From: http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-21566

Close Flash Builder 4 beta 2

Delete this folder in your workspace:

\.metadata\.plugins\com.adobe.flexbuilder.codemodel.

Relaunch Flash Builder 4 beta 2

cfdevcamp is a gathering of people passionate about learning through  collaboration.  Attendees will work in small teams to code projects  ideas from the team members or from a suggested list of projects.   This will not be a lecture style event or a traditional classroom with  a set curriculum and learning materials.  We want you to ask questions, hack away and have fun.

This is a great event for ColdFusion beginners, experts, and everyone in between.

For more information and to sign up for this free event visit: http://www.cfdevcamp.org/

Here is the sample code I showed in the presentation. Rt-click and select View Source for the source.

http://www2.themorphicgroup.com/blog/flashcamp2009/singleton/Singleton_Complete.html
source

http://www2.themorphicgroup.com/blog/flashcamp2009/observer/Observer_Complete.html
source

http://www2.themorphicgroup.com/blog/flashcamp2009/event/Event_Complete.html
source

Should be a good time. If you are in St. Louis and have any interest in Flash, Flex, or Catalyst think about coming.

Tickets still available.

www.flashcampstlouis.com

We don't want to brag or anything but we know we showed you something you've never seen before. We bet you went and told all of your programmer friends about it. It's cool. We're proud of our talents. We're even cool with the fact that you probably went and told your boss you figured that problem out all by yourself. No, no, it's fine, don't worry. We're happy for you. We had a good time too, but there is something that does bother us. We never see you anymore. It's kind of awkward.

We know, we know. You've been busy. You got your projects and the office has been a mad house. We TOTALLY understand. We have stuff going on too. Like we've been wicked busy. It's just that when we don't hear from you we kind of feel used. Sorry. "Used" is too strong of a word. Well it's like this. Even though the role of Blogger has evolved over the years, the stigma of having a high bounce rate still exists. Once word gets out on the street you have a high bounce rate, people have no problem stopping in, getting their answer, and then leaving without so much as a comment.

Oh god. We're sorry. We can see your eyes glossing over. Look, we don't expect you to leave a message on our Facebook or Twitter page every day. We don't expect you to immediately introduce us to your CIO or CTO. We know those are big steps. Don't get us wrong. We have lives of our own and don't want to get tied down either.

All we want is for you to follow us on Twitter or become a fan of our Facebook page and occasionally let us know if you like what we are doing. That's all. Who knows. You might find out we're more than a nice pair of technical tutorials and that we are also interesting and funny.

The other day I was signing up for a new gmail account, just filling out the form as usual. I clicked the submit button, and I got an error. Apparently I hadn't typed the correct value for the CAPTCHA field. (In case you're wondering what a CAPTCHA is, it's that image and text input usually with instructions like "type the letters that you see.")  I was puzzled at what had happened. Certainly it couldn't have been BECAUSE THE CAPTCHA WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO READ. I figured that I must have just mistyped.  I tried the new CAPTCHA that gmail provided, certain that I'd gotten it right this time. Again, an error.  It wasn't until about the twentieth CAPTCHA that I was able to eventually create 2hot4u_55@gmail.com.

This got me thinking, though. I see CAPTCHAs everywhere except on The Morphic Group's blog. And if CAPTCHAs are good enough for Google then they are good enough for The Morphic Group. That's why I've decided to add a CAPTCHA to our blog for comments.

I don't actually think the addition of a CAPTCHA will have an effect on comments spam. We've already got the 500 WordPress plugins installed for that, and they work nicely to keep the comments spam to only a few hundred a day. The point is just that people expect a certain user experience these days. If you don't have a CAPTCHA then people will feel that something is missing from their experience on your blog. I wouldn't want anyone to have too easy of a time posting a comment on the blog and feel that they'd had a bad user experience on our site. That's the real reason for adding the CAPTCHA.

We decided to outsource the development of the CAPTCHA system for our blog to a company that says that between their teams in India, China, and somewhere in Brazil they can have developers working 24 hours a day for only 55 cents an hour.  The only trouble is that they only communicate by email, and we can't really understand their emails. We can only understand the part that says "next week, very soon." In the meantime, we did get a comp image from them. We think it looks like it will work great. It seems exactly like the CAPTCHA systems we see on every site, including gmail. This is what it looks like.

