initRIA:registrations are open

Bangalore Flex User Group has launched the initRIA website last night. It’s now up and running and open for registrations.

According to Mrinal, Manager, Bangalore Flex User Group: initRIA it is the first of its kind Rich Internet Applications developer conference in India. We, the members of the Bangalore Flex User Group are organizing this conference with the hope of providing a platform for RIA enthusiasts around the country to interact and learn. The lists of talks is not finalized yet, we will be accepting topic proposals till the 11th of December, so if you have a topic in mind that you would like to talk about, become a speaker at initRIA by sending your topic proposals to organizers@initria.org. You can get more info about this at our FAQs page . The goal is to attract speakers and audience who are interested in different kinds of RIA technologies although till now all the topic proposals that we have received are about the Flash Platform, probably because I personally do not know many experts on other RIA technologies... so if you know any RIA gurus do try and convince them to share their knowledge at initRIA. If you need any kind of help with this, do write to us at organizers@initria.org.

I will be there at initRIA and wish to speak on the event .I have not finalized my note for the meet yet.I would be a great experience to meet all the flex enthusiast there.

New version Cairngorm 2.2.1:support for Flex 2.0.1 with Hotfix 2 and LiveCycle Data Services 2.5.x.

There is a minor change from Cairngorm 2.2 to Cairngorm 2.2.1.

They have changed ServiceLocator to reflect moving of classes to LiveCycle Data Services (fds.swc). The main aim is to align Cairngorm with the moving of SWC libraries in Flex 2.0.1 with Hotfix 2 and LiveCycle Data Services 2.5.x.

Cairngorm was developed to work on request/response communication mode. To work on Data Oriented Architecture is still a challenging task.It seems that Adobe Consulting is working on this area.We can expect some significant changes in next Cairngorm release.I am looking forward to the next big release of Cairngorm with all these changes.

Pune Flex User Meet:7th Oct, 2007

Who will talk on what?

Debabrata Acharjee
1. Flash CS3 and Flex integration
2. Flex memory profiling

Anupam Shah
1. Flex and .NET Integration
2. Benchmarking applications: DOT NET web service, JSON web service, and Flex Remoting using FLUORINE. It is an open source .NET Flash Remoting Gateway

When?
Sunday 7th Oct, 2007 11 AM

Where?
Perennial Systems campus.
32 Market Yard,
On the way to Last Bus Stop,
On the way to Ganga Dham,
Pune - 411037
Phone : 24271114

Here is the map

We would love to see you in the meet and also love to hear from you :)

Adobe Roadmap: CoCoMo + Pacifica + Thermo

Web 2.0 to work 2.0 - Adobe is going to cater for everyone. Apart from acquiring Virtual Ubiquity, they are working on number of applications, platforms which will help to retain adobe’s supremacy over the RIA market.Max 2007 was one of the most successful events of adobe in terms of visibility and marketing the future product. I could not attend MAX. Out of the hype on the blogosphere I had to notice the following interesting technologies:

CoCoMo :

Adobe® Connect™ enables peoples to share screens and have meetings. Users pay on hosted subscription basis without buying this product.It seems that adobe is going more towards this revenue model. Adobe is opening that up now as a platform for developers which will be known as CoCoMo .It will allow the developers to create applications that Adobe will be hosting. Web video, is one of the key focus of adobe. Few days back they have announced support for H.264 high-definition video in Flash.

Pacifica:

Pacifica is another interesting real-time collaboration technology which is going to add voice communications to adobe platform. Pacifica is the name of Adobe's voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP),developers will be able to establish point-to-point, player-to-player connection using Pacifica.

Thermo:

Adobe is always popular among the designers. Thermo is the visual tool that will enable more designers to create rich Internet applications. Now designers will be able to enjoy ultimate freedom while designing the rich user experience. The prime focus behind this tool will be on encashing from the existing designer base. This is why Thermo is a one of the strategic project for Adobe. It will enable designers to more efficiently build the richer experiences and shall also give developers greater control over creative assets without leaving the development model. It aimed at improving the work flow that happens when developers and designers create applications.

As a Flex Developer,I am happy that I will have lots of new tools and technologies to work with :)

Flex + Ribbit

I have blogged about Ribbit few days back. Now
they have opened their site for the developers. Go and make your next generation VOIP application using flex + ribbit.

