Fun in the Swiss Alps

I'm in Davos Switzerland launching, WELCOM, an online collaboration application we developed for the World Economic Forum at Adobe. The application uses Flex 3, LCDS 2.6.1 and a Sharepoint backend shared via web services. Forum members use this application to collaborate on various economic topics. The Forum WELCOM team is below at breakfast. I'm gonna miss them.

 

Shameless Plug: Best Enterprise Productivity App at MAX '09

I have been heads down working on a Flex Social Collaboration/Event Management application for the World Economic Forum for the last 6 months. I am the lead Flex Technical Architect on this project. We just went live!

I was surprised to find out that an application I worked on when I first joined Adobe Consulting won the Best Enterprise Productivity application at MAX 2009, i3Cube. I was the Flex architect on this project and it was a herculean effort. I wanted to at least post it on my blog, come on, that's cool!

i3Cube is an application that allows the management of clinical trials managed by United Health Care. It is revolutionizing clinical trials and I am very proud to have invested a year of my life on it. It was a very challenging project. Check it out!

Well, these are my major accomplishments at Adobe so far. I love working for Adobe and have enjoyed the challenging work. I am done with my plugs, now it's time to enjoy the holidays during my two weeks off. Happy Holidays!

Cairngorm Extensions and Other Flex Frameworks

Univeral Mind released some very helpful Cairngorm Extensions awhile back. I wanted to let folks know they are out there and are definitely worth checking out. They cover some frequently requested Cairngorm enhancements. The Cairngorm steering committee is busy now working on enhancing Cairngorm and addressing some of these areas. More news on that later.

Check out the great Flex framework overview article FrameworkQuest on InsideRIA for some excellent in depth coverage of some Flex frameworks. The author also has a great Cairngorm/RIA article (Anatomy of a Flex RIA), though some of his examples are a little dated and not best practice, good primer. Following are some MVC architectures you may want to check out as well:

• Parsely - This framework is interesting allowing the use of Presentation Models and dependency injection.
  
• Mate
• Swiz
• Prana
• Finally, check out Tom Sugden's IoC Framework discussion.  Professional Flex 3 is a great book with lots of good examples. Tom contributed some Cairngorm chapters.
  

Blogger Tips and Tricks and Motorcycles Too

When I bought my first motorcycle a year ago, a 2006 Honda Shadow Sabre, the first thing I did was buy a Garmin Zumo 550 GPS for it. Cause I needed it, OK! When I took my bike to the shop, the mechanic said to me, "You know, when people buy a new bike, one of the first things they do is buy louder pipes or bigger tires, but you are adding a GPS?" Well, I'm a gadget geek and that's right, the GPS was the coolest thing out there. I of course also had to buy the XM Radio GXM 30 antennae, speakers for my helmet and a cool handyman toolkit, but I digress.

I am fairly new to blogging, being the gadget geek that I am, one of the first things I did was search for all the cool tips, tricks and gadgets out there you can use on Blogger. You can find some of them if you read on.

1. Had to think of some theme for the Blog that was personal and could be broad enough to encompass the amazing wealth of knowledge stuck in my head. Not that much really.
   
2. Setup a Google Apps Domain, because I needed to my own domain name of course. I did this through Blogger and had some real problems getting Google Webmaster tools to see my new domain and allow me to submit a Sitemap. Here's a good knol article on the issues. Incidentally, I discovered Google Apps and Webmaster tools through this and they are very nice tools.
   
3. Added jQuery Expandable Summaries to posts.
4. Created my own hacked up minimalist Blogger template with a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
5. Had to show off my basic Photoshop skills creating my classic iconic site header graphic.
   
6. I created my own Adobe icon buttons using a cool AIR application. If you don't know, AIR is a cross platform runtime that let's you create offline desktop applications. It's pretty amazing and people have created some incredible applications, a lot more and some more.
   
7. You should definitely sign-up with Technorati.
8. Submitted a Sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools.
9. I added links to my Social/Web 2.0 site buttons, gotta have those, right?
   
10. I found a few nice tools to help manage, advertise and track traffic on my blog including:

• AddThis
• FeedShot
• FeedBurner
  - If you are using Google Webmaster tools, check this out.
• Google Analytics
• Grazr

So I think I am good to go ;) Now I just need to create some great content and get everything in my head onto my Blog. I read a good point that it's easier for experts to report than reporters to become experts. I have a little expertise I can share that may be of some value. I have been a terrible troll the last few years, consuming much and giving little. I started this Blog to index my life, work and interests hoping you can find something valuable here amongst the loud buzz of the Blogosphere and my cluttered mind, which I am trying desperately to organize. I like to say that I am smart enough to know that I have a lot more to learn. I think Socrates said that. Enjoy.

MAX 2008 Cairngorm Tips Presentation

You can download my MAX 2008 Cairngorm Tips presentation I did with Peter Martin. You can download it below. Check out his new Cairngorm plug-in as well.

• RIA Development with Cairngorm: Tips and Tricks

I have added some links to some other Flex frameworks and articles, here.

MAX 2008 Flex for Java Architects Lab Materials

OK, if you are trying to find the lab materials from our MAX lab, you can find them below. Click the download link on the right menu to download documents:

• Lab Handout
• Lab Files (Part 1)
• Lab Files (Part 2)
• Lab Presentation

If you have any questions drop me a line. I will be working on a new Maven archetype that will build in support for Cairngorm, Java, and ActionScript code generation. 

Are you Guilty of Truthiness

When you think you know something intuitively and you have no idea what the hell you are talking about, you might just be spouting a little Truthiness. A little truthiness can destroy a marriage, end a friendship, bankrupt a company, or send America to war with little ole Iraq. Please, let's watch the truthiness and back our talk up with facts. If your comments smell truthy, I will delete them expeditiously, but this is my blog, so I can say whatever I like :)

Life of a Geek [PIC]

So sad how true this is. I need to get out more.

read more

New Star Trek HD Trailer

I'm a closet Trekkie. I don't let too many people know. I just saw the new Star Trek trailer and all I have to say is OMG! It is going to be amazing and you bet my non-sci-fi fiance is gonna get dragged along to the midnight showing! 

Trailer!

MAX 2008 is Over!

I just finished attending my first Adobe MAX conference. It was pretty amazing. I am relatively new to Flex/LiveCycle, just over a year. I had the chance to present at MAX due to some work I did on my first project at Adobe Consulting. It took a lot of work to prepare for, needless to say I am glad it's over. I will be blogging on some of the things I learned and you can find my lab and presentation materials up on the blog as well. 

I presented with Peter Martin on Cairngorm Tips and Tricks to a full house. I was pretty nervous, but it came off pretty well I think. Peter was one of the original authors of Cairngorm, an MVC framework for Flex, and he presented a great new Eclipse plug-in to make your Cairngorm development a lot easier. I encourage you to check his blog out for more information. 

I presented my lab with Francois Le Droff from Adobe Consulting. We covered code generation techniques using Ant and Maven for Flex applications. I am planning on developing a new Maven Archetype that will use JAXB, Hibernate, and a Java to ActionScript library to create a skeleton LCDS application with code generation support. Look for more information on that soon.