Adobe MAX 2008 in Milan is now open for registration

Today Adobe has opened for registration for this year's Adobe MAX Conference in Milan.

Check it out...
http://max.adobe.com/eu/register/

PV3D : Training in Cologne

The Rich Media Institute are having one of their renown PV3D training courses in Cologne at the end of this month.

I am still hoping to to have the time to go there, perhaps not as much for the sake of learning new stuff as I have already attended some courses and have some experience already, but also to hang out with a lot of cool people and get a peek at all the amazingly cool stuff that is going on out there in the community.

Check it out...
http://www.richmediainstitute.com/papervision_cologne

DFUG meeting in Aarhus - Indian Summer Knowledge

On the 23rd of July DFUG has a summer meeting...

Be there or be a { someComponent.graphics.drawRect( 0, 0, 50, 50 ) }...
http://flashforum.dk/events/dfug-mode-i-arhus-indian-summer-knowledge

Google Browser Sync Discontinued in FF 3

If you are as sad as I am that Google have decided to discontinue further development of the Google Browser Sync, please dont hesitate to sign the petition...

You can read about Google's decision here...
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-browser-sync-to-be-discontinued.html

And sign here...
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/googlebrowsersyncff3/

Silverlight Tour Workshop

If you are keen on getting up to speed with Silverlight 2, there is a chance with the Silverlight Tour Workshop orchestrated by Wildermuth Consulting Services.

The Silverlight Tour Workshop is a three-day course on Silverlight 2. It divides the content into three distinct areas: Design, Development and the Server-Side. Students should be able to develop Silverlight 2 applications once attending the workshop. The Workshop is structured with a mix of didactic lessons, demonstrations and hands-on labs. Each student will leave the workshop having created several small Silverlight 2 applications. This variety of learning techniques will ensure that all students become proficient in the technology quickly and in an exciting way.

Silverlight is about building Internet applications so experience building web applications is encouraged. In addition, since Silverlight utilizes .NET to build online experiences, familiarity with .NET is suggested. No specific experience with WPF or XAML is necessary.

The schedule is as follows...

* June 16-18, 2008 Washington, DC
* June 23-25, 2008 Toronto, ON
* July 14-16, 2008 Chicago, IL
* August 6-8, 2008 Melbourne, Australia
* August 11-13, 2008 Boston, MA
* August 27-29, 2008 Toronto, ON
* September 1-3, 2008 Denver, CO
* September 22-24, 2008 New York, NY
* September 24-26, 2008 Toronto, ON
* October 22-24, 2008 Atlanta, GA
* October 29-31, 2008 Sydney, Australia
* November 3-5, 2008 San Diego, CA
* November 19-21, 2008 Seattle, WA
* December 1-3, 2008 Dallas, TX

Check it out...
http://www.silverlight-tour.com/

MSDN : TechEd 2008 in Barcelona

Now registration is opened for this years Microsoft TechEd in Europe.



If you sign up prior to the 31st of July, its possible to get a discount on the fee.
This year there is gonna be a lot about Silverlight, so be sure to sign up if you are working on RIA's.

There is a discount code which will make it possible to get some discount:
DLCTTN37

Check it out...
http://www.microsoft.com/emea/teched2008/itpro/

Adobe MAX 2008

Milano is one of the most beautyful cities in the world, and this December its gonna be the venue for this years Adobe MAX conference.

If you have not already checked it out, be sure to visit the website to see the latest updates about it...
http://max.adobe.com/eu/

Adobe OnAIR Tour Stockholm (2)

Jens Brynildsen have been so nice to share his photos from the Adobe OnAIR Tour's stop in the swedish capital, Stockholm.

Check it out...
http://www.flashmagazine.com/News/detail/onair_stockholm_2008_pictures/

Adobe OnAIR Tour Stockholm (1)

A day inside the "Munchen-bryggeriet" masshall when the weather was so good and Stocktown was at its finest, caused everyone to assume that the sessions would be as abandoned as the beach in Jaws succeeding the second attack of the killer-shark... however, it was not !
It was packed with designers, flash programmers and flex developers (and perhaps even an existing AIR developer) and off course reps. from Adobe.

The food was great, the "swag" was OK and enough so that everyone seemed to feel appreciated.
Lots of cool people with lots of great knowledge and ideas...

Stay posted for more on this topic...

Adobe Air : OnAIR Tour Stockholm (0)

The Adobe AIR team visits Stockholm in Sweden next month. Unfortunately the registrees have already reached capacity.