Here is the mail I have received from them:

Dear soon-to-be Ribbit Platform Developer,

Within the last 6 weeks, you filled out a request to download the Ribbit component and join our developer community.

We are happy to let you know that as of this week, the component has gone public beta and the developer platform is now open to all developers to join.

Join Now & Download the Component:

To join, go to: http://developer.ribbitphone.com/signUp.php

You will be approved and able to code within 24 hours.
You will receive a login username and password, as well as a dedicated purpose number to develop with.

You will receive 3 simple code samples to get you up and running, building your first voice enabled Flex and AIR apps.

You will be given access to our powerful and informative developer forums.

Happy coding and we can't wait for you to join our growing and valuable developer community!

Charles Freedman

Adobe Max 2007 on YouTube: Opening Keynote and Flash Player 10 (Astro) Sneak Peek

Adobe Max Opening Keynote



Flash Player 10 (Astro) Sneak Peek at MAX Chicago 2007 Keynote



Want to see more ? check out max2007 blog

MAX2007: Trio:Flex_India !

Adobe MAX 2007 [Day 1: Pre-Keynote] Breakfast, originally uploaded by prayanks.

John Koch (Asia Developer Relations manager), Prayank (Evangelist Asia Pacific) and Mrinal Wadhwa (SAP India) at MAX2007 :)

Performance comparison among JavaScript, Java Applet, Flash Player 7,8,9

A nice performance comparison among JavaScript, Java Applet, Flash Player 9
New (Actionscript Virtual Machine-AVM2) - ActionScript 3 as well as Flash Player 7 and 8 (old Actionscript Virtual Machine -AVM1 ) - ActionScript 2. It would be nice to see a comparison between Flex and Silverlight performance. If you know any good resource on this please leave a comment here.

Here is the link

Check out adobe.com/devnet!

Finding information on adobe site was never so easy. Check out the new site .It’s just wonderful! No information overloading. All the information you need is just one click away. You will experience a better navigation and find a greater consistency.

For Flex resources and tutorials. Check out this link

Mass migration from orkut towards facebook by the elite crowd of India?

I have joined facebook few days back after receiving tons of invites from my friends/contacts.I have noticed with all my surprise that lots of my friends have migrated to facebook from orkut.Alexa has already ranked facebook No.22 in India.By opening the APIs facebook has created a platform which empowers the developers to plugin features into facebook and get noticed by 30 million people connected to it.

Doug McCune has already added the flex based ShuffleBored app to facebook.

Here is a screenshot of my friends on shuffleBored:




Some facts about facebook:

General Growth
• More than 24 million active users
• More than 100,000 new registrations per day since Jan. 2007
• An average of 3 percent weekly growth since Jan. 2007
• Active users have doubled since Facebook expanded registration in Sept. 2006
User Demographics
• Over 47,000 regional, work-related, collegiate, and high school networks
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older
• Maintain 85 percent market share of 4-year U.S. universities
User Engagement
• Sixth-most trafficked site in the United States*
• More than 40 billion page views per month in May 2007
• More than half of active users return daily
• People spend an average of 20 minutes on the site daily*
Applications
• No. 1 photo sharing application on the web*
• Photo application draws more than twice as much traffic as the next three sites combined*
• More than 1.8 billion photos on the site
• More than 6 million active user groups on the site
International Growth
• Canada has the most users outside of the United States, with more than 2.5 million active users
• The U.K. is the third largest country with more than 1.4 million active users
• Remaining Top 10 countries in order of active users (outside of the U.S., Canada and UK): Norway, Australia, South Africa, Lebanon, Egypt, Sweden and India
-Source

I also want to see half a million Indian Flex Developers in next three years!

Dear Yakov Fain,

This is regarding your post "I also want to see a million Flex developers in three years". I liked your attitude towards the technology, especially when you say ' I’m not going to fall in love with any programming language, sorry, Flex. But I promise, we’ll have steady relations for a while’. You are sounding like a real businessman here :)! I agree that everything depends on the current market trend. Flex is hot and you want to explore or exploring the opportunity around. Good luck Yakov Fain! But I don't agree on the part that India is still asleep. Have a look to this post

Flex India is going great guns

This post will prove you wrong! As an early adopter of flex and being a part of the ever increasing flex developer community of India,I can assure you about a good competition soon from these new kids on the block.

