part of SOA, it is in fact not and the presenter
will clearly explain why. It is, however, often the end state sought by
those who pursue SOA as an architectural model and hence has a close
relationship with SOA.

The topics covered will include identifying services by modeling
business processes to spot services used by more than one process, the
question of how much process state a service should be aware of, reuse vs.
repurposing, various standards approaches to SOA and BPM, as well as a case
study of large scale SOA for powering Enterprise 2.0 type applications.

2. Web 2.0 patterns, models and architecture

Abstract: Many enterprises seek knowledge of the design patterns used by
successful Web 2.0 companies. This session starts with Tim O'Reilly's list
of Web 2.0 examples and distills the abstract architectural patterns
behind the examples. By using the patterns notation, the core knowledge of
the design principles is preserved in a template which can be reused in
multiple contexts.

Duane will also show the evolution of the client server model into a 5-tier
model based on the consistent concepts of most successful Web 2.0 patterns.
The model serves as a useful starting point for anyone designing either
business models or technology for Web 2.0. The Web 2.0 model is also used to
illustrate a reference architecture. This abstract set of technology
components allows developers to start thinking about the types of technology
decisions required for building Web 2.0 projects.

***************************

Hope to see you all there!!!

InsideRIA site on O’Reilly Network is live!

InsideRIA has just launched! My good friend Andre Charland (Nitobi) is the lead blogger.

It’s a gathering place for thought leaders in the RIA field. (See http://www.insideria.com/experts.html ). The site will be an ongoing conversation about RIA technologies including Flex, AIR, and AJAX – the experts will be continually posting their opinions, cool findings, and technical information to the site. The other leader of the site, another good friend Rich Tretola (Everything Flex and Community Manager/Editor), is an expert in his field.

These guys are off to a good start! Please take a visit.

Flex 3 and AIR pre-release tour

Flex 3 and AIR are getting close to launch and in preparation, the Adobe Flex/AIR product team is traveling to select cities to show off the great new features and help prepare us for this exciting launch.

Flex 3 is a feature-packed release, adding new UI components like the advanced datagrid and improved CSS capabilities; powerful tooling additions like refactoring; and extensive testing tools including memory and performance profiling, plus the addition of the automated testing framework to Flex Builder.

Adobe AIR is game-changing in so many ways, extending rich applications to the desktop, enabling access to the local file system, system tray, notifications and much more. Now you can write desktop applications using the same skills that you have been already using to create great web apps including both Flex and AJAX.

Don't miss out on the opportunity to see and hear about this highly anticipated release of Flex 3 and AIR during this special pre-release tour. Plus, in addition to giving away some one of a kind Flex/AIR branded schwag,we will also be raffling off a copy of Flex Builder 3 Professional (pending availability) and a full commercial copy of CS3 Web Premium at some of these events!

Kevin Hoyt
Monday, January 21, 2008 at 6:00pm
Denver
http://www.ria5280.org

Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 6:30pm
Phoenix
http://www.gotoandstop.org/

Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at 6:30pm
Salt Lake
http://www.flexusergroup.org/

Thursday, January 24, 2008 at 6:00pm
Albuquerque
http://www.nmaug.com/

Monday, February 04, 2008 at 6:00pm for 7:00 start
Pittsburgh
http://www.pitcfug.org/

Tuesday, February 05, 2008 at 1:00pm
Cleveland
http://www.clevelandmmug.org/

Wednesday, February 06, 2008 at 7:00pm
East Lansing
http://www.theflexgroup.org/

Thursday, February 07, 2008 at 6:00pm
Milwaukee
http://www.milwaukeeaug.com

Ben Forta
Monday, January 21, 2008 at 6:30pm
Orlando
http://adogo.us/

Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 6:00pm for 6:30pm start
Atlanta
http://www.affug.com

Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at 6:00pm
Raleigh
http://www.triangleuserexperience.org

Thursday, January 24, 2008 at 6:00pm for 7:00pm start
Nashville
http://www.615flex.com/special-events/


James Ward
Monday, February 04, 2008 at 7:00pm
Minneapolis
http://www.mnswf.com/

Tuesday, February 05, 2008 at 6:30pm
Chicago
http://www.augchicago.org/

Wednesday, February 06, 2008 at 6:00pm
Kansas City
http://www.kcdevcore.org/

Thursday, February 07, 2008 at 6:00pm
St. Louis
http://www.flexandfusethearch.com/

Dave Gruber
Monday, January 21, 2008 at 8:30am for 9am start
Washington, DC
http://www.useadobe.com/Flex3.cfm

Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 7:00pm
Philadelphia
http://www.phflex.org/

Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at 6:30pm
NYC
http://www.nyflex.org/

Thursday, January 24, 2008 at 6:00pm for 6:30pm start
Boston
http://www.bostoncfug.org

