Video - Acrobat Connect on Google Nexus One

This is just a short video I made this AM while watching the Adobe Open Source Media Framework (OSMF) launch on Acrobat Connect via my Google Nexus One. I haven't tested all the features but as for watching, it seemed to perform perfectly. Note there is no plug in to present from the N1 device. For the record, I am on Android 2.2 (FroYo) build with Adobe Flash Player 10.1 (10.1.61.68).

Some awesome webinars on building multi-screen content

For developers, we want to invite you to a series of webinars on authoring content and code for mobile screens. Yeah - there has been a lot of talk about how you can just "write once, run everywhere" but the devil is in the details. Developers who have been at the cutting edge are preparing to reveal some best practices and tips, tricks you should at least be aware of when authoring for multiple screens to take advantage of new features of Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2. These webinars will run from June 22-24, 2010.

Best practices in optimizing web content for Flash Player 10.1
Tuesday, June 22, 9AM – 10AM Pacific Time - REGISTER

The quickest way to build cross-platform apps with AIR 2
Tuesday, June 22, 1PM – 2PM Pacific Time - REGISTER

Rich Internet App development with Flash Builder 4 for Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2
Wednesday, June 23, 9AM – 10AM Pacific Time - REGISTER

Multi-screen web content development with Flash Pro CS5
Thursday, June 24 9AM – 10AM Pacific Time - REGISTER

Open Source Media Framework Webinar Wed June 10

An event not to be missed. In tomorrow's webinar, Lisa Larson-Kelley will dive into the fundamentals of Open Source Media Framework (OSMF), Adobe’s standard video player libraries for building playback experiences and monetizing video on the web. She’ll give you a high-level overview of why you’d want to use OSMF and what it can do, and then dive into its underlying structure and some simple sample code to get you started. This session is for beginner to intermediate programmers and web developers who want to gain a better understanding of OSMF, and how it can simplify media player development.

Lisa is a speaker not to be missed! On top of this, there is a chance to win a copy of CS5!

Register now (I have)
http://www.eventsadobe.com/osmflaunch/invite.html

Website and Blog Hosting - some questions.

Technoracle has been on Blogger now for over 4 years and feel I may be missing out on some of the new features of blog platforms. While investigating these, I also started thinking about just using another company's Website hosting and build my own blog and condense all my other websites on to one provider. The reasons are pretty obvious. No waiting on third party sites for widgets or auxiliary items to load, full control over look and feel, etc. On the downside, WordPress, Blogger and others give you a lot out of the box and the server hosting from various third party suppliers is actually pretty cheap.

I already have my web collateral pretty spread out too. Web2open.org (where I place a lot of tutorials) is hosted on a dedicated server hosting. www.duanesworldtv.org is on yet another provider and nickull.net and 22ndcenturyofficial.com are on two different providers. This is before we ever get into MySpace, Facebook etc. Here are some things running through my mind though:

1. Will condensing all of them into one IP address affect search engine results? While they are not interlinked much, there are some links. My gut tells me yes but I am looking for anyone with actual experience.

2. Staying on blogger seems to result in blog posts being indexed much quicker than using non-Google owned blog platforms. Anyone have some experience here?

3. I haven't migrated to the new templates. Has anyone experience with this old Technoracle Blogger template moving to a newer one? I heard it is lossy.

Any other advice on my contemplated consolidation would be appreciated.

Have a great weekend everyone!

New Video Tutorial - LiveCycle Services via SOAP.

This is the latest in a series of videos aimed at Adobe LiveCycle ES2 for Java (tm) developers. This tutorial covers using SOAP based web services to invoke remote ES2 services. The project is built in the Eclipse IDE and if you want it, email us here at technoracle.

Comparison - Full Screen H.264 video on Google Nexus 1 vs. MacBook pro

We were contacted by the lads over at lucid.it about video on mobile to gather some more information. I decided rather than give them the technical marketing belch, it might be better just to show them via video how well Flash Player 10.1, running on the Google Nexus One smartphone, can render full screen H.264. Unfortunately, the camera I used to film this does not do the video justice, nor does the YouTube conversion. If I get a better result on Vimeo, I will replace the video embedded. Nevertheless, this video shows a true comparison on how a full screen video experience runs roughly the same whether using the Gala Flash Player (Mac OS X hardware accelerated) on a MacBook Pro 15 inch laptop and the Google Nexus One Android smartphone using the latest Flash Player 10.1 (not Flash Lite - full Flash Player).