Best Regards,
Debabrata

Should Flash/Flex Developers learn Java/PHP/Ruby?

Try this search query on flexjobs list
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/flexjobs/msearch?query=java&charset=utf-8

There are around 325 job posts for Flex Developers by the time I have posted this entry. Out of these 325 jobs, I have noticed 322 jobs require Java or any other server side technologies as a skill.

In most of the job posts at flex jobs list, I have found the following key skills and attributes for Flex Developer requirements:

• CF, .NET, PHP, JAVA, or Ruby experience
• Knowledge of MS SQL and/or MySQL
• Extensive background in Java or C++.
• Java 1.3+, .NET, C#, JSP 1.2+, Javascript,
• DHTML, ActionScript, CSS, Java Beans, XML, Struts, Servlets 2.3+, ASP,
• 4+ years JAVA programming experience required,
• J2EE/EJB3 experience preferred.
• Knowledge of back-end technologies such as PHP and Ruby on Rails
• Strong object-oriented development skills (Java, C++)

If you closely notice these requirements, you will realize that most of them are for Java Developers (or any other server side technology), who can work on Flex too. That means Flex is not the primary skill but a nice to have.

Yakov Fain has a nice and interesting post under the topic
Should Java developers learn Flex - mixed feelings
I have also experienced this at my work, where Java Developers are embracing flex not because of the love for the technology but for the pressure from their employer. Big companies are adopting RIA extensively as their future technical direction and trying to make use of existing developer base. It’s all good. Learning a new technology is always fun. The success story of Flex as a technology lies mostly on this mass migration of developers. But what about the existing flash developer base? Should they also learn server-side technologies and upgrade themselves for the demanding market? The job requirements trends at flexjobs suggest us to learn and have a very good command over server-side technologies too. Being just an Actionscripter or Flex Developer is not going to fetch good fortune in today’s competitive market. Now flash platform is no more restricted to client side technologies. Gone are the days, when we used to have timelines, Movieclips to create nice and fancy looking animation and intros using flash.To become successful in flash platform, one has to have very good understanding of Eclipse IDE, Adobe LiveCycle, Servlets, JMS, J2EE architecture and the list goes on.

Jooce in India: strategic philanthropy

Before delving into a discussion on Jooce in Indian context, let us consider some of the available statistics on Indian internet users:

• Less than 5% of India’s populations are online
• Home PCs at 3.5 million out of a total of about 210 million homes
• “India has the fastest growing Internet user base in the Asia Pacific Region" -IDC report
  
• The Internet & Mobile Association of India predicts that internet users will grow from the current 39 million to a 100 million by 2007. A majority of these users will be accessing the Net from cyber cafes

I have traveled and stayed in almost all of the big cities in India and have noticed the ever increasing crowds of the cyber-nomads around the cyber cafes. Most of them are young generations addicted to social networking sites .Due to this increasing number of net users, internet service provider Sify’s iWay Cyber Cafe Chain already crossed the 3100 mark in India.

Jooce, a Paris based startup is targeting those cyber-nomads. They are coming up with a flash based webOS and sharing platform. Jooce has got that X factor in its user interface.

Jooce could be used as a private online desktop with public file sharing capabilities. It is a online space to keep, view, listen to – and instantly share files, photos, music and video with friends.

Considering the large number of cyber cafe users, I can see a bright future of Jooce in India



I can feel the pulse of their marketing strategy just looking at their blog. The proper term to describe the strategy would be ‘grass root level penetration’.

I could not resist myself from quoting jooce’s blog where they say,

“As we prepare to launch private beta it is worth reminding ourselves that potential applications for internet platforms are not always obvious to those of us in the western world who own several laptops, PDAs or PCs.”

So true!

“If a community believes a product is going to contribute to the education of the next generation and create a brighter future for them, they will find the money to pay for it,” said Dan Shine, Director of the 50×15 Initiative, speaking in the “Connecting the four billion” session. “If you spend time in any one of several developing countries, you soon start to appreciate that it is standing room only in cybercafes. There are huge market opportunities that are largely untapped.”

I agree on the above “strategic philanthropy”. I wish if we can come up with a product something like jooce in our own. I hope some day Indian MNCs will realize the potentiality of Indian market and work on it rather then focusing on outsourcing work only.

Good luck jooce!

