InsideRIA

PhoneGap: my new favorite open-source project

2008-12-29T16:21:53Z

The real problem with mobile development is that you need to learn a new language. Every platform currently has their own unique language for writing applications, and some of them are downright obtuse (I'm talking to you, Objective-C for iPhone.) With the number of mobile devices and mobile internet connections exponentially rising, it was only a number of time before someone made it easier. Enter PhoneGap.

Why Ribbit is a Big Deal

2008-12-22T16:33:05Z

If you've been hiding under a rock for the last year or so, Ribbit is a platform for voice - a strong platform that allows developers to manage and process voice content in ways we couldn't before. Ribbit is well positioned to radically change the way we view voice communication, and if you're a developer you should probably dig into it. Besides learning a great technology, there's $100,000 in it for you if you can make something good. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

What makes a "User Experience expert"?

2008-12-17T21:37:14Z

If you're like me, you've been hearing a lot about this amazing thing called User Experience. It's supposed to turn your normal, old, web 1.0 piece-of-garbage application into a shining beacon of hope in a world beleaguered by bad interfaces. If you're like me, you've been watching the explosion of User Experience from somewhere between the forefront and the sidelines, enjoying the arrival of the requisite acronyms (UX, XD, EX, UXD, etc.), and trying to figure out exactly where and what the forefront even is. If you're like me, you've been a little skeptical of this vague and magical term for a while now, and if you're anything at all like me, you've been wanting someone to clear things up.

An interview with Rombla creator Bob Lang

2008-12-15T22:04:49Z

If you missed my post last week, Rombla is a powerful WYSIWYG editor for Flash content. Built entirely in Flex, the application serves as both a powerful design tool and CMS. Rombla was built by Piria, a software company based in Louisville, Colorado. I recently caught up with Piria CEO Bob Lang. Bob was kind enough to agree to an interview about Rombla, and gave me some great insights into how they built such an excellent application in such a short time.

Herff Jones launches eDesign online yearbook editor

2008-12-10T08:00:00Z

Today Herff Jones announced the launch of a robust new RIA for creating and editing yearbooks online. The application is called eDesign, and it lets teachers and students collaborate in real time through a fully functional and very powerful layout and content creation tool. I took eDesign for a test drive recently and was really impressed by the sheer number of usable features the team was able to implement - imagine Adobe InDesign done specifically for yearbooks. In this entry I'll take you through the wide range of features eDesign has to offer.

Rombla: powerful, online, WYSIWYG Flash-site builder

2008-12-08T15:00:00Z

In case you missed all the adjectives in the title, Rombla is a powerful online WYSIWYG flash-site building RIA. Created and hosted by the folks at Piria, the app is geared towards bridging the gap between web designers and their clients. In this entry, I'll talk about how Rombla works, some of it's cooler features, and give screen shots and links to a site I made with it.

Flex presentations at Adobe MAX

2008-11-12T21:51:39Z

In this entry, I give you a list of my favorite Flex related presentations being given at the Adobe MAX conference this year, and a short description of why I think you should attend each and every one of them. :) Not attending MAX? Don't worry - they'll be available online sometime shortly after the conference is over.

Attention MAX attendees: get a 33% discount on Adobe product certification

2008-11-06T23:57:54Z

Certification for developers and Adobe product users of all kinds will be available at the Adobe MAX conference at a 33% discount. Certification will be going on all three days of the MAX conference Info can be found on this part of the MAX homepage if you scroll down to the 2nd item from the bottom. If you're interested in taking an exam, feel free to brush up on your skills with a free study guide from Adobe. A full list of the available exams and links to the study guide pdfs can be found here.

Bruce Temkin on the importance of UX

2008-10-31T14:00:00Z

Bruce Temkin is a Customer Experience analyst with Forrester Research. I was recently forwarded one of Bruce's articles on the importance of user experience and decided to check out his blog. I was really surprised by the wealthy of insight Bruce provides for free here on the blog - he has thoughts about preserving your business through recession, tips for management in customer experience environments, the importance of UX, and how to create innovative UX in any vertical.

Nokia's "Music Almighty" Headset Competition

2008-10-29T14:00:00Z

Nokia recently launched a new site that allows users to use their imaginations and create new visions for headphones of the future. The headphones users create are mostly fictional, adding some wildly expressive features like hot rod exhaust pipes, peacock feathers, missiles, etc. The site is part of a contest Nokia is launching around the configurator. Users are invited to create and submit their designs online, where they'll be voted on by other users. The top 10 users will get a free trip out to Nokia's headquarters in the UK, where their designs will be produced into real headsets and given to them to keep. I caught up with the development team who built the app and they were nice enough to give me an interview. Read this entry to see the full interview text as well as get some more information on the contest.

Efflex: Designer effects for Flex

2008-10-24T14:00:00Z

Efflex is a set of designer effects for Adobe Flex created by Stephen Downs (aka "Tink"). Stephen presented Efflex at the recent Flash on the Beach conference and has a background in building applications for the Flash platform. In this entry I'll talk a little bit about what Efflex has to offer and what sets it apart from other effects libraries.

Get your Merapi-powered AIR app featured at MAX

2008-10-22T14:00:00Z

Merapi will be featured in two separate sessions at Adobe MAX, and Merapi project evangelist Dave Meeker wants to demo your application. If you have a Merapi-powered AIR app, get in touch with Dave at meekerd@gmail.com and get on the...

SUMO Paint: PhotoShop and MS Paint's happy medium

2008-10-20T14:00:00Z

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the afternoon and thought, wow, I need a graphics editing tool that's a heck of a lot better than Paint, but not nearly as complicated as Photoshop? If so, you're looking for SUMO Paint - the robust and free RIA for graphics editing.