The video can be seen at http://www.lucid.it/mobile.

Open Source Media Framework now!

The first release of Adobe's Open Source Media Framework (OSMF 1.0) can be downloaded for free today from www.osmf.org. If this isn't enough, social media start-up KickApps now offers an online service (www.osmfappstudio.com) available starting today. That certainly makes my Friday!

OSMF was started over a year ago to simplify the development of media players by allowing developers to assemble components to create high-quality, full featured video playback experiences. Key service providers such as Omniture, Akamai, Conviva, Eyewonder and many others have completed plug-ins or submitted code to be included as part of OSMF. OSMF 1.0 also supports the latest Flash Platform initiatives such as Flash Player 10.1, Flash Access 2.0 and HTTP Dynamic Streaming.

In addition to this fully tested, production ready version of OSMF, the team also posted the first prerelease of Strobe Media Playback. Strobe Media Playback is a compiled swf that allows a web developer to get up and running quickly and easily with an OSMF based media player. It basically will look and render the same in every browser (One of the issues with HTML5 video I have worried about is the problems for web developers to ensure a consistent look and feel across all browser/platform combinations and maintain it over time). The out of the box player looks like this:



The team has created a interface that gives the customer a terrific “out of the box” experience. Every group at Adobe who is interested in an easy to use web video experience should talk to the Strobe Media Playback team. The team is working to make SMP even easier to use through a hosted version that can be integrated on a customer’s web page as easily as an HTML 5 video tag, but with much more power and flexibility.

Have a great weekend!

Adobe LiveCycle ES2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) now available

Adobe has released LiveCycle ES2 Service Pack 1. Service Pack 1 updates LiveCycle ES2 server components, LiveCycle Workbench ES2, LiveCycle Designer ES2, and LiveCycle ES2 SDK (updating both LiveCycle ES2 server and LiveCycle Workbench ES2 is required). This Service Pack can only be deployed on LiveCycle ES2.

Please visit https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=lces2_sp to download Service Pack 1. Additional details on the contents of the service pack, including the issues it addresses and installation instructions are included in the Read Me file available at the same URL. A file extraction utility such as WinZip/gnu tar/unzip will be required in order to extract the files prior to running the installation.

The direct link to the Service Pack download is http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=lces2_sp.

You can also access the download from a few locations on LiveCycle DevNet pages:
1. Downloads tab: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/index.html?view=downloads

2. Get It section on the Get Started page: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/get_started.html


Be sure to review the Release Notes and Read Me PDF before installing.

Release notes: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/livecycle/9.0/releasenotes.html
Read Me: http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/livecycle/lces2_sp1/designer/sp_download_readme.pdf

Bloodied but Unbowed: As real as it gets

During my time working with Adobe, I seem to keep getting drawn into the movie business crowds. Our creative tools seem to be a favorite amongst many film producers who in turn are always super enthusiastic about showing us the awesome new ways they have used them for special effects, turning movies into truly interactive experiences and more. Celebrities such as James Cameron (Avatar), Peter Beyak (Extreme), Colleen Nystedt (Exhuming Mr. Rice) and others seem to be genuinely stoked about our technology and what they can do with it. Once in a while, I am blessed with the opportunity to meet someone from the lucky group of people who are living their dreams. Translation: working on something you are truly passionate about = living your dreams. Yesterday was one of those days.

