UVLayer releases a new version (Warning! Won’t help you get your xmas shopping done or will it!)

Posted on December 14, 2008 by admin

The new version of the AIR and web versions of UVLayer has been released. In case you haven’t heard of it yet, it is the best way* to search out, collect, and share videos available on the web today (and now flickr pictures too). The application takes you out of your standard square, stop, and go interface and puts you into a fluid experience. Try it for five minutes and you’ll see what i mean.

UVLayer

During the process of writing this blog entry and playing around with the new features (shared canvas, more IM network integration, themes) I’ve come to realize that UVLayer is perfect for spending hours and hours being entertained and aweful for getting my Christmas shopping done. And as I sat here wondering who I haven’t given a Netflix subscription to yet, it came to me. Why not put together a UVLayer collection of my favorite Christmas video clips and make that a Christmas present. Briiiilliaaaant! (if i do say so myself and I do say so) Yes I can have it all, I can bring cheer to myself and the ones I love and never leave the couch.

So without further ado here is my UVLayer collection of XMAS videos.

View my UVLayer XMAS Collection

PS. If while making your own XMas video collection you run into the Scrooged scene with the Ghost of Christmas past where he sees his Mother (Niagra falls frankie angel). Please share it with me. That scene just tears (both) me up every time. Thanks -s

Read about UVLayer on Techcrunch

* I may be biased, since I’m lucky enough to get to work on UVlayer from time to time. Props to the UVLayer team for putting out another fantastic release.

Posted in Adobe AIR, Life in general | Leave a comment

Pet Project Cemetery – The Pownce Badge Creator

Posted on September 7, 2008 by admin

So many of the “pet projects” we work on never see the light of day. Often times its not that what we have holds no value, rather its that the creator in us just can’t see it as mature enough to be ready for the world. So we set it aside, the pet, and let it slowly starve as it inches its way to the graveyard abyss which we know as the back-up harddrive that eventually gets stashed away never to be seen again. This has been the fate of many of my pets (projects) over the years. Today, I’m going to prove that people can change by releasing one of these pets. I call this little guy the Pownce Badge Creator.

Its a simple little badge maker that lets you customize the colors and make a pownce flash badge for your website (or whatever). It displays links when available and also thumbnails to flickr pictures.

Example Badge

Create your own badge here

So I had high hopes for bringing the different media types into this little guy but may never get to it. That doesn’t mean that he still isn’t cute and useful. Enjoy.

It lives! -s

Side Note: Pownce is much faster these days. Muuuchhh faster. One my other new goals outside of pet saving is to post there more and try out that pownce iphone app. You can follow me there at http://pownce.com/initapp

Posted in Development, Flash, Life in general, Pownce | 3 Comments

The 6 Parnassus, William Gibson, and acknowledging a job well done

Posted on June 21, 2008 by admin

This isn’t a technical article. Although it could be about a person you know that does technical things well. This article is about taking a couple of extra minutes out of your day to acknowledge someone that always does a terrific job. Those rare people who through their everyday work contribute to making your world a better place.

The best bus driver in SF

If you ride muni (public transportation) in SF then you know that you rarely have a trip that you would describe as being pleasurable. The typical bus driver is not overly helpful and passengers can often be kind of unruly. You basically want to get off the bus as soon as possible. There is the occasional good trip but never any consistently great bus drivers or at least thats what I thought. Then on my morning trek downtown to work I took notice of a bus driver on the 6 that was going above and beyond.

When climbing onto the bus she gave a cheerful “good morning” with a smile that made me feel like “hey this really could be a good morning”. What really impressed me was that she carried that same attitude through every aspect of her job. First, she called out every stop with detail about what you would find there and the connections at the stop. Second, she goes above and beyond in the giving of directions. There were at least three occasions on one trip that I watched her give a passenger directions including two times that she gave directions to people standing outside the bus at a stop. She did this all without ever slowing down the ride. You know what you’ll find most impressive about her bus? How well mannered the passengers are. Her courteousness and consideration flows through every passenger on that bus. It is because all of this that I can honestly say that riding her bus is a pleasurable experience.

So what is my point here? My point is that this person goes far beyond that of any average bus driver. She takes a typically miserable part of your day and turns it into something good. When you notice these people in your life take a minute to say thank you. After I had been on her bus a few times I made a point to walk to the front before I jumped off and thanked her. I let her know how awesome I thought she was and she let me take her picture. (above)

Another case of a person who loves their work and always delivers is William Gibson. A couple of weeks back he did a reading at the local borders book store. Only a handful of people showed up (I suspect that was do to poor marketing). So despite empty seats he read from his book with what I imagine to be the same enthusiasm he would share if it had been a sell out crowd in stadium. It was the kind of reading that reminded me of those kindergarten days when I would curl up on rug and be read to, letting my imagination run wild in the story. In the end I gave William the same type of treatment as the bus driver, thanking him for the reading and his books. Admittedly I could have thanked him more had I not been a bit nervous. (Its William Gibson!!!)

me and william gibson

By now I think you get the picture. These people exist in our everyday lives. When you see them you’ll know what to do.