Scalenine "Skin to Win" contest winners announced

2008-10-17T16:11:09Z

The Skin to Win challenge is over and the winners have been posted on the Scalenine.com blog. Each of the winning entries receives mention in the post, and clicking on the screen shots leads to an interactive sample of each implemented skin. All of the winning entries look really good - browse on over and have a look. Thanks to everyone who participated in the challenge!

Want to get showcased at MAX? ILOG Elixir wants to help.

2008-10-16T14:00:00Z

The ILOG Elixir team is going to present two sessions at Adobe MAX on their unique visual interface library, and they want to showcase your app. If you've built anything that uses Elixir in the past year or so, check out this recent blog post by the Elixir team and get the publicity you deserve!

Joost comes to the web, enters online-TV / video fray

2008-10-15T21:13:06Z

Today Joost launched it's new, non-download required version of it's service, which joins Hulu and a scad of other companies in delivering real television shows and movies straight to your Flash-10-enabled browser. Joost is based out of Estonia and founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, who also founded both Skype and Kazaa. In this entry I'll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the new online version of Joost.

New simulator uses 360 degree video / audio in Flash Player 10

2008-10-15T07:00:00Z

Intelligence Gaming announced their Immersive Cultural Simulation Product today, which uses a highly specialized Flex Application designed for Flash Player 10 to deliver full panoramic 360 degree video and 8 channels of binaural audio to users. Users participate in the simulations through use of a specialized headset that projects the display through goggles and the audio through a headset and moves the scene to correspond with changes in the user's head orientation.Intelligence Gaming built the simulator as part of a new training program for the Army, which leverages the immersive technology to train soldiers in situational awareness outside of real danger. Read the full entry to learn more about the technology used in this project as well as more details about the simulations themselves.

Webmonkey creates forum for angsty iPhone developers

2008-09-28T14:00:10Z

If you've ever developed an iPhone application, or thought about developing an iPhone application, or thought, gee, I'd love to develop an iPhone application if it wasn't for that silly, restrictive, nonsensically awful Apple NDA, then this web app is for you. Webmonkey started an online forum charting the history of Apple's descent into Evil. It's conveniently available as an embed-able timeline (below.)

Skin to Win challenge ends Oct. 10

2008-09-26T15:45:30Z

The Scalenine "Skin To Win" challenge ends October 10th. If you're a Flex or AIR developer and you haven't gotten in on this action, what are you waiting for? There's a Macbook AIR, MAX tickets and more on the line. Get on it!

Adobe CS4 "It's going to be Brilliant" video

2008-09-25T21:48:18Z

Adobe released this video about CS4 on Adobe TV on Wednesday. It's long - about an hour - and contains just about everything you'd ever want to know about CS4.

An interview with KitchenSync creator, Mims Wright

2008-09-25T14:00:16Z

KitchenSync is an up-and-coming ActionScript 3.0 library for sequencing animations and other time-based actions. The project is focused on giving developers a smarter way to handle animation or other time-based, rather than frame-based, functionality with code. The whole project is geared towards using standard OO practices to make time-based synchronization easier on developers. Creator Mims Wright recently announced a Kitchen Sync demo contest which has generated some buzz around my office and got me interested in the project. The winners will have their entries demoed at the upcoming conference. I recently caught up with Mims and had the opportunity to ask him some questions about the project. If you haven't heard of Mims before, he's a great developer who co-authored the Actionscript 3.0 Bible and has done a lot of great Flash work in his career. Mim's is a really friendly guy and agreed to an interview about KitchenSync.

Adobe CS4 Gets Release Date, Cool Website

2008-09-23T07:00:00Z

Early this morning Adobe announced that the latest edition of Creative Suite, number 4, will be released in October. I've been told that Adobe is currently targeting a release on the 15th, but that the date is subject to change. Read on to learn more about CS4, or checkout the the CS4 homepage.

Using Trac? Try Traction.

2008-09-18T20:59:42Z

If you've ever used Trac to track tickets for feature requests, bug fixes, or tasks, then you've probably been frustrated. Trac integrates well with SVN, allowing you to close or reference tickets in your SVN checkins and easily see the source each checkin adjusted, but it has an absolutely terrible UI. Terrible. Horrible, bad, very awful - one of the worst things I've had to deal with since becoming a UI developer. Enter Traction. Traction is an AIR application written by Greg Owen (yup, we're related) that replaces Trac's front-end with something easier to use. It allows you to edit multiple tickets at once and aggregates the changes periodically. If you're a project lead or a project manager responsible for managing tickets, Traction is for you.

Alan Cooper on Agile Software

2008-09-08T15:06:17Z

Alan Cooper is an experienced software developer and interaction designer who's been around for a while. He runs a consulting firm, writes a lot of books, and is called the "father of Visual Basic." Alan Cooper has been on the forefront of experience design and software development for a while now. He's been in the trenches, seen what works and what doesn't, and now he's decided to share some of his experience on software process and why Agile software is best. Cooper was asked to deliver a keynote at the recent Agile 2008 conference, held in Toronto earlier this August. His slides with accompanying notes are available on his website, and make a really great presentation both for those already converted to agile methods and those who've heard the term but don't really know what it's about.

Google Chrome: The Comic

2008-09-06T14:00:00Z

Google chose to launch its Chrome browser with a comic book about the browser, among other things. In this entry I talk about the book itself, its value as a piece of information design, and a little about the book's author, renown comic book artist Scott McCloud.