New Duane's World Merchandise - Snow Blowers!

Since I live in Canada, I called up a friend of mine to test a new model of the Duane's World Snow Blower. This joint venture with a well known Japanese manufacturer is in early alpha testing. We are currently putting it through the paces in Ottawa where snowfall has already covered most of the province.



To be environmentally friendly, the new prototype engine runs on 100% pure alcohol. There was a slight argument as I tried to put some of Matt's finer single malts into the fuel tank at one point however....

LOL!!

Wrap up from MAX EMEA in Milan

Milan's MAX was fun but I was one busy camper. My schedule is below. It started by getting up early Friday morning and working until I got on the first of 3 legs of an airplane trip at 3:00 PM.

Saturday November 30 - arrived late evening in Milan, spent 4 hours with James, Phil, Ivan, et al., building images for the lab sessions. During this time, we ended up getting locked inside the building. One janitor let me out only for me to discover I was trapped inside a one square kilometer fenced in area with only one exit. It took 30 minutes of walking around in 1 degree weather and pissing rain to find the exit. Needless to say, I needed a scotch and fire. We got everything done but those guys rock. Without them, MAX would not happen.

Sunday Nov 31 08:00 - 17:45 - spent the day inside the hall handling last minute details, rehearsals, testing images, finalizing slides, etc.

18:00 - 19:30 - Speakers Reception

20:00 - 01:00 - Late night dinner.

Monday, December 1, 11:30 am - 1:00 pm, Orange 3
Adobe AIR Boot Camp (Part 1 of 2)
James Ward and I delivered an introduction to working with Adobe AIR, in which we got an entire classrooom to build several projects from start to finish. Projects include an advanced "HelloWorld.air", a video player, a "full screen" application, a web service client, a simple example of how to make remote calls, a chromeless window application, writing data to and reading from a hard disk, working with XML (including RSS feeds), and packaging AIR applications for later distribution. Course materials include the presentation, all code for the projects, and a step-by-step written tutorial.

13:15- 13:35 - French Interview with journalist. Results are here:
http://www.lemondeinformatique.fr/actualites/lire-adobe-max-soa-bpm-et-cep-en-toile-de-fond-27555.html

Monday, December 1, 15:15 – 15:45
James Governor analyst debriefing. I love James - what can I say! Marc Duke
Analyst Relations, EMEA set this one up but I also filmed James for Duane's World and talked to a number of other journalists. Some wrote about it:
http://kurse.focus.de/news/ne-nadeInformations-und_id_news_90638900.html

4:00 pm - 5:30 pm, Orange 3
Adobe AIR Boot Camp (Part 2 of 2)
The last 90 minutes of the two part AIR Boot Camp.

6:30 – 7:30 – BOF Meet the Evangelists, Red Room. This was a chance for people to meet the evangelist team. Big Takeaway: We need to be more clear about the future of ColdFusion. Trust me - I'll be bringing this up several times in the near future!!!

Monday, December 1 7:30 – 10:30 – Press Dinner
From: ssaissay@adobe.com
As you attend the BOF session that ends at 7.30 pm, you will join us directly at the restaurant
Enrique will manage to get taxis for all of you – We met him in the Convention Center lobby to leave at 7.45 pm. Yet another very late night (past midnight).

Tuesday, December 2,

8:30 am - 10:00 am, Orange 3
Adobe AIR Boot Camp (Part 1 of 2) - second repeat of this session - first one and second were sold out!
I delivered an introduction to working with Adobe AIR, in which we got an entire classrooom to build several projects from start to finish. Projects include an advanced "HelloWorld.air", a video player, a "full screen" application, a web service client, a simple example of how to make remote calls, a chromeless window application, writing data to and reading from a hard disk, working with XML (including RSS feeds), and packaging AIR applications for later distribution. Course materials include the presentation, all code for the projects, and a step-by-step written tutorial.

12:15 – 12:45
Dutch journalists meeting at MAX in Milan. Can't remember the outcome.