Real-time charting solution: Lightstreamer an alternative to Flex Messaging Service

I have been working for real-time/streaming data/charting solution in flex for last couple of months. We are using Flex Messaging Service which comes along with the Flex Data Service (Adobe LiveCycle Data Services). Few days back I checked Lightstreamer as an alternative to Flex Messaging Service. They have just released SDK for flex 2.0. I have configured and run the demo app in my system. It’s really easy to configure. I wish to code a nice app using Lightstreamer soon.

Lightstreamer Flex SDK

The new Flex SDK features a native ActionScript 3 library that handles the communication with Lightstreamer Server and offers a high-level API, used by Flex developers to exploit the publish/subscribe paradigm implemented by Lightstreamer. The Flex SDK, that is shipped as part of Lightstreamer Presto and Vivace editions, will be demonstrated at AjaxWorld 2007 West (September 23-26, 2007, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA).

About Lightstreamer

Lightstreamer is a push/streaming engine based on the AJAX and Comet paradigms that can deliver real-time text data to Web browsers (pure HTML applications, with no downloads) and to any client applications. The Lightstreamer Server can handle thousands of concurrent clients and implements advanced algorithms, as bandwidths management, congestion control, dynamic filtering. Lightstreamer (legal entity Weswit Srl) is part of Par-Tec Spa. Development began in 2000, originally by the financial system Integration activity within the group, then in 2004 Lightstreamer became an independent ISV to provide ‘push technology’ to a wider global market.

Flex Builder: An error has occurred. See error log for more details

How Many times have you encountered the problem while refreshing your flex builder or opening a mxml file?

• An error has occurred. See error log for more details.
• Unable to create this part due to an internal error. Reason for the failure: The editor class could not be instantiated.

I get this error more often. How I solve it?

Earlier I use to go to my workspace directory and delete the entire .metadata folder without knowing anything. In this way I used to lose all my settings.

Recently I have found a better way of solving this problem:

• I go to [workspace directory]/.metadata/.plugins/com.adobe.flexbuilder.codemodel/searchCache

• Backup the directories in there that end with “.index”. zip them up and keep them somewhere else
  
• Now delete the directories and keep the file “catalog.xml” file as it is there
• Run builder again and I should not get any error now
  

The problem is that the lucene index was corrupted or lost, probably during a failed Flex Builder shutdown. When flex builders starts it tries to load the lucene index but it fails to load that file and then it throws the error.

Web 2.0 Entrepreneurship: business ethics and yaari.com

All this started few months back when I had started getting mails from my friends and contacts to join yaari.com, an India focus social networking site but I have never acted upon that. My inbox was getting flooded with mails from my contacts to join that site. Out of my surprise, I noticed that I was getting same mail again and again from the same contact. All these days it was limited to my contacts only. So it forced me to think that it came from my trusted contacts only. But when I received the same mails from two of the technical groups I belong, I could not resist myself from expressing my frustration out there and I came to know about a cheap tactics of generating traffics by the people behind yaari.com. One of the members of the group mentioned about the privacy policy of yaari.com. It says in its policy that the user will allow yaari.com to use his/her address book. It also forces the user to enter his/her gmail/yahoo id and password. It’s very frustrating to know the terms and condition of yaari.com mentioned in their privacy policy. Very few people read the terms and conditions while signing to any site and the after affect of it could be worst then just spamming the inbox. Websites like yaari.com and mushrooming web 2.0 sites are so desperate to increase the member base that they often forget the moral and ethical aspect of business. Some time they don’t even have a privacy policy in place. Personally I don’t provide my email address and password to any site which I don’t believe but instead of that I do get spam mails everyday.

I will just quote two frustrated members of that site from flex India group

Oh... Sorry Debabrata and FLEX_INDIA team, I am sorry I don’t know how to stop this spam. Can any please help me? Or else we need to complain yaari.com about this

I am really sorry for this kind of mail. But trust me, "yaari.com" is among bad sites which I was not aware of. I had just registered/subscribed my account into it, just to know what this site is all about. But it has somehow taken all the e-addresses from my address book, and sends such a mail request/spam mail to all my email address. I would have never forwarded such mails to professional forums/professional people. I am unsubscribing myself from yaari.com. It’s just that I am one among who got caught by them. And I replied for letting all the members know about these bad/banned site "yaari.com". And please be aware of such sites (which prove themselves to be like orkut.com) and not to subscribe to it!! I am sure there must be many like me who might have got stuck by this yaari.com. O please unsubscribe from it, before something unusual happens. It has just has stolen all the e-mail address from my contact list and forwarded such kind of mail to everyone.

