Alekkus » Empowering social media with Flash

Flex tutorial: Enabling track pad (mouse wheel) scrolling on Mac OS X for Flex 4

Alekkus — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:54:54 +0000

It’s been quite a while since I last worked on Flex after I became a Web Evangelist at Microsoft where I’m spending most of my time working on Silverlight (a very awesome technology too). Recently, I was working on a pet project using Flex 4 (to keep up with my Flex skill), and sadly despite all the new features, mouse wheel/track pad scrolling on the Mac OS is still not supported out-of-the-box. All the previous implementations by the Flash community doesn’t work on Flex 4 if you using the viewport approach introduced in the new version. So I decided to modify the codes in my previous post, and here you go… : )

Demo/Source codes:
Trackpad/Mousewheel Scrolling on Mac for Flex 4 (view source is enabled….because sharing is caring)

I also took an extra to tweak the scrolling speed for various browser… let me know if it’s not working well in a particular browser.

Google Image Search API

Alekkus — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:56:45 +0000

Here’s a demo of Google Image Search API which was included in 65amp.com. The good thing about doing this in Flex or Flash is that the API endpoint has a cross-domain.xml that allows any external domain to coomunicate, hence the app can be completely standalone without roundtrip to proxy server.

Test your site for cross-browser comparability with Adobe’s Browserlab

Alekkus — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:34:39 +0000

Only one week after Adobe announced a free web-based “Powerpoint” application, called Presentation, it releases another offering this week, the Browserlab. This product simply lets web designers and developers test their site in multiple browser emulations. Currently, the supported browsers are: Firefox 2, Firefox 3, IE6, IE7, Safari 4.

Be sure to check out all the other web-based applications that Adobe is offering:
Buzzword
Photoshop Express

65amp.com launched! Why everyone needs a mashup?

Alekkus — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:15:14 +0000

I left the corporate world back in late 2007 to pursue a business idea. It was an idea that I thought it was obvious to have been implemented, yet I don’t see it on the web at that time. To work on the idea, I knew I need to learn web development skills, an area which I have never touch on during my Computer Science course (shame on me). I joined a small company as a Flex developer, and learned as much as I could. Then in July 2008, I once again tender my resignation to officially kick off my startup. After a 10 months roller-coaster ride, I finally got it launched – http://65amp.com

It is a mashup publishing platform that allows users to integrate their existing contents from various sites into a single page so that friends can access all the users’ contents from a single place. Why is this a much needed product? Let’s travel back a few years from now. When blogging came out, it was a hit because people have yearn to publish themselves but the hassle of learning html and hosting a site was too much of a trouble. Blogging, on the other hand, allow everyone to own a place on the net, to express their thoughts and to communicate with others. But soon, people want something more than text content. So came the waves of sites offering photo management services like Flickr and Photobucket. Then came videos (yes YouTube). And now feeds (Twitter, Friendfeed). With all these services, each offering a segment of contents, a user online identity gets disperse since a person who like reading your blog wouldn’t know what other contents (images, videos) you have contributed online. Hence, it seems rational that a whole-new publishing platform that can integrate contents from various sources are needed at this moment.

Aggregating use contents is nothing new. Many sites do it, with the majority chose to present the aggregate contents in chronological order (FriendFeed, Storytlr). I thought my approach is better and so 65amp was born. It’s currently still in Alpha version, and I’m open up to feedbacks to improve the site.

Here’s a short demo of how to create a mashup in 65amp. Let me know what your thoughts.

Do you want to stay in the zoo or get out to the wild?

Alekkus — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:51:38 +0000

Just read a blog post by Paul Graham, who discussed the cons of technology professionals working for big companies. He used several metaphors to describe the differences between working for large corporations and starting your own. I particularly liked “the zoo or the wild” metaphor: working for companies are like animals in a zoo, although safe, they can’t show their full potentials. I would certainly agree with him. Since I went out to start my own startup, the amount of the things that I’ve learned is tremendous. If I were to return to the “zoo” anytime now, I could easily considered for position that are a few levels higher than a year ago because of the amount of skills and knowledge that I poses now.

Paul’s post was pretty long (as usual). So I have decided to extract some of them out:

“Lions in the wild seem about ten times more alive. They’re like different animals. I suspect that working for oneself feels better to humans in much the same way that living in the wild must feel better to a wide-ranging predator like a lion. Life in a zoo is easier, but it isn’t the life they were designed for.”

“An obstacle downstream propagates upstream. If you’re not allowed to implement new ideas, you stop having them. And vice versa: when you can do whatever you want, you have more ideas about what to do. So working for yourself makes your brain more powerful in the same way a low-restriction exhaust system makes an engine more powerful.”

Bored with your desktop?

Alekkus — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:43:23 +0000

Are you bored with your computer’s desktop. Try out BumpTop, which aims to reinvent the way you work with your files. The “waoh” factor is certainly there, but I’m concerned about the adoption rate; making a dog learn new tricks is not an easy task.

Adobe releases ActionScript 3.0 Library for Facebook

Alekkus — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:00:01 +0000

Adobe just released a client library that will aid developers to easily create Flash applications on Facebook. The mechanism involved is explained here. A get-started video tutorial is also available.

Cynergy Systems, one of the best RIA companies

Alekkus — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:41:28 +0000

From day one when I stepped into Flex, I have been following the cool stuffs that Cynergy Systems Inc. builds. While there are many companies who are experts in building Rich Internet Applications (RIA), Cynergy would come out top when it comes to seamless visual experience. I have seen so many applications which embed unnecessary animation, making user feel annoying at times. Cynergy really tackle that well. Check out their showcase to see what I mean.

(A video interview taken by Ryan Stewart)

Quickcomm Enterprise with Cynergy from Ryan Stewart on Vimeo.

Microsoft’s Silverlight 3 updates

Alekkus — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:32:57 +0000

For the past two days, there have been many discussions surrounding the latest update to Microsoft’s Silverlight when it was announced during the MIX 09. The most interesting feature would be its whole new “Out-of-Browser” experience. I thought there was Microsoft’s answer to Adobe’s AIR, but soon found out they were addressing different problems. Although I’m a complete supporter of Adobe’s Flex and Flash platform, I must say Silverlight looks more attractive with each release.

I must also say MS are great marketers, on the video front, they were able to convince the Olympics folks to use Silverlight to stream videos in both the Beijing 2008 Olypmics and Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

An emerging trend – Augmented Reality (AR)

Alekkus — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 10:28:36 +0000

After checking out Cyber Figure Alice, I came across more products that use Augmented Reality. For instance, AR-powered baseball cards and GE’s Smart Grid. Let me know if you come across anymore.

For Flash enthusiasts, Saqoosha has released a library for enabling AR on the Flash platform dubbed the FLARToolkit. Ryan Stewart posted a FLARToolkit demo while attending Adobe Max in Japan earlier this year. Check it out : )

FLARToolKit Demo from Ryan Stewart on Vimeo.