pixelkin

My Notes from Day One Sessions

Day One Keynote from Adobe, featuring Mike Chambers, Andrew Spaulding and …

• Packaging is the term used when we take existing content and wrap with additional technology into an installable file for a particular
  platform/operating system. Content is installed with the correct user experience for the platform. Launch content from existing user workflow. Hide raw content in file system. (don’t scare or confuse users – be as seamless and easy as possible)
• Major platforms:
  • Symbian S60 (mostly Nokia phones, some Samsung, Smartphones) packages require SIS (Symbian Install System) format, an SVG image for the icon, the SWF file is treated as passive content.
  • Windows Mobile (Smartphones) packages require CAB format and an ICO image for the icon
  • Nokia (Mid-range consumer phones) require the NFL (Nokia Flash Lite) format for packaging, a PNG image for the icon, a ZIPped file package, points to content rather than installing.
• Packaging tools:
  • SWF2NFL AIR Application
  • SWFPACK.com
  • on the horizon? Adobe Mobile Packager
• Distribution:
  • Flash Lite 3.1 Distributable Player currently supports 31 devices, Flash 8 and AS2.0 content, Video (On2 VP6, Sorenson, 3GPP, H.264), MP3 streaming, data services via XML and SSM (Simplified Security Model).
  • Nokia Ovi
• Funding Opportunities in the FlashLite world:
  • Flash Lite Developer Challenge
  • Nokia “Calling All Innovators”
  • Nokia / Adobe Open Screen Fund

WebDU Podcast [28.4 MB]

still not sure how this saves time – in fact, not entirely sure he even mentioned how it saved time. Phil’s main argument for PureMVC was the complete separation of “church and state” with an increased flexibility for reuse and scalability. Phil created an entire application for sorting WebDU speakers and sessions, with only the interface and data having been pulled together earlier.

Showcasing (?) the new API with examples of custom windows, tagging including customised, animated (spinner class) tagging, perspective shadows, occlusion of overlay items. He provided links to the Google Maps API Flash Group and Hosting Maps.

WebDU Podcast [25.4 MB]

My Notes from Day Two Sessions

Day Two Keynote from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft featuring Alan Noble, Wilf Wilkinson and Mike Kordahi

Alan Noble – Google
“It’s never been a better time to be a developer, so get out there and build stuff!”

I think the very best thing about working at Google (of all the things that must be great about working at Google) is the ability to say “we” …”We developed Google maps…” “We released Chrome… Android…” etc etc. Pretty sweet. Here’s a list of the 6 trends as seen by Alan Noble – and probably anyone who sat down and compiled a list. While the talk was interesting, there wasn’t anything “new” mentioned.

• search (only about 10% done)
• Social Applications (sharing, collaborative, complex business processes)
• Geospacial
• Mobile
• Digitalisation (separating data from medium)
• The Cloud (huge data centres)

Neil “Wilf” Wilkenson – Yahoo

A much more developer focused/ code based talk around YQL and Yahoo! developer tools, online tools etc encouraging mashups and lateral thinking. The guy reminded me of Tim Wayper. I can’t really talk much to this in detail as it was a bit over my head – but a lot of people in the audience were excited by it.. and also perplexed as to how little Yahoo seems to promote itself when it comes to how innovative they appear to be.

• Yahoo! Open Strategy
• Yahoo! Query Language (YQL)
• Design to grids
• Utilise font percentages for accessibility and scalability

Michael Kordahi – Microsoft
“How cool was that? I mean really? YQL: Select for the internet, dude!”
“Shit…I was told not to swear. Can we take a vote? Is ‘shit’ a swear word? No? good. Oh, Shit!”
“Any game developers [here]? [no game developers] Huh? I thought you guys were awesome and stuff!”
referring to Apple “…that fruit company..”

Who knew the most dynamic speaker at this morning’s keynote (actually the entire WebDU so far) would be from Microsoft. Kordahi is passionate (about life I think, not just Microsoft), articulate, animated and a charismatic speaker. Big change in the audience with this speaker was the laughter from women. They (we) liked him and responded by laughing at _all_ his funnies, no matter how small. I’m sure if I’d turned to the woman behind me I would have seen her eyes transfixed on Kordahi while absentmindedly tucking her hair behind her ear. He was totally scoring all over the room and I bet he didn’t even realise it.

News Flash: Virtual Earth is dating Photosynth.

Brian Chau has been a constant since the early Macromedia Software Launch events. The man is perpetually ageless. His accent is particularly endearing, exchanging p’s for b’s and r’s for l’s. I particularly like when he refers to the key board as the “key bort”. Today he set up a multi-user video and chat channel. It sounds easy when broken down into the five steps:

1. create an actionscript communication file (.asc)
2. create a netConnection
3. have the server talk to the client
4. let the client talk to the server
5. remote share the object

Download and install the media server. Create a folder for application. Save the .asc file to the root of app folder. create another folder inside app folder to store media. Utilise the FMS ADMIN CONSOLE to monitor server-side activity and help debug code. Piece of cake!

• netConnection >> netStream >> Data
• files: pacific.adobe.actobat.com/bchau_fms

WebDU Podcast [26.6 MB]

Pixel Bender is a fast filter renderer that can be deployed to After Effects, Flash and Photoshop. Download and install the Adobe Pixel Bender Toolkit.

• .PSK file format for AE (export from PB and drop into AE Plugins folder)
• .PBJ file format for Fl (export filter for Flash)
• .PBK and PBG file format for Ps (export from PB and drop into PS Plugins folder)

Google these peeps: david lollar, Mrdoob, killer kernal/fractal bender. URLs: video-flash.de, derschmale.com, eiromdesign.com, aviary.com

WebDU Podcast [22.8 MB]

WebDU Podcast[28.4 MB]

WebDU Podcast [25.6 MB]