12:45 – 13:15
French Journalist Olivier Raffal

13:30 pm - 3:00 pm, Orange 3
Adobe AIR Boot Camp (Part 2 of 2) - second session of 4 hour hands-on coding lab.

3:30 pm - 5:00 pm, Green 2
Building Service Clients with Flex and Adobe AIR

Learn how to build SOA clients with Flex and Adobe AIR. In this hands-on session, you will explore how to build various service clients using the WSDL Import Wizard, hand-coded ActionScript 3.0, and simple REST-based services. Flash Remoting and performance metrics will also be covered. This session is intended for those who build front-end service clients for business applications. Attendees should come prepared to write code or partner with someone else writing code. (This session complements "Deploying Services with BlazeDS and LiveCycle Data Services ES.")
Speakers: Duane Nickull, James Ward, Andrew Spaulding
Audience: Application Developer, Architect
Skill: Advanced
Products: AIR, Flex, Flex Builder, LiveCycle DS, LiveCycle ES

17:15 – 18:00 h.17.15-16 interview
PCopen Studio Italian Press

Wednesday, December 3, 10:15 am - 11:15 am, Blue 1 - a lecture:
Adobe Adoption of Web Services, SOA, and REST
Learn about the OASIS Reference Model for SOA as well as other service architecture work. Attendees will see Adobe's messaging around and integration of Web services, REST, and SOA, including how they relate to one another and where they are implemented within the Adobe platform and product lines. We will include an overview of LiveCycle services to illustrate integration points using services.

1:30 pm - 3:00 pm, Green 2
Building Service Clients with Flex and Adobe AIR - second session.
Learn how to build SOA clients with Flex and Adobe AIR. In this hands-on session, you will explore how to build various service clients using the WSDL Import Wizard, hand-coded ActionScript 3.0, and simple REST-based services. Flash Remoting and performance metrics will also be covered. This session is intended for those who build front-end service clients for business applications. Attendees should come prepared to write code or partner with someone else writing code. (This session complements "Deploying Services with BlazeDS and LiveCycle Data Services ES.")
Speakers: Duane Nickull, James Ward
Audience: Application Developer, Architect
Skill: Advanced
Products: AIR, Flex, Flex Builder, LiveCycle DS, LiveCycle ES

4:00 pm - 5:00 pm, Red 1
Forms Gone Wild (2008)
Learn how to avoid the top mistakes form developers make, whether they are working in Flex, Flash, Ajax, or LiveCycle, using HTML, PDF, or other formats. Back by popular demand, this session covers the top ten most serious mistakes, as voted on by previous session participants, as well as touching on other serious issues form developers struggle with. You'll walk away with winning strategies that you can put to work in your form design practices.

This latter was my best talk ever, however the session evaluation forms were not distributed during most of the conference. The ones on the chairs at this session were from the previous session so I probably got no feedback and the speaker before me got some good marks. Nevertheless, there were several who blogged nice things:

"Platogo at Adobe MAX 2008
By Christoph Atteneder
The third day was the best one regarding the quality of the talks, topics including RTMFP (Michael Thornburgh), Flash Player security (Jim Corbett) and as an entertaining last session Forms gone wild with Duane Nickull. ...
Platogo Blog - http://blog.platogo.com/"

Thursday: a 33 hours day of flying back just in time to take my wife out to Nitobi's Christmas party in Vancouver.

Another average week in evangelism!

Mac Pro 8-core RAM not recognized?

WARNING: Do not attempt this if you are not comfortable with hardware hacking. I will not accept any responsibility for anything you do trying to follow this article.

I went to the store yesterday to get more RAM for my Mac Pro, an essential need really if you are editing video as I am for Duane's World TV. I discovered that installing the RAM into an 8-core Mac Pro is not only somewhat difficult, but poorly documented. This step by step guide is aimed at helping save others the 4 hours it took me to get an answer from Apple.

