Archive for December, 2007

Technology

Adding .AIR Mime Type to Apache

Now that I am letting folks download AIR files from my server, I realized apache didnt know how to serve those file. So because it didnt know the mime-type for air, it just spit out the binary to your browser instead of helping the browser know to tell you to download it.

Fixing that was easy, opened up my httpd.conf and found the line that had the mime-type for zip files (air is really just a zip). and I added air as an extension. The release notes on labs.adobe.com state that the actual AIR mime-type should be listed as:

AddType application/vnd.adobe.air-application-installer-package+zip .air

Bang! life was all good.

ps. Thanks to Ryan for letting me know it was wonky.

Technology

MoTwitAir v0.5

Ok, last night I updated MoTwitAir again. This time we added some UI enhancement, some keyboard shortcuts, and some more settings.

Check it out over on the MoTwitAir page.

Technology

MoTwitAir - What a very active first day

I released the first version of MoTwitAir on my lunch break today and thanks to the feedback of several people, I am already releasing its first update.

Just so I dont have to do this all the time, I have created a MoTwitAir page in my projects section.

Version 0.4 is available now and includes links for replying and direct messaging users. It also includes auto linking to users twitter accounts as well as web urls. And to keep from having to do lots of downloads I added in an update feature. So the next time I say there is an update you can just hit the check for update screen from the setup page.

Thanks for the feedback on the app and thanks for using it. Glad its filled a need for folks.

Technology

MoTwitAir - What’s It Look Like

Nick commented on my last post and wanted to know what MoTwitAir looked like. Well here is a screenshot.

Technology

MoTwitAir - More Twitter

Ok, so this is really stupid, but I got mad that Tweetr didnt update for beta 3 of the Adobe AIR release yet. So… I wrote my own air twitter client really quick like.

So right now all you can do is see your timeline (w/friends) and the main public timeline. You can post updates to your status. It stores your username and password in the LocalEncryptedStore of AIR. So you only have to set that the first time you launch the application. After that it loads up without asking. It also auto-refreshes every minute.

At this point its stupid simple, but if anyone else is missing their Twitter fix. Then you can download it here. Note: This requires Adobe AIR Beta 3 runtime

MoTwitAir v0.2

Or if you want to play with the source you can grab it from my public repository here.

http://svn.simb.net/public/motwit/branches/client/src/

Lots of credit goes to the new Yahoo Flex Skin so it doesnt look so drab, and the Twitter AS3 lib. Neither of which did I have any hand in.

ps. If someone wants to make me some icons or pretty this up. please let me know. i am looking for enhancement suggestions.

Technology

Not a prediction but a whole hearted wish

I was thinking last night about the upcoming release of the iPhone SDK and how as I play with Twitter and Pownce i would really like to have a native application on my phone to do that. Which of course takes me to thinking about learning Ojbective C and the GUI stack for OS X applications. Something I have never bothered to dig into.

Then I went back to work on an AIR application I have been playing with, and thought how miraculous it would be if I could deploy it to my iPhone. My ponderings continued as I remembered that my Flex 2 serial no longer works with Flex Builder 3 Beta 3. This leads me to believe that they think that the final release will be ready before the trial expires. Funny how that 90 days works out right around the time the iPhone SDK is supposed to be released.

How amazing would it be to have that last-hour announcement that not only do AIR applications run on Window and Mac (with linux to come) but that because the iPhone runs a modified version of OS X our AIR applications will run on the iPhone as well!

Of course I have no expectations of that, it appears more likely that Apple would buy Adobe with its 15 Billion dollars in cash. But a guy can dream cant he?

In the words of our (least) favorite purple dinosour. 1…2…3…Wish!

Technology

Rays Christmas Code Challenge in Ruby

While I love what ray does for these exercises, I often feel like there is not much challenge left in doing them in CF. However I am nowhere near as good at Ruby as I am at CF so I thought I would do a version of his code challenge in Ruby.

So the first 11 lines of the app do the code prep that he gave on his blog. This sets up the data to loop over to create the song. Then I have 8 lines of code that actually do all the output for the song. 4 of which are actual code stuff. and it could be less but I wanted to make sure that on any but the first verse we sing “and a partridge…”.

So without further ado here is my solution for Ray’s code challenge

class Gift
  attr_accessor :id, :name
  def initialize (id, name)
    @id = id
    @name = name
  end
end

gifts = Array.new()
giftNames = ["A partridge in a pear tree","Two turtle doves","Three French hens","Four calling birds","Five golden rings","Six geese a-laying", "Seven swans a-swimming","Eight maids a-milking","Nine ladies dancing","Ten lords a-leaping","Eleven pipers piping","Twelve drummers drumming"]
giftNames.each_index { |i| gifts.push Gift.new(i,giftNames[i]) }

#Actual output code for song
gifts.each do |g|
  puts "On the #{g.id+1} day of christmas, my true love gave to me:"
  g.id.downto 0 do |gi|
    verse = "#{gifts[gi].name}"
    verse = "and " + verse if (g.id != 0 and gi == 0)
    puts "\t" + verse
  end
end

If you are on a mac running this code is very simple. Copy it into a file called Ray.rb, save the file to your computer, then run `ruby Ray.rb` (get the path right). You will see the song output. If you are on a pc you have to actually have ruby installed, but I am not gonna tell you how.

Technology

BlazeDS - Adobe Open Sources Flash Remoting and Messaging Servers

On twitter just moments ago, I saw James Ward point toward a truly awsome move by Adobe. Tonight Adobe announced that they are open sourcing the technologies that are the base for Flash Remoting and the Messaging Services found in their high end server technologies. BlazeDS represents the services which makes data transfer with Flash and Flex perform better than traditional javascript (text based) technologies. These technologies make use of the AMF (Action Message Format) a binary protocol for describing the data to lessen the data payload that must be transfered to describe your data. In addition to open sourcing the technologies to do the messaging they have also released the AMF specification allowing AMF servers to be implemented on other server platforms.

In hitting the labs site to read more about BlazeDS I see that it appears the Flex 3 Beta 3 has also been released. Flex 3 is another amazing product from adobe that has been open sourced. Although not open source the Adobe AIR product has also seen its 3rd beta release tonight. AIR allows web developers to use their existing skill set to build desktop applications which reach beyond the boundaries of the browser.

So take some time and get familiar with these new tools from adobe.

Technology

Thoughts on Silverlight » BIT-101 Blog

Keith Peters has posted a very nice article on his experiences with SilverLight from a flash developers perspective. Keith is the author of Making Things Move, which just about every example I have seen of moving stuff in flash is based on. So when he sets out to make something move in SilverLight I was very excited to see how things worked out.

The article does a great job of being honest about his intentions, and that although he finds somethings that should be easier he is willing to admit that this is his first foray into the SilverLight realm. What I take from his findings is that although c# is reputedly easier than as AS3, this does not translate to SilverLight being easier than Flash.

Check out the article Thoughts on Silverlight » BIT-101 Blog and be sure to scan the comments because they offer some great insights as well.

Personal

Welcome Ava Louise Rinehart into this world

I just got off the phone with Joe and I am so excited to help him share the announcement of his daughter Ava!

Ava Louise Rinehart was born into this world on December 9th at 9:40 PM EST. She weights in at 8lbs and is a striking 20 3/4 inches long. She and mommy are recovering well.

There is no wi-fi at the hospital so Joe has not had a chance to post, so I have selected a post on the family blog for well wishers.

Be sure to go and offer your congratulations to Joe and his family!

Next »