LiveCycle Collaboration Service and Screen Sharing

LiveCycle Collaboration Service just got three new features that I’m pretty sure will make you very happy:

Screen Sharing. Yes, this is exactly what the names implies. Now, you can add screen sharing to your applications. Amazingly cool isn’t it?
Recording and Playback. You can record and download your collaborative session, and then playback this recording. You will see the data, audio, and video.
LCCS JavaScript SDK. We added JavaScript APIs and you can code your collaborative service using JavaScript. Though you still have to embed a SWF in your HTML page.

We also changed the domain name to something more meaningful: http://collaboration.adobelivecycle.com and we have a new logo for this service :).

You can read more on the team’s blog, and my fellow evangelist, Tom Krcha, has examples on his blog. Sign up here and get the SDK, use these forums to post questions and feedback, and learn about it here.

August 18, 2010 | Filed Under Others | 2 Comments

Enterprise Cafe

I thought it would be cool to talk about this app because chances are that you haven’t heard about Enterprise Cafe. So what is Enterprise Cafe? It is an AIR application (:D) that aggregates a big number of resources on the following topics: LiveCycle, Acrobat, Connect, ColdFusion, Flash Platform.

Once you log in using your Adobe ID account and choose, for example, the Flash Platform, you’ll see a screen like this:

Enterprise Cafe helps you to stay in touch with the community (you can access Adobe forums from this app), receive news (you’ll find the success stories posted here very interesting), check out the latest blog posts and videos using the incorporated RSS reader and Adobe TV section, or check for Adobe events.

If you want to convince your team or boss about the value of the Flash Platform, then you should definitely take a look at this app. You’ll find the information you need to convince them.

Install Enterprise Cafe

You can download the application from here.

July 19, 2010 | Filed Under AIR, Others | Leave a Comment

Unlocking the true potential of smartphones

Lately, I’ve been thinking and working a lot with multiple-screen applications that run across desktop and Android devices. The reason for doing this is pretty simple: my first four computers were less powerful than the current smartphone I’m using these days.

And still I was doing far more things then I do with my phone now. So what are we using the smartphone for? I think we use a smartphone mainly for: making phone calls, Internet browsing, mailing, GPS, listening to music, and playing games. But is this all we can do? I think not.

One of my dreams is to be able to use my phone for tasks that I accomplished using the same tools 5-10 years ago. Let me give you some examples: we all have at home a number of remote controls: for the TV sets, DVD player, sound system, Air Conditioner system, TV set-top-box and the list could go on and on. The basic interaction between us and these devices hasn’t changed lately. Maybe you could replace some of these remote controls with an expensive one, touch based. This is only a compromise. We should be able to use our smartphones for these kinds of tasks and much more.

I mean we all carry the phones all day; they have beautiful screens and you can interact with them using the touchscreen interface. The biggest issue that prevents us from doing this is that most of the systems we are using today don’t talk the same language, nor do they offer a common API to interconnect them.

Hopefully this is starting to change. With the extension of the Flash Platform on smartphones (for now only on Android phones, but soon it will be available on other phones too) and on the TV sets/set-top-boxes we are one step closer to achieving a unified system. So instead of relying on manufacturers to expose a common API, we can leverage a common runtime that runs across devices. Imagine that you’d be able to use your smartphone for:

Checking the current temperature in your home (even when you are not at home) and starting/stopping/reprogramming the AC
Being able to change TV channels from your phone
Being able to check the schedule and make a recording right from your phone
Start recording a program on your way back home because you’ll be late and don’t want to miss the NBA final
Controlling your music system from any room or even from your lawn
Checking the grocery list your wife wrote two days ago while shopping

Some of these are already possible using some expensive home automation systems. Others are possible using a cloud solution. I think the ubiquity of the Flash Platform on a larger number of different devices and the huge number of Flash developers will make many of these available in the near future for everyone who cares and decides wisely what devices to buy.Why? Because on one hand it will be cheaper to develop a solution for multiple devices due to one common runtime and one language/framework to learn and, on the other hand, the Flash community is full of people who are not afraid to dream and who love to push the limits (just have a look at projects like Nexus One Wireless Slot Car Gas Pedal, Audiotool, Screenergy, or Creaza.com if you don’t believe me).

Until then, I will keep dreaming and try to build some of these myself. I’m looking forward to Google TV and the first TV sets that “speak” Flash.

What do you think?

LATER UPDATE: I’ve just seen this cool Android app build with AIR and Flex 4 that controls Freebox STB: http://chubby75.com/blog/?p=9

July 12, 2010 | Filed Under Others | 2 Comments

Going Multi-Screen with the Flash Platform Webinar

It seems this summer that webinars are highly fashionable. The App in a Week European webinar hasn’t finished yet, and we’ve announced another one: Going Multi-Screen with the Flash Platform. The webinars will take place between June 22nd – 24th and you can register here.

I guess after attending these webinars you should be ready to create multi-screen applications when Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR will be available for the Android platform (now they are still in beta).