Several of the other stops on the tour is still open for signup, so dont hesitate to consider going to either Berlin or London if your in the area.

Check it out...
http://onair.adobe.com/schedule/cities/stockholm.php

PaperVision3D : Now in Stockholm

For all us fans in Scandinavia of the Papervision3D API, there are great news in the immediate future.
It appears that PV3D major contributor Ralph Hauwert is having a course in Stocktown on June 12th thi year.

Check it out:
http://www.richmediainstitute.com/papervision_stockholm

The Copenhagen RIA / Flex Meetup

Earlier this year a MeetUp group was created for Copenhagen centered around the development of RIA's and Adobe Flex.

Along with DFUG (www.flashforum.dk) this will become one of the places where you can expect to see events posted.

Check it out:
http://flash.meetup.com/149/

FITC Amsterdam 2008 : Immediate post-festival thoughts

Now the FITC Amsterdam 2008 is formally over, remaining is only the Colin Moock, ActionScript 3.0 - from the ground up tour.
Licking my wounds on top of a session filled 3 days (including the pre-festival workshop day) I am confident that I will go next year again. Yes, FITC has announced that they will do it again for sure next year. Good news to us in Europe who struggle to make the non-north-american influence on Adobe's products stronger in an coordinated effort in concretely making the future better in regards to localization of the Flash platform.

Anyways, in short I have met a lot of interesting people here doing great things on the Flash Platform and I have been motivated to make my contribution more significant, seeing that it appears to me that some of the things we are doing at Hello are pretty upfront.

There are many possibilities of making a difference right now since the developer community is just getting started... and I have decided that I want to be an active part of this.

PV3D : Course in London, 2nd day

The second day was the most interesting of the two days as we here got to dive a bit deeper into the API's and even got to do some "freestyle" coding under the watchful eye from the competent Mr. Ralph Hauwert.

The sources and presentation files for the entire course can be downloaded from UnitZeroOne's website:
http://www.unitzeroone.com/papervision/workshops/workshoplondon.zip

An additional source is a spherical panorama of the course-hall which can be downloaded here:
http://www.unitzeroone.com/papervision/workshops/spherePano.zip

FITC : ActionScript 3.0 PostFestival Session

If you are attending this years FITC in Amsterdam, don't miss out on the opportunity for at day with Colin Mook. The day after the "Flash In The Can" festival, there is a "ActionScript - From The Ground Up" session.



You can sign up here, and its free.
The SignUp form is taylered for US citizens only, but with a little cheekiness you can get around it.

Sign up here:
http://www.adobeas3tour.com/

FITC Amsterdam 2008 : Discount code

For the first time ever, Flash In The Can (FITC) will visit Europe.
This takes place as previously announced between the 24th and the 27th (incl. pre-festival workshops and a post-festival ditto featuring none other than the legendary Colin Moock).

If you still haven't gotten your ticket I would def. urge you to, its gonna be a lot of fun and it might even have some educational aspects too (just kidding, I know I will bring home a lot of goodies for the dev-shed).

Anyways, in case you haven't gotten your ticket yet I can offer you this discount entitling you to 25% off the sticker-price.

I know it works as I myself have used it... :-)

FITC Discountcode: "labs25" (without apostrophe's)

Adobe Event : January 25th in Copenhagen

The Adobe experts are throwing a presentation of their Web technologies and AIR.

Folks like...

- longtime Macromedia/Adobe web-tech evangelist Greg Rewis
- omnipresent CSS and accessibility expert Stephanie Sullivan
- video-rockstar Jason Levine
- top-of-the-lnie AIR guru Mike Downey

...will come and present this for the general masses.

I don't expect this to be advanced in any way as its targetted towards the general public, but nevertheless it might be interesting for the more strategically inclined techies to attend as it will summarize the vision of the technologies down to one commutable serenade. A serenade I expect will be usable as part of a "sales pitch" both internally to management, other peer-departments as well as externally to customers considering a RIA solution.
I therefore also assume it could be beneficial for more non-technical personnel working with techies to attend, as I assume it will provide a not-too-technical overview of the technologies.

Check it out and signup here:
http://events.adobe.co.uk/events/cgi/event.cgi?country=dk&eventid=6279
NB. Its free and signup has just opened as of the time of posting this.

