Go Blog Go!

I know it’s the total geek in me, but Silicon Valley was all that I hoped it would be.

When I got into San Jose, I picked up my rental and managed to get absurdly lost on the way to the hotel from the airport. It couldn’t have been more than mile that I had to travel from one location to the other. But, somehow, I still managed the get so twisted around that I almost ended up in San Francisco. Because I had to pick up one these killer new SmartPhones from Nokia for the Flash Lite Training class this week, I pulled over in some parking lot and busted out my Flash enabled device to punch in my current location into Google Maps Mobile. I figure out where I am when I look up and see the big eBay logo staring me in the face. Again, the geek in me creeps out and I start giggling over the whole “I’m-lost-and-in-eBay’s-parking-lot” thing. At any rate, I figure out where I need to go, and get to the hotel, in what I’m sure, is record time.

The Flash Lite training couldn’t have been better. It was hotested by Adobe’s Mobile & Devices and delivered by the courseware author James Talbot, who has an excellent article on getting started with Flash Lite over at DevNet.

A few others who attended:

• Stephanie and Bryan, the two person team that make up Yiibu, creators of “Casual Content” for Mobile devices. Be sure to check out some of their downloads.
• Andreas of Smashing Ideas was there giving great tips and tricks for mobile development.
• Stephen, the principal of Flown Away
• Matt, an independent Macromedia Instructor
• Bob from Encore CBT
• Art from Lodestone

After going through the material and seeing what Flash is going to be capable of doing on mobile devices, I can’t stop thinking about the different applications/video games that are possible for handhelds. I tellin ya it’s gonna be the next application development gold rush.

Another thing that was pretty cool was that the Adobe offices were crazy hip. My favorite part was in the main lobby where they had a massive Swatches Panel that acted as a pseudo-stainglass window. Pretty cool.

In addition to killer training and uber hip office space, the release of Flash Player 9 was announced this week and a preview version of the Flash 9 IDE. Now, I haven’t gotten my hands as dirty with AS3 as much as I had wanted to last October, but I’m really looking forward to digging in and playing with the all new toys.

That’s about it. Celebrate all indie style this weekend.

Cheers, ya’ll!

I’m going to be heading out to Adobe for a little Flash Lite Training this week. I’m really excited about getting into Mobile Applications and I already have a few ideas for some applications. There are already some very cool apps that have been made, and I’m looking forward to contributing what I can to the community.

I’ve been using David Seah’s Emergent Task Timer for awhile now and it’s a great way to see what you’ve accomplished in any given day (plus, getting to bubble in circles “scantron-style” is also quite fun for some reason). While I’ve recently become a fan of low-tech tools, there’s something to be said for being able to click and be done.

So, if you haven’t tried it before, spend just 1-3 hours trying out the The Printable CEO” Online Emergent Task Timer

Last week, in our Dreamweaver class we took a brief look at a Javascript image fade sample. Then, today in Flash Rich Content Creation, someone asked about the same concept for Flash.

As a result, I’ve slapped together a little zip files that has working samples of both versions. Feel free to download it, play with it, and ask questions. Hope this helps!

I’ve been playing around with pulling an image in from Flickr, which takes a minor amount of XML parsing once you snag your RSS Feed.

As I was cleaning out my del.icio.us links I came across this post about a cool little javascript script named “thickbox” that produces a nifty effect. Check it out by doing the clickity thing on Avery here (btw, both the thumbnail and pic are being hosted on Flickr):

All that you’ll need to do is download some files, copy and paste a little html and you’re in business. So, what are you waiting for, Get to it!

If you have any questions, leave a comment or email me.

With all of the storms going on Houston, we (thankfully) haven’t had any high water problems, but our house did get a slight pop from some lightning the other night. Turns out that our cable modem, router, TiVo and garage door opener have all been fried. ARG! Oh well, at least I can make posts from my phone and the office.

I’m going to try and start using Flickr more for sharing photos. As such, be on the lookout for a Flickr Photo Stream coming to my blog. When I get around to finishing it, I’ll post the CF markup and a brief overview of the code. (For those interested, this is something that falls on my @playground GTD list)

In keeping with my domain purchasing addiction, I snagged IForgotYourWebsite.com which will magically take you here.

Wouldn’t you know that as soon as I convert my blog over to BlogCFC from Wordpress that someone goes and builds a utility to do the exact opposite!

Oh, well.

Being the awesomely awesome programmer that he is, Ray Camden has given birth to the bundle of coding joy he’s dubbed BlogCFC. This has got to be one of the best blogwares ever! Primarily because it’s OpenSource and written in ColdFusion. Booyuh!

Do yourself a huge favor and go and download a copy and start playing around with it. If you get stuck you can check out the forums, that are running on another of Ray’s fantastic creations, Galleon.

I’m seriously due for buying that man something from his wishlist.