PieTimer: A timer component using Piechart

One of my colleague, asked me to develop something like a timer using Piechart. It took only 15 minutes to develop in flex. I will provide the source code of it soon. Keep checking this place.

Flex 2 Contracts:Contractor/Freelancer Rates for Adobe Flex 2 developers in UK

I came to this site which looked at the demand for Adobe Flex 2 developers in UK with a comparison to their application Development category. They have presented a study of the contractor/freelancer rates which have been offered in IT jobs that required Flex 2 skill over the last 3 month to 23 August 2007 with a comparison to the same period last year.

Do you have any idea how much a Flex contractor earns in UK?? The average rate of a UK based flex developers is as high as £306!!

Let’s convert those digits in INR :)
----------------------------------------------------
Daily:306.00 GBP = 25,130.94 INR
Monthly:3910.00 GBP = 753,901.05 INR
Yearly:46930.00 GBP = 3,853,794.93 INR
-----------------------------------------------------
United Kingdom Pounds India Rupees
1 GBP = 82.1179 INR 1 INR = 0.0121776 GBP
-----------------------------------------------------

I don’t have any idea about the Indian rates. Let’s calculate it using the simple formula: yearly Rate = Years of Experience + 1.5 lac

That means a guy having 5 years of experience in IT industry will earn 6.5 Lacs per year.

Web 2.0 site Orkut should have some responsibilities!!

What’s going on? Why people can be so rude? Every day I watch Indian TV channels I feel bad about the degradation of human values. There is a speculation by police that Mumbai based 16 years old boy Adnan Patiala could be kidnapped and killed by his orkut friend “angel”.

I have been blogging again and again on the misuse of the power of orkut on my blog. This time an innocent teen is the target. I can foresee the dangerous side of web 2.0 site orkut for Indian innocent kids from these incidents. These young kids who don’t have much knowledge on the dangerous side of it are easy target now! Last night I was reading famous Indian blogger brajeshwar’s blog and came to know about an activist organization warriors for innocence who are constantly working for saving the innocent kids from the perverts of internet. They forced the LiveJournal to delete around 500 journals. I think its time for orkut to monitor the activities and delete those kinds of profiles which are dangerous.

“LiveJournal deleted around 500 journals in hopes of better “protecting children.” It said the deletion was prompted by activist groups, including one called Warriors for Innocence that claims to track sites promoting pedophilia, the sexual abuse of minors, and other illegal activities.”

Orkut has been flooded with filthy profiles. Every kind of perverted profiles and communities are there in orkut. People love google, so it’s their responsibility to protect the interest of kids and minors as well as the social fabric of India. I think its time to create an India based organization too that will save the Indian kids and force the web 2.0 site like orkut to delete those kind of profiles which are causing social hazards.

Market Speculation:Google takeover of Adobe

Macromedia>Adobe>Google ?

Flash video is the most popular thing over the internet. Youtube has not only created its own fortune out of it but also helped flash community to grow with the noticeable increase in the flash player 9 penetrations. By the time I am typing this post the penetration is as high as:

2,483,353,315

And this success story has created lots of forecast like these:

Google: Buy Adobe for Video!

A Google (GOOG) Takeover Of Adobe (ADBE)?

May be these are just speculations but who knows the future. Anything can happen in today’s market scenario.

Tomorrow may be adobe flash player will be known as Google Flash Player :)

Everything about Cairngorm: Samples, Code Generation,Unit Testing

You want to develop a loosely coupled, scalable solution for your next project. One of your colleagues might tell you that Cairngorm (CG) is the way to go. But you found it really scary. Is it really scary?

Dear friend! I can assure you about the simplicity of the Cairngorm micro architecture.

Cairngorm is the collection of some design patterns borrowed from J2EE fraternity. Sounding tough? Hold on!

It’s nothing but some well-known and largely used solution for common problems developers encounter in their day to day job.

Cairngorm is very flexible. Creators of CG encourage you to modify it and use it as per your requirements. You will find yourself using everything or something of CG once you are comfortable with it. You just need to get into it and once you are into it,you will not look back. You will just love it.

Are you ready to get started?

How to and where to start?

I have listed down step by step guide to use those recourses you will find around the flex ecosystem.

