Peter Elst

Was interested to read that in the latest Flash Player 10 beta refresh a number of issues have been fixed that were real showstoppers for Linux users. Most notably webcam support has always been problematic, which meant that that devices like the Nokia N800, the Eee PC and many others could not take full advantage of a number of web apps.

The Linux Flash Player beta now also support wmode, meaning your embedding SWF is not automatically the top-most element and you can have things like navigation elements rendered above.

I think what might be even more significant is that for the first time ever the Linux Flash Player seems to be on the same release cycle as those for PC and Mac.

This is really great news as it means new features in the Flash Player will now be completely cross platform from the get go rather than the Linux release lagging behind for a year or more.

Happy to see Adobe paying more attention to Linux and hope the Flex Builder 3 alpha for Linux is also getting closer to a release.

 
Go get the latest Flash Player 10 beta here

More information on the Penguin.SWF blog

 

I’m very excited about the RIAJobs.org project now sponsoring on one of my all time favorite podcasts!

RIA Weekly is a (somewhat weekly) podcast with Michael Coté from Redmonk and Ryan Stewart, Platform Evangelist at Adobe, and the occasional guest.

If you’re at all into Rich Internet Applications that is definitely a podcast you’ll want to subscribe to. Previous episodes already featured news and discussion on Flex, Sprout Builder, Curl, JavaFX, Gears, etc.

 
Make sure to listen to episode #17 for a special offer that you might want to take advantage of!

Over the months I have tried numerous Twitter clients and few have survived my wrath. Twitter has for me largely taken over from email and IM for staying in touch with colleagues, family and friends. Working with the constraint of 140 characters also tends to make sure people get to the point which you don’t always get with email.

I’ll just walk through some of the clients I’ve used so far:
 
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[update] There does appear to be a FAQ available here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/swf_searchability.html — doesn’t go into a lot of technical detail though.
 

OK, the news today is that Adobe is working with Google and Yahoo! to make sure they are able to index SWF content fully. That’s pretty exciting and a real step in the good direction but it does leave me with a bunch of questions and concerns.

Reportedly Google and Yahoo! have been given a ’special, search-engine optimized Flash Player’ that is able to index all data, not just static text as was the case with the Search Engine SDK Macromedia already released back in 2002. Google implemented that SDK which meant you were able to do search queries specifically on Flash content e.g. “peter elst” filetype:swf.

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I got an email from Thomas Joos tonight saying he had something I might be interested in, and you’re not wrong there!

Using the b.Tween framework (currently in beta) which in turn uses barefootsoft’s EyeGT technology they were able to port mobile content, in this case a Flash Lite app to the iPhone.

While that does not mean a Flash Player on the iPhone (yet, I told Steve I wouldn’t buy one until they do support it) at least it opens things up for Flash Lite developers to move into the iPhone market and start deploying apps.

Now the bigger question, can I get that to run on my iPod Touch?

You can read more about it here: http://www.thomasjoos.be/2008/06/30/porting-flash-lite-to-the-iphone-rock-werchter-mobile/

Great work Thomas and Boulevart as always!

I don’t think I’m alone in seeing Twitter’s service deteriorate to the point where euthanasia seems like the only humane option.

Without any obvious intimate knowledge of how the service is architected, these are my three easy steps to hunt and kill the fail whale.
 
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I’m really happy to finally be able to announce a project I’ve been working on for a little while now — www.riajobs.org.

A job board targeted at Rich Internet Application developers from various backgrounds be it Flash, Flex, AJAX or Silverlight.

Of course there are already great community resources available for those looking for Flash, Flex, AJAX developers but what I believe is often missing is the idea that Rich Internet Applications and Web 2.0 are about more than any single technology.

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“In case it wasn’t clear already, you’re now watching Kevin Lynch live in concert. This isn’t just one track. No, this is a video of the entire live Kevin Lynch concert at Paradiso - Main Hall.”
  
http://www.fabchannel.com/kevin_lynch_concert/

 
That made me laugh, remember being at Spark Europe in October 2005, the last Macromedia conference I attended before Adobe took over. Web 2.0 was still a new buzzword, ah those were the days

Of course Kevin Lynch, now Chief Technology Officer, is still the rock star of the company!

 

Now that the old MXNA is back up and has been revamped as Adobe Feeds I had a good excuse to create a Firefox search plugin for it.

If you’re a Firefox user you can install the plugin by clicking on the button below. Enjoy!

In case you didn’t know Adobe is running a great program where they offer you a free one year certificate with Thawte for signing your Adobe AIR applications (worth 300 USD) — the only thing you need to do is submit your unsigned AIR application to the AIR Marketplace and be among one of the first 135 to do so.

I did just that and submitted the VideoSnapshot application I built a while back — low and behold I got an email letting me know how I could redeem the certificate.

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