This day or seminar follows a day for VIP's only, where I suppose the plans for the future will unveiled... tell me, is there anybody out there who is not excited about the sharp turn Adobe has taken since the acquisition of Macromedia in regards to parter-relations :-)

FITC Amsterdam 25th - 27th February

Don't forget to get your ticket while the early bird discount still is available (Last chance is the 9th of February). Its the 7th year of this exciting event and I am gonna try to do my best to be able to find the time and finance to attend.



Check it out:
http://www.fitc.ca/event_detail.cfm?festival_id=29

PV3D : Course in London, 1st day

Sitting in my hotel room (one of the box'y, container'ish and non-superfluousness-yet-no-hassle one's with 'business-person-only-in-town-for-a-short-business-meeting' written all over it) sipping some mediocre, yet drinkable wine with screw-cap from New Zealand bought in the local "non-7/11-yet-still-open-24hours-drugsstore" the day begins to settle in this old brain stuck to the top of my neck.



Let me start by stating that Ralph Hauwert is one of the "real" ones. He is a nerd that has turned pro !
Ralph Hauwert is quite a lucky man, because his product (PaperVision 3D) sells itself - so even if he had not been the talented speaker he is and had he not been the jovial guy residing on top of what appears to be pure high-level competence, he would have made anyone in the place today go home with a shitload of inspiration and a lot of "so-ein-ding-muss-ich-auch-hapen" feeling regarding the many demos shown during the day in their respective pockets (S.E.D.M.I.A.H.: please check the image of a real BABELFISH translation later in this post).

The day today has been spend by mostly establishing a common vocabulary and getting everything setup for the "big" day tomorrow. The audience, being split apr. 50/50 between coders and visual-designers (ref.: informal hands-up poll conducted by Ralph Hauwert himself during the inception of today's session) and what I suppose was an equivalent split in regards to Flash and Flex, was necessary to be groomed in order to establish a common starting point from where to start the open part of the course (2nd day). However, just by walking through all the basic stuff relating to PaperVision on the course of establishing a common foothold I have already learned a lot already that I can use in my business, however eventually the complete lack of proper documentation of the PaperVision SDK and API also became obvious and kinda scared me a little but, however...

After having asked Ralph Hauwert (during the post-session informal QA that always happen when the speaker acts a roadie and packs down his/her gear) about an explanation for the lack of documentational focus from the PV3D team, the answer proved to be quite a bit more clever than the question.
It appears that PV3D have more than 400 1st-line developers using the API who are not only using the API, but also putting great effort into reporting bugs and issues to the PV3D team. The reports harvested from this impressive group of early-adopters are of a reportedly high quality and naturally: its a very relevant fear from the PV3D team that if a "normal" Java-doc like documentation and versioning paradigm was implemented, it would spawn of a plethora of "not-so-diligent" masses of developers with no particular interest in bringing PV3d to the next level that would start bombarding the bug-reporting-system with mere incident-reports and not actual bug-reports. The PV3D team would, if the API was published publically, hence probably end up being tied down into a never ending trench of bug-reports made by people from all corners of the web-development industry with no particular interest in the PV3D platform and that would effectively be the end of PaperVision (This particular course of events have been seen before, remember? ). I personally believe its a quite clever move by the PV3D team to steer clear of painting themselves into a corner by the act of exposing themselves to the vast community of (lets face it, this group to which I belong in this context are an obnoxious and ignorant group of non-forgiving and intolerant "revengees") early-adopters and first-movers on a hyped-up-technology which in many people's eyes may contain unlimited possibility of both profit and fame , which we all know is a very efficient recipe for problems when attempting to release a new API which is challenging in its nature.

About the concrete contents of the session, I will post from my notes when day number 2 has passed and I again will be sitting alone in a hotel-room with nothing better to do than to post to my blog.

Anyways, sofar... its SO great and VERY VERY inspiring in regards to get cracking on the code... to ALL of you out there who didn't make it this time: be sure to attend the next time... I for one will probably be to find among the geeks in the back-rows :-)

Check out my translation from the classic public web-app over all classic public web-apps: BABELFISH...

DFUG : Interview w. PV3D' s Ralph Hauwert and Mike Chambers

Mike Chambers have posted an interview following the DFUG / Adobe AIR User meeting in Aarhus.
I'm attending Ralph's course on PV3D next month in London, and this interview just even makes me more happy to have signed up already.

Check out Ralph's blogpost on it (linking to the video of the interview):
http://www.unitzeroone.com/blog/video_interview_on_papervision.html