Have a similar story of a person that makes your world a better place? Please add it in the comments.

Thanks
Steven

Have a positive Muni story. Tell them about it here.

Posted in Life in general | 2 Comments

Adobe Share ActionScript library goes community – Updated! Now with PDF Support!

Posted on May 11, 2008 by admin

Don’t you just love an exciting headline. If you haven’t heard by now, Share (Document Services API) is an online service provided by Adobe that allows you to share, publish, and organize documents online. Share is already a good service, but it can be an even better service with a little help from all of us. How can we make the service better?

1. Use the service and give feedback on the Share Forum. Whether you’re happy or not they want to hear about it. Have a feature idea, pass it on.
Share Forum
Share API Forum

2. Tell other people about the service. Its 1gb of free space for your documents. Who doesn’t like free.
https://share.acrobat.com

3. Create and share your own projects around the service.

4. Contribute to open source projects that use the Share API.

There are many open source libraries that allow you to easily use the Share Service in your applications (listed at the bottom). One of these libraries is the ActionScript library. Developed internally at Adobe, it has the full original functionality of the service but has fallen behind in the latest revisions of the Share Service. So when speaking to Fang Chang (Adobe Product Manager in charge of the Share APIs) this past week I offered to help bring an updated version of the ActionScript library into the hands of the community. Fang who is a very patient man, (listened to all my feature idea ramblings) felt like it would be a great move. So here we are.

What has been done?

1. The as3 library has been updated to work with the new endpoint and pdf creation support has been added
2. Updated AirShare demo for the release version of AIR.
3. The code has been checked into subversion

Visit the Project Site

4. Documentation has been generated

View documentation

5. A release has been made that includes the updated source/example.

Download Library and Sample Code

Example of upload with pdf creation:

import com.adobe.share.api.ShareAPIToken;
import com.adobe.share.api.ShareAPIEvent;
import com.adobe.share.api.ShareAPIUser;
import com.adobe.share.api.ShareAPI;

private var _shareAPI:ShareAPI = new ShareAPI("", "");
private var _shareAPIUser:ShareAPIUser = new ShareAPIUser("", "");

private var _file:File = new File();

private function initApp():void{
	var shareAPIToken:ShareAPIToken = _shareAPI.login(_shareAPIUser);

	shareAPIToken.addEventListener(ShareAPIEvent.API_AUTHENTICATED, function():void{
		_file.browse();
		_file.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, onFileSelected);
		_file.addEventListener(DataEvent.UPLOAD_COMPLETE_DATA, onFileUploadComplete);
	});

}
private function onFileSelected(event:Event):void{
	_shareAPI.uploadFile(_shareAPIUser, _file, null, _file.name, "", true, true);
}
private function onFileUploadComplete(event:DataEvent):void{
	trace("complete");
}

Want to contribute to the Library?
Please contact me or select join from the project site.

Other Share Libraries:
Java Library
Ruby (Developed by Hideyuki KATO) Ruby
Python (Developed by Vivek Kapoor) Python
Cold Fusion (Developed by Ray Camden) Cold Fusion

Posted in Actionscript 3, Adobe AIR, Adobe Share, Flex | 7 Comments

Web Expo 2.0 thoughts: Getting my hands Meshy and is Curling a game that will really take off?

Posted on April 28, 2008 by admin

I was busy last week and unable to make it to most of the show, but I did use my free expo pass on thursday morning to see the Keynotes, a mesh demo, and take a pass through the expo hall. Overall it was worth it. At the very least I now have a new t-shirt for every day of the month.

During the brief visit I sat in on a Mesh Demo. If you don’t know what Mesh is, its something between FolderShare, Groove, and .Mac with web services (if you dont’ understand what these things are then go here (mesh.com) for a better explanation. It has been awhile since Microsoft released something that made me feel itchy. You know the way you felt itchy when the iPhone first came out. That I got to have that itch. An itch that must be scratched.

