Overall, what we learned at Adobe Max this year was really nothing different than what we already knew months ago almost. Granted, finding out that Flash CS5 can export iPhone apps (perhaps they bundle the player and the flash file together?) was pretty neat- it was not really unexpected. Every cell phone will be getting Flash player soon (including the iPhone with the special export) which will really help increase the hold that Flash Player has on the market. However, there really wasn’t anything other than this announced that was worth getting excited over in my humble opinion. AIR 2.0 is coming out soon, but it’s roster of new features is rather lackluster for a new revision number- it should have been a patch number I believe.

On the flip side, the speakers and show setup were truly aweful. Speakers droned on as if they never bothered writing an outline for themselves, and I felt many ‘novelties’ of the show were tacky (like the canned video of the iPhone app doing the wheel-of-fortune company picker). Even the jokes the speakers used to lighten the content fell so flat that it was as if they were in lue of another joke. Don’t get me wrong, I am definately an Adobe fan boy- I just felt that they put almost no effort into their presentation. Anyone else feel the same way?

Adobe announced that this years MAX event will be one of the most significant ones in the history of the event. There are lots of rumors floating around on what might be unveiled during the event. We know from enough sources that Adobe plans to showcase Flash Player 10 running on almost all major mobile devices (excluding Apple since they hate the idea of application framework competition). In addition, there has been some rumors from Adobe twitter accounts that a new improved desktop Flash Player 10 version will be released (perhaps faster??). Lastly, here is a guess of my own, Nintendo Wii may also get FP10 because they have shown that they are working with Opera and Adobe to port over the player- as last month Flash Lite 3.1 was released in an update. So remember to set your calendars for October 4th to the 7th as it might a historic day for the Flash platform as a whole. It’s very exciting to imagine having full Flash Player 10 Flex applications running on my Android G1!

Labels are dangerous when used improperly regardless if they were created in good intentions. The present day world is filled with named factions that rage verbal or physical war on each other for nothing more than self affirming the dominance of their party. This is somehow deeply ingrained in our human nature… to provide loyalty to our clan and subvert others to establish dominance. If you’re not quite sure where I’m going with this, I am hinting at the fruitless debate between the American political parties.

Democrats and republicans have evolved to hated enemies of each other… no longer remembering that they were formed to work in harmony over national issues. In my opinion, there is one major entity to blame for this downfall and social dysfunction of the parties. That would be the American media. Regardless of the national media network you watch, you are being spoon-fed DAILY about the ‘evils’ of the other party that that media network is associated with. I can’t watch any of the big three news networks for more than an hour without being told why one party is better than the other. This is a shame that they choose to demonize and point fingers rather than focusing on the core of the issues at hand.

Should matters like health care regulation be shunned because it ‘sounds’ like a certain party’s agenda? On another separate issue, I heard from one news network that a certain bill wasn’t worth looking into because the originator happened to be from the other party so the bill could be linked to promoting that party’s cause “somehow”. This is the kind of blind hatred that has caused our political degradation. So what do I propose? I would merge all political divisions… democrats, republicans, and the other 3^rd parties. Why can’t a person have a mixture of beliefs instead of being forced to conform to only the stances their party supports? The fact that someone who tends to be liberal is only going to feel at home in a democrat party versus someone who is more conservative in their views will have few options but go republican is a sad commentary on how the parties have outlived their usefulness.

The only person who benefits from this segregation is not the voter but the news networks. Controversy sells and the media has turned our political system into a kind of dark entertainment art form. Let’s spend less time worrying about if new policies fit the agenda of our party… and instead focus on what is “right” and benefits people the most. I normally don’t blog about political matters, but I find this dilemma in need of more attention than what it currently gets. Anyone else feel the same way?

The bell rings, and it’s another showdown between modern drawing APIs. Over the past couple weeks, I have weeded out many of my choices of libraries to now these four. What happened to some of the others? XNA, I determined, was way too XBOX360 centric with its multitasking, shaders, and DRM all tailored to the platform. Again, my primary aim was to develop on a Windows platform with possibly Mac compatibility. In addition, XNA requires end PC users to install the XNA framework package which only causes additional hassle for the user to install the game. Blade3D is also removed from the list as they recently went under last week, leaving many of their subscribers scratching their heads. Below is my up-to-date list for viable platforms to use for developing my prototypes and AI research:

