OzFlex July Meeting - July 14th 2008

After missing the month of June OzFlex is back and will be having an open meeting where the focus will be the following:

• Open discussion regarding recent developments with Rich Internet Application technology
• A Flex/AIR example showcase - this is where YOU get involved
  • Show us some of the work you have been working on, problems you have been having, or even if you have just found something you think is damn cool and want to share, this is your chance to show your wares! Bring your laptop or your code on a geek stick and we’ll put it overhead for everyone to see.
• Code Help - this is where if you’re having trouble grasping a specific problem with something you’re trying to do - let the group give you some ideas!

If you have something you would like to show it would be great if you could let me know before hand, but it is not imperative.

Arrive 6.30 for a 7pm start @ Loop Bar. Food platters & light refreshments provided. Please RSVP below if you are going to be attending!

I have finally got the meeting assets together & tracked down who owns them! Serge Jespers is the man who designed this demo, and I thank him for his permission to post the files here for your enjoyment! Look out in the next week for details regarding July Meeting

Click here to download the May 2008 Meeting AIR Demo (~26Mb)

I’m sorry for the late notice - I was planning to be posting about what was going to be happening next Monday BUT due to my University Exams & Assessments starting this week & going through until 20th June. Be prepared for a great July meeting - Im organising a guest speaker at the moment & if anyone has any projects / examples / presentations they would also like to contribute please email me as soon as possible!

There will also be a few announcements at the July meeting with regards to OzFlex & some related projects. I will post more on this closer to the 14th of July. If you have any questions or ideas for future meetings give me a call or email me and i’ll see what can be done.

Thankyou to all who turned out last night for the first OzFlex meeting! It was great to see some familiar faces as well as some new faces too

One of the items discussed was the Flex / Actionscript posters.. the details are below (Taken from Flex Team post):

[begin quote] If you’d like a set of the posters, here’s what you need to do: Register your copy of Flex Builder 3, Standard or Professional. Fill out the form, and then you’ll be forwarded to the poster request form.

If you’ve already registered your copy of Flex Builder 3 and didn’t request the posters, or if you received an error with the poster form before and can’t re-register your copy of Flex Builder 3, then you can head directly to the poster request form and request a set of posters be sent to you.

If you bought your copy of Flex Builder 3 online through the Adobe.com store, your copy of Flex Builder 3 is already registered automagically. You can head directly to the poster request form to request a set of posters be sent to you.

The posters are also available online in high quality PDF format (Warning! 97 MB zip file) if you prefer to print them yourself. [end quote]

The equivelant document in a “pocket” form PDF is called the Adobe Technology Platform RIA Guide and is available here (Thanks Charles for that link!)

I will be posting other assets relating to the night later on once I have gathered the relevant materials.

Once again thankyou to everyone, and I look forward to seeing you all in June!

After searching long and hard for a suitable venue for OzFlex finally the wait is OVER! I am happy to announce that OzFlex will be having its first meeting on Monday 12th of May at Loop Bar. Loop bar will be OzFlex’s permenant home and the meeting will be held on the second Monday of each month from now on.

Its shaping up to be a great night, come down there will be an introduction of OzFlex, Matt Johnston (Manager) & a small presentation on Adobe AIR Application Development. Finger Food & Beverages provided (limited)

A full copy of Flex Builder 3 Professional will be given away as a door prize(RSVP required) and there will be a few other goodies up for grabs too!

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I will be making an announcement regarding the date and venue for the first OzFlex meeting tomorrow! This is very exciting and hopefully you are able to attend. STAY TUNED!

For those of you who are interested - Details for the Adobe AIR Camps in Australian Capital Cities have been released! This is happening on Thursday 15th of May 2008 for Melbourne at the Sebel, Albert Park.

Adobe AIR® lets developers use familiar web technologies including HTML, Ajax, JavaScript, Adobe Flex® software, and ActionScript™ to build RIAs that deploy on the desktop. Leading companies like eBay and AOL are already shipping applications on Adobe AIR. Attend the Adobe AIR Camp to get yourself one step ahead. Amongst other things you will learn:

- What’s new when outside the browser?