After reading all these posts in the list I started digging on the site and the people behind the site. I came to know that the people behind this initiative are not any ordinary people but having a strong academic background. Some of them are Stanford alumni.I think we can expect some sort of business ethics from them.

What people say about this site?
I have seen number of posts around the blogsphere expressing the outrage and frustration against this site.

1.Aalap.com
2.Startupsquad.com

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!!

Declarative Graphics Framework (Degrafa) for Flex

Another Good news for flex developers and UI designers.Jason Hawryluk,the man behind Flex 2 Primitive Explorer and Juan Sanchez,the creator of ScaleNine both are working on a Declarative Graphics Framework for Flex 2 (Degrafa).Check this out at degrafa.com

Declarative Graphics Framework (Degrafa) will work as a bridge between the designer and developer.It will make the graphics classes more easy to use within Flex framework.Developers/designers will be able to use the richness of graphics classess through MXML.

Getting on the Flex Highway:Flex APAC Seminars

Some brilliant guys from adobe India, Prayank,Raghu ,Harish are doing a great job in evangelizing flex in India.If you missed it,check out the Flex APAC Seminars at code.google.

I liked the last presentation “Getting on the Flex Highway – How to get up to speed with Flex” by Raghu

If you are a flex newbie or like to start coding in flex then this presentation will definitely give you a good start.

My New Bangla blog!!

Blogger in Draft: video upload in blogger

Blogger in Draft: Introducing Blogger in draft and video upload

We stopped writting long back.Now are we going to stop typing too? :)

What is mx_internal?

I have seen this namespace so many times but could not understand or I should say never tried to understand it.Today I have found this small piece of information from Deniles's blog.Just marked it here for my future reference.

"Sometimes you want to change the behavior of a Flex component but its hidden behind a private method or variable so you can't subclass it. Thankfully they provide the source so you can just create your own version. This is heavy handed and in some cases you just need to tweak things a little. Many components within the Flex framework have methods and properties flagged as mx_internal"

Orkut Scrap book Reader

As promised here is the link for downloading Flex Orkut Scrapbook Reader desktop version .99

URL:Click Here

I will have a online version of it soon on my blog.Keep checking.. :)

Flex 3 “Moxie” and “Apollo” public beta

No more monday blues to day! Flex 3 (Moxie)and Adobe AIR (Apollo) public beta now up on Adobe Labs

Orkut: Popular Social Networking site is in trouble in India once again

The popular networking site orkut is again on the eye of media.This time Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena (BVS), the Shiv Sena's student wing ordered cyber cafes in Mumbai to block the site alleging it contained 'matter defamatory to Chhatrapati Shivaji and Sena chief Bal Thackeray' according to MUMBAI MIRROR ,a Mumbai based popular newspaper.

Orkut is the mySpace of young indian citizens.Young generation of india is getting addicted to Orkut.I remember Abdul,the flash guru of India, deleted his orkut profile twice.You can read his share of reason here.I had to delete my first profile for more or less same reason but I could not resist my temptation to keep in touch with my long lost buddies and created my profile once again. The time of my parents and mine are totally different.My father and grandfather had not much of mobility. They have spent most of their time in the same country/state/city. We have much more mobility than them. My friends are scattered all over the globe .Our life style has changed dramatically.We live in isolated flats unlike them. So the social networking is the manifestation of our inner desire to keep in touch and socializing.It solves a very basic requirment of todays generation.

Technology has got both its pros and cons.Social networking has got its both sides too. But I don’t think banning of such site shall solve the problem.Whenever technology brings something new to us,it will keep creating its impact in our society. We, the building block of this society are responsible for how to use the technology.

Flex Orkut ScrapBook Reader !!

I have just developed a small flex app called Orkut scrapbook Reader.Orkut user will be able to read their scrapbook without even login into orkut account.I will upload this app soon.

Googlegear:Journey of a new Era

Last few days my techie friends are talking about googlegear.Today I have installed and tried to play with the nuts and bolts of it. This smart kid of google allows user to view and work on web app offline and is in its early beta only!!

