The Adobe AIR for Linux alpha is a version of the Adobe AIR runtime that allows Adobe AIR applications to be deployed on computers and devices running the Linux operating system.

The Adobe AIR for Linux alpha is a version of the Adobe AIR runtime that allows Adobe AIR applications to be deployed on computers and devices running the Linux operating system.

Title says is all. Go to Adobe Labs for the alpha version of the Linux AIR Player. We've also posted an update to the Flex Builder 3 for Linux alpha, adding support for AIR creation.

Here’s a nice little poster to put up for a quick reference to the Flash, Flex and AIR API’s. It’s pretty big so taking this pdf to a professional print shop is the best way to go. Or If your looking for a more compact version Mike Chambers posted a newer version that is intended to be [...]

Just a reminder, the 11 city On AIR European Train Tour starts tomorrow in Madrid. The team is already there setting up (although, unfortunately, I am not joining them this time around). So if you are in (or near) Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Stockholm, Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Munich, or Milan, be sure to drop by!

I've been wearing Bluetooth headsets for about as long as they have been around, and have owned lots and tried even more. And I have a new favorite, the BlueAnt Z9. Here's the scoop: Pros:

• The Z9 is small, one of the smallest and lightest headsets I have tried.
• It is also extremely comfortable to wear, even for very long periods. It is so comfortable that I often forget I am wearing it.
• Sound quality is superb, at least based on what the people on the other end of the connection are telling me.
• Many very lightweight headsets have optional ear loops, but they often feel like afterthoughts, not fitting the devices well or coming apart (Plantronics devices seem very prone to this). The Z9 ear loops (there are 3 of them, all identical, or so it seems) fit well and stay in place properly.
• Battery life is really good.
• It comes with both an AC charger and a USB cable. The latter is an absolute must for anyone who travels, and I automatically rule out any Bluetooth headset that does not include this necessity.
• The Z9 comes with a built in clip, making it easier to carry the headset in your pocket or attached to your shirt and so on.
• The headset is firmware upgradeable. The actual upgrade process is convoluted and horribly unfriendly (yes, I tried it). Still, it's nice to know that firmware updates are an option if they are needed.

Cons:

• I have only found one downside with the headset, and that is that I find the volume too low. Others hear me fine, the problem is me hearing them. It's fine in most environments when cranked up to the highest volume, but in noisy environments the volume is definitely too low. I contacted BlueAnt and they suggested that I update the firmware which I did, and unfortunately it did not make a difference. This is a shame, and hopefully they can release another firmware update that really does fix the problem.

The verdict? The BlueAnt Z9 is definitely the very best Bluetooth headset I have owned, and is highly recommended (but keep that one negative in mind). It is available from Amazon.com.

I’m flying with fellow Plug-in Media colleagues Juliet and Sarah to New York on Tuesday to meet with clients that I’m not sure I’m allowed to talk about… but we’re producing some cool Flash 3D for a massive US sports company… seriously exciting work so watch this space for more details. And I’m taking the [...]

Last week I spent a whole day trying to solve an issue in Phoenix due to a strange problem which comes up suddenly after some code changes.
The problem was that now using the transformation tool the bounds of the selected bitmap were not detected correctly and the tool itself didn't work.
So I spent a lot of time in checking out all the recent code changes ( and they were a lot! ) to find out the possible cause...
Anyway, I was lucky to figure out the problem by accident and the problem was cacheAsBitmap!

The problem with the tool is because in order to find the correct bounds of any element on the stage it use the .concatenatedMatrix property of the element itself ( which represents the combined transformation matrixes of the display object and all of its parent objects, back to the root level ).
BUT if any of its parent display object ( not the root itself ) has the cacheAsBitmap property set to true then the concatenatedMatrix returns a wrong value!

I put a real simple flash example of what I mean. Just click on any of the 2 colored objects to activate the transform tool, then click on the "cache" button and click again on those objects to see the difference.

 

P.S. I've reported the bug in the flash player bugbase, if anyone is interested in watch or vote for it.

PaperWorld is many things - it lets you create multi-user applications, yes, but it also gives you the tools to create large games, quickly, localise them to a particular language or region, and manage everything in your workflow - so your designers don’t need to code, and your coders don’t need to design, and anyone [...]

Great news if you’re in or around Dublin, Ireland on April 11th! There’s a fantastic tag team consisting of Ryan Stewart, Kev McCabe and Ted Patrick coming to entertain you with talks on Flex, ColdFusion and AIR at a free half day event called Scotch on AIR. Agenda 12:00 - Lunch 13:00 - Flex - Ted Patrick 14:00 - [...]

The Rolls-Royce of the FDT 3.0 family, Enterprise, was released a couple days ago. This probably isn’t news to you anymore but I thought I’d mention it anyway. I’ve got to say I’m very happy with where the Powerflasher team has taken this magnificent tool. Today I find it hard to work without FDT mostly because [...]

I’ve been pining for an AS3 code coverage tool for so long, I feel sick. I hate not being able to know how much of my code is actually exercised by test cases, whether automated or manual. So I’ve been playing with an idea on how to get AS3 code coverage working for [...]

Sure, it can withstand a nuclear war, and we've got some records, but how much of our beloved Internet is a database error away from being lost? Reading Robin Wauter's tweet and the heart-wrenching paragraph that is all that's left of one man's four years of blogging, it made me think again how little time [...]

You tired, you poor, hungover masses yearning to Google... stop rubbing your eyes, Google has turned off the lights to support Earth Hour. On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this [...]

