Two amazing Flash projects: Screenergy and Creaza

If you haven’t seen these two projects, then please keep reading. I’m sure even if you are familiar with all kinds of cool rich Internet apps these two apps will surprise you. And to tell you the truth, I was surprised too. It seems that every now and then some cool projects pop up and they manage to move what is possible with the Flash Platform to a whole new level.

Enough talking, let’s start with the first project. Screenergy.com is a multi-touch 46″ full HD table with object tracking capabilities. Well, these specs are cool but not something to amaze you. Yet! They used this cool hardware as the platform to run AIR applications that allow people of any age and background to interact visually with a system that handles and displays loads of data. Basically, the system can recognize a specialized card you place on the table and display the information related to that card. You can move the card on the screen, and you can expand and change settings. Here are some pictures to help you better grasp the amazing interactivity that Screenergy provides:

This project was built for the Global Climate conference in Copenhagen (2009). And the visitors and VIPs were able to visualize the impact that different changes have on the climate. Here you can get a taste of the application and here is a video with the table in action:

I knew about this project from the beginning because the people who built it approached me back in October 2009. They told me “we want to build an application for a touch table using AIR for the UI, and the client is one of the organizations behind the Copenhagen’s Climate Change conference. We have about a month to do it! “. Then we talked about AIR 2 features (at that time it was in private beta) and how they could leverage AIR 2 features for their project. And then, before Christmas, I received an email from them telling me that the project was delivered on time and it was a success.

The second project, Creaza.com, is delivered as a web application using Flash Player. It is a suite of four programs: a mind-mapping tool, a movie editor, a sound editor, and an online comic tool for creating cartoons/digital stories. Funny,  I know the guys behind this project too :) I had the pleasure to meet them back in 2007 during a user interview around Flex Builder 2 at that time.

For me the most amazing product from this suite is MovieEditor. It is one thing to play video in the browser and a totally different thing to be able to create a movie inside the browser using a web application that is pretty close to desktop video editors in terms of features and performance. You can use this timeline-based video editor to create movies  complete with professional-looking titles, transitions, effects, animation, music, and narration. You can test this app here.

I think these two projects are not at all two lonely rain drops lost in an ocean. I strongly believe that this is the natural result of the maturity and power the Flash Platform has achieved. The Flash Platform truly makes easy things easy, and hard things possible. There are more than 3 million Flash developers according to Evans Data, and many of these developer started with the Platform in the past two years. There are tons of libraries, frameworks, and tools to pick from (both commercial and open-source). There are many companies and agencies with a lot of experience in building rich Internet applications.

In a nutshell, I’m seeing an ecosystem that is growing and innovating faster than ever. Thus, I’m sure that many more cool projects will cross my path and I’d be happy to talk about them. And remember, these two projects are not just a proof of concept; these are fully functional projects that make money. The companies who built them are not huge corporations – quite the contrary. But what they may lack in terms of money they make up in imagination and a belief that everything is possible!

What do you think?

June 23, 2010 | Filed Under Flash Platform | 1 Comment 

Flash Builder’s Lost Features: Call Hierarchy

Last week I had the pleasure to present to the first edition of gotoAndSki() conference, up north in Norway. During one of my sessions people said that it’d be a great thing if Adobe could present the Flash Builder new features in such a way that it makes easier to learn them. They suggested instead of just throwing big PDFs to the community, we could also have blog posts tackling one feature at a time. I think this makes sense; we are all too busy with current and upcoming projects to find the time to go through manuals.

So here I come and I start today a series of articles called Flash Builder’s Lost Features. Today I’ll present Call Hierarchy command. This command makes it easy to find all the places where a particular property/variable/function/method is used in your project. It works for ActionScript or Flex projects.

To use this feature, right-click the variable or method you are interested in and select Open Call Hierarchy.

When you do this, you should see in Flash Builder a new view (named Call Hierarchy) with all the occurrences of what you’ve selected. If you double-click an entry, Flash Builder will open the file where that entry can be found and you can inspect the code. Also, you can extend a node to see the call stack trace. And all of this can be done without having to run the project.

This is it for now. Like I said, it is a small and simple to use feature, but it is pretty powerful. In the next episode I will talk about Flash Builder’s Profiler.

June 18, 2010 | Filed Under Others | 7 Comments 

Flash Coffee Bucharest

I know it has been way too hot lately, especially here in Bucharest. I have good news. First, next week the weather is expected to be cooler.  And second, I plan to host a Flash Coffee Meetup in Bucharest! The event will take place next Tuesday (June 22nd) at Grand Cafe Galleron (near La Mama restaurant, P-ta Romana) starting at 5PM.

There are only 15 tickets so hurry up and use this link to register. I’ll pay for the coffee and bring an