I had the immense pleasure of having lunch with Susanne Tabata. Susanne is an accomplished film producer (just Google her name for a plethora of credits). What I am most impressed by though is that she is so real for a person who has just released what is destined to be a one of a kind documentary film chronicling the pivotal years of early punk rock in North America. While the film "Bloodied but Unbowed"starts in Vancouver, BC, it weaves tentacles outwards, and the effect of the Vancouver punk movement from 1978-1981 is still influencing artists globally as told by people like Randy Rampage (DOA, Annihilator, Stress Factor 9) and Duff McKagan (Guns & Roses, Velvet Revolver, Jane's Addiction). According to Alternative Tentacles, the Vancouver sound pulled out a "Yeah, that's the shit!" from the likes of Jello Biafra, Henry Rollins, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sonic Youth, John Doe, Randy Bachman, Dave Grohl, Pete Seeger, and many many more! As someone who played bass for Stress Factor 9 with Randy in 2007, I can tell you the sound is still relevant. My own band still embraces this stylistic sound, which is ingrained into the song "Howie the skid" (not yet released).

Susanne Tabata (on the left, yeah that is as obvious as it gets)

Here is the bad part now. I haven't seen the film. Like me, there are thousands of people who would die to see this (all screenings were select and sold out in advance). Susanne did confide in me during lunch that there may be a flash screening (short notice, one time shot to see it). If you want to get the invite, you best be logging on to Bloodied but Unbowed's Facebook and Twitter pages and keep watching for the invite.

Tom Harrison, the Provinces rock critic and a tough cookie to impress ( he still won't review my last CD ), writes:

"The film is more like a memoir based on key figures and what they said then and now. I applaud that. Initially, I feared it would take a journalistic angle - the "us versus them" slant. That's a familiar battle and not only tiresome but narrow. This was a widespread cultural phenomenon, not merely a musical one. The story is told from a punk point of view with a brief explanation of what started it and hints of what ended it.

Ultimately, the punks won that battle, or reached a pact in an ongoing war. They didn't win with their music as so little of it was heard beyond the punk scene, but with their attitude, which changed the thinking of so many and which was taken up by the bands who danced down the trail the punks had blazed"

The Georgia Straight also heaped praise on Tabata by writing "Bloodied but Unbowed takes a loving—and long overdue—look at one of the most fertile scenes in North American music history, with Tabata mixing rare archival footage with modern-day interviews with those who were on the frontlines".

What also excites me is that this film seems to be taking on a life of its own. So many people like me never got a chance to see it as the screenings were sold out (I was performing in New York on the date anyways). The grassroots swell of interest only can be attracted by something that is truth. Punk rock, to me, has always been about the search for the truth and a fight against complacency, mixed with cynical humor of the mainstream life of being a herded sheep; an organic pain collector hurtling towards certain oblivion. Punk rock just embraces this fact first, then asks "so what are you gonna do now?"

I know what I am going to do. Go and see Bloodied by Unbowed the first chance I get.

I suspect Bloodied but Unbowed is destined for a long life as a cult classic. I cannot wait to get a chance to see it in a theater or even on DVD. Until then, I can only hope that cutting edge film producers keep using Adobe software so I can get in on the V.I.P. lists.

UPDATE AND DISCLOSURE: Technoracle's founders have entered into a financial relationship with the company that will distribute this movie in order to support it's migration to digital streaming and DVD. In the interest of transparency, this is hereby disclosed to readers.

LiveCycle ES for Java Developers (Video)

This is a simple video tutorial on how to programmatically invoke LiveCycle ES services via an EJB API. To complete this tutorial yourself, you will need to do the following:

1. Download and install the LiveCycle ES2 turnkey JBoss solution from http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/trial/. Note that this is 3GB and if you would rather, please contact me dnickull at adobe dot com with your name and mailing address and I will send you out a DVD of everything you need.

2. You also need to download the Eclipse IDE. This can be downloaded from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/technology/epp/downloads/release/galileo/SR2/eclipse-jee-galileo-SR2-macosx-cocoa.tar.gz

3. The code project can be downloaded from here - http://www.web2open.org/adc/LiveCycleESProjects.zip

That is about all. Here is the video:

Video Tutorial - Adding video to PDF forms for LiveCycle ES

This is a short video demonstrating how to add a video object to a LiveCycle ES2 PDF form.

Video Tutorial on LiveCycle Data Services Model Driven Development

This is a video to accompany the written tutorial to show how to use the brand new features of LiveCycle Data Services 3.* and Flash Builder 4. The development methodology of using the data model to build an application is a very cool feature. Data is often bound to an enterprise process and being able to build an RIA demands that you have a well thought out data model. This allows the developer to reuse existing data rather than asking the user to enter information more than once.