• PROs
  • Faster than AS3 10% to 200% depending on use
  • Single language to also write the server platform
  • Flash Player 10 has a huge penetration rate (87% roughly)
• CONs
  • Still rather slow

• PROs
  • Faster than Flash by at least 400% in math and drawing APIs
  • Growing community (10,000+ users)
• CONs
  • Costly
  • Focused around primarily 3D development
  • Small penetration rate for its player (maybe 5% or less)

O3D by Google Labs

• PROs
  • Comparable to Unity3D
  • Bleeding edge technology
  • Google’s supported platform
• CONs
  • Buggy and very new
  • Lacks industrial strength demos
  • Extremely small player install base (< 1%)

Super Fast Media Library

• PROs
  • Super fast 2D library (several times faster than the above APIs)
  • Uses C++ and would allow higher customization and flexibility
• CONs
  • Desktop installation / is not loaded by the browser (user barrier)
  • Only meant for 2D

Over the weekend, we finally had a new release of haXe made available, bringing the current version up to 2.04. The new version mostly is for resolving a slew of obscure bugs; however it also introduces early C++ translation support which is definitely something to keep an eye on. Now we just have to wait till Flash Develop supports the C++ language additions. For the people who have not looked into this language, it worth your time to at least check out as it’s one of the few mature mutliplatform languages available today.

Haxe information and download

Update: Nicolas Cannasse has a simple example of a C++ compile on his blog.

Changes 2009-07-26: 2.04

• flash9 : fixed get_full_path error with -D fdb
• js : fixed Array.remove on IE
• flash8 : removed extra empty AS3 tag (causing some issue with F8 loadMovie)
• improved speed of Bytes unserializing (no need for BytesBuffer)
• flash9 : bugfix, Null<Typedef> was generating dynamic code
• flash9 : added error message in flash.Vector if used without flash 10
• flash9 : fixed some “never” property access issues
• all : added “never” property access support for all platforms
• js : small syntax fix with value-blocks
• js : fixed Type.enumEq with null values
• js/flash8 : use &0xFF in haxe.io.Bytes.set
• flash9 : fixed switch on Null<Int> verify error
• flash9 : fixes related to UInt type + error when using Int/UInt comparison
• as3 : improved Vector support, inline flash.Lib.as
• as3 : bugfix with skip_constructor
• as3 : added Enum.__constructs__ (allow Type.getEnumConstructs)
• as3 : make all constructor parameters optional (allow Type.createEmptyInstance)
• as3 : bugfix with property access inside setter (stack overflow)
• all : Enum is now Enum<T>
• all : added Type.createEnumIndex
• all : forbid same name for static+instance field (not supported on several platforms)
• all : renamed haxe.Http.request to “requestUrl”
• all : renamed neko.zip.Compress/Uncompress.run to “execute”
• spod : fix very rare issue with relations and transactions
• compiler : added TClosure – optimize closure creation and ease code generation
• cpp : added CPP platform
• all : added ‘using’ syntax
• neko : added ‘domains’ optional param to ThreadRemotingServer to answer policy-file-request
• php : fixed php.db.Mysql so that getResult is consistent with Neko behavior
• php : fixed __toString for anonymouse objects
• php : fixed bug in overridden dynamic functions
• php : fixed round to be consistent with other platforms
• php : fixed bug concatenating two dynamic variables
• php : php.Lib.rethrow now works as expected
• flash9 : fixed bug with SWC output and recursive types
• flash8 : fixed inversed arguments in __new__
• neko : added neko.net.Socket.setFastSend
• php: fixed String.charCodeAt
• php: minor optimization (removed foreach from std code)
• php: implemented haxe.Stack
• php: changed exception handler to use haXe call stack
• php: changed special vars to use the » prefix instead of __
• php: fixed use of reserved keywords for var names
• php: List iterator is now class based (faster)
• php: fixed behavior of class variables having assigned functions
• php: fixed php.db.Manager (was uncorrectly removing superclass fields)
• php: added support for native Iterator and IteratorAggregate interfaces
• all : added –display classes and –display keywords
• all : fixed issue with optional parameters in inline functions
• all : allow implementing interfaces with inline methods
• all : enable inlining for getter/setter/iterator/resolve/using

One of major benefits of working with computers and internet-based technologies are the massive communities behind them. Such communities offer feedback on ideas, technical help, and tutoring. In addition, standards begin to arise on their own because developers want to be able to integrate with other existing services to ease transition to and from their software. To allow other developers to embrace a new standard, an author of the standard usually releases it free-to-use, creates simple documentation, and provides support usually in the form of a open forum.