Ted Patrick
Monday, January 21, 2008 at 6:30pm
San Francisco
http://bacfug.org/

Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 5:30pm
San Jose
http://www.silvafug.org/

Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at 7:00pm
Los Angeles
http://www.laflex.org/

Thursday, January 24, 2008 at 6:00pm for 6:30pm start
San Diego
http://www.sdcfug.org/

Duane Nickull
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 at 6:00pm
Vancouver
http://www.flashinvan.com/

Wednesday, January 30, 2008 at 5:30pm
Calgary
http://www.flexcalgary.org/

Thursday, January 31, 2008 at 7:00pm
Edmonton
http://efug.org/

Adam Lehman
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 at 7:00pm
Toronto
http://www.torontoflex.org

Mike Potter
Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at 6:30pm for 7pm start
Ottawa
http://www.ottawaflex.com/

Thursday, February 07, 2008 at 6:30pm
Montreal
http://www.montrealadobeusergroup.com/


Ryan Stewart
Monday, January 21, 2008 at 6:30pm for 7pm start
Seattle
http://www.seaflexug.org

Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 6:00pm
Portland
http://pdxria.com

Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at 6:30pm
Sacramento
http://www.norcalflex.com/

Thursday, January 24, 2008 at 7:00pm
Las Vegas
http://www.vegasflex.org

From OMG in Orlando: Event Driven Architecture

Today I am sitting in on Robert Covington's (CTO, Rhysome) talk on SOA and EDA. Event-Driven Architecture is an interesting animal however the current models I have seen ignore a grand unification of architectures into a definitive definition. The wikipedia definition sucks in a way that would make vacuum cleaners jealous.

What Robert covered today is the issue of event context within the realm of Complex Event Processing (CEP). The latter is great work, largely spearheaded by David Luckham, professor emeritus at Stanford. I have been working on an idea called IDEA (Intelligence Driven Enterprise Architecture) which combines the best of SOA and EDA. The gist is below.


The idea (pardon the pun) is that EDA can be divided into two major components - the event generation and detection (shown on the left) and the event processing (shown on the right). It makes architectural sense to keep them separate as it leads to more scalability within enterprise architecture.

The core model illustrates how events (instances of one specific event type from the meta event class), are generated and caught. This diagram is high level and leaves out things like the event message dispatch, the event bubble model (usually split into unicast and broadcast via subscription), the event capturing and subscription mechanisms. The causality relationship between events is a core evolution of complex event processing. Causality relationships can be one of many types, however in order to process them more accurately, the event context (the set of specific circumstances in which the instance of the event occurred) is very important to feed to the event processing side (everything to the right of the inference engine).

During Robert's talk today, I had several epiphanies, one of which was that perhaps it is time for some formal standards work in this area.

Thoughts?

New Adobe SOA White Paper

Myself, James Ward, Laurel Reitman, and Jack Wilber have finished producing a new white paper on SOA. The paper is licensed under creative commons so anyone can take it, post it where they want, and do with it what they want as long as attribution is preserved. The paper is available here (in PDF of course):

http://www.adobe.com/enterprise/pdfs/Services_Oriented_Architecture_from_Adobe.pdf

The paper looks into specialized messaging patterns for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Most people still mistakenly believe that SOA is limited to request-response. Such is far from the truth as most standards work on SOA now recognizes alternative patterns such as subscribe-push and probe-match.

Service Oriented Architecture is an architectural paradigm and discipline that may be used to build infrastructures enabling those with needs (consumers) and those with capabilities (providers) to interact via services across disparate domains of technology and ownership. Services act as the core facilitator of electronic data interchanges yet require additional mechanisms in order to function. Several new trends in the computer industry rely upon SOA as the enabling foundation. These include the automation of Business Process Management (BPM), composite applications (applications that aggregate multiple services to function), and the multitude of new architecture and design patterns generally referred to as Web 2.0.

The latter, Web 2.0, is not defined as a static architecture. Web 2.0 can be generally characterized as a common set of architecture and design patterns, which can be implemented in multiple contexts. The list of common patterns includes the Mashup, Collaboration-Participation, Software as a Service (SaaS), Semantic Tagging (folksonomy), and Rich User Experience (also known as Rich Internet Application) patterns among others. These are augmented with themes for software architects such as trusting your users and harnessing collective intelligence. Most Web 2.0 architecture patterns rely on Service Oriented Architecture in order to function.

When designing Web 2.0 applications based on these patterns, architects often have highly specialized requirements for moving data. Enterprise adoption of these patterns requires special considerations for scalability, flexibility (in terms of multiple message exchange patterns), and the ability to deliver these services to a multitude of disparate consumers. Architects often need to expand data interchanges beyond simple request-response patterns and adopt more robust message exchange patterns, triggered by multiple types of events. As a result, many specialized platforms are evolving to meet these needs.