Enjoy.

Flash Player 10.1 on Google TV

Adobe and Google are working closely together on a number of different efforts including support for Flash Player 10.1 and AIR across various platforms and devices. One of these new platforms is Google TV, Google's new Android based platform that brings the power of the web in to the living room. Google TV includes Flash Player 10.1 integrated directly into the Google Chrome browser delivering the full Web to consumers on their television sets. The digital home is a huge step for Flash and it represents an amazing new screen for developers and content creators to bring rich interactive content to the TV.

Read the rest here

Video:

AIR 2 for Android Public Beta!

They AIR team did it!! While at Google I/O this week developers are getting blasted with awesome news and new technology, Google and Adobe have worked hard on this and IMO it is a top 5 event of the week. For those of you who don't know AIR, Adobe AIR for Android enables developers to build standalone applications that run on Android devices, like the Nexus One (my all time favorite smartphone). You can use any text editor and the free SDK to build applications and easily deliver applications that work across Linux, Mac, Android, and PC. When developing for Android, you must use the AIR for Android SDK.

By joining this Public Prerelease program, you will have access to a beta version of the AIR SDK with support for Android. Before signing up for this program, there are currently limitations that you should be aware of:

• In this early stage of development, you should be comfortable with using command line tools.
• Flash Professional CS5 now has a new extension that allows developers to publish directly to Android-powered devices. The extension adds a new AIR for Android publish setting that works in the shipping and 30-trial versions of Flash Professional CS5.
• The Flex 4 framework has not yet been optimized for mobile devices; for this prerelease, we recommend building applications using ActionScript only. We're currently working on creating a highly productive, cross-platform solution for mobile development using Flash Builder and Flex, which we expect to be available in public preview by the end of this year.
• You will be able to build and test AIR applications on Android devices, but you will not be able to deploy on the Android Market or share them with end users
• You will be subject to terms of an NDA which allows you to display your application publicly, but you will not be permitted to disclose anything outside of Licensee’s own personal development experiences of a beta Android application(s) using this beta AIR SDK.

If you are interested in joining our Prerelease program, just go here:

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

I'm going there now!

Some more Adobe HTML5 love!

Today at the Google I/O conference, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch gave a strong speech pumping up our support and excitement around HTML5. The video is online here - http://www.youtube.com/GoogleDevelopers. This is an awesome conference and great announcements continue to pour out.

In parallel, Adobe is now offering a new Dreamweaver CS5 HTML5 Extension. This pack brings enhanced capabilities for HTML5 and CSS3 to web designers and developers using Dreamweaver CS5. The update and more information is now available on Adobe at http://bit.ly/DWHTML5.

HTML5 is going to be huge for everyone!

Seaport Cafe, NYC - a place that really sucks

I have eaten in over 30 countries in multiple thousands of cities over the last 2 decades as a traveler but never have I been at a restaurant worse than the Seaport Cafe in southern NY. Note that this includes restaurants in developing nations or transitioning economies. This is the first restaurant I have eaten at that was so bad I felt obliged to blog about it to warn others.

This place has the worst food you can imagine and a fixed gratuity even though my wife and I waited over 30 minutes to be given menus and another 30 minutes to get our food. But hey - why hurry when the tip is already built into the bill? When the food arrived it was cold and stale. The tomatoes were white (unripe), lettuce wasn't washed and the buns old and frightful. I wish I had check out the Google reviews first as it seems everyone else agrees this is the worst restaurant ever - http://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=seaport+cafe+new+york&fb=1&gl=us&hq=seaport+cafe&hnear=new+york&cid=0,0,12350209958079735554&ei=HuPuS4yhLormswP6gd28Dw&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQnwIwAA

The worst part is the complete lack of understanding of the process of waste. Everything came in plastic containers. Here is a photo:


The plates = all plastic, all condiments individually wrapped or in more plastic
Cutlery = all plastic, wrapped in more plastic
Orange juice = served in plastic, plastic lid, straw and wrapper on the straw

The servers are indicative of a society where they are only the second generation in their bloodline to walk upright, some of them probably still have relative who live in caves and trees.