CAPTCHA

Go ahead. Type the letters you see.

Indycar Race Control is a fully immersive way to experience Indy Racing. Not only
can you watch the live race or in-car video but you can monitor each car's
telemetry data. Here are just some of the features:

• Live race and in-car video (up to 5 simultaneous videos)
• Real-time car telemetry (speed, throttle, RMP, steering, etc)
• Switch any in-car camera to full view and listen to driver & pit crew
• Race standings and scoring
• Configurable driver 'pods' allowing individually drivers to be tracked
• Customizable layouts
• 2 driver compete mode
• Fullscreen mode

Indy Race Control is only available during live Indy Races, please visit indycar.com
for more information on race dates.

Indycar Race Control Technical Details

Indy Race Control is an Adobe Flex application created by The Morphic Group that receives
live streaming video and live telemetry data from the race track during a race.

Race & in-car video
During an Indy car race live video and in-car video are encoded and redistributed from a
Flash Video CDN. Each video stream is encoded at multiple sizes. The Indy Race Control
Flex client is given information on which cars have in-car video and which is the main
video feed. The client allows any of the in-car videos to be switch from the small viewer
to the main viewer.

Real-time race car telemetry
Each car's live telemetry data is acquired by a cluster of Wowza servers. The Indy Race
Control Flex client connects to a Wowza server via a load balanced cluster living on
Amazon EC2. After connecting the client receives real-time race car telemetry data.
The Morphic Group create a Wowza based application that can scale to multiple
thousands of simulations clients.

Video Statistics
Conviva's LivePass gives Indy Racing the ability to view real-time statistics of video
streams being watched with the Indy Race Control.

Indy Racing Control Flex Client
The user interface was created by The Morphic Group using Adobe Flex. This Flex based
client provides the race fan with a huge amount of information displayed in friendly
and useful way. The user can customize the application to meet their needs. Specific
drivers and/or videos can be selected, and these custom layous can be saved.

Visit indycar.com to view Indy Race Control during races.

The main focus of this three day convention was the presentations and sessions on a variety of topics such as pixel manipulation, animation, programing design patterns, accessibility, broadcast media, sound, and video. What comes to mind are all of the tasty tidbits of knowledge smoothly gulped down like a frosty IPA.

Day one started out with a series of workshops. My workshop of choice was Papervision 3D presented by John Grden and Andy Zupko. The first half with John was a great overview of basics. The next half included the advanced and new features of PV3D. John and Andy kept a steady pace making sure that the attendees were involved throughout in the session. I was most impressed with the new amazing features of layers and effects. Keep in mind that this was only a day workshop that is covered in two days.
Good job guys.

The next two days consisted of breakout sessions and keynote presentations. Unfortunately
I could not attend all of these presentations. From what I've heard from the attendees,
everyone was pleased with the content presented throughout the conference.

Briefly... I will go though some of the session I did attend:

• Building Social applications with Christophe Conraets was great eye opener to projects you can do with Actionscript API for Facebook and Adobe Flash Collaboration Service (formerly named "Cocomo"):.
• Joa Ebert presented some great tools (including Hobnox Open Source) and development disciplines.
• Every time I attend a session related to Big Spaceship, I'm always entertained as well has inspired. Jamie Kosoy gave us a backstage look at the process of Big Spaceship... Very cool. From Ten fundamentals of the process, my favorite was number 6: Buy the developer Whiskey! … indeed … (Make mine Bushmills, Sam).
• Dr. Woohow gave an exceptional presentation of mixing it up with applications to create
  some amazing visual landscapes.
• Doug Marttilla attempted to go through ten design patterns within an hour and succeeded. By presenting his own insight into each pattern, he gave an overall good presentation. You rock!
• Who couldn't learn a thing or two about video production from a guy like Robert Reinhardt, A true innovator. It was a power packed session. He's got a really great project coming up - VideoRX.

