Saturday, December 11, 2010

Require Flash Builder 4 for Egit and MecurialEclipse yet?

I just tried install Egit and MecurialEclipse on Flex Builder 3, but looks like it is not compatible with Flex Builder 3.  I guess I'll have to upgrade to Flash Builder 4.
I believe Flex Builder 3 is based on Eclipse 3.2.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Installing AIR SDK onto Flex SDK (Mac)

Here is a good instructions for installing AIR SDK onto your flex builder's Flex SDK for Mac.
http://radleymarx.com/2010/02/install-air-2-osx/  (by Radley Marx)

Monday, August 2, 2010

Wow! Android Prediction Update - My Prediction Comes True!

Wow, wow, wow!  My prediction about Android selling more phones than iPhone has come true, much sooner than I predicted.  I am wrong in how soon this will occur.  It happened this quarter already!  

According to Nielsen, 
"In terms of subscriptions over the past month, Android has surpassed iPhone in new users, with 27 percent of smartphone subscribers going with Android compared to the iPhone’s 23 percent. "
 
http://phandroid.com/2010/08/02/android-edges-past-iphone-in-smartphone-subscriptions/
http://www.androidguys.com/2010/08/02/nielson-android-outsells-iphone-handsets-q2/

Solution to "Problem using as3corelib and HTTService"

I encountered this error message in one of my AIR projects.

VerifyError: Error #1053: Illegal override of concurrency in mx.rpc.http.mxml.HTTPService.

It looks like the same error as the one described in:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/681351?tstart=0

Steps to reproduce:
This occurs after I download as3corelib.swc 0.93 and put in my Flex project's libs folder.  Inside my app, there is an mx:HttpService.
It looks like some sdk incompatibility.

Solution:
Instead of putting downloaded as3corelib.swc into libs folder.  Copy and paste as3corelib source code into your own project.  You can download the source code by using svn from http://as3corelib.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/

For example, I only use JSON library.  So I just need to copy com.adobe.serialization.json folder to my project.

Android Prediction Update - AdMob predicts more Android than iPhone by end of this year

Admob's prediction is a lot more aggressive than my prediction.  They predict more Android users than iPhone users by end of 2010.
http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/12/mobilebeat-android-users-will-surpass-iphone-users-by-end-of-2010/

Android Prediction Update - rumor, Verizon to have iPhone next year

When I made a prediction, I did put in a condition.  If Apple do let other carriers to carry iPhone, it may change my prediction.

Android Prediction Update - 1.7m iPhone4 in 3 days, 3m iPhone4 in 3 weeks

Although news said that 1.7m iPhone4 sold in 3 days and 3m iPhone4 sold in 3 weeks, I still believe Android will eventually be able to outsell iPhone within a year, unless iPhone is open to other carriers.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Update on Android Prediction - 160000 Android Activations a day

A few day after my "Android Prediction" post, where I think that there will be at least one quarter where Android outsells iPhone (in one year), Google said there are 160000 Android activations a day.  More data point to support my prediction.  I couldn't ask for a better timing in that announcements.  :)

source:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/23/160000-android-phones-sold-per-day/

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Creating more secure swf app

This is a good article on creating more secure swf app
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/secure_swf_apps.html

If your primary focus is on making the data secure in transit, then you should read the "encrypting data" section.  That is how I found this article.  I had a need to encrypt data in transit.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/secure_swf_apps_12.html

Hope it helps.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Android Prediction

The tipping point of Android and iPhone is coming very soon.

When I say tipping point, I mean when Android will outsell iPhone (not the total devices in the market, but the number of devices sold in that quarter) in one quarter in US.  This tipping point should come very quickly barring Apple pulling something drastic (like opening up iPhone to carriers other than AT&T)

Since early 2009, I have believed that Android will eventually surpass iPhone.  That belief has not changed.

The combined innovation of multiple players will eventually overtake one single company.  As long as Apple's iPhone remain a closed system, the result will be inevitable.  The history will likely repeat itself.

Let's look at the PDA market in the past.  At the time that Palm has 90% market share, I believed that Windows Mobile (at the time called PocketPC) will eventually overtake Palm.  It may take a long while, and it did take several years.  But Microsoft eventually was able to overtake Palm in PDA area.

However, I cannot say that my belief at that time is correct, at that time, I based my belief on gut feeling alone.  However, looking back, it appears that several signs were already present at that time that partially foretell such outcome.