First, the basics. For the new Mac Towers, RAM is distributed into two Printed Circuit ("Riser") cards, each with 4 DIMM slots that you can put RAM into. Before you begin, there are a few basics you should understand. Ground yourself!!! I cannot emphasize this enough. There are commercial products available or you can roll your own. I decided to use a 1/4 inch guitar cable taped to my wrist (metal touching skin) and grounded by connecting it to an Ampeg Bass head ground connection. You can also use a metal plumbing pipe but be careful that it is metal all the way into the ground (sometimes they use PVC in the middle). Here is my MacGyver setup:


This keeps static and other electrical flows from ruining the RAM. If you want to know why, read this article here. Believe me, this is not to be taken lightly as I have personally ruined RAM chipsets.

When you remove the panel to the Mac, you will see two RAM banks, an upper and a lower. Note that there are white dots that are aligned with the surface of the chassis to let you know that the boards are installed properly. See below:



On the newer machines, you can simply pull them out by placing your fingers in the holes as shown below and pulling gently. Be sure to read service bulletins to understand if a clasp or other lock in device gets added after this article runs to avoid breaking these board. In general, you must treat these PC ("Riser") boards very gently. Do not carry them across carpets then let them touch a metal window frame or bend them.


Gently remove both the upper and lower boards and place them on an insulated surface. Now here is the weird part. I always knew RAM had to be installed in matched pairs and I had a 2GB in DIMM 1 on both left and right and a 1 GB on DIMM 3 on both left and right so I installed an extra 1 GB on each side in DIMM 4 on both left and right as shown below.


This should have been 8 GB of RAM in total
((DIMM1-Left = 2GB + DIMM1-Right = 2GB) + (DIMM3-Left = 1GB + DIMM 3-Right = 1 GB) + (DIMM4=Left = 1 GB + DIMM4-Right = 1 GB) = 8 GB. WRONG!! It was not recognized. When I started up my system, this is what showed up.


It showed that DIMM 2 and 4 on both sides were empty and I only had 6 GB of total RAM. I tried various configurations before giving in and calling the shop that sold me the RAM. The guy there knew nothing about installing RAM and just told me I probably had bad RAM. I tried to explain that each RAM stick worked in positions 1 and 3 on both sides as long as it was balanced however he failed to grasp the most primitive forms of logic. I then called Apple who were much more knowledgeable. It turns out that not only do Left DIMM 1 and Right DIMM 1 have to be matched on 8-core systems, but DIMM 1 must match DIMM 2 on both right and left. This left me going back to the store to buy two more 2 GB RAM strips and installing them as shown below:


Place them back VERY gently into the two slots. Don't force these into the chassis. Before the final push (you will have to push hard) the white dots should be about 3 mm away from the metal chassis edge. If you try to do the hard push when they are 15mm away, you can break something. Also - before you try to place them back into your machine, make sure each RAM strip is locked into place as can be evidenced by the clips lining up as shown in the second photo below. If the clip is left open as shown in the first photo and you try to force it, you can easily break something that will cost a lot of money to fix.



After all is safely back into place, start up your Mac. Here is what I was rewarded with!


12 GB of RAM with 8 cores!! I am now faster than you!!! Bwahahahaah!!!

Duane's World Episode 14 - InterAct 2008, Media and Democracy

In this episode, Duane explores the InterAct 2008 conference event in Washington, DC and interviews Holly Hickman (formerly of Fox News) and Tamela Beene about the importance of a free and independent press to any democracy. Code and Tunes also features how to work with the Flex Color Picker component within the Flex 3 framework.

The Intense Duane Chaos!

This is what I look like when I am being intense.

...or lackadaisical....


...or just having fun....

Why you need to meet me in Dubai!

Circle 14 – 18 December 2008 in your diary! THE NEW MEDIA EVENT is taking place from 14 – 18 December 2008 at JW Marriott Hotel in Dubai, UAE.