Read this interesting post by Steven Webster before you try anyhing with Cairngorm

-Why I think you shouldn’t use Cairngorm

If you still interested and determined to implement Cairngorm in your next project. Have a close look to these diagrams.

Diagram
-Cairngorm Diagram
-Cairngorm Diagram Explorer

Interesting? Want more understanding on CG architecture. Read these six part articles by Steven Webster of Adobe Consulting.

-Six-part article

Now is the time to make your hand dirty with some real coding. Have a look to the below given link. It will give you step by step guideline on how to setup your Cairngorm project. You will also get to see a very basic implementation of CG which is famous by the name of Cairngorm Login Example. Keeping the legacy of Steven, he has also written 3 part articles for beginners.

-Login Example

Need to see more complex implementation. Here are some links for you:

-Cairngorm Store Example Updated to Cairngorm 2.1
-wordweb-visualization-graphs-keywords-from-digg-api
-WebService & Cairngorm 2 Example by Jesse Warden’s
-Some sample code examples on cairngorm

How about generating codes automatically ?

-Cairngen
-Cairngorm code generator

Need to do some Unit Testing?

flexunit_basics
cairngorm-iresponder-async-flexunit
Unit testing Flex with FlexUnit and Cairngorm - The IResponder interface hurdle

I have noticed some promising screenshots in thinkingdigital blog. This guy has got some cool plan on screenshots but not sure it will be ever materialized or not.

- Cairngorm Plugin

ExternalInterface:javaScript injection through ActionScript and Firefox1.5.0.12

I was playing with the powerful javaScript injection through ActionScript/mxml utility developed by Abdul.I have encountered a strange error while using it. I am using this utility for data: URI scheme to show an image inside a popup from flex. I am sending Base64Encoded data to the pop up. It works fine when I send the data to the popup through window.open();

var generator=window.open ("data:image/png;base64,"+imgData, "", "width=" + w + ",height=" + h + ",resizable=1", toolbar="0");
But, when I try to write an image tag inside the popup, it does not work.

generator.document.write("<""img src=" +imgData+ ", height=" +h+ ", width=" +w+ "/>");

It does not show any data in the pop up. It throws the following strange error in my Firefox JavaScript console.

Error:
Error: [Exception... "'Permission denied to get property XULElement.accessKey' when calling method: [nsIDOMXULLabelElement::accessKey]" nsresult: "0x8057001e (NS_ERROR_XPC_JS_THREW_STRING)" location: "JS frame

I have posted this bug(?) in flex_india Google group and yet to get the solution.I would really appreciate if any body throws some light one this.

Dr. Ron Paul and Youtube

Thanks to flash player, internet and Web 2.0 common people of the cyber fraternity has got tremendous power in their hand. Yes, yet another praise for the successful web 2.0 venture of Youtube. This is the first time I have embedded any Youtube video in my blog. This video is about Congressman Ron Paul. I was watching this video for a while and I really got moved by his thoughts.

This video has revealed the secret of his popularity. I liked his thoughts and stand on war. He is the only person among the Republican candidates for the presidency, who has always opposed the Iraq war. I remember when I was in college; I used to perform anti-war street dramas. Myself and some of my friends used to visit remote villages and perform those street dramas to make poeple aware about the darker side of war. Like Paul I hate war too.I think this is the prime reason to put this nice video on my blog!

Ribbit:Flex Based VoIP Component

When Ryan Stewart says,“I just saw one of the greatest demos I’ve ever seen built on the Flash platform".

It made me think what it is?

Reyn, is talking about about Flash based VOIP component from a company called Ribbit.

The nice part of this component is, it runs solely on the Flash Player and requires NO download of any kind of browser plug-in and it supports full telephone capabilities.

So what’s their in that great component which is called to be a threat to Skype:

Here goes the list of features:

1. You will be able to dial any phone number and answer calls to your phone from your browser.
2. You can keep the caller ID of the person whom you’re dialing.
3. Anyone will be able to call your number and it will ring both on your phone as well as inside the browser application.
4. You can take the call from app and use a microphone to talk.
5. You will be able to track your messages and you can see a list of them and play them back.
6. You can receive the text version of the message of your sound file. That means an auto ‘transcription’

You can have a look to their roadmap here

You can sign for their prerelease program which is scheduled to be in next Month.

