Holy Cow! Google linked back to me!

All I can say is "Wow!". I wrote a blog post last night on insideria.com about the new Google Maps Flash/Flex API. That example made it up to the Google Maps Demo Gallery !

This is really cool!

Update: Jun 23, 2008
I just had another example linked to by Google! You can check out my examples on Google at: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/flash/demogallery.html?searchquery=trice&classname=

Ubuntu Got It Right

I just installed the latest version of Ubunutu on my laptop (8.04, which was released yesterday), and for the first time in the 8 years that I have been dabbling in Linux, I did not need to do anything to install any drivers. It automatically recognized my graphics card, wireless network, sound card, etc... I've been a fan of Linux for a long time, but have always been hesitant to use it for my "main" operating system. I think that could change now that everything worked on the first try (w/o recompiling anything). I think this was actually even easier than installing windows. I'm going to evaluate it further, but its looking promising.

First Post from my EeePC

The title says it all. This is my first post from my new Asus EeePC. ultra-portable computer. The keyboard is a bit small for full-fledged writing, but the machine is very cool. It is tiny, the battery lasts 4 hours, and its very powerful considering its size.



It weighs in at just 2 lbs, runs linux, and is smaller than a hard-back book. It has a 7 inch screen at 800x480. Its definitely not the 1680x1050 of my other computer, but still gets the job done. I can see lots of uses for this machine in the future. Now I just need to get the internet connection on my phone working...

Blogs, Books, and More!

Yep, I've been up to a lot of writing lately. Not only have I been actively writing for InsideRIA.com, I've been working on books.

The Flex 3 Cookbook is about to go to print (if it's not there already). I'm a contributing author for this book, and wrote the chapter on "Communicating with the Browser". Go buy it!

We're moving forward with Professional Flex 3. I'm one of the authors for this book, and have a good bit to write still. :) It is going to be a very comprehensive book, with a solid group of authors. It should be available in the fall of 2008. You can read a bit more about the book and the team here:
http://www.joeflash.ca/blog/2008/03/the-professional-flex-3-book.html
(the information on Amazon about this book is wrong)

New Article on Devnet

My article "Use ColdFusion 8 and Flex 3 to export visual components" was released yesterday on the Adobe Developer Connection. Go Check it out! This article shows you how to export visual components in Flex 3 using the ImageSnapshot class, which is much easier than the old "bitmapData.draw" method. This article also shows you how to serialize and store images on a ColdFusion server using Flas/Flex Remoting and CFFile, shows you how to generate image thumbnails using CFImage, and shows you how to embed the Image Snapshots into a PDF using CFDocument.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/articles/screen_exports.html?devcon=f2

Enjoy!

What I've been up to...

Things have been quiet on this blog lately, but that certainly doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I just haven't had the time to keep this blog up to date. Here's a few things that have been going on:

• InsideRIA - I'm both honored and excited to be a part of this initiative by Oreilly and Adobe to cover the emerging trends of RIA. Go read it!
  
  
• Flex 3 Cookbook - I just completed writing chapter 21 on "Browser Communication" as a guest author. Pre-order it now! It should be coming out soon!
  
  
• Another book! - Yep, I'm one of the authors for a new Flex 3 book coming soon. It's still under wraps, but I'll be sure to post more info when things are ready to move forward.
  
  
• Cynergy Labs - I'm doing some R&D for new projects at Cynergy Labs.
  
  

... and don't forget the day job! I'll try to post more fun stuff and code examples soon, but I make no promises. :-)