Everyone that IS somebody in the PR industry will be there. WHY? Seriously, who would not like to be in the same company with these speakers?
• SHEKHAR KAPUR, Academy Award Winning Director Of Elizabeth And Elizabeth: The Golden Age
• DUANE NICKULL (ME), Sr, Technology Evangelist, Adobe Systems.
• DEBBIE WEIL, Author, The Corporate Blogging Book
• AMMAR BAKKAR, Head Of New Media, MBC Group
• MOHAMED NANABHAY, Head Of New Media, Al Jazeera
• PHILIPPE DELTENRE, Media Strategist, Microsoft
• ANGEL GAMBINO, Former Global VP, Music And Content, BEBO

They will have 25 speakers in total. And all of them are playing an integral part in the new media revolution. The full listing is on the website at www.thenewmediaevent.com.

OK, so you may be asking yourself, why do I need to attend an event on new media? What is in it for me? I am doing a great job – plus all of this new media stuff is only hype! Yeah, keep telling yourself that!

Do you realize that there are 200,000,000 blogs on the net? 150,000,000 videos on YouTube? 120,000,000 Facebook members? I am sure you don’t. You also don’t now that it takes only one blog post to destroy your organization’s reputation. Imagine, there are over one billion blog posts on the net and it takes only one to destroy everything you have been working for.

There is a teaser for the event here:

Duane's World 14 - The New Media.

You have several options.

1. Visit www.thenewmediaevent.com
2. Call +971 4 335 2437
3. Email register@iirme.com

Interview on Duane's World from Dutch Cowboys

I got to do this great little piece during MAX 2008 Europe in Milan 3 days ago:


Patrick Petersen interviewt Videohost Duane van tv.adobe.com from AtMost Channel 8 on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

Building Service Clients With Flex and AIR (Improved) Course Online

During both MAX events, James Ward and I taught a course on building Adobe Flex and AIR clients for various service types (including Web Services, REST, HTML clients, Flash Remoting) talking to PHP and ColdFusion. During the first session in San Francisco, we had a few glitches (the image had MySQL already running that prevented the WAMP stack from being able to start and gave only a cryptic "Java.socket.exception" exception). We also had the remote server at www.webservicex.com go down during the middle of the class as well as some hard drive glitch that wouldn't let a valid Flex project be loaded. I was perplexed as all of these things had been tested several times prior -- however, things happen.

To ensure this did not happen again, I have rewritten a new version of BlazeDS which now includes the Apache Axis 1.4 SOAP Stack and some additional *.jars. We also rearranged the course so it can be taken as a self-paced tutorial on how to talk to the various types of courses.

I have placed the entire courseware up for grabs by anyone at http://www.web2open.org/courses.html. I would like to invite anyone to download and take or even consider teaching these courses to your user groups. They are both release under Creative Commons license but please share and share alike. I put a lot of time and effort into both of there courses.

If you took the courses at MAX, please also realize that James and I always put too much content into every course to account for a best case scenario (the entire class types fast, asks no questions, has great eyesight, and makes no mistakes). Given this rarely happens, we often do not get through the entire course; so we designed this to make it a self-paced tutorial complete with instruction guide in case you want to teach it to others. All the projects are included and well commented. User group managers, please make this available to your groups.

To those of you who attended the first MAX Lab in San Francisco, we apologize again for the glitch but things were beyond our control. This should more than make up for it. All the other classes went very well (we did this 5 times).

Audience Assumptions
- Attendees are familiar with XML
- Attendees understand the basics of network architecture and various protocols
- Attendees have Adobeʼs AIR runtime installed
- Attendees have Flex Builder 3 installed

Prerequisites and Downloads

Before you can take this course, you must have the following
software installed on your computer:

- Adobe Flex Builder 3 or later
- Adobe AIR 1.1 runtime or later
- Java ™ SDK 1.5 or higher

Additionally, you must have the CD of courseware that includes the
two directories and a soft copy of this handout.