I have just followed the following simple steps to create my first googlegear app.

1. Installed googlegear
2. Followed these few step by step guidance

And I was able to create my first googlegear web app, which is smart enough to work offline.

Googlegear architecture



Like all other breakthrough products of google, this product has also got tremendous amount of potentiality.

Currently googlegear is working with other technology partner adobe to align the Apollo SQL API with the Google Gear SQL API..

Flex-Java geek Christophe Coenraets has created a nice Flex-based SQLAdmin for Google Gears.

You can see the application here.

Unit testing for Flex and ActionScript 3

I wanted to attend Adobe Evangelist prayank swaroop's presentaion on FlexUnit today but could not make it because of some urgent meeting at work.After returning to home,I have got the link of the recording from Flex India group. That presentation was good.I think in India we are not using unit testing tool extensively for Flex app testing.This presentation will definitely help the fellow Indian developers.

Good initiative prayank!!

I have listed down some of the good resources for Flex unit testing here.

1.Unit testing and Test Driven Development (TDD) for Flex and ActionScript 3.0
2.ActionScript 3 error checking: unit testing recommended

Urgent Flex Developer requirement at Kanbay !!

Urgent Flex Developer requirement at Kanbay (Capgemini)

There are some urgent open positions for Flex Developers at Kanbay (Capgemini) with onsite opportunity!

If you are interested please send me your resume to dzacharjee[at]kanbay.com or deb.flash[at].gmail.com.

Mogulus:Live 24/7 online Television Channel!

Another kid on the block!This time it’s Mogulus! In this era of citizen journalism and user generated content,Mogulus has come up with a unique concept.

No progressive download like YouTube anymore! Its Live and real time video stream! The beta website looks promising .I have enrolled myself for the beta testing and eagerly waiting for the invitation.

Nanocast to Mixercast!!

Check out the new mixercast.I tried to login with my old nanocast ID to mixercast and it worked! Mixercast is more user friendly than nanocast.I liked the fullscreen mode of the cast.It looks nice.At times I was totally lost while creating mixercast!I will blog about the details of my experience with mixercast soon.I have just put togather some of the movie related to my home state Assam here! Enjoy !

ActionScript 3.0 cookbook in India

Every time I search for a latest flash/flex book in Indian computer bookshops; the answer is always the same,'No! We don't have one’. If I am lucky enough then the shopkeeper will show me a copy of Flash MX book or any other book on older version of Flash/Flex .I have Never got any book on the current version as soon as it releases. The same way I tried to get a copy of Actionscript 3.0 cookbook. I have placed an online order months back to Computer Bookshop (I) Pvt. Ltd for the same book along with some other Flex books. The reply was as frustrating as before. Few days back, I have received the book through VPP.

This book is Available in Indian Edition

Price of the book is Rs.475.00 Less 20% Disc. = Rs.380.00

I was really happy to have this book on my shelve.This book will help the developers to approach the common day to day Actionscript problems. The target reader of the book are budding coders as well as the experienced ActionScripter.If you come to know about any latest Flex /Flash related book available in Indian bookshops, please leave a comment here.

Joost error #121 in India

There are not enough numbers of Joost users in india due to this reason you are likey to see this message over and over.

Joost:online distribution channel for television

Joost is a Internet television browser developed by the Skype team. It allows users to instantly flip among thousands of channels of full-screen video. Joost's main server provides only licensed content, which is then shared over peer-to-peer networks.It gains efficiency as more users log on ike BitTorrent.

Apart from watching online TV, you will also be able to chat with the other viewers instanlty.

The service is free, and it's supported by one minute of targeted advertisements per hour.

I have found one south Asian channel 'Saavn' which Serves bollywood content.

As a beta tester,I have some invite left with with me.If your need an invite, please leave a comment here.

New look and feel of Flex.org

Just noticed Adobe has restructured flex.org. Things are looking much simple and user friendly now. The new look and feel consists of the following links.

• Blog
• Community
• Documentation
• Download
• Jobs
• Showcase
• Support

All the information you require to plunge into flex development is handy now. With this new look and feel adobe has also tried to cater information to the bigger developer community by adding the following links:

Flex for ColdFusion developers
Flex for Java developers.
Flex for .NET developers.
Flex for PHP developers.
Flex for Ruby developers.