This is the complete schedule:

Tuesday, June 22, 9AM – 10AM Pacific Time – Best practices in optimizing web content for Flash Player 10.1
Tuesday, June 22, 1PM – 2PM Pacific Time – The quickest way to build cross-platform apps with AIR 2
Wednesday, June 23, 9AM – 10AM Pacific Time – Rich Internet App development with Flash Builder 4 for Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2
Thursday, June 24 9AM – 10AM Pacific Time – Multi-screen web content development with Flash Pro CS5

Enjoy!

June 9, 2010 | Filed Under Others | 1 Comment

Open Source Media Framework 1.0 is out

The first release of OSMF, 1.0 is out. This is great news for both developers and publishers. Using the components from OSMF you can build quickly high quality and fully featured video players. And if you think about this, it totally make sense. I mean if you are a publisher your main expertise is to create/distribute/monetize the content and not to create advanced video players. And if you are a developer then you get an excellent start using components that were already tested and supports the latest advancements from the Flash Platform (Flash Player 10.1, Flash Access 2.0, HTTP Dynamic Streaming).

OSMF gives you the blocks you need to build a modern and powerful video player. What if you just want an out of the box player? Well, you have to take a look at Strobe Media Playback then. This is a compiled SWF that gives you a video player created using the OSMF.

I just want to add one more thing: OSMF was developed by many parties, not only by Adobe. Others submitted plug-ins and code. I know my friends from Kaltura are one of them, but other big names like ESPN, Akamai, Brightcove.

You can find more here.

May 30, 2010 | Filed Under Others | 3 Comments

About Technology and Disasters

From time to time nature shows us that we are not as almighty as we might think. Consider, for example, the recent volcanic ash clouds that plague air flights across Europe.

These two things usually don’t mix well together. Although one could argue that some disasters happen because of technology, I think usually disasters are outside of our control. But only when a big one is happening do we come to realize how dependent we are on all the shiny things that mankind has been inventing mostly in the past 100 years.

What if there were no flights across Europe for three months? What if the complex network that provides communications were to break down for a month? Could we function in such a disruptive event? And how well would we cope with it?

While the economic losses would probably be huge, I think some good could come from such an event. Without all these networks we would probably talk more with the ones around us. Like really talk.

I mean, could you imagine Socrates doing his work today? Forging wisdom into 140 characters to accommodate Twitter or having a Facebook account to keep in touch with Crito and the others.

On the same note I was talking to a friend about the prospects that we as programmers, have in the event of a really big disaster. No computers, no networks. And we still need to make a livingt? So here you go to find something to work:
– So what do you know to do?
– I’m a programmer!
– Right! Can you “program” this cow to give more milk? Or perhaps you could “program” this hammer?
– ?!

Indeed we would be in deep something :D

I guess it is uber cool to be head down in the IT field. But on the other hand we don’t have to lose sight of why we are doing this.

What do you think?

PS. Like many people who needed to travel in Europe and couldn’t, I had to cancel my session I was about to do in the Netherlands. So this is happening when I’m not working on Saturday just blogging on something other than RIA :)

April 18, 2010 | Filed Under Others | 4 Comments

Wednesday’s Movies

In case you are out of idea for what movie to watch tonight, let me lend a hand with not one, but four exceptional movies featuring the amazing and ubiquitous Flash Platform:

Adobe AIR apps on the iPhone and Motorola Droid (Kevin Hoyt, platform evangelist)
Multi-touch capabilities of Flash Player 10.1 (our mobile evangelist, Mark Doherty, sheds light on these features)
One app, five screens (Christian Cantrell shows you how you can leverage Adobe AIR to target multiple devices with basically the same code base)
Event Performance in Flex (the famous Chet Haase amazes you once again)

Enjoy :) !

April 7, 2010 | Filed Under Others | 3 Comments

Acrobat.com Workspaces

Today we launched a new release of Acrobat.com (hosted services for working with documents in a collaborative manner, including online conferences). Probably, the most important addition to this platform is Workspaces:

team members can store and organize project content online, and easily share and manage team access to files – eliminating the need to continually e-mail updates.
Teams can create Shared Workspaces to store and share a set of files related to a project, letting distributed team members work together across times zones and firewalls, with no special file sharing software or IT involvement necessary.
Workspaces help increase the productivity of project teams by letting members efficiently work together through central, easy-to-use Workspaces. Users simply access an online Workspace to review and collaborate on documents.

If you have the free account you can create one Shared Workspace, if you have Premium Basic you can create 20, and for those having Premium Plus the number of Workspaces is unlimited.

March 29, 2010 | Filed Under Others | Leave a Comment

Photoshop: the first demo

Just a coincidence: yesterday I was talking about Creative Suite Buzz Hub and today you can watch a recreation of the first Photoshop demo John Knoll did 20 years ago (John is one of the Photoshop’s creators).

Enjoy!

March 16, 2010 | Filed Under Others | 1 Comment

Creative Suite Buzz Hub

Do you wonder what’s going on with the next versions of Creative Suite? Do you want to know more about the new features from the next versions of Photoshop, Flash Professional, or Illustrator? Well you have an easy (and funny) way to find out: just follow the news at Creative Suite Buzz Hub.