Blackberry development on OSX isn’t quite supported as yet but Aziz Uysal has a great tutorial about getting the Blackberry SDK and simulator up and running on osx.

How To: Implement Facebook Connect on the iPhone in 5 minutes from Cat Lee on Vimeo.

… strangely enough, it was fine all day; I left for an hour to go shopping and when I returned it was *not* in the same state as I left it. Got it to boot into the OS/desktop *once*; began to do some work, but then it did the weird every other pixel flakeout with the moire pattern…

I can debug and test, patch and peruse to my heart’s content, but if there’s no electricity there’s not much hope of anything happening… like a castle built upon the sand.

Today the power went out not just in my building, but seemingly my whole section of town since the traffic lights were out as well. With no power comes no responsibility it seems (and yes I’m looking forward to Kick Ass)… so right now I’ve gone to the local Barnes and Noble to piggy back on their working electricity and internet, hoping to see the two home computers come online on Skype to know when to go home..

….oh joy; school just called to tell me that the kids are being let out early, so I’m the one that gets to deal with my child’s withdraw of moving objects, tv, and video games. We might have to venture out into the world.

Update: power came back on, machines rebooted and signed into Skype.. got to watch the dog freak out.

I’m actually quite astounded how quick it is to set up; see for yourself:

http://www.modrails.com/

Apple’s iPad and iPhone Software Engineering division is growing tremendously, so we will be having a job fair at the Apple campus in building 4 on Friday February 5 from 11am to 8pm.

We are currently hiring for:
- Software Engineers from embedded level up to UI (applications, frameworks, firmware)
- Wireless and cellular software development and test
- QA Engineers (black box, white box, test tool developers)
- Software Engineering Project Managers (telephony, multimedia, build, factory)
- Carrier Field Test Engineers
- Software Engineering Management

You can check out all iPhone Software Engineering job opportunities at www.apple.com/jobs/us /corporate.html and click on the iPhone Engineering Division.

Please send your resume to iphonejobs@apple.com and bring copies with you. The attire is business causal. We are growing a lot, so please also tell your friends. Thanks and we look forward to seeing you on Feb 5 to join us in pushing the evolution of mobile communications.

Dan Ryan
iPhone Software Recruiter
408.974.5859
dryan@apple.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/danielryan

Address:
Apple, Inc.
4 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014

Directions:
- 280 to DeAnza Blvd
- Turn left on Mariani Ave
- Turn left onto Infinite Loop
- Drive around to building 4 (4 Infinite Loop, the “back” side of Apple’s campus) and park
- Go in the lobby of building 4 and ask for the iPhone SW Job Fair

I agree that it’s not really a ‘tablet’ and that it’s tied to the appstore; but it DOES have a keyboard and prop stand (how it recharges).

However I don’t see it so much as trying to fit in the netbook/tablet space so much as how it’s going to change the way we deal with the CONTENT so much.

First off I think — though there will ALWAYS be books – books will go the way cds/vinyl has done; I see this fitting in a place specifically for tech, or students; people who have an awful lot of books that they might be needing to access rather than cart around huge tomes at all times. Or the medical profession; one server on an internal network, and all your files can be accessed right there. YES I understand it can be done today; but one app store app to fit in that market and it’s golden.

I also see a space where there will be MUCH more self-published works; if iTunes sets up the same sort of schema for pdf as they have for music, more indie writers will put up pdf and people might be more willing to purchase something for $2 that they can read right there, rather than buy online and ship, or in a bookstore. Just a thought.

Even the pay as you go cellular is great – buy the cellular, never use it until you’re on vacation, pay for that month and .. it’s great.

Past all this, as a musician, I see this multitouch being a new way of working with electronic music/samples etc. On top of that, I think it’ll really bolster gaming and how one would interact with games.

Don’t get me wrong – there are things I think that are wrong with it, and that might change in the future. I don’t know what politically is going on with adobe/apple but lack of Flash is just some kind of gameplay. I can’t see that staying that way if apple really wants to make this the ‘best browsing experience’. Lack of usb ports are another issue… but it’s def more of an extension of a computer than a computer itself — at least for now. Perhaps devices might be made using the dock port… I think apple is also trying to come up with some firewire/usb/dva/rgb standard port.. so…that might come into play here.