The bigger presentations at the Castle were outstanding even with a ruckus beer festival going on. Grant Skinner… Mark Anders… Andre Michelle... Gmunk... Keith Peters… Chuck Freedman … Mario Klingerman and of course Hoss Gifford. (I may have missed a few presentations... my apologies)

Of course... there were the parties and beer tastings at the end of each day at The Castle.
This was challenging place to incorporate speakers on stage with the combination of socializing,
beer and food. Unlike most of the conferences there was better chance to meet and talk to more people in this forum. Maybe it was added element of beer. It all seemed to work out well. I don't
think anyone was thrown out for rude behavior ... (Todd ?).

Favorite events: (Day 2) The Flash is Right with Host Philip Kerman and (Day 3) Toussaint and the China Band

The convergence of learning, drinking, and hobnobbing for three days was a success for the organizers and partners. All who attended were treated to the best talent, not to mention some
great micro-beers. Special shout out to the Park Plaza Hotel- great venue.

Having gone to a few out of town conferences on Flash, design and development, I was happy
and proud that this one was held in my own backyard, Boston.

Cheers!

Ben brings his interactive development expertise and professional process to our team. Having worked with Ben on past projects, we had the advantage of knowing the level of code and attention to detail that Ben brings to his work.

Again we are delighted to have Ben aboard...welcome.

Ash is a highly focused seasoned senior software developer, with a well known reputation for delivering quality code on every project.  Co-author of " Adobe Air in Action", Ash also brings to the table a wealth of knowledge which has benefited the greater development community and will no doubt be a great asset to The Morphic Group and it's clientele.

Having worked with Ash in the past, we know The Morphic Group has added another great talent to the team.

Welcome to The Morphic Group.

Our engineers have been sneaking away from work and tinkering around in the lab (along with a few elves) during this year to create these two winter-themed games for you to play and share with friends and family. We hope you enjoy our gift to you.

Take me to The Morphic Group Labs

Cheers!

In the last couple of days, I decided to go through my notes, collect all the presentation files (powerpoints, pdfs and zips) and find blogs that reference the keynotes. Essentially I wanted to reflect and review "the Happening" that was Adobe Max 2008, my first Max.

For the most part I was impressed with this, my first, Adobe convention. It did not fail to inspire and to inform developers and designers on the future of Adobe and their products. In fact, when I got home I wanted to buy the latest Creative Suite right away, based on the feeling that I'm missing out on new and exciting features. Call it the rabid consumer in me. Like all the conventions I've attended in the past, I feel that most of the session only skimmed the surface of what I expected to learn. Keep in mind that I've attended Flash in the Can three times and FlashForward last year. The big difference is the session security lock up. You had to be assign to you time slot session via your id card. If you changed your mind, you had to log in to the system and change your schedule. In other conventions, you could wonder around to another session if the assigned session you were slated to attend went south. I can understand this method reduces the congestion and interruptions of people running around and crashing into the middle of a presentation. My hat goes off to anyone who prepares and presents ideas to a group as large as the Max crowd or any crowd for that matter.

These are the sessions that impressed me the most in no particular order:
The Flex Architecture Faceoff - "to be or not to be" using a Framework. It had as much drama as a Shakespeare play - Starring Todd Anderson, Josh Noble, Chafic Kaznoun and Yakov Falin. I only wish it could have lasted a bit longer. Chafic and Yakov voiced their disdain for using a framework in projects. The idea being that they contain a lot of code that can be unnecessary. They found that an "al a carte" setup with a smaller, tighter group of developers is best for their projects. Ideally using a blackbox approach, passing data providers, is what one should strive for. Other suggestions include passing events on data changes rather than using data binding and using code generation. If there was an opposing side to this argument, it was held by both Josh and Todd. They touted that frameworks are best in large group project where developer level may vary. It is also a means to standardize the work/code. This makes it easier for another developer to maintain the project after the fact. Cairngorm was the framework most referenced in the discussion. There was also a discussion on using Prana with Cairngorm (http://www.pranaframework.org/), to implement inversion of control and dependency injection. From what I understand you can swap out services willy nilly and test object instances via xml file. I heard something about this from the Flex show Podcast. Never used it, but I should definitely try it out. There was a reference to using PureMVC (puremvc.org). No doubt it was a lively discussion. At the end of the session, I think everyone was in agreement on a few points, on when to use and not use a framework. Both sides voiced sensible opinions. Those who attended benefited from their knowledge.

