At last night's meeting I described Kenny Bunch of Dreamsocket as having a larger brain than the rest of us. His response was "Well, I don't know about that." Then he proved that, even if his brain isn't larger, it certainly has a lot more knowledge in it than most people when it comes to delivering content on the Web. Kenny walked us through the ins and outs of delivering slide shows, audio and video (and any combination of those) to the Web, and then showed us how he's helped CBS, Disney, Cartoon Network, and CNN coordinate media delivery, bandwidth management and advertisement insertion.

Kenny has been working in technology for more than 20 years and has been working with these media giants for the past seven years. His work with the Cartoon Network's Ben10 PS3 game that he demoed at our meeting has earned him a seat at an interactive video panel at this year's NAB conference. Kenny is always a big draw for our user group and I am happy to say that he attends the group regularly, making the group that much better.

Although the focus of the meeting was media application, Kenny was also giving us a glimpse into something that makes media applications easier to build and maintain: the Dreamsocket Media Framework. Kenny built this framework over the last few years to make it easier to provide the depth of support that his clients have required. The Dreamsocket Media Framework was released last month, but Kenny is trying to find a way to make it possible for the framework to be freely licensed for non-commercial work. We'll let Kenny announce his licensing plan when he finds the right licensing solution for everyone.

At our next meeting on Tuesday, March 24 we have another advanced topic as Andrew Westberg from Simplified Logic will be discussing "Digital Rights Management and the Flash Platform." We hope that you will join us.

Now that Adobe Creative Suite 4 has been announced, Adobe has made a package available to us to present to you all. Please join us on this Thursday, September 25, 2008 to take a peek into our future with a preview of Adobe Creative Suite 4.

Who should attend: Anyone interested in hearing more about the new features in their favorite Creative Suite products. Come join like-minded Creative Suite designers and developers for a look at videos and presentations created by Adobe to give you a clear idea about new features that will save you time, effort and money.

More Details.

As an update to my previous post, the Flex and AIR Pre-release Tour's Atlanta stop received so many RSVPs that the meeting site needed to be changed to accomidate the audience.

If you are planning to attend, please use this page for directions to the event.

I look forward to seeing everyone there.

Our December 2007 meeting presenter canceled because of last minute business travel, so we will not be having our meeting this month.

We will, however, be showing our Christmas spirit next week by cleaning out our stockpiles of t-shirts, books, bags and software (yeah, we still have a copy of Adobe CS3 to give away). The bad news is that you'll need to register to win. The good news is that you won't need to be present to win!

We'll be letting everyone know what they have to do later this week, so pay attention!

I wanted to post an entry about last night's meeting featuring Ryan Taylor from Schematic to recap the event. Ryan's presentation on his Animation System was excellent and I believe that everyone at the meeting got a lot out of the session.

Ryan began the presentation explaining the differences between timeline and programmatic animation, showing the advantages and disadvantages to both. Then Ryan went into the math of animating, which quite honestly is the most math I've endured since high school (and that was a long time ago). I was truly impressed with Ryan's confidence and knowledge when it comes to programmatic animation. He really understands what makes an animation work and relayed that to the audience well.

Finally, after getting us the background that we needed to understand what his Animation System offered, Ryan demonstrated the many things that you can do with very few lines of code. Built in ActionScript 3.0, Ryan's Animation System can use either the Enter Frame Event or a Timer to control animations. I loved seeing that you can write one line of code to animate an on-screen object in ways that would normally take many, many more lines. By the end of his demonstrations I could clearly see the time and money that can be saved using this system. Finally, Ryan showed showed the presentation that John Grden used at MAX last week that combined PaperVision3D with Ryan's Animation System. It was very interesting.

Ryan's Animation System is currently at v2.0 and can be found here. Ryan said that the system has an MIT License and developers may do what they want with the code. Ryan has also gone to to trouble of documenting the system and providing all of the demonstration files within the code download.

Thanks, Ryan, not only for presenting but for giving back to the community.

One post, three good subjects!

Tonight's AFFUG Meeting

I am honestly very excited about tonight's Atlanta Flash and Flex User Group meeting featuring John Mason presenting Unit Testing and Test Driven Development (TDD) for Flex & ActionScript 3.0. It happens to be coinciding with my frustrating efforts of getting some unit testing implemented at Roundbox Global. I hope that John is ready for all my crazy questions, 'cause I have quite a few.

Free Flex Training

Yeah, that's what I said it! Thirty days of free access to 17 hours of online Flex training from Total Training. Click the link, fill out the form, enter the code (it is on that page). It's that simple. Just remember, your first one is free...

Add Content to the Flex Cookbook

O'Reilly is calling you out!

Are you doing any development work (including skinning and UI design)
with Adobe Flex? Here's your chance to be a contributor to an Adobe
Developer Library book to be published in 2008, Flex 3 Cookbook.
Adobe's got a terrific site for Flex developers of any stripe to show
their best stuff, and O'Reilly and Adobe are partnering on a book that
will include some of the best contributions from the site. Each
contribution uses the classic O'Reilly cookbook
"Problem/Solution/Explanation" format; if you've got strong material to
show the rest of the world, it couldn't be easier to write up your
material in the online fields, and join the cookbook party. Flex
developers are in very short supply in an exploding market, so here's
your chance to show your stuff to the rest of the community!

What?!? You mean you didn't know about the Flex Cookbook Beta?!? Just remember that this is a problem and solution site — you have to have both to post.

Next month's meeting will be at the Fox Theatre in conjunction with the onAIR Bus Tour in Atlanta. (more details about the tour)

Attendance is free but you must register. You will need to choose one of three options: 1) Day Only (10:00 AM - 5:30 PM), 2) Evening only (6:00 PM - 9:00 PM) or 3) Full Day (10:00 AM - 9:00 PM). Check out the agenda here (scroll down to the agenda header) to figure out how much you want to participate. Also, we will try to keep you updated here about any changes to the agenda, as it is obviously still tentative.

To find out more about the Adobe Integrated Runtim (AIR) drop by the Adobe Labs Site.