Submerge yourself in the Flash Community

I've noticed lately that a lot of the developers I have been meeting are not crazy into the Flash/Flex community. I believe its because they just haven't seen the full potential of being apart of this type of community or they're just not looking in the right place for information. Being apart of this community is great way to get you name out there, it has wide spectrum of contributors from the seasoned veterans to the rookies. I mean, I'm no guru but I pay attention to what's going on by reading the blogs of the Flash/Flex all-stars and keeping up with Adobe. I know my stuff and can talk the talk because I read these blogs. I soon hope to be a major player in the Flash/Flex community. I'm working on that by keeping myself up to date and honing my skills.

If you're new to the Flash/Flex or even a well-versed developer that doesn't have a lot of connections, you need to get yourself out there and meet the interesting people of the Flash/Flex community. Join a forum, start to regularly read a flash blog and comment on the posts, go to conferences, create your own blog and showcase projects/code/experiments.

It's the best way to get your name out there.


Random Caller - A prank caller’s dream.

So recently I have been playing around with the Ribbit API and I have been going back and forth with Tim Allard and collaborating ideas. We decided to team up to build an application based around the API. Once we get the ball rolling with the app, I'll start posting screenshots, alphas, betas, and code.

While discussing these ideas with Tim, I had funny idea for a widget. I was thinking of an iPhone Shuffle, which would be funny to but you would need contacts in Ribbit already so I went a little further and created a random number to call. I created an array of all the US area codes and pulled one at random along with 7 other random integers. It will take a few tries before you get a good number so for a later update I'll figure out if theres a way to check the number to see if its in use or a valid number.

No style or animation yet, I just pulled code from the Ribbit code examples. I'll update it here when I add some "pizzazz." Here it is:

This movie requires Flash Player 8


Flash Forward 2008: San Francisco


FFSF2008

If you haven't heard it already. Yea, Flash Forward is going to be in San Francisco and was sold to Beau Ambur, CEO of Metaliq. Neat, so I guess no more Lynda from Lynda.com. SADFACE! She has done a great job with the conference over the years.

I hear Beau Ambur is a Microsoft Silverlight enthusiast, which is weird that he is buying a Flash/Flex oriented conference. It will be interesting to see where this is going.

Hopefully I'll be going, we shall see.

-Gregosaurus


10 Damn Good Resources for Flash Development

Adobe Developer Connection - Here is a massive amount of information that Adobe has collected on their products. You can find tutorials, support, links to popular bloggers in the community, and upcoming event. They have developer sections for Adobe AIR, Flash, and Flex. From new developer to seasoned veterans, its still a heaven of cool code examples and knowledge.

TheFlashBlog.com - A blog that is updated on a semi-day to day basis by Lee Brimelow. He gives tips, sneak peaks, product suggestions, video interviews, and conference wrap-ups.

gotoAndLearn.com - A lovely resource that had helped me out of many jams when I was first starting out as a Flash developer. Every video tutorial is created by Lee Brimelow an includes files you to work with and follow along. Use this site to your advantage.

theFWA.com - I am sometimes surprised that a lot of people haven't heard of this site. TheFWA awards other sites for good use of interactivity and design. All the sites are Flash/Flex. Its just cool to see what other people are creating with Flash and Flex.

Google - Type into Google's Search "as3 video player". I bet you'll find some examples and tutorials right away. Don't underestimate the power of Google's Search.

flashandmath.com - Hate math? Love Flash? Well you better start loving math because it can do some crazy sh*t in Flash. Browse around for tutorials about certain equations that can help with animations, game physics, hit detections, or just some crazy experimenting you want to do.

Actionscript.org - Actionscript.org is community that helps each other out. Its got a bunch of tutorials, articles and a decent forum. Join up to start reading/writing posts. Following along with other people problems might help you avoid some of you're own, but if you find yourself stuck and no where to turn, post it here. Someone will help out eventually.

Flashkit.com - I have never been a fan of FlashKit (do to user experience) but its still huge dripping mass of Flash knowledge. I find that most of what is on there is beginner-intermediate but if you are just starting out its a damn good resource. As long as its something simple, you'll find it here.

kirupa.com - I like to think of Kirupa.com as a cleaner version of FlashKit. Again most of the tutorials here are for the beginner-intermediate but there are some advanced(not too advanced) things scattered around. Its a must better design and user experience than FlashKit.

levitated.net Levitated has a nice amount of open source examples of interaction and animation. You can download the FLA and start picking apart the code till you understand how it was done. Enjoy!