It seems that when a new thing is introduced to consumers, it must be very simple to use for it to catch on.  Palm was a master of that.  However, as time goes on, people demanded more choices, options, and functionalities.  aThat is where the combined industry ecosystem comes in that can overtake a single company.  In another word, smart phone market would have been as vibrant if it wasn't for Apple's iPhone.  iPhone is a superb devices to convert users to smart phone users, but it also opens the door for the users to accept other smart phones.  And that is where Android can excel eventually.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

App stores - mobile, flash, and beyond

Here are some of the appstores.




AIR 3.2 SDK upgrade error: error while loading initial content

I run into the same error, thanks to dancashman.com for solution.
http://blog.dancashman.com/?p=30

Need to update the AIR descriptor file's xml namespace.



Summary:

Update your descriptor file namespace (yourApplication-app.xml)

New Value:
<application xmlns=”http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/1.5” >

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Tip: Flex with https require the web page to be https too

Just a quick tip.

Flex can make SSL call by simply specify "https" in the url of HTTPService.  However, the enclosing page must be in https for this to work.  Otherwise, you may get "Security Sandbox Violation" like the one below:


*** Security Sandbox Violation ***
Connection to https://graph.facebook.com/me/friends?access_token=xyz halted - not permitted from http://localhost:8888/xyz/xyz.swf


Thursday, April 22, 2010

Facebook f8 announcements: Graph api, OpenGraph protocol, and plugins

Today's Facebook F8 conference has 3 major announcements

1. Plugins for 3rd-party websites
2. Graph API
3. OpenGraph protocol

1. plugins for 3rd-party websites

This includes:
Activity stream plugin – allows other website to add Facebook “news feed” to their site
Social bar plugin – allows other website to add barlet at bottom of their site.  Chat included.javascript:void(0)
Like plugin – allows other website to add Facebook “Like” button
Login plugin – can show which of your friends have login to this site.
Recommendation plugin

2. Graph API
Facebook have overhauled their api.  The so-called "Graph" api is now the way for apps to access all api.  

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api

3. OpenGraph protocol
This requires some explanation.

OpenGraph protocol specifies a set of structured meta data that can be more easily understood and categorized by machines.  Once a 3rd-party website embed these data, it allows facebook to include the site and these data as part of the Facebook OpenGraph.

Eg. IMDB website can use OpenGraph protocol to describe a movie object




<html xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/"
      xmlns:fb="http://developers.facebook.com/schema/">
   <head>
     <title>The Rock (1996)</title>
     <meta property="og:title" content="The Rock" />
     <meta property="og:type" content="movie" />

     <meta property="og:url" content="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117500/ "/>
     <meta property="og:image" content="http://ia.media-imdb.com/rock.jpg" />
    ...
   </head>

  ...
</html>





When this is included, Facebook can store this site as an object in the OpenGraph.  And that object will have these properties: title="The Rock", type="movie", url="...", image="...".




How is OpenGraph significant?


If facebook's vision of opengraph succeed, they could be the connector of the web!
  
In terms of the flexibility and coverage, what facebook wants to do with OpenGraph may seem like a baby step comparing to what Semantic Web wants to do. Facebook only define a small set of predefined meta data.  While semantic web have various powerful ontologies already defined.  However, with facebook's reach and appeal, facebook might finally get a lot of website owners to embed structured metadata, which would be a significant milestone for semantic web in any case.  This may turn out to be a giant leap for semantic web.  





Apple should not limit the language used by developers

Many people were pretty upset about Apple's decision two weeks ago to ban users from using other programming language to develop iPhone app. All I can say is that I did not remember Microsoft banning developers from using other languages to develop on Windows. Apple seems to be worse than Microsoft in this case.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Event: FLEX 4 Launch Tour and Livecycle Code Night


FLEX 4 Launch Tour and Livecycle Code Night

Thursday April 1st
6:30 Pizza, 7pm Meeting

Sponsored by Adobe

Adobe HQ - East Tower
345 Park Ave
San Jose, CA 95110

rsvp | map

Duane Nickull (aka Duane Chaos) is in town so we are getting him and the local Livecycle evangelists out for a special evening on Flex 4 (the new release) and Livecycle!! The evening will involve an early start for those wanting to learn about getting started with Livecycle followed by increasingly in-depth code examples and reviews.

Speakers
  • Duane Nickull (blog) - Adobe Evangelist
  • Bill Shapiro (Linkedin) - Technology Entrepeneur at Adobe Systems
  • Matthais Zeller (blog) - Group Product Manager, Enterprise Rich Internet Applications


  • More info at: http://silvafug.org/