Finally – as an artist, I think the multitouch is great for drawing on screen, but if they had only added pressure to some capacity then one wouldn’t have to buy a $3k cintiq wacom. I personally would ask some hardware developer to create a very simple bluetooth pen that would send pressure senstivity from the pen point to the tablet; the tablet itself could handle the tracking, and combined with the bluetooth data in the driver, give an artist a real experience. Any takers?

Great video demonstrating Flash Player on the Google Nexus Phone. Now I’ve got to look and see exactly what one can do in regards with Flash and Android.

Really cool 3d interface for those blessed with a Mac, Snow Leopard and the latest Safari – all done via CSS and javascript…

More info can be found here.

Carlos Ulloa – of Flash/3d/MiniCooper fame (how many people getting into Pv3d would just spend part of their day driving that thing around in his banner) — has also been playing with the sweetness that is Unity3d.

Unity3d is becoming what Director3d once promised — and I’m not so sure if it was just kismet that Tom Higgens – who used to be the Director Developer Ambassador for Macromedia/Adobe — is now on the Unity team.

The lady (lollyrot) and I have been delving into Unity, so you can expect a few strange games coming out of us soon…


${project}
The name of the project, e.g. MyProject.
${application}
The name of the application, e.g. MyApp.
${version_major}
The major version number of the version of Flash that is required to run this app, e.g. 9 for version 9.0 r28. You can change this and the other ${version_...} macros by going to Project > Properties, then “Flex Compiler” or “ActionScript Compiler,” and then changing the player version number in the “HTML wrapper” section.
${version_minor}
The minor version number of the version of Flash that is required to run this app, e.g. 0 for version 9.0 r28.
${version_revision}
The revision number of the version of Flash that is required to run this app, e.g. 28 for version 9.0 r28.
${build_suffix}
This is equal to "-debug" when building the debug version of the SWF, and "" when building the release version.
${swf}
The name of the SWF, not including the .swf extension, e.g. MyApp or MyApp-debug. This is essentially a convenience macro which is equivalent to ${application}${build_suffix}.
${bgcolor}
The background color of the application, as specified in the backgroundColor attribute of the tag, or, in the case of ActionScript-only projects, in the backgroundColor field of the [SWF] metadata attribute of the main application class, e.g. [SWF(backgroundColor="#ffffff")] public class MyApp extends Sprite (see this post for more information on setting the width, height, and background color of an ActionScript project). The result is in the form #rrggbb, e.g. #ffffff. This can actually be a little tricky to use, because by default, the background of a Flex app is actually a gentle gradient from one color to another; if you want the HTML background to match the background of your Flex app, you may need to fiddle with both the backgroundColor and backgroundGradientColors attributes of the tag.
${width}
The width of the application, as specified in the width attribute of the tag, or, in the case of ActionScript-only projects, in the width field of the [SWF] metadata attribute of the main application class, e.g. [SWF(width="300", height="400")] public class MyApp extends Sprite.
${height}
The height of the application, as specified in the height attribute of the tag, or, in the case of ActionScript-only projects, in the height field of the [SWF] metadata attribute of the main application class, e.g. [SWF(width="300", height="400")] public class MyApp extends Sprite.
${title}
The title of the application, as specified in the pageTitle attribute of the tag, or, in the case of ActionScript-only projects, in the pageTitle field of the [SWF] metadata attribute of the main application class, e.g. [SWF(pageTitle="flex r00lz")] public class MyApp extends Sprite.


Another video created for Charles Schwab.

A video recently finished for Charles Schwab that I believe is playing in their lobby and done using Motion 3.

Adobe recently announced that Flex will now be known by Flash Builder; my feelings about this are mixed however.  There were many times I had to explain the differences between Flex and Flash (and, saying ‘Flash’ in that sentence I mean the capital ‘F’ Flash CS4 authoring vs the little ‘f’ flash which is the compiled output), as well as explain in the end that there really WAS no difference as it was all flash in the end (note the little ‘f’).

But at the same time being an old Macromedia Director developer who remembers when Flash was still FutureSplash, was part of the Flash 3 and 4 beta team and was one of the first using Flash inside of Director for my work for Marvel — I still shy away from saying I ‘do Flash’.  Why? Because my experience with Flash (big ‘F’) as an authoring environment has been painful to say the least.  FutureSplash originally was just a little vector graphics drawing and animation package; there was never really any room for any scripting other than the most simplest imaginable.  When Macromedia bought it and renamed it Flash, Actionscript 1 was things like the old ‘goto(20)’ stuff; Flash was still very much an animations package and tied down to the use of a timeline.  Even coming from Director – where one could use the MessageWindow to create objects in memory and manipulate them without ever committing anything to a script as such (and common now with things like Ruby and the irb) Flash seemed like a step BACKWARDS.  Director had objects – Flash didn’t.  Director had bitmaps. Flash didn’t. Vector graphics? Really? Why then was Photoshop the standard and Illustrator not so much?