In the beginning of the demo I was apprehensive. Would you be able to show me an open platform that could back up Meshs ability to run on anything? Or would you show me another FolderShare (which i love) that runs on windows and runs on mac if you don’t mind that its powerpc and hasn’t been updated in years. In the end I found myself pleased with Ori Amigas presentation of how the service level architecture works. In the presentation Microsoft had a list of other technologies that they would work with the community on getting libraries built for. One on the list was Flash, which immediately made me go hmm… After the show I asked Ori if when I got home I would find a crossdomain.xml file on the API server. To this he responded by saying it was something they were working out the details on. So no, but yes, I think. He also said that they are only allowing a limited amount of 3rd party developers in at the moment. In the demo Ori showed syncing between a Mac, Vista, Online desktop and to put it simply I liked it. After getting home, I signed up for Mesh and when going to add my mac as a device it just said “coming soon”. That being the case, I’m going to be on hold with this technology for a bit. Overall, I’m pleasently pleased with the potential (you know i’m happy when alliteration just comes out) and am looking forward to using Mesh. I even went over to the Microsoft booth and thanked them for giving me something to be excited about. They seemed slightly caught off guard by my complements and they tried to give me more shirts. I settled for just seeing genuine smiles all around. (they didn’t know that i already had 2 of those shirts )

Next up: Curl

Curl Nitro is an emerging RIA technology that is trying to position itself as a competitor for AIR and Silverlight. I already feel like I’ve spent too much time on Curl for the moment so i’m just going to give you a link to a blog entry by Gary Gibert about Adobe vs Curl. It contains pretty much what you would expect including the required AIR vs Curl employee flame war in the comments. So here you go.

View Gary Gilbert Article

The comment I left at the end of the article:

Wow thats a lot of talking. I just wanted to chime in to say that i also wandered over to the Curl booth during 2.0 and spoke with Richard. First Richard is a nice guy, he’s a nice guy who happens to be a small fish in an ever growing pond (soon to be ocean).

Admittedly i have not read all of the comments here. Frankly i’d rather spend this beautiful day playing frisbee at the park. But I do feel like just stating basically what I told Richard after he gave me a product demo with the “performance” spiel.

If you’re going to make these performance comparisons then you should make two applications. One AIR and one CURL that do the same thing and show off performance in various scenarios (data load, 3d, etc…). Then provide the source code for both applications.

An after thought I had about it is make an awesome application that uses curl. Showing me a demo of a spinning DNA strand will get you no where when courting flash/flex developers. Its hot but I want something more substantial if we’re going to be in it for more than a one night stand.

Adobe and the dev community is constantly showing me hot and substantial AIR/Flex applications. To me the idea of taking on Silverlight and AIR head on like in your curl.com home page airplane animation analogy (btw done using flash) is comical in a very sad way. You know Ha Ha sad, not Ha Ha funny.

So pony up some applications done in CURL people want to use. Not because its CURL but because they’re cool and useful applications. And show some clear differences on why CURL is better because it fulfills some needs AIR developers have but are not getting. Then maybe we’ll consider putting it on our ever growing tool belts.

On the plus side I did mention that Adobe always buys the beer and they offered to take me out for one after the show. I wasn’t able to take them up on it but its a good first step in any developer relationship.

Off to the park. -s

Posted in Adobe, Adobe AIR, Development, Flash, Flex, RIA | Leave a comment

How to get Safari Technical Books Online for free +more

Posted on March 13, 2008 by admin

I’m completely serious about this next sentence. Get a library card. The San Francisco public library (and many others) offer Safari Online for free. The library also has these things on shelves called books, they are made of paper(comes from trees) and have words in them. I highly recommend checking them out.

Personally I love the library, I’m not afraid to say it. Try it out and you will too.

Although sometimes at the SF Main library Nicolas Cage will show up and just stare at you. He doesn’t want your seat or anything, he just stares.

SF Library Card Sign-up
Safari SF library Link

Posted in Development, Life in general | Leave a comment

My code look pretty one day (or turning your GeSHi install into a service and using it with AS3)

Posted on March 9, 2008 by admin

File this one under “when I could have been creating something useful, I created this”

Hmmmm

I’ve been using PrivatePaste.com quite often of late and thought hmm… it would be simple to create a quick as3 library for using the service. Unfortunately PrivatePaste isn’t intended to be used as a web service. This means we can post and get a result, but it will be html. The site also lacks a crossdomain.xml file. While parsing the HTML using a regular expression, it occurred to me that privatepaste just uses GeSHi. A php open source library for syntax highlighting.

Since I already have the GeSHi wordpress plugin setup on this blog, I figured why mess around with parsing an HTML page when I can just make a quick syntax highlighting service myself. All you need to do is add the following file to the directory containing GeSHi. If you’ve installed the wp-syntax plugin (or any highlighting plugin that uses GeSHi) for your wordpress blog then its under /wp-content/plugins.

include('geshi.php');

if ( get_magic_quotes_gpc() ) $_POST['source'] = stripslashes($_POST['source']);

$source = $_POST['source'];
$language = $_POST['format'];
$path = 'geshi/';

$geshi = new GeSHi($source, $language, $path);

if($_POST['linenumbers'] == "true")
	$lineoption = GESHI_NORMAL_LINE_NUMBERS;
else
	$lineoption = GESHI_NO_LINE_NUMBERS;

