… it feels very bad, why? Just to mention a few reasons, the people, the scenery, the people, the snowboarding, have I already mentioned the people?
yep, besides Flash At The Lake 09 there was no conference that I loved so much, It was such an awesome time talking with some great cool people, it was a laid back conference with
lots of time for networking, snowboarding, and simply having fun. Let me recap for your what happened and how I experienced it.

Day T-1:
Yep, I’ve driven up to Stechelberg a day before the Conference officially started together with Mihai Corlan which I had the opportunity of picking up at the Airport and having
a very relaxed drive to the mountains with some very good talks not only geeky but very inspiring and fun. After arriving at the Location, people started to walk in ( there were already a few though ),
and we had a great time getting to know each other and to learn about what others do, very constructive and inspiring, if it wasn’t for the late night obligatory speaker snowball fight at 3am

Day 1:
First day on the slopes, first day of the conference, after a very relaxing snowboarding day with @riccastelhano, @masdennis, @starnut, @johanlopes and @agens as you can see here, the conference started late but very interesting with the opening speech of @mcorlan on Building Mobile Apps with Adobe AIR, followed by @agens speech on Making Flash Games where he showed an awesome ski jump game which attracted a sick amount of gamers, Peter also presented FunGrid an opensource flash game API, almost at midnight @mcorlan had the last speech of the day/night where he showed some great AIR/P2P examples as well some tips & tricks on his session Optimizing your Flash/AIR Application. Same as last night, it didn’t end very early and in this place I would like to thank Otto & and his service for keeping us awake with some booze and especially to stay awake with us at such late time.

Day 2:
Apart from the usual awesome weather in Stechelberg, just have a look at this awful pics, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and if you don’t have enough of it, here the complete Album. Everybody was pretty much on time to attend @masdennis awesome presentation on Messing with Actionscript and the Kinect then as the Dinner arrived, @fcolaco had a surprise prepared for us especially for visitors outside of Switzerland, the local yodeler group made a show for us and you shouldn’t miss this one, The Yodelers at gotoAndSki(); after their show, the conference continued its normal path and @starnut was up on the stage for his talk titled Hot Wireless Data Fudge where he speaks about all kinds of wireless communication while developing for AIR on mobile and on the desktop, again quite late it was my turn to present Developing for TV with AIR, where @fcolaco grounded me for not behaving don’t remember why though but I think it was okay to do so.

Day 3 & Last Day:
Yep, this pretty much sucks, everybody knew that this was the last day of the conference and everyone was sad about it as well, nevertheless, @dctrl @starnut and me decided to have a blast on the slopes and do some snowboarding the last day, which again was wonderful due to the awesome weather in the mountains, this time we had to start a bit earlier as some attendees were living that night.
First of all @trinefalbe stepped up the stage with her talk on Cognitive Psychology in Interactive Design a very very good talk which I really enjoyed and I recommend this one to all of you designing Flash Applications, Websites, or even if you are not a Flash Developer, have a look at it as soon as her video is online. After Trine we had to speed up things a little and instaed of having dinner @riccastelhano was up on the stage doing his talk on Flash + Arduino: a connection with Feelings, again a very inspiring talk with funny moments and great shows, as well it wakened up the electronical guy in me, just need to get my hands on a bunch of boards and start building my own stuff, I think our good friend Maciek “Feel happy like a pig in the mud” Wcislik aka @inoutin had the same thoughts like me.
Last but not least our very own SFUG co-manager @_sandro was up on the stage talking about Advanced Flash Accessibility a great talk as usual and how could it be different, Sandro released a new opensource library called JAcc that will help every flash developer enabling Accessibility in their Flash Projects. That was it gotoAndSki(); was officially over and everyone was feeling sad about it.

At the end it was one of the best conferences I’ve attended in the past, not only because there was some snowboarding involved, no, @fcolaco and @almeidavid_made a great conference in the swiss alps porting the concept from norway to switzerland, I had a blast meeting all these people, which now became friends, I can’t describe well enough how the conference was, I think the best would be to check out the tweets from the first week after the event by then you will be mad that you didn’t attend this event but you will know where you are going to be next year when it’s time for gotoAndSki(“switzerland”); 2012.