But for the web, Flash started to grow, to overtake it’s big brother. Now I could go off on Macromedia’s choices in this and why this happened (the difference with the plugin installs, Director’s unfocus in regards to platform, it’s shirking of really interesting technologies such as Beatnik which I have strong opinions about, how Macromedia just kept glomming onto a busted engine without re-writing it) but irregardless of grandpa’s tirades, it DID happen.  Flash became the standard, and I left Director behind. But it was painful; having seen what an (almost real) programming tool could offer, Flash 4/MX/CS3 was just…urrrgh.

But then I picked up Flex and it was …. different. In some ways I’d say it was BETTER than Director — ok in a LOT of ways. Here was a true programming language (either with ActionScript3 or MXML), and EXTENSIBLE in ways that Director never was. A real skinnable interface.  Things that originally were first in Director (bitmapData) were now in Flash.  Now once in awhile I do still miss the MessageWindow but on the whole, I’ve drunk the Kool Aid and found that it was good…

At AdobeMax in 2007 I got to see what was coming – Gumbo (Flex 4) looked fantastic, and Thermo took photoshop and allowed designers to add the rudimentary logic to an interface. I’ve been waiting…

And so Gumbo — I’m sorry, Flex 4 — I’m sorry, Flash Builder beta has just been released.  And I’m still drinking the Kool Aid.  I’ve had a little bit of a poke around it today (I’ve got work I gotta do!) and there are some really cool things I’ve found..

First off, while scripting I found you were given hints and additional information while adding components; this will save time if a developer just needs some quick information rather than have them open up the full help. Another huge time saver is having the IDE generate additional functions automatically either while scripting or in a component’s properties window for all the scriptable items.

Themes are huge as well – especially after developers like Juan Sanchez of ScaleNine and Degrafa fame brought Flex’s skinning engine the attention it deserved.  Though I really don’t like the new default ’spark’ theme (it seems like we’ve gone back in time to retro computer land) support for the extension, creation and packaging of themes are stronger than ever.  Working hand in hand with Flash Catalyst the skins output can be selected with Flash Builder’s new theme browser, with single items still being customizable.

I’ve yet to really play yet though; I want to dive into the CSS support; I was confused by the previous incarnation of Gumbo’s CSS editor — it seemed as if one couldn’t get to the visual representation of the ui elements as one could in Flex 3, but it might have been my bunglings… I had a weird issue with this version of Gumbo – the Flash Builder beta — when ‘tab’ wasn’t finishing the autocomplete, but was instead tabbing out of eclipse, but again, suppose that was my fault as well…

Strangely enough, I’d probably have more time for play from work if I was using ‘Flash Builder’ – as I’m dealing with skinning issues in Flex 3. The universe mocks me.

Neptune’s Fields: Wax

Added more flexified goodness for the Flex to Crestron interface I’m building for Abercrombie and Fitch that I described here.  I have to say, being an old Macromedia Director guy  that migrated to Flash (grumpily as the world did) I find Adobe Flex to be …well… it’s a joy to work with; I’ve actually become very excited about coding again.

[Update]: Heh I’ve been uploading all my old work so much lately I didn’t realize that the previous post about this interface was just below…

I’m writing a class for it for a sort of flipping card interface; I’ve seen this done before in Flash but not in Flex (if anyone has examples, feel free to send them my way).

Click the above image to launch it in a new window from it’s home on Amazon S3; for the time being it’s a bit large. Once I finish debugging I’ll post an example here.

Note: Flash does seem to play much slower in the lightbox; click on the top right video tab to see the 3d action.. it really seems to chug in the iframe.

A quick test of the current Flex interface for iDesign communicating to the Creston control system 2 states away..  Using the Flash Crestron SDK, no longer is e-Control tied to a windows only system. Created in such a way that the subcomponents listen for their own joins, the Flex UI loads in the XML that is created by the installer and displays the proper devices listening on the system.

The amp audio channel templates are programmed in such a way that it is repeated for the amount of audio channels the amplifier has; iDesign created the joins in such a way that the channels are iterated 21+ for every channel so that the system can ‘find’ itself.