All these link I have used at some point in my career. They are all great resources but there is a chance you may not find what you are looking for. You just have to dig deeper to find what you want for or join a forum to get help. Don't hesitate to join a forum, people want to help. If you have a good resource thats not listed here, please post it in the comments.


Ribbit Ribbit

About two weeks ago I stumbled upon the BFPUG Blog announcing their speaker for the February meeting, Chuck Freedman promoting the new API for his company Ribbit. Ribbit offers VOIP through the flash player but packaged this service with an actionscript API for Flash/Flex developers to build off of and create some really amazing apps. There are a couple other services out there that do this but don't give an API out (Grand Central) and this is where Ribbit has the advantage. Not to mention they're offering a marketplace for developers to sell their applications to Ribbit members. Which is amazing.

Needless to say, I signed up right away for a developer account. I've had a ton of ideas for RIA's and widgets but I just can't fully conceptualize/prototype them due to my schedule. I showed Tim Allard the Ribbit site and API and he's really interested to get something started as well. We plan to have a brainstorm session soon, so I'm sure we'll come up with some outrageous and I'll blog about the process.

Stay tuned.


I’ve decided to revamp the blog yet again

I think its time for me to focus more on experimentation with actionscript. I'm frankly sick of video players on the web and need a new out. So its time to crack down and manage my time to design/develop some weird apps and pointless animations.

By the way, I've moved all my other random thoughts onto my tumblr blog located @ NotGreg.com. But if I need to post something funny/interesting here, I will.


Hey Arnold!

I've been so damn busy lately. I've left my position PermissionTV for greener pastures and I am now current working at Arnold Worldwide. PermissionTV was an amazing place to work and is where I did most of my growing as a developer but I can't wait to see what Arnold has in store for me.

If anyone is interested, they are hiring for my old position @ PermissionTV. I pretty sure the site isn't updated but here.


iPhone Apps GALORE!

Its been one week since Signor Jobs announced that there was no SDK for the iPhone but that developers could use web technologies like AJAX. Even with no iPhone to test their applications there has been many developed already! Heres what I have found while trolling the net:

Gas app Created by Jeffrey Grossman
This app can get really handy with gas prices these days. Quickly find the cheapest gas in your area by inputing a zipcode. No directions yet, but still awesome.

One Trip Created by Neven Mrgan
This a simple grocery list. Super useful. I can see a lot of people using this one.

Digg App -- Created by David Cann
Everyone loves Digg most people are Digg addicts. Why not have on your iPhone!? Now you can check it continuously!

iChat App Also created by David Cann
I just dont get why Apple didnt put in a version of iChat in iPhone... woohoo my SMS Messages look like an iChat conversion. This iChat app is filling in the gaps.

iTwittr Created by Dean Robinson
Twitter is a crazy social site that lets you update what you are doing from the website, SMS, IM. Instead of using your iPhone's SMS you can use this app.

My First Mac App Created by MyFirstMac.com
View the Article of the Day, Tip of the Day, and Link of the Day. Will this be used often...eh I'd rather check out the RSS feed with the Safari browser on the iPhone.

All of these apps work in Safari, some in Firefox (sorry IE, not!). Have fun, comment if you find new ones!


Party Hard? You bet your ass we did!

One Friday night after work, Chris and I decided to stay late and film internet gold. Chris had purchased a song earlier that day and since I was on a streak of lib dubs with songs we decided to film us dubbing to.....Andrew WK's Party Hard And boy did we...

Once we finished we posted it up on youtube, vimeo, and facebook and let it stew for a week. Our entire office got a kick out of it. Chris soon decided that we should show Andrew WK and we contacted him on Myspace.Well guess what.....its on his myspace and his website. BANGING!



Frank….the man fairy

I'm bringing one of my characters to interwebs. Yep, Frank the man fairy is soon to be in a series of his own internet shorts. More details coming soon... Stay tuned my faithful blog readers ::crickets::

Frank the man fairy

 UPDATE 6-15-07: No show for Frank....sorry folks. Maybe if I feel like cramming myself into a tutu for my own benefit I'll shoot some stuff and put it up here.