Google Maps with Flash/Air applications: More dynamic views of the map content (3D), Embed video and animation assets. Now support Air... What I got out of this session- I'm interested in building an Air Application using this library verses MapQuest's library.

Adobe XDCE - Air User Experience Model - Demos on Aggregators, Utilities, Media Consumers... Probably the most impressive application demo - the International Herald Tribune - Basically brings the New York Times layout and design to Adobe Air. What I got out of this session, ideas on Air applications that could be built.

Flex framework features to support large applications: Build the case for the Marshall Plan - Dividing the work between sub application domains / different versions of Flex Framework. This plan will start to be implemented from Flex 3.2 on up to newer versions. Many limitations - No strong typing, No Managers/Singletons, Security issues, and Remote Object Data services have serializing issues. The idea is to support legacy frameworks from this point forward when updating legacy projects cannot be accomplished. What I got the most out of this session was the idea of using modules, RSL to break up application and make applications faster.

Session on 2Advanced: I learned that a company that started around the Internet Crash of 2000 happened can still survive and thrive by having employees multitask. I was very impressed with their work ethic and their creative portfolio.

The major keynotes on Monday and Tuesday focused on The Flash Platform and sneak peeks - Flash Player 10, Adobe Catalyst (Thermo), Adobe Air 1.5, Gumbo (Flex Builder 4) The major trends - Client and Cloud computing, Social computing, Devices and desktop computing. They had a small mention of Adobe Alchemy, which allows you to run C/C++ code into Actionscript (hmm interesting).
Links (good accounts of the major keynotes):
http://flashthusiast.com/2008/11/17/liveblogging-max-2008-day-1-general-session-keynote-click-refresh/#more-102
http://flashthusiast.com/2008/11/18/liveblogging-max-sneak-peeks-and-awards-refresh-yo/
http://blogs.adobe.com/pdehaan/2007/10/adobe_max_2007_keynote_day_2_e.html

I am really thankful that my company (TMG) allowed me to attend this conference. It was great to finally meet my fellow talented Morphicians from the West Coast. This was the crème al la crème of conferences, a way to see what can and will be next in our industry.

Please feel free to respond with comments or any thoughts on Max 2008.

Joey Lott (author and co-founder/partner at The Morphic Group) has embarked on a cross-country lecture series.

Joey will be speaking to hundreds of developers across the nation on best practices in Flex, Flash and AIR development. As well as teaching, Joey will also be spreading the word on career opportunities at The Morphic Group. 

Here is Joey's tour schedule:

Detroit - September 23

St. Louis - October 4 - AS3 Apex in St. Louis
Presenting Flex, Actionscript, and Flash. Space is limited so please RSVP.

Cleveland - October 9 - Cleveland Flex User's Group
Presenting Flex, Actionscript, and Flash.

Harrisburg - October 10 - Central PA Adobe User Group & Central PA Flash User Group
Presenting "How To Architect Flex Applications."

Philadelphia - October 22 - Philadelphia Flex User Group
Presenting Flex, Actionscript, and Flash.

Raleigh - October 25 - More information to come.

Lafayette - November 3 - Acadiana Adobe User Group
Joey Lott, author of the upcoming O'Reilly book Programming Flex 3 will speak on "How to Architect Flex Applications," as well as answer questions! Join us to welcome this noted Flex author to Acadiana!

Austin - November 5 - Austin CFUG
Joey Lott is internationally recognized as one of the pre-eminent authorities on Adobe Flash technologies. A best-selling author and frequent speaker at industry conferences, Joey strives to inform, engage, and empower his audience.

