Cliff Hall hosted his "PureMVC Pirate Radio Conference Takeover" tonight, and I must say it was very cool to hear how the framework is being put to the test in production. Technical (Acrobat Connect) difficulties aside, it's obvious that PureMVC is the real deal.

Thanks guys, for taking the time to talk about how you're using PureMVC.

A very notable aside by Brendan Lee was his plug about the Ribbit $100,000 Killer App Challenge. If you're interested in developing an app on the Ribbit Open Telephony Platform, you definitely need to take note of this developer contest. Cash is good.

I just read a little about the new beta technology that they have released today called Cocomo. It supposed to solve a bunch of problems, like "real-time social capabilities" and "real-time multi-user applications." Features of the Cocomo beta include things like whiteboards and chat.

Ok, Adobe. Help me out here. What's the point? Don't we already have all of those things in Flash Media Interactive Server and Livecycle Dataservices? What problem are you trying to solve exactly? The biggest difference I can see at first glance is that this is a hosted solution, but....we already have that too (ie Influxis). We've had the technology to build real-time apps with Flash and Flex for years now.

I'll investigate a little more, but man this seems a little redundant, and I definitely don't see the value here. Hopefully they aren't planning to ax FMS or LCDS. I would love to know more about where they are going with these different technologies. Sorry, I just don't understand the "big, big deal". They don't seem to compliment each other very well....they're almost in competition with themselves.

Off to learn more...

This is a follow up to my previous post, For Designers: How to Create a Flex Skin.

Ok, so you just received an email from a designer, since they are scared of Subversion, with an attachment of a fresh new glossy Flex skin (just kidding, we must be nice to our designers....otherwise, they will draw degrading cartoons of us). Below are 3 short tutorials on how to apply the skin, from start to finish.

Setting up Flex Builder:

Importing Skins into Flex Builder:

Testing and Customizing Skins:

I've noticed that many designers are completely scared of Flex. I understand. Flex is scary. However, Adobe is making Rich Internet App design very approachable for UI designers now. So, if you're a designer, it's time to stop complaining and jump on the Flex bandwagon. It's easy. Really.

Below are a few tutorial videos on how to create a skin for a Flex application in Fireworks from start to finish. You can also create skins in Photoshop using a very similar technique.

If you're a developer, don't bother with the mind-numbing nonsense below, see my other post: For Developers: How to Apply a Flex Skin

Setting up Fireworks CS3:

Editing Skin Templates in Fireworks:

Exporting Skins From Fireworks:

Good news from Techcrunch:

Adobe has created a special Flash player for the search engines that acts like a virtual user going through each application. It actually goes through the runtime of each Flash application and translates it into something the search engines can understand. So all of those fancy interactive Flash Websites and other rich Internet applications that have been invisible to search engines, can now be seen by them.

Techcrunch Article

So Adobe finally released their online version of Photoshop. It is a Flex based RIA called Photoshop Express. While the tool is a very nice tool, it only slightly similar to the desktop version, and IMO doesn't really deserve the "Photoshop" name. The Express version seems like more of an online photo manager repository type thing. Maybe I'm not seeing the big picture? Maybe Adobe is planning to integrate the online tool very closely with the desktop tool, which might justify the name. Either way, the app itself is pretty slick.

Check it out here: Adobe Photoshop Express

www.searchme.com