However, from my observations, the physical engineering world seems to completely lack such concepts as a whole. Almost every device you can buy has parts that are completely non-interchangeable with one-another. About the only thing that is standard is the screw type that the product gets put together with. Why can’t products be made with interchangeable plug-n-play modules? If the radio brakes in one stereo, why can’t I just pull out the ‘radio receiver module’ and replace it with another?

You can sorta do that by un-soldering several circuit board parts, look at the model numbers (if they have one), and hope that some foreign warehouse has them for sale for consumers. It makes it even more difficult because there are hundreds of thousands variations on parts and warehouses can’t inventory that many effectively… as opposed to carrying components that encapsulate functionality that devices share in common. This is just one example of engineering evolving.

What would Engineering 2.0 look like? Perhaps, if someone had an idea to build their own radio, they could:

• Create a blueprint of the radio case using a web application
• Upload the blueprint to a company that can cost-effectively make custom cases
• Order a radio and power ‘module’
• Order device buttons that are easily mountable to custom cases
• Radio module has a ‘USB’-esk port for the button interface to plug into

In a weekend, someone who knows little about the engineering world could literally build their own home device that fits their exact needs. Maybe this is all far-fetched, but I am convinced that traditional everyday engineering as we know it will change based on the need for a new level of global standardization and maintenance tasks that are client friendly.

Newsweek offers an interesting article that touches on the issue as well:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/55776

Here are just a couple more enhancements to FlashMVC I was able to add over the weekend. These will not only automate a few things, but it makes room for additional addons in the future. There are two new features that have been added to SuperAction:

bindVars(… REST):void
This method looks at the SuperEvent fired from a completed action class, and copies properties to the SuperModel from the SuperEvent.

lastSuperEvent : SuperEvent
[read-only] Returns the last SuperEvent fired after completing an action. (This is useful for reading a property from a SuperEvent after the event has fired and you didn’t have a listner for it yet in your view)

Check out the documentation for more info:
http://www.flashmvc.com/documentation/

FlashMVC overview: www.FlashMVC.com

Ever had one of those times where you had quickly dismissed a piece of software only to find how essential it was after giving it a try later on? This happen to me roughly last week when I had issues with quick launch icons and desktop shortcuts. I had so many shortcuts that I had to organize icons in folders… and even the folders started to litter the desktop. While the Windows Vista’s start search bar is helpful, it does not allow (with the exception of some hacks) the use of custom commands and doesn’t supply any configuration options for its search index.
I needed a better solution for quick access to directory folders and applications…

I then remembered a program called Launchy that was a more customizable search bar. After I got it setup, I suddenly realized how vastly superior it was to my horde of desktop and quick-launch icons. Ultimately, I ended up switching from Launchy to Executor as it better support for custom commands. These commands can perform what would be several manual steps in just one keyword which is rather handy. Humanize Enso (the desktop grandfather project of Ubiquity) looks to help bring friendlier human language syntax than either both previous applications, but personally I find Executor able to do everything I need it to do.

After playing around with these applications, I remembered that Firefox had a similar plugin called Ubiquity that did something like this except for website related content. Between Ubiquity and Executor, I can execute almost any function of my computer within a few key taps. This means I have really no need for desktop icons or a quick-launch bar which removes a ton of visual clutter while still being efficient at accessing my commonly used applications.

While I think language interfaces are a fantastic way to eliminate clutter and improve efficiency, I don’t think they are a replacement for GUI interfaces as most current implementations have done (like Bash, Ubiquity, Launchy, etc). It would be a neat concept to try to merge the two methodologies into one interface… perhaps starting with a language interface and switching into GUI modes when the user needs finer control for complex input.

It will be really interesting how well into the future projects like Ubiquity and Firefox Awesome Bar are accepted into the general public. My main concern is if beginner to novice computer users are able to unlearn GUI control in exchange with keyboard hot-keys and human language syntax.

Here are two interesting articles on the subject that are worth mentioning:
Why Language Interfaces?
Problems with Language Interfaces?

This week has been pretty slow, but I recently had a reader email me his answer to my twitter critter riddle and thought it was a funny yet cheesy ripoff of the woodchuck riddle answer…

Riddle: How many tweets could a critter twitter if a critter could twitter tweets?

Answer: A critter would twitter as much tweets as a critter could twitter if a critter could twitter tweets.

What do you think? Do you have a better answer?