The list goes on an on. Shame on you Seaport Cafe!!!

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! STAY AWAY!

Technoracle’s Top-10 reasons for using Flash Builder 4 for Flex 3 Projects.

I write this after only being half way through my itinerary for speaking about Flash Builder 4 to Adobe Flex User Groups. Having a chance to hang with many developers made me realize that we (Adobe) understated a major benefit of Flash Builder 4. Specifically, it seems we could have done a better job of explaining some of the key benefits for using Flash Builder 4 for Flex 3 projects. Many Flex developers I have talked to seem to be holding off on upgrading to Flash Builder 4 based on a perception that they also have to also update all projects from Flex 3 to Flex 4. This is simply not true. One of the top requests for the next version of Flex Builder was the ability to use multiple Flex SDKs within one IDE. You can import your Flex 3.X projects into Flash Builder 4 today and they will simply work. Check out this cool feature on the new project creation wizard shown below:



The top ten reasons are presented in random order (I’m a pretty random guy). Also note that this article does not get in to the compelling reasons why someone would want to use Flex 4 instead of Flex 3. The reality is that many of the developers I have spoken to work on large scale, long term enterprise Flex projects and rewriting them in Flex 4 is not something up for negotiation. If you are one of those, this article caters to you. I could write another ten pages on the beauty of Flex 4 and the new Spark component architecture but I am a lazy Adobe employee and this is probably the only blog post I will write this week. Here is my list.


1. Enhancements to ASDoc integration. By far, my most favorite feature of Flash Builder 4 is the tighter integration with the ASDocs and the enhanced information available during the development process. Any time you hover the cursor over a reference to a component, ASDoc information is available as both a popup menu (can be disabled) or via the ASDocs tab.



This is so powerful for developers for a number of reasons. One is that you instantly have access to the information about that component/class without having to migrate to another screen or window. This includes full inheritance and a plain text description of what it does (brief version). The second is that there are embedded hyperlinks to the documentation of related classes so you can get a feel for whether or not you are using the right component or class. The new addition of information about which language version of the Flex SDK the functionality appeared in as well as which Flash Player and AIR runtimes is also very useful.

2. The ability to use multiple SDKs. As mentioned above, Flash Builder 4 lets you start new projects in Flex 4 but also finish up existing projects in Flex 3 with the aide of all the enhanced developer tooling. Even if you’re just going to do Flex 3 for the short term future, this is the IDE you want to be on.

3. Pair code highlighting. Whenever you hover over a component declaration or named object, Flash Builder highlights all instances of it. This even works across both MXML and AS as shown below.



This one feature alone has saved my sorry developer behind so many times when I’ve made typos.

4. The Network Monitor. This is another one of my favorites and, if you will indulge me, a totally kickass addition to the IDE. As an SOA guy, I spend a lot of my coding time working on remote calls to services. The Flex Builder 3 IDE hid most of the details from the developer making it difficult to debug an application when something went wrong. The Network Monitor gives you the raw messages in both a logical and raw data view. You can easily spot malformed headers, get direct access to SOAP fault messages, and see HTTP, AMF, and raw text results in real time. Below is a typical HTTP request.



And here is the accompanying response.



This tool makes it so easy to debug both simple and complex message exchanges in a variety of protocols.

5. Enhanced Data Centric Development features. My record for setting up a new project, using the Web Service wizard to inspect a WSDL instance, generate the stub code, generate a form for the service call, optimize it, save it, compile and run it is 26 seconds! Do I need to say more? Not really but I will. The Flash Builder team also answered the biggest developer request which was access to the generated code to inspect and modify. For example, here is the generated code for the service call above. Note that the parameters for all the details of the call are clearly spelled out in plain ActionScript for you to inspect.



But wait! That is not all you get. This code is from the super-class. If you want to modify this, there is a sub-class stubbed out with the starter code, which allows you to override permissible operations or functions without messing up the generated code! IMO this is a very cool feature.


6. Fix Code Indentation. OK – this blows the SAP “pretty printer” away. If you are like me, code is art. I see beauty in well written and properly indented code. If you are fine with code that is indented like a drunken lemur had access to a random number generator that controlled lead in spaces on each character, you might not use this feature. If you want to create code that can be displayed in the Louvre, check this feature out. Here is the art-less heathen coding style that multiple quick fixes can create just before the “Correct Indentation” is used.



and here is the work of art that results:



Beauty is in the eye of the developer (since it all gets compiled into a SWF anyways).

7. Fiber Plugin. The Fiber (a code name for a data model driven methodology for development) is one of the coolest client and server-side technologies ever made. When you use the Data Model plugin with Flash Builder 4 and a supported application server like LiveCycle Data Services 3.1 running on JBoss, there is simply nothing better for developing a client with full CRUD capabilities with the Flash Builder 4 IDE. This one feature alone should be the holy grail for many J2EE developers looking to cap a great enterprise application with an awesome GUI written in Flex. Flash Builder 4 gives the developer a “view” into the servers’ data capabilities via HSQLDB running on port 9002 (default).



What is awesome is that these tables can be simply dragged directly into an existing project, which then creates service calls for all major CRUD operations. Generating a graphical user interface is as easy as dragging and dropping a service call onto a datagrid or right-clicking and selecting “Generate Form”. Rather than repeat everything in this blog post, I would direct you to the tutorial posted at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/articles/lcdses2_mdd_quickstart.html.

8. Easier FlexPMD Integration. If you are a Flex Developer and have not tried FlexPMD yet, do yourself a huge favor and try it out. FlexPMD is an open source tool that helps to improve code quality by auditing any AS3/Flex source directory and detecting common bad practices, such as:

* Unused code (functions, variables, constants, etc.)
* Inefficient code (misuse of dynamic filters, heavy constructors, etc.)
* Over-complex code (nested loops, too many conditionals, etc.)
* Over-long code (classes, methods, etc.)
* Incorrect use of the Flex component lifecycle (commit Properties, etc.)

Flex PMD can be easily installed and run on any Flex project to find out how well ( or not ) your coding practices align with industry conventions. Of course my own code generates very few exceptions (if you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you).



9. Automatic Event Handler Generation. One of the top things I get errors with is catching an event and passing an event object to the event handler. Flash Builder 4 has a very cool feature whereby in the code complete, the IDE offers to create an event handler for you automatically.


This now makes me also want a new feature in the future. I would love to have the ability to have this generate the click handler as an ActionScript class inside of one of my packages in my project.

10. Automatic Getter/Setter code generation. This is a feature I haven’t personally used but am looking forward to trying on larger projects. When following enterprise Flex coding practices and conventions related to OO methodologies, developers often find themselves performing the same basic patterns over and over. By automating some of these patterns, developers can free their time from the more mundane programming tasks. When you create a variable in Flash Builder 4, you can right click and select “generate getter/setter” and Flash Builder will build the code for you. Below is the result from such an operation.


Even though I only listed ten, there are tons of other new features you can use within Flash Builder 4 for Flex 3 projects. So what are you sitting there reading this for? Download and try Flash Builder 4 trial already!

Flash Player Gala preview release!

A new Flash Player, code-named “Gala”, is now live for preview. One of the newest features of this release is support for H.264 video hardware decoding on Mac OS X 10.6.3. Note that Flash Player has supported H.264, the codec behind HD, since 2007. This newest release, with support for video hardware decoding, should logically make for a much better video performance on supported versions of OS X.

From the release:

"Gala allows developers to preview Flash Player with hardware acceleration of H.264 video on supported Mac computers equipped with the following GPUs: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M. The hardware acceleration functionality in the Gala preview release of Flash Player is expected to be included in an update following the release of Flash Player 10.1."

Read more or sign up here.

Tutorial: Dynamically Changing PDF form labels

This tutorial shows how to change the caption for a PDF form element at runtime based on a user's interaction with another form component.

How to add a 2D bar code to your LiveCycle Forms

This video tutorial covers how to add a 2D bar code for capturing and retrieving data from a PDF form. The LiveCycle Designer process shows how to create the bar code and link it to a data set.