Cobrowsing application built with Cocomo

After attending the session “Cocomo Deep Dive: Building Social RIA with Flex + Adobe Hosted Service” by Nigel Pegg @ MAX 2008, I decided to write a simple application using the Cocomo API’s. This application uses as3flickrlib. as3flickrlib library is an ActionScript 3.0 API for the online photo sharing application, Flickr. This in turn required me to download as3corelib. The corelib project is an ActionScript 3 Library that contains a number of classes and utilities for working with ActionScript 3. These include classes for MD5 and SHA 1 hashing, Image encoders, and JSON serialization as well as general String, Number and Date APIs.

shareFlickr is an application that allows users to cobrowse flickr images, chat and share your webcam. Adding a chat and webcam component is just a simple tag (1 line). It is a proof-of-concept to show the capabilities of Cocomo API’s. Cocomo saved me a lot of time (I mean it) to write the back-end code which I was planning to write so that I can run it in LCDS based on Christophe’s example. Thanks to Anil Channappa for pointing me in this direction. Feel free to cobrowse flickr images.

Broadchoice is already using Cocomo. Just imagine how using Cocomo and this interactive video object manipulation can look like in the future.

Regular Expression Explorer

Ryan Swanson has written a very useful application to work with Regular Expressions in Flex.  Click here and bookmark it.  Sams Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes is a tutorial book organized into a series of easy-to-follow 10-minute lessons. This should be part of Tour de Flex along with other Explorer applications.

Data visualization

It is an art of story telling through data visualization. I was watching Jonathan Harris‘s TED presentation. I was particularly impressed by “We Feel Fine” project. This will inspire us to present data in very interesting ways. Here are other projects love-lines, phylotaxis, 10×10, Universe that got launched sometime back. His latest project is the whale hunt. It is an experiment about web being the interface for story telling that is worth watching. We now need Flash/Flex UI components/widgets to be built so that we can help tell such stories.

3D Visualization

I was blown away with this House of Cards video. This video is pure data and a treat for people who are interested in visualization. It is incredible. You should also check out Processing.

Mind Reader – AIR Marketplace

I posted a simple game called Mind Reader in AIR Marketplace. You should checkout some very useful AIR Applications at AIR Marketplace. I searched google for the term Mind Reader and found this interesting Flash program. I was teaching basics of Flex to someone and took the Flash example and made it as an assignment to write this program. Here is the Mind Reader application in Flex. Of course, next thing would be to have it as an AIR application :-).

Spirograph in Adobe AIR Marketplace

I released the Spirograph AIR application in Adobe AIR Marketplace as I couldn’t update my AIR application in o2apps. I can share snippets of code, if someone is interested. I will be adding other interesting patterns/curves later on.

NJISACF link in Flex Builder 3 docs

I was wondering why I am getting hits from learn.adobe.com as per Google Analytics tool. I was surprised to find the NJISACF link in Getting Started Flex Builder 3 docs. Look at the comment section in Part IV->Tips, tricks and techniques. Thanks Tony :-). It is actually Ely’s DisplayShelf component. The other link in the comment is no longer valid.

High Performance Web Sites

I found some interesting things on this topic that I would like to share. First check out this google tech talk video. Steve Souders is also the author of the O’Reilly book ‘High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers’ Yahoo developers network has dedicated section on this topic. YSlow is a Firefox add-on integrated with the popular Firebug web development tool. Click here  to download the IBM Page Detailer. I know we got Profiler in Flex Builder 3. Do we have guidelines for high performance Flex 3 applications? I found the livedoc pretty interesting about ‘Using the framework RSL’ There is Optimizer tool also to help. Any comments on this is highly appreciated.

Newsglobe – Yahoo’s Papervision 3D application

Newsglobe is another application that is using Papervision 3D API. Yahoo launched it recently. It is a nice mashup application that shows news across the globe. See what Poly9 guys are doing with 3D earth Flex/Actionscript APIs. Take a spin! Great job greg@poly9.com

Toyota’s Model Selector in Flex

Well, one of the first proof-of-concept that I built before Flex ver 1.0 was released was Model Selector and ofcourse it is an AIR application too. Now I finally see automotive website built model selector application in Flex and it is live. Experience Toyota’s Model Selector. How do I know it is written in Flex? I did a view source on the page and found this link. We are very familiar with the error messages when a RemoteObject call fails, right. This is the reason we need a fault event handler that gives a better error message. Usually we write code for the result event handler and ignore the fault event handler. Should we have better error message as default in the flex framework, in case a developer doesn’t write a custom fault error handler for HTTP, RemoteObject or WebService call?

We are bringing nice user experience with Flex for consumers. Go Flex!