After enjoying Macromedia’s developer’s friendly policy, like other fellow Actionscript developers, I was also skeptical about Adobe’s policy towards community building activities. But it seems adobe has learnt from the former Macromedia. Things are looking positive.

Cairngorm 2.2 Released

Adobe has finally released Cairngorm Microarchitecture 2.2.If you don't have it yet. grab your copy from here

It has been more than a year,I am developing my Apps on top of Cairngorm Microarchitecture.As most of my projects are enterprise level projects,CG always saves much of my development time.

There are some signigicant changes in this release.

Changes between Cairngorm 2.1 and Cairngorm 2.2:
1.Removed dependency on Flex Data Services (fds.swc)
2.Flex SDK SWCs are no longer linked into Cairngorm.swc
3.Added support for setting remote credentials
4.Fixed bug with Web services not loading the WSDL
5.ModelLocator interface deprecated in favor of IModelLocator
6.Added deprecation metadata for compiler support
7.Added dispatch() helper method to CairngormEvent
8.Commands now added to Controller with weak references
9.Added removeCommand to FrontController
10.Made commands protected in FrontController

Three months without Internet connection!

I have spent more than three months without an internet connection at home (without TV too). It's long three months. I never imagined that I would be able to live my life without internet.

"To say, 'Try to give up the internet and if you can't do it you're addicted' would be like saying, 'Try to give up speaking' – It was the saying of one of the netizen.

In this 21st century, we all are like a solitary island. Like those solitary island all My friends are scattered across the globe. I remember my school and college days, my fellow friends, when we all were so well connected with each other. We used to stay in the same small town. But now things are different. We are apart now. Our destiny has taken us to places. Internet has given us the opportunity to stay connected. But is this the same way we used to share and enjoy our company? No, not at all. Sitting in front of a pc and chatting with my friends are not all the same like before. This virtual meeting can not give me the same satisfaction as I used to get in person with friends.

After using internet for 7 years, I have found myself a different person. I have metamorphosed to a different persona. There were times when all my six senses used to fill up with the real experiences of a situation. How can I compare those real lives with this virtual cyber world!

Yes, Internet has given us so many things. It has become the part and parcel of our life The other day one of my fellow Software Engineer was telling that ‘Google ’ should be the another resource name in our project plan. I can see the dangerous part of this dependence.

Enough of the background! Let me put in some simple words what I was up to these days.

I have had the privilege to watch many good movies, heard good music; turning the pages of my favorite books once again. I have given myself a royal treat. It was a celebration. A celebration of my self. I have once again discovered that old small town guy in me. It was just awsome!

If you are a netizen and can’t think your life without internet then try to give your self this treat once in a while. You would simply love it! You would give a big relief to your eyes too. You will feel fresh and energetic. Get yourself busy with the thing you love to do or used to love to do and re-discover yourself once again.

শুধু বন্ধু হতে কি পারবে তুমি আমার?

আমি চাই না তোমাকে ঝাঁকাতে কিংবা বাঁকাতে
কাঁচাতে কিংবা পাকাতে কিংবা ঠকাতে,
চাই না তোমায় ভীষণ কিছু শেখাতে
চাই না তোমাকে বাড়াতে কিংবা কমাতে,
তোমার হৃদয় গলাতে কিংবা জমাতে
হবে না তোমাকে কোনমতেই আমার মত হতে,
একটা বন্ধু হবে কি বল তুমি আমার?
শুধু বন্ধু হতে কি পারবে তুমি আমার?

Hyderabad to Pune

Another excuse for not blogging for a long time! Yes,it was another transfer in my career and the journey continues. I have got transferred to our Pune location. I hope this time I am going to enjoy the city and work both. An exciting flex project is waiting for me. This time I am going to use flex charting like never before.

Comparing to Hyderabad, Pune is much vibrant city but I have found infrastructure of Hyderabad is much better than Pune.

I am missing my everyday journey from my apartment (Kondapur) to Gachibowli,Kanbay Kampus and old work place and co-workers too!

After coming to Pune I met Abdul in person. I used to know him virtually.But this time met him in person.He is intelligent and hearty.I liked his idea of Indian flash/flex community.If you want to know more about his initiative you can read it here

I am looking forward to Meet another great guy Brajeshwar ,he is also in Pune working for Nanocast!