The following image must be on all computers:
1. The AIR runtime
2. Flex Builder 3 or later
3. BlazeDS
4. MAMP (Mac) or WAMP (Windows)
5. ColdFusion (optional)

A preconfigured MAMP image (Mac OS X) is available here:

A preconfigured WAMP images (Windows) is available here:
http://www.web2open.org/courses/MAX2008_BuildingServiceClients.zip

When you get it:

1. unzip it to the desktop

2. open a command window and navigate to the directory \MAX2008_BuildingServiceClients\sampledb and type in “startdb”. It should start up a database. Leave that command window open.

3. Grab a new command window and navigate to \MAX2008_BuildingServiceClients\tomcat\bin and type “catalina run”. This should start up tomcat.

Please then test the following URLs to make sure they are there:

http://localhost:8400/axis – to make sure Apache Axis 1.4 is up and running fine
http://localhost:8400/xml/Wines.xml
http://localhost:8400/xml/crossdomain.xml


The AIR runtime may be downloaded from:
http://get.adobe.com/air/

A trial version of Flex Builder 3 may be downloaded from:
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/

Use the BlazeDS included in the build.

MAMP may be downloaded from:
http://www.mamp.info/en/download.html

WAMP may be downloaded from:
http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php

A trial version of ColdFusion may be downloaded from:
http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/

The following files must be on all computers

~/RootFolder/AttendeeHandouts.pdf
/AttendeeProjects
/CompletedProjects
/BlazeDS
/MAMP (For Mac OS X only)
/WAMP (For Windows only)

Each computer must have an internet connection

Description

Learn how to build SOA clients with Flex and Adobe AIR. In this hands-on session, you will explore how to build various service clients using the WSDL Import Wizard, hand-coded ActionScript 3.0, and simple REST-based services. Flash Remoting and performance metrics will also be covered. This session is intended for those who build front-end service clients for business applications. Attendees should come prepared to write code or partner with someone else writing code. (This session complements "Deploying Services with BlazeDS and LiveCycle Data Services ES.")
Preparations for this Lab

1. If the Windows image you are using has a MySQL instance running, it must be killed first. To do this, please go to Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services and stop the MySQL instance.



2. Next, start up the BlazeDS server. To do this, open a Command Window (or shell) and navigate to \BlazeDS\sampledb (if on OS X, use forward slashes instead of back for path).

a. On Windows, type in “startdb”. This should start the database.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\MAX2008_BuildingServiceClients\s
ampledb>startdb

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\MAX2008_BuildingServiceClients\s
ampledb>java -cp hsqldb.jar org.hsqldb.Server
[Server@1d58aae]: [Thread[main,5,main]]: checkRunning(false) entered
[Server@1d58aae]: [Thread[main,5,main]]: checkRunning(false) exited
[Server@1d58aae]: Startup sequence initiated from main() method
[Server@1d58aae]: Loaded properties from [C:\Documents and Settings\Administrato
r\Desktop\MAX2008_BuildingServiceClients\sampledb\server.properties]
[Server@1d58aae]: Initiating startup sequence...
[Server@1d58aae]: Server socket opened successfully in 40 ms.
[Server@1d58aae]: Database [index=0, id=0, db=file:flexdemodb/flexdemodb, alias=
flexdemodb] opened sucessfully in 1512 ms.
[Server@1d58aae]: Startup sequence completed in 1552 ms.
[Server@1d58aae]: 2008-11-25 12:29:14.087 HSQLDB server 1.8.0 is online
[Server@1d58aae]: To close normally, connect and execute SHUTDOWN SQL
[Server@1d58aae]: From command line, use [Ctrl]+[C] to abort abruptly




b. On Mac, type sudo sh ./startdb.sh




3. Now start the servers.

a. On Windows, do this by changing directories until you are at the \BlazeDS\tomcat\bin directory (note: use forward slashes on Unix based Systems) and type catalina run


C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\MAX2008_BuildingServiceClients\t
omcat\bin>catalina run

Using CATALINA_BASE: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\MAX2008_B
uildingServiceClients\tomcat
Using CATALINA_HOME: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\MAX2008_B
uildingServiceClients\tomcat
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\MAX2008_B
uildingServiceClients\tomcat\temp
Using JRE_HOME: C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_10
Nov 25, 2008 12:34:20 PM org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener init
INFO: The Apache Tomcat Native library which allows optimal performance in produ
ction environments was not found on the java.library.path: C:\Program Files\Java
\jdk1.6.0_10\bin;.;C:\WINDOWS\Sun\Java\bin;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\CFu
sionMX7\verity\k2\_nti40\bin;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\
Wbem;C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies\ATI Control Panel;C:\Program Files\PC-Doc
tor for Windows\services;C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies\Fire GL 3D Studio Max
;C:\WINDOWS\Downloaded Program Files;C:\Program Files\Common Files\MXI;C:\Progra
m Files\Common Files\Adobe\AGL;C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTSystem\
Nov 25, 2008 12:34:20 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol init
INFO: Initializing Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-8400
Nov 25, 2008 12:34:20 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina load
INFO: Initialization processed in 432 ms
Nov 25, 2008 12:34:20 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService start
INFO: Starting service Catalina
Nov 25, 2008 12:34:20 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine start
INFO: Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/6.0.14
Nov 25, 2008 12:34:24 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol start
INFO: Starting Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-8400
Nov 25, 2008 12:34:24 PM org.apache.jk.common.ChannelSocket init
INFO: JK: ajp13 listening on /0.0.0.0:8009
Nov 25, 2008 12:34:24 PM org.apache.jk.server.JkMain start
INFO: Jk running ID=0 time=0/20 config=null
Nov 25, 2008 12:34:24 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina start
INFO: Server startup in 3988 ms



b. On Mac OS X, do this by changing directories until you are at the /BlazeDS/tomcat/bin directory and type
sudo sh ./catalina.sh run



4. You should be able to validate the servers are up and running by hitting the following URL: http://localhost:8400/xml/Wines.xml

Live Blogging From MAX Milan 2008

During the MAX 2008 event keynote in Milan, Adobe Evangelists Mihai Corlan, Tom Krcha and Piotr Walczyszyn will be doing some live blogging. If you want to get the very latest goods on what is happening, tune in to these three guys' blogs. You can find the MAX schedule at the MAX website.

Mihai Corlan - http://corlan.org

Tom Krcha - http://flashrealtime.com/

Piotr Walczyszyn - http://www.riaspace.net/

Can someone please explain this?

Why are we paying taxes to our governments so our governments can give that money to banks who then lend it back to us at a profit. Someone is getting really screwed here and I think it is us, the people. The worst part is if the bank screws up, the government just gives them more of our money. Why don't I just keep a larger portion of my paycheque? Quite frankly, I have started to enjoy the sight of major bankers in trouble.

Please remind me why any of this is even legal?

Netherlands Java User Group Rocks!!

This year, I had the immense honor of being a keynote speaker at the jFall event sponsored by the Netherlands Java user groups. I also gave a second talk on SOA and Adobe LiveCycle ES which had a big impact amongst the attendees. Most of them noted that Adobe LiveCycle ES is in fact a very mature J2EE Enterprise Service Bus. It has been a busy few weeks and I am behind on sending out the developer licensed versions of LiveCycle ES so I apologize to everyone who is waiting. It will come. If you did not get yours yet, please remind me via email to dnickull [at] adobe [dot] com.

Here is a video of the event.


J-Fall 2008 from Bachelor-ict.nl on Vimeo.

Adobe MAX 2008 AIR Boot Camp Course Online

James Ward and I gave a 3.5 hour mega lab at Adobe MAX 2008 which was attended by 250 people (sold out). The course is designed so that anyone can take it at as a self-paced tutorial. Here is a shot of about 25% of the room.