Below some of the tweets that I think really explain how the conference was:

I guess good networking is when you think “I miss this guys” instead of just “I made this business contacts”. Damn #gotoAndSki nostalgia…
@fcolaco

Blog: Two thumbs up for #gotoAndSki(‘Switzerland’) http://www.trinefalbe.com/?p=690
@trinefalbe

Walking through the streets of Lisbon. “Need to catch fresh air”, my brain says. I guess it’s a #gotoAndSki secon… http://picplz.com/FvSV
@imhugo

Me too! RT @RicCastelhano: may I return to the Swiss Alps ?? May I, please? Pretty please? #gotoandski aftermath
@jenschr

In the following series, I’m going to show you how to access those special properties that are available when developing for an Android or any other Flash / AIR powered device.

Today, we start with the Accelerometer API.

In this article I’m going to show you how to control a simple ball with the help of the accelerometer API. Clearly you could create a game like the well known Labyrinth available for the iOS or Teeter available on the HTC android devices very easy as soon as you know how to master the Accelerometer API.

Before we start just a heads up that you can follow this article even if you work with Flash CS5 although working with Flash Builder “Burrito” makes your life much easier.

To start let’s create a new Flash Builder “actionscript mobile project” called: “AccelerometerBall“.  Setup the project how you like it, just be sure that you enable full screen.

Now that you are ready to go we first check if an accelerometer is available, if none is available then it’s not worth of continuing the game, but if it’s available we add the sphere to the stage which we want to control. You can add whatever you want, i’m just using a simple sphere I created in Photoshop to be my indicator.

if ( Accelerometer.isSupported )
{
    _accelerometer = new Accelerometer();
    _accelerometer.addEventListener( AccelerometerEvent.UPDATE, onAccelUpdate );
 
    _sphere = new sphereClass();
    _sphere.scaleX = _sphere.scaleY = .2;
    addChild( _sphere );
 
    addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, moveSphere );
}
else
{
    //display message to user that accelerometer is not available
}

When you test the application at this point, you will not see your sphere unless your developer machine has an accelerometer in place, which I doubt

So to properly test it, you should debug your application on your mobile phone, now if you are on Flash CS5 you can use Device Central to simulate the normal behavior of  a mobile phone, Flash Builder “Burrito” users can deploy and debug directly from the Flash Builder Interface, to do that, just simply create a new Run configuration and setup as following.

When debugging the application on your phone you should now be able to see the sphere you placed in stage.

Next on let’s move on to the usage of the Accelerometer API.

To move our sphere, we simply need to take the accelerometers x & y event, have a look at the code below:

protected function onAccelUpdate( event:AccelerometerEvent ):void
{
     _targetX = event.accelerationX * _factor;
     _targetY = event.accelerationY * _factor;
}
 
protected function moveSphere(event:Event):void
{
      _sphere.x -= _targetX;
      _sphere.y += _targetY;
}

If you now test your applcation on your device or in Device Central you should see your sphere moving around on your screen.
As you see every time an update of accelerometer is being dispatched the new position is being saved in the _targetX & _targetY variable, thanks to the EnterFrame we move our sphere around the stage.

Here the complete code for you to review:

package
{
	import flash.display.Bitmap;
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.display.StageAlign;
	import flash.display.StageScaleMode;
	import flash.events.AccelerometerEvent;
	import flash.events.Event;
	import flash.sensors.Accelerometer;
 
	public class AcceleroBall extends Sprite
	{
		[Embed(source="sphere.png")]
		private var sphereClass:Class;
 
		private var _sphere			:Bitmap;
		private var _factor			:uint			= 50;
 
		private var _accelerometer		:Accelerometer;
		private var _targetX			:Number;
		private var _targetY			:Number;
 
		public function AcceleroBall()
		{
			setup();
		}
 
		protected function setup():void
		{
			if ( Accelerometer.isSupported )
			{
				_accelerometer = new Accelerometer();
				_accelerometer.addEventListener( AccelerometerEvent.UPDATE, onAccelUpdate );
 
				_sphere = new sphereClass();
				_sphere.scaleX = _sphere.scaleY = .2;
				addChild( _sphere );
 
				addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, moveSphere );
			}
			else
			{
				//display message to user that accelerometer is not available
			}
		}
 
		protected function onAccelUpdate( event:AccelerometerEvent ):void
		{
			_targetX = event.accelerationX * _factor;
			_targetY = event.accelerationY * _factor;
		}
 
		protected function moveSphere(event:Event):void
		{
			_sphere.x -= _targetX;
			_sphere.y += _targetY;
		}
	}
}

Now it’s up on you to create the boundaries, some holes on the floor, and there you go you have your first Flash Game.