- Building your first AIR app with Flex, HTML and Javascipt

- The creative workflow and the desktop paradigm

- Deploying and updating AIR applications

Add rich, interactive functionality to your existing web applications or recreate an entirely new, highly interactive user experience for your app. With Adobe AIR you can create RIAs that run on the desktop and leverage local data and system resources.

Click Here for more information & to register!

If you are interested in this please register soon as places will fill up!

THIS HAS NOW FINISHED … THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING!

Adobe is asking users of Flex or ColdFusion to take the following survey. Adobe wants to learn from a wide range of developers how they use the products today and what they would like to see in the future. The survey will take only a few minutes to complete and the responses will be invaluable.

Click on the following link to initiate the survey:

http://v2.decipherinc.com/survey/adobe/ado08002?list=5

Responses by March 21, 2008 will be greatly appreciated.

Note that this survey is being hosted by Decipher Inc, a survey company who is helping Adobe collect the data. Your responses will remain completely confidential - they will be combined with responses from others who complete this survey and the results will be reported only in aggregate form to Adobe.

When
Monday evening, March 17th 6PM to 9PM. Capacity is limited, please arrive promptly to avoid disappointment!

Where
Horse Bazaar Venue 397 Little Lonsdale Street. Melbourne.
Drinks and dinner will provided courtesy of Adobe.

Presentation one

Join Matt Johnston (OzFlex) at a joint OzFlex / AUG Vic event as he presents and demos Flex 3 and AIR 1.0 - as announced by Adobe on February 25th. You’ll see an exclusive video presentation by Adobe Chief Software Architect, Kevin Lynch, hear some important product news, plus get your hands on some exclusive giveaways.

Flex 3 builds on the already solid framework of Flex 2 - adding new components, advanced data tools, CS3 integration, native support for AIR development & the ability to use the Flash Player cache of components to reduce the size of your applications.

With Adobe AIR 1.0 the gap between RIAs and the operating system (OS) desktop has been bridged now you can develop applications for the desktop using familiar technology - Flex and/or Flash and/or AJAX. AIR also gives your RIA access to local resources, drag and drop and adds another dimension to your web application.

Matt is the manager of the OzFlex Adobe User Group & also a student at Monash University. He has a long history with traditional Web Technologies and has a keen interest in RIA Development- in particular Adobe Flex.

Presentation two

What you didn’t know about video in the real world.

In this 30 minute session Dean Laffan will do a brief recap on how video compression has evolved in the last ten years, give a quick overview of the video workflow from acquisition, processing and delivery, discuss the range of formats and codecs which are available to deploy, the range of programs and utilities to create your streams, discuss the arrival of Hi-Def and it’s impacts and finally demonstrate how Real World is applying these skills in some current projects. After the presentation, Dean is happy to take any of your questions related to any aspect of digital video capture, encoding and delivery.

Dean Laffan is the founder and CEO of Real World Productions, a Melbourne based digital communications house http://www.realworld.com.au/. Dean’s main role entails a Producer/Director function but simply can’t bear to keep his fingers out of of the video compression pie and his hands off the keyboard. Since his first project way back in the mid 90s using Quicktime 1.0, Dean now oversees and creates a range of digital video workflows across the gamut of applications and formats. Dean is experienced in video compression for streaming, CD and DVD covering all major formats such as Quicktime, Windows Media, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, AC3, MP3 … and of course Sorenson Spark & On2 VP6 for Flash. Dean is a sought after tester of the most popular compression programs and a regular contributor to the peak internet discussion lists on compression and authoring.

Feb 25th 2008 - Adobe has officially announced Flex 3 & AIR!

Taken from Adobe.com:

Flex is a highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems. While Flex applications can be built using only the free Flex SDK, developers can use Adobe® Flex® Builder™ 3 software to dramatically accelerate development. (link)

The Adobe® AIR™ runtime lets developers use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that deploy to the desktop and run across operating systems (link)

Also announced BlazeDS - server-based remoting that allows connection from Flex or AIR RIAs to almost any back-end data service. And its also Open Source! (link)