After the success of the course, we decided to upload all the materials so others could take this and teach. It contains some great examples from James' book as well as 12 completed projects. These demonstrate the main aspects of AIR that distinguish it from Flex and Flash.

While presenting this at MAX, there were some minor glitches and that is why we are posting this publicly. One glitch was that the webservicex.com site was not working well (an external site required for the web services module). This was obviously well beyond our abilities to control so we had to do the best we could at the time. If you want to see how the web services introspection wizard works, please watch the Code and Tunes segment of Duane's World Episode 1. I have tested it now and it seems to be working okay. This could have been a bandwidth issue with 250 people connected to the Internet at the same time.

The second glitch was very minor. We had a few people who complained and said "We never got a chance to complete all the labs [modules] of the course". This was by design; James and I always include more materials than we know can be covered in the time allowed. This is done to allow attendees to work through the rest of the course at their own leisure. The course is set up so anyone can take it and we wanted to have more than enough materials to be somewhat flexible should the consensus in the room be to explore one particular aspect of AIR in more detail.

The course is being given out in hopes that others will take it and teach it at their companies or to user groups. You may download the AIR Tutorial from here: The course is laid out as follows:

|
|- - AIR-Boot-Camp_DNICKULL-FINAL.* - PDF and PPT versions of slides
|
|-- * AIRBootCampHandouts - what you give out to attendees if you teach it
|
|--AttendeeProjects - these are the starter projects for the students
|
|--CompletedProjects - the solutions for each of the 12 labs

* Use the handout as the Teachers Guide - a special guide for those who wish to teach this class.

Good luck - please let us know if this works for you. If you want to introduce AIR to your co-workers, we encourage you to take these materials and use them as you wish. We did this for you and put a lot of effort into this.

Another way for Adobe designers to save when attending Adobe MAX Milan

Purchase Adobe(R) Creative Suite(R) 4 or any Adobe product and get 10% discount off  if you attend Adobe MAX Milan. 
Take advantage of this offer : www.adobe.com/go/max2008

See conditions below.**

** Offer good for Adobe MAX 2008 attendees only. Offer cannot be combined with any other offer, package or registration code. The offer with the 10% discount off is valid on all products on all Adobe Store in EMEA available via an offer code embedded on the following URL : www.adobe.com/go/max2008. Offer valid for qualifying purchases made between November 16, 2008 and December 6, 2008, applicable for web or phone orders. Terms and conditions for Adobe MAX registrations will also apply. Offer is not transferrable and valid only for individual product registrant in possession of a valid purchase confirmation. OEM, NFR, and volume licensing customers are not eligible. Void where prohibited.

Alchemy: C and C++ running in Flash

So you think Flash is fast now? Check out Alchemy as soon as you can. Alchemy was previewed 11 hours ago for the purpose of reusing existing C and C++ libraries in Flash Web applications.

Alchemy is a research project that allows users to compile C and C++ code that is targeted to run on the open source ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2). With Alchemy, Web application developers can now compile their C and C++ code on Adobe Flash Player 10 or Adobe AIR 1.5.

Developers should be careful to avoid using C and C++ projects that rely on OS-specific libraries. Alchemy is ideal for computation-intensive use cases (which can be slower on Flash), such as audio/video transcoding, data manipulation, XML parsing, cryptographic functions, or physics simulation.

Performance:

Runtime performance can be considerably faster than ActionScript 3.0 and anywhere from 2-10x slower than native C/C++ code. Alchemy is not intended for general development of SWF applications using C/C++.

For more information, go to labs.adobe.com/technologies/alchemy

Why Tech Stocks are a Good Buy

I've been around. I got slammed in 1987 when the stock market crashed. I remember my parents getting crunched in 1980. There is an important cycle here that has been emerging in my head as a theory but it might be several years before we can find out if there is truth to it. Here is how it goes. It starts with a sequence of events.