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to comment on this post.

Today, I would like to show you how to suppress certain Keyboard Events, let’s say you setup a kiosk application where the keyboard has to stay attached to the computer and available to the users, there are two ways you can prevent the application to be closed by a kiosk visitor:

A) You take hammer and hit the ESC key out of the keyboard
B) You write a simple small function that will take care of it.

I know I know option A is more fun, but we prefer going with option B.

So let’s have a look what we need to do:
1. As soon as our application starts we need to tell our application to go full screen interactive and add an eventlistener for Event.CLOSE and KeyboardEvent.KEYDOWN.
2. When the user tries to exit the application by either trying a key combination or CMD+Q (Win: ALT+F4) these events will popup and do whatever you wrote in the callback, this is how it should look like:

addEventListener( KeyboardEvent.KEYDOWN, onKeyDown );
addEventListener( Event.CLOSING, onClose );
 
private function onKeyDown( e:KeyboardEvent ):void
{
      e.preventDefault();
}
 
private function onClose( e:Event ):void
{
      e.preventDefault();
}

Yep the magic happens with the preventDefault() method, as it says it prevents the default action to happen. Additionally you could assign an if statement to the onKeyDown event where you listen for a specific combination of keys so you can really close the application.

To start off I would like to show you people how to go FullScreen on Startup of your application, before I show you how that works, let me tell you one very important thing:
Going fullscreen rightaway without any user interaction is ONLY available within Adobe AIR, don’t try this with a pure AS3 or a Flex Project as this will not work!

Why? Security! People visiting a website shouldn’t be capped by a website taking over the whole screen without them wanting to do so, in AIR you create an application that a user will need to install to be able to run it, therefore other security aspects.

Enough of gray theory, let’s have a look how to do this very complicated task

//default fullscreenmode
stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN;
 
//fullscreen mode with interactivity
stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.FULLSCREEN_INTERACTIVE;
 
//going back to normal screen
stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.NORMAL;

Yep that is all you need, in a typical AIR Application you would add an EventListener to your application where when creation has been completed it should call up the method above.

Example of AS3 application:

public function myApp()
{
        stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN;
	subs = gridSize-1;
 
	particles = new Vector.>();
	_attractions = new Vector.;
	s = new ParticleSystem(new Vector3D(0,0.2, 0), .01);
 
	_attractor = s.makeParticle( .8, new Vector3D(0,4,-0.2 ) );
 
	var tmp_bm:Bitmap = new Img() as Bitmap;
	texture = tmp_bm.bitmapData;
}

Does anyone know about any solution / drivers or anything that could enable AIR to communicate with other devices?

I also recall a post by Mike Chambers saying that AIR 2.0 would bring some of these functionalities can anyone confirm that?

Thanks for your input

Tiago

Klok is a wonderful tool that helps you keep track of your time, it’s made for freelancers, individuals, for people that workout on different billable projects. I could even think that it could be used by a small company to track time of their workers.

1. IT’S SIMPLE!
I’ve tested and used a lot of timetracking software throughout the past years and no other timetracking tool was that easy as Klok. Drag & Drop the defined project into the weekly / daily grid and you are done, you can change the time by dragging the top or bottom bar of the entry, done!

2. FLEXIBLE
Let’s say you work on different projects like webdesign, Flex development or Video editing, you never have the descriptions that you really need to comment your tracked hours, Klok gives you the possiblity to create your own Project templates and define subcategories.

3. STOPCLOCK
Wouldn’t it be cool to just track your time realtime, Klok enables you to do that with the help of a simple drag&drop.
Drag & Drop your project or activity to the title bar and Klok stops the time that passes by until you hit the stop button, the entry is automatically created and you can move on to the next project.