Enjoy~

Web 2.0 presentation tops 6500 views in 8 weeks!

I just found out that my presentation from the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Berlin event has garnered the 4th highest score of all the sessions and has now been viewed almost 6500 times in the 8 weeks since the event. Needless to say, I am humbled by this and hope the upcoming Web 2.0 book has equal success.

If anyone wants the original PPT content, please just drop me a line at dnickull at adobe (dot) com and I'll send them over. In the spirit of community, these are open and free for anyone to use, modify and present. Cheers!

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The way to deal with Scammers and Spammers

I have had a lot of requests for a post I made to the CRIME Hackers board back several years ago documenting more ingenious ways to deal with spammers and scammers.  The original post is still available here.  The relevant parts read:

I usually spoof the email address of another known spammer or else put
the email address of a law enforcement agency that is tasked with
stopping the Nigerian Scams. These guys send out so many emails they
will never know who they sent to or not.

The spoofing idea is a new twist on an old school fax-spam retaliation
scenario I used to do in the late 1980's. The office I worked at used
to get hundreds of Spam faxes each week. We would note the return fax
numbers of the biggest perpetrators, then change our fax machine to
spoof a fax coming from them. I would then tape four pieces of paper
into a big loop with the words "Buy" "More" "fax" and "Paper" on them
and transmit the fax to another fax spammer. The machine would chug
away until it used up all the fax paper at the receiving machine. I am
sure this started more than one fax "war" between the spammers.

Although I abhor spam in any way shape or form, I usually rationalize
retaliation against known spammers in this manner, by using a
combination of creativity and social engineering for personal amusement.
Hey - we have to get something back from these people ;-).

cheers

D

NOTE: Use at your own risk!!

Free LiveCycle ES Developer Licenses

Hey all you LiveCycle ES tire kickers!  I've got a few remaining LC ES DVD's with special developer licenses sitting in my office.  You can install and use LC ES to create solutions (just not production - see the license as the authoritative source of license) and show your bosses cool stuff.  If you want one, ping me fast as they are going quickly.

dnickull at adobe (dot) com

This is the real thing - full blown Enterprise SOA platform coupled with a complete Java BPM solution, governance (BAM) and great design tools.  J2EE heads will love this.

Dr. Dobb's loves LiveCycle ES!!!

Dr. Dobb's (one of my favorite software publications) named 98 finalists for this year's Jolt Product Excellence Awards (read here). These were all selected by an esteemed team of industry insiders, columnists, and technology leaders.

Dr. Dobb's panel of judges have selected the best product known to enterprise architecture circles - Adobe LiveCycle ES. It is the first product listed under the category of Enterprise Tools.

Other Adobe awards were given for ColdFusion 8, RoboHelp, Device Central and Captivate 3.
For anyone wanting to try LiveCycle ES, I have a box of 34 DVDs left with developer licenses. These licenses allow you to install the full suite and use it for testing, development purposes. If you want one, please ping me at dnickull at adobe dot com.

About the awards:

"For the past 17 years, the Dr. Dobb's Jolt Product Excellence Awards have
been presented annually to showcase products that have "jolted" the industry
with their significance and made the task of creating software faster, easier,
and more efficient. Jolt Cola, the fabled soft drink quaffed by software
developers for sustenance during project development marathons, sponsors the
awards presentation."

Great Flickr Perl hack from Matt!

I saw this on Matt Mackenzie's blog.  This is great and takes me back to the good ole' perl 4 days.

Today I decided that I would like to backup my flickr account to my Mac. After a few attempts at using a Java based UI tool "FlickrBackup", which had terrible network performance for some reason, I fell back to my trusty old Perl skills. Here is what I did:

1. Install Net::Flickr::Backup

To install this module, open up a terminal and type:
"cpan" (not the quotes)

When CPAN loads up, type:

install Net::Flickr::Backup

Its pretty much that easy.

2. Go to Flickr.com and create an API key. Create one for a web application, and enter pretty much any valid url as your callback. I know, its not a web application...just do it, k?

3. Get an auth_token. This is harder than it needs to be, but here is how I got it done:
- First get a frob. This page shows you how to do it manually. Mac OS X has a terminal command, "md5" that you can run to make your api_sig value. for example:

md5 -s 000005fab4534d05api_key9a0554259914a86fb9e7eb014e4e5d52permsread

Which would yield a MD5 hash of: f2c52fb8fd3124314227bbc0f48003d3

Which it turn would mean the auth url needs to be like:
http://www.flickr.com/services/auth/?api_key=9a0554259914a86fb9e7eb014e4...

Once the URL is constructed, paste it into a browser, and approve access to your account. Once you approve, flickr calls your callback url. I just made my callback a bogus url like http://mattmackenzie.com/authdummy/