While showering last night (this is usually when ideas and / or solutions present themselves) I came up with this idea. Basically it’s a simple class that allows you to listen for specific sequences of keystrokes. So if the user was to press the sequence in the title, in the correct order naturally, you might react [...]

…and end the drawNow madness. I knew something was SERIOUSLY wrong when I read in the official docs (Part 3) from Adobe that if your code doesn’t work correctly, try using “drawNow”, and failing that, “validateNow”. What do you mean “try”? What… the… hell…

No Flash stuff this time :)
During my last trip to New York city I finally decided to buy an iPhone for me too (I think I have everything from Apple right now.. except a mac :) ).
The most annoying thing for a linux user like me is obviously the fact that the iPhone syncronization should pass from iTunes, which is not available for linux...
Ok, there are some ways indeed to copy music like this: http://help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/iPhone, but as you can see is not so smart.

Sync your address book isn't easy too. The AddressBook sqlite can be easily browse using an SQLite browser such as SQLite Database Browser http://sqlitebrowser.sourceforge.net/, just get the AddressBook.sqlitedb (it's into  /private/var/mobile/Library/AddressBook/)  from the iphone via sftp (just remember to install BSD Subsystem and OpenSSH) and call a simple query like this:

SELECT t1.First, t1.Last, t2.value from ABPerson as t1, ABMultiValue as t2 WHERE t2.record_id = t1.ROWID 

For a full AddressBook sync you can read more here: http://www.estamos.de/blog/...the-making-of/

Another tip I just discovered is how to upload into the iPhone my own Ringtones.
First convert the mp3 file into an M4R file using this command line script:

mplayer -ao pcm input_file.mp3 -ao pcm:file="~temp.wav"
faac ~temp.wav -o output_file.m4r -w
rm ~temp.wav

then using sftp put the output_file.m4r into /Library/Ringtones directory. A sample workflow can be this one:

alessandro@alessandro-u-laptop:~/iphone/Ringtones$ mplayer -ao pcm The_Spell.mp3 -ao pcm:file="~temp.wav"
MPlayer 1.0rc2-4.2.3 (C) 2000-2007 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU         T7600  @ 2.33GHz (Family: 6, Model: 15, Stepping: 6)
CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing The_Spell.mp3.
Audio file file format detected.
Clip info:
 Title: The Spell
 Artist: Lunatica
 Album: Fables & Dreams
 Year: 2004
 Comment:  00001A75 000016D0 00004374 
 Track: 6
 Genre: Other
==========================================================================
Forced audio codec: mad
Opening audio decoder: [libmad] libmad mpeg audio decoder
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 128.0 kbit/9.07% (ratio: 16000->176400)
Selected audio codec: [mad] afm: libmad (libMAD MPEG layer 1-2-3)
==========================================================================
[AO PCM] File: ~temp.wav (WAVE)
PCM: Samplerate: 44100Hz Channels: Stereo Format s16le
[AO PCM] Info: Faster dumping is achieved with -vc null -vo null -ao pcm:fast
[AO PCM] Info: To write WAVE files use -ao pcm:waveheader (default).
AO: [pcm] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback...
Cannot sync MAD frame 538.0 (08:58.0)  0.8% 
Cannot sync MAD frame
Cannot sync MAD frame
Cannot sync MAD frame 538.0 (08:58.0)  0.8% 
A: 288.3 (04:48.2) of 538.0 (08:58.0)  0.8% 

Exiting... (End of file)
alessandro@alessandro-u-laptop:~/iphone/Ringtones$ faac ~temp.wav -o The_Spell.m4r
Freeware Advanced Audio Coder
FAAC 1.26.1 (Jan 22 2008) UNSTABLE

Quantization quality: 100
Bandwidth: 16000 Hz
Object type: Low Complexity(MPEG-2) + M/S
Container format: Transport Stream (ADTS)
Encoding ~temp.wav to The_Spell.m4r
   frame          | bitrate | elapsed/estim | play/CPU | ETA
12388/12388 (100%)|  137.8  |   12.5/12.5   |   22.95x | 0.0  

alessandro@alessandro-u-laptop:~/iphone/Ringtones$ sftp root@192.168.1.203
Connecting to 192.168.1.203...
root@192.168.1.203's password: 
sftp> cd /Library/Ringtones
sftp> put The_Spell.m4r

 

We at BLITZ know that Patrick Matte and Ivan Todorov are interesting people, and apparently the folks at FITC think so too.  Both join a list of some of the most interesting and engaging presenters from around the world at FITC Toronto on April 19-22.  Patrick’s session on Monday, April 21, “Creativity Conducted - Wii [...]

  Since September 07 I’ve been working as a Intern at the Adobe office in Ottawa, Canada. I thought I would share some of my thoughts about what its like to work as a intern for a company like Adobe. Currently I’m in my second co-op term at Adobe working as Software Verification Intern and I just [...]

Well well, seems like it's finally live. So, that's the site I've been doing a this little game for during the last months at Hi-ReS!. We should be activating a room next week and another room the week after. Probably improving some bits here and there in each release. Click here to see a replay from myself, otherwise click here to have the complete experience.

Used the ubercool (and free) FlashDevelop 3.0.0 Beta 6 and it features box2dflash for the car 2Dto3D physics, a modified version of Papervision3D 2.0 (Effects branch) and, believe it or not, Tweener for the replay. Oh! it also features loud and annoying sounds, you've been warned ;)

After working on it for that long I don't know if it's fun or not. Hope you like it.