4. REPORTING
What’s more important than tracking your time? You would like to BILL your time to your client, Klock does a pretty solid job, you just click on “weekly timesheet” and you can drag & drop the table to your desktop an Excel file is automatically created for you, not enough? Then click the  “Reports” tab and you get a nice pie chart of all the projects that you worked on during the current month, past month or any user defined date range.

Am I completely happy with Klok, well yeh kind of, there are a few bugs and issues that are a bit annoying like for example the zoom slider of the weekly grid, if you work past midnight and the stopclock is running the entry will be closed at midnight and the stopclock stops working. But all in all it’s a great Project and I hope that Rob McKeown continues the development of Klok

You can find Klok HERE

UPDATE: I’ve just seen that Rob has released Klok 1.5 as a beta version, some of the bugs mentioned above that I encoutered have been fixed, which really makes me look forward to this nice little AIR application

Carlos from the well known flashenabledblog.com has released a new site called The Tech Labs,
now you probably asking yourself :

Why is he creating a new flash tutorial collection site again?
What’s wrong with the flashenabledblog?

The answer is simple, there is nothing wrong with the feb, The Tech Labs is a complete new site aiming at Flash, Flex & AIR developers, only publishing the finest tutorials about these 3 topics and the best of it, you can also make money by writing a tutorial, The Tech Labs pays you 100$ for each published tutorial.
Sounds easy no? well hang on.. there are some regulations and guidelines that you need to follow, stick to them and Carlos will come back to you for more

So if you think you have a small author in you, then start writing some cool tutorials and help the Flash, Flex community to learn even more.

Today I’ve been questioned from two friends why I’m using Twitter?
Twitter may seem to you “not geek” that it’s way to tell people what you are doing, (which is true partly) but the really cool thing about it is that you can learn from a lot of twitters around the world, I’m following a bunch of people lately and to be honest you can learn a lot from them, I even considered shutting down my IM since it’s anyway blipping around whole day long and distracting me from work. I’m currently using Twhirl on all my computers and Hahlo.com on my iPhone.
Either if I get a message about a new blog post, or a friend that needs some help on a particular issue, new ideas or just random rambling and yeh… knowing what your friends are doing.

Is it completely useless?? I don’t think so.. For example: Twhirl is a very good example on how twitter can be made cool, no more constantly sign-ins and big ass browser access to view what others are doing, a simple desktop app (Built with Adobe AIR) does it work very good (if not better then the original) and I’ve already seen a few similar clients out there doing the same work.
If you new to AIR, this is your chance to start writing your own twitter client and start learning the dev process of AIR.

At the end to profit from using twitter, you need to follow the right people, being followed is nice, makes you feel popular.. altough it’s not important to be followed, as I said it makes more sense to follow people and learn from them.

What do you think, why are you using Twitter?

Hey guys just a follow up on one of the keynote speeches, MTV & Adobe have teamed up and they are searching for the coolest application.
Maybe you guys wanna join on this fun contest. I definately will

MTV and Adobe are teaming up to bring you the “MTV Adobe® AIR™ Challenge.” Think you can make the coolest Adobe® AIR™ application worthy of MTV’s digital age? Then give it a shot!

btw. this contest is only for people living in North America, though why not give it a try and compare it with the entries that other people did, if you are new to AIR maybe also a good way on learning the amount of power behind AIR.

More informations on: http://adobe.mtv.com

So I started with a datagrid, and an external datasource which is an XML, then created some effects and at the end, a media player which would play the contents of my xml, the cool thing about it, is that I’m feeding a complete itunes-podcast compatible XML into my datagrid, I don’t have to rework the XML for the purposes that I need.

Believe me or not, but just in a matter of 4 hours, I was able to create a fully functional and I hope soon in production application, with a basic knowledge of AS3 and Flex.

Bottom line is, i had a hell of a fun creating that application, you can design your apps very clearly, they are nice and shiny, and they don’t look so bad as some of the applications among us which were done in Java “Grey windows with no styling are out”

I will try to get a public version for you guys, and I will write a small tutorial explaining how it has been created in the hope that beginners like me can also learn from my first steps

Till then
Tiago

Go check it out here: