Preparation Guide for Hands on Workshop

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

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

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

Sincerely,
Duane Nickull
Adobe Senior Technical Evangelist

System Requirements for BYOL lab

Mandatory:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

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

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

Video Tutorial: Using Transform Gestures in Mobile Development

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



Code Explained:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FlashAndTheCity is only two weeks away and they are giving

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

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

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

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

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

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

VIP seat at the FATC keynote.

Rules

I will pick a number, between 1 and whatever

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

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

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

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

announced on Twitter. HURRY UP and REGISTER NOW!!

http://fatc11.eventbrite.com/

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

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

your ticket now!

My Twitter is @duanechaos

Adobe MAX 2011 - A Special Deal for Loyalists!

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

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

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

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

See you there!

ciao!

Club Intrawest Points for Sale

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

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

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

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

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

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

End result?  

Flex/AIR Mobile Color Picker

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

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

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

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

As you move the sliders, the color changes.

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adobe MAX 2011

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

Adobe MAX awards:

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

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

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

There is also a Community Pavilion this year again.

Community Lounge

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

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

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

I'll be there!  See you there!

What is Customer Experience Management?

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

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

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

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

Adobe Resource Synchronizer CS5.5

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

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

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

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

Flash and the City - NYC Better than Ever!

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

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

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

Extending LiveCycle ES 2.5 for Java Developers

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

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

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

This course covers the following topics:

Extending LiveCycle ES for Java Developers

TABLE OF CONTENTS
OVERVIEW
EXERCISE 1: UNDERSTANDING CUSTOM COMPONENTS

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

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

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

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

New Open Source Mobile Application

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

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

One Most Excellent book on Ontology Science

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

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

Security Breach!

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

Dear Marriott Customer,  "We were recently notified by Epsilon, a marketing vendor used by Marriott International, Inc. to manage customer emails, that an unauthorized third party gained access to a number of Epsilon's accounts including Marriott's email list.  In all likelihood, this will not impact you. However, we recommend that you continue to be on the alert for spam emails requesting personal or sensitive information. Please understand and be assured that Marriott does not send emails requesting customers to verify personal information.  We take your privacy very seriously. Marriott has a long-standing commitment to protecting the privacy of the personal information that our guests entrust to us. We regret this has taken place and apologize for any inconvenience." Data breaches are inevitable.  This was not Marriott but a third party used by them.  I applaud Marriott for being timely and honest with their news.  This is what I call good customer service.  I will continue to use Marriott.  In fact, I just left one this morning in Mexico City and have another one booked for next month.

Flex Mobile Development - Transform Gestures

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

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

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

Adobe Launches new CEM Software!

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

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

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

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

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

Adobe MAX 2011 - Crowdsource Request!

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

Adobe MAX 2011!

Adobe MAX - Save the date!

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

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

Other action items:

Follow @AdobeMAX on twitter

Hit us up on Facebook

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