Happy flexing!

Flex Developer's Journal:SYS-CON Media

Flex Developer's Journal, (flex.sys-con.com), has launched by SYS-CON Media.It is the first independent magazine serving Adobe Flex developers worldwide

Yakov Fain, the author of the best-selling book Adobe Flex & Java, is the founding editor and editor-in-chief of Flex Developer's Journal.

The premier issue of the FDJ contains the following articles:

Real-World Adobe Flex Tips, Tricks and Techniques
By Christophe Coenraets


SYS-CON.TV Live From Times Square: Eclipse.Org Adds SOA, AJAX, and Flex Tools
By Eclipse News Desk

Turning Your Adobe Flex/Java Application Into a RAD Project
By Yakov Fain

Job Interviews: Adobe Flex and Flash Career Guidance
By Jesse Randall Warden

Multi-Tier Application Development with Adobe Flex
By Victor Rasputnis; Yakov Fain; Anatole Tartakovsky

Video Rock 'n Roll With Flex 2
By Michael Givens

Binary Data, ColdFusion & Flex
By Andrew Trice

AJAX Version of ClearBI Web Reporter for Adobe Flex Will Be Unveiled at AJAXWorld
By Flex News Desk

Flex and ColdFusion Hybrid Application with ServiceFactory
By Michael Givens


FDJ Editor-in-Chief Yakov Fain: "The World Is Changing – RIAs Have Reached Wall Street"
By Flex News Desk


AJAX Developers Brought Web 2.0 to the Browser
By Flex News Desk

Flex India google group

I am really happy to see the revolution flex 2.0 has brought to Rich Internet Development. I can see the revolution has touched Indian developer’s community too.

Just have a look to the above graph which depicts the number of messages posted in the flex India google group over the last few months. I have noticed a dramatic increase in the number of messages and members within a short span of six months. Currently there are 375 members and the numbers is increasing.I hope by the end of the year it will be more than 1500(may be more than that).

Thanks Manish for creating this nice group and the contributors of the group to make this a helpful one.

Adobe Flex Interview Preparation

Want to fetch the top Flex job in the market?

Out of my long experience in taking and giving interview here is a list of 10 things you need to know before you go for your next Adobe Flex technical interview. If I have missed anything, you can add to the list:

1. Good understanding and working knowledge of object oriented programming
2. Good understanding of Flex SDK
3. Event handling model of Flex
4. Custom component development
5. Experience of developing loosely-coupled components
6. Interacting with remote data
7. Understanding of J2ee architecture (or any other server side technology)
8. Cairngorm micro architecture
9. Unit Testing Framework for Flex
10. Logical thinking

Nokia BL-5C battery :Safety hazards

One of my friend pointed me to this link today which warns on Nokia battery overheating. Nokia says there have been reports of 100 incidents of overheating globally,As per Nokia,customers having BLC5 battery can request a replacement for any BL-5C battery that's affected. I have checked my Nokia 6600 phone battery and found that its BL-5C and manufactured in the same time ranged mentioned in the site.I am a bit confused should I continue using the same battery or not. I am not sure how Nokia will be replacing such a huge number of batteries which is more than 46 million!

Orkut : This is how google captures the virgin space of your mind

Orkut celebrates 60 years of Indian Independence!!

Pune Flex User Group

It was another Saturday for me. I was eagerly waiting for this Saturday to come. It was Pune Flex User Group Meet.Aasim, one of my colleagues and I left home early, just to make sure that we reach he venue on time but we had little idea about Pune’s rain. It was raining cats and dogs. By the time we reached ECMi office, we were half wet. Yes,We were 30 min late!!

After entering the boardroom of ECMi, first thing I noticed is Abdul, his Apollo T-shirt and lots of unknown faces. When we settled down to the last row of the room, Abdul was talking about flash and flex and rest of the audience was engrossed in that presentation. Time passed on and I made myself comfortable with the informality of the meet. I was really happy to see the passion of the developers about flex. I would like to tell about Martin, who came all the way from Mumbai just to attend the meeting. I used to know him through groups and forums.He was the only guy who noted down every details of the meeting.

You can check it out here

I would like to thank all of you guys to make it an august one!!