$geshi->enable_line_numbers($lineoption);

echo $geshi->parse_code();

Thats it, you now have a GeSHi service. To use your service in ActionScript 3 you can use as3geshilib that I’ve included in the download:
GeSHi AIR

private function parseCode():void{
	var geshiService:GeshiService = new GeshiService();

	geshiService.addEventListener(GeshiResultEvent.ON_GET_PARSE_CODE, function(event:GeshiResultEvent):void{
			trace(event);
			htmlDisplay.htmlText = event.data as String;
		});

	geshiService.parseCode("SELECT * FROM user_table", GeshiFormatType.SQL, true);
}

geshiservice.zip Includes geshiservice.php, as3geshilib – source included

In the end, what we really have here is an example of how to make a quick php service and use it in ActionScript. Which I guess is not a complete waste of time…

If you just need syntax highlighting in your AS3 project then I would recommend checking out this AS3 code highlighting library http://labs.searchcoders.com/text/. I haven’t checked it out yet, but plan to the next time my code runs off on a tangent.

Posted in Actionscript 3, Adobe AIR, API, Flex, php | Leave a comment

Stefan Sagmeister at Design Matters: For designers, developers, everyone.

Posted on March 7, 2008 by admin

Stefan Sagmeister

When your average developer hears about a design conference or lecture they often don’t give it a thought. Its like a developer sitting in a meeting while designers argue over fonts. Early in my career I often didn’t pay designers any mind, but as I matured I realized that there was a lot to learn from them and that design isn’t all about fonts and colors. Sagmeister is a designer that when he gives a lecture every developer should shut their laptops and pay attention.

Stefan is in a unique position of being able to take basic principles he has learned from life and turn them in to design (and make a living at it). These principles aren’t design principles, they’re life principles. A simple set of ideas that if you can live by them could actually improve your life.

Here is the list (Things I have learned in my life so far) that he went over in his presentation lastnight at AIGA DesignMatters in SF:

Everything I do always comes back to me.
Complaining is silly. Either act or forget it.
Thinking life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now.
Being not truthful works against me.
Organizing a charity group is suprisingly easy.
Drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on .
Over time I get used to everything and start taking it for granted.
Money does not make me happy.
Traveling alone is helpful for a new perspective on life.
Assuming is stifling.
Keeping a diary supports my personal development.
Trying to look good limits my life.
Worrying solves nothing.
Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses.
Having guts always works out for me.

In the end it was a really enjoyable (and funny) lecture. And as for the developers out there. Listen to the designers and creative directors you work with. They may have more to offer than you think.

Contribute things you have learned in your life to the website

Information on upcoming AIGA events (Devs sign-up you won’t regret it)
Sagmeisters website
Watch an interview of Stefan Sagmeister
Watch a talk given by Stefan Sagmeister

Thanks to my girl Kelly for turning me on to this guy and to Lee a creative director I used to work with who always encouraged me to attend events like these.

Posted in AIGA, design, Development, Life in general | 1 Comment

Silverlight to run on linux! Oh wait that was last year.

Posted on March 4, 2008 by admin

Silverlight

So I’ve heard a few people today mention that Silverlight is going to be running on new nokia handsets. (Article 1, Article 2)

I especially enjoyed the end of the article 1.

Nokia is only prepared to say that a Silverlight developers’ kit is “intended” to be available during 2008, and that versions for S40 and Nokia Internet Tablets will be “confirmed later”.

Given how enthusiastically Nokia has endorsed every other Web 2.0 technology, its reticence is both uncharacteristic, and a little worrying.

Come on. Can’t microsoft stay focused on anything for more than 10 minutes. Please just show me another demo of silverlight running on my giant touchscreen coffee table. It works great when my cats not sleeping on it.

Microsoft Surface

In conclusion. Microsoft please fix my Vista Media Center First. I would like a Netflix Watch Now plugin and to not have to reboot it every couple of days.

You know what I do like, SQL Server. Good job with that.

Thank you Ben for giving me my mornings rant. Its like most people without coffee.

Link to last years article on Silverlight for linux

Posted in Life in general, Microsoft, Silverlight, WPF/e | 3 Comments

UVLayer releases a new version (Warning! Won’t help you get your xmas shopping done or will it!)

Pet Project Cemetery – The Pownce Badge Creator

The 6 Parnassus, William Gibson, and acknowledging a job well done

Web Expo 2.0 thoughts: Getting my hands Meshy and is Curling a game that will really take off?

How to get Safari Technical Books Online for free +more

My code look pretty one day (or turning your GeSHi install into a service and using it with AS3)

Stefan Sagmeister at Design Matters: For designers, developers, everyone.

Silverlight to run on linux! Oh wait that was last year.

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