1. The economy sours because of "X"
2. The stock market crashes
3. The stronger companies acquire the weaker ones in every vertical.

Now when companies get acquired, their IT systems need to be integrated. If you look at any merger or acquisition of roughly equal sized companies, this takes some time. First consultants have to work with internal IT staff to create a plan, then it is put into action.

So what should the signs be if this is true?

Q: IT people should be as busy as ever.
A: True from my perspective

Q: Consulting companies are still hiring.
A: True from my perspective

Q: Tech conferences will be packed and busier than ever.
A: True from my perspective

The first major sign we will see is going to be results from consulting companies combined with an increased amount of RFPs on the street, probably starting late 2008, Q1 2009. While I don't think hardware will be involved at first, the secondary signs will be an increase in sales from Apple, IBM, Dell et al. In the midterm, we will see system integrators and big projects using lots of ESBs (like Adobe LiveCycle, IBM's offerings, Oracle's suite). Sales will probably weaken a bit for the next month, but strong demand will bounce the tech sector back fast.

That is my prediction. Let's revisit this blog post in about 12 months and see what happened.

22nd Century @ 330 Ritch, Monday Nov 17

10:00 PM will hit the stage. Set list below:



Peculiar - Original (for upcoming 2nd CD)
Echo Beach - Punk version of Marth and Muffins
Live in Space - Original (off CD "The Twenty Second Century")
No Secrets - Punk version of Angel City song
Let me be - Original (off CD "The Twenty Second Century")
Sawgrass Hill - Original (off CD "The Twenty Second Century")
Saturday Nights all right for fighting - Punk version of Elton John Classic
Good Grief - Cover of Foo Fighters
Pieces - Sum 41 Cover
509 - Original (off CD "The Twenty Second Century")
Longview - Greenday Cover
FireFly - Original off "Little Green Planet"
Zero - Smashing Pumpkins Cover
Nightmare - Original (off CD "The Twenty Second Century")
What my Age - Blink 182 cover
U Generation - Original (for upcoming 2nd CD)

+ some others (in case of encore)

Double-neck Fender Pre Bass/ Stratocaster done!

It took me a while to complete this project but it is finally done. The body itself was built in 1986 by Cremer Guitarworks out of Illinois. I originally put some cheaper necks on it to test it out but it is now complete with a 2005 Pre bass and 2008 Fender Strat.



I put custom pickup for the guitar (Seymour hot stacks) and some other custom goodies but tried to keep it the way Fender would have built it if they ever made such a beast.



Now I need to find a case for it before it can go on the road with 22nd Century and Stress Factor 9.

Lance Armstrong at Web 2.0 Summit?

While it would be hard to say which talks were the best, my high point was getting to personally meet up with Lance Armstrong. After watching him win a battle with cancer, then proceed to win the Tour de France 7 consecutive times, this is a person who inspires me. What did we talk about? Vancouver singer Bif Naked is undergoing a battle with breast cancer (see link on left to blogroll). Of all the things Lance could have asked me or Tim, he was most interested in how she was doing when I told him. I am sending Bif a copy of Lance's book today.

What I am going to do now is ask you all for something totally unreasonable. Give to Lance's charity LiveStrong. Give because it is important to beat this bastard called cancer. Cancer has touched too many people's lives. Lance could use his fame for anything, but he chooses to focus on helping others beat cancer. Please donate now.

Peace, love & inspiration for all!!!

Watching James Ward demo Pixel Bender at jFall!

James Ward just did a great demo of Rich Tretola's AIR iteration of FotoBooth. Rich used the new Pixel Bender technology in Flash Player 10. The results are amazing!



Download Rich's app at:
http://blog.everythingflex.com/fotobooth/

Duane's World TV now on Podcast

We have just finished uploading most episodes of Duane's World in high quality m4v format. The new site may be accessed at:

http://www.duanesworldtv.com

Please let me know if you find any issues (public beta).