Tucson - November 10 - Tuson Adobe User Group
3pm at the Arizona State Museum

How To Architect Flex Applications:
When building Flex applications the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You may know how to work with the pieces of Flex (layout, styling components, data components, etc.) but it's still rather easy to get tangled up and frustrated when trying to stitch the piece together into a coherent application. In this presentation we'll look at strategies you can use to build Flex applications in the best way possible. Rather than presenting one boiler plate solution as the "right way" this presentation looks at the bigger picture and common patterns you can employ.

Phoenix - November 10 - GoToAndStop.org
We have the great opportunity to hear from Joey Lott on November 10, 2008 @ 8 PM. This will be our last meeting of the year due to the holidays and isn’t on our normal meeting date because of Joey’s travel plans. He’ll be in Tucson on the 10th presenting earlier that day and will make it here at 8 PM to speak.

Las Vegas - November 13 - VegasFlex
We will be having an extra super special event with Joey Lott (yes, THE Joey Lott) giving a presentation on How to Architect Flex Applications.

Santa Rosa - November 24 - http://nbaug.com/
Joey Lott will be presenting on a variety of Flash-related topics. Joey works with ActionScript during the day, and by night he's a super-secret international man of mystery, rescuing animals and children from harms way, righting wrongs, working for global peace and the rights of all living beings and the environment. Joey is the author (or co-author) of a veritable arsenal of ActionScript and Flash-related titles, including the ActionScript Cookbook, Programming Flash Communication Server, and the Flash 8 Cookbook. In his free time he likes to write poetry, pursue competitive origami, and train in the art of aikido

Salt Lake City - December 2 - More information to come.

Seattle - December 8  - http://www.seaflexug.org
Joey will be speaking to the Seattle Flex User Group on December 8^th at 6:30pm at the Adobe campus in Seattle.  He’ll discuss deep linking in Flex applications.  The Seattle Flex User Group meets monthly to hear from distinguished Flex developers and network with one another.  Past presenters have included members of the Flex engineering team, inventors of technologies built around Flex, and businesses whose services are built with Flex to name a few.  The meetings are open to all who are interested, regardless of experience.

> For additional information click here

Be among the first to see the CS4 big picture at this special joint meeting of 7 Northern California user groups hosted by Adobe. Enjoy free pizza and special prizes.

If you are in the San Fransisco area please join us:
When: September 30, 2008 at 6:30 PM
Where: Adobe San Francisco Building - 601 Townsend at 7th
Cost: FREE!!

RSVP: http://www.baadaug.org/

We think the PDK is one of the coolest projects we've seen in a long time. We really like PermissionTV, and we think they've got a real edge over their competitors because they are willing to innovate in ways that others simply aren't. Working with PermissionTV is a genuinely great experience. They seem to "get it" when it comes to the marketplace, and (for us) more importantly, when it comes to engineering. The PDK shows this, I think. Unlike many of their competitors PermissionTV's PDK is a well-documented and well-engineered (which should go without saying since we had a hand in building it) complete (yet extensible) solution for building video applications.

The Adobe Solution Partner Program benefits partners who extend, enhance and support Adobe products and technologies in the solutions they deliver to customers. As a member, The Morphic Group recognized the additional benefits and opportunities Adobe's program provides. And by integrating new technologies into their products, The Morphic Group is able to extend their reach as well as provide superior support.

I'm due to present a workshop about Flash and Flex application architecture and also a shorter talk about a topic that I have yet to select. If you're going to Flash on the Beach then stop by and say hello.

We are really looking to put together something different. One aspect of what we see as different about The Morphic Group is that we see it as a confederation of really great talent, people who do great work and have respect for one another and for our clients. We've all worked at agencies where we were herded along and buffered from clients and never got to take real ownership of the work we did. We were tired of being nothing but cogs in the machine. And we think that there are lots of talented people who feel similarly.

Another thing that we are looking to do differently is how we work with clients. We are all adopters of agile methodologies because we see that they work where waterfall approaches with layers of management don't work. Fundamentally we think that projects succeed more frequently when clients are engaged in meaningful ways, and when clients are product owners responsible for driving the development process. This fosters a sense of teamwork and mutual respect instead of antagonism.

Okay. Enough said for now. We've got plenty of work to do. We'll write again soon.

[Oh, and we have a fancy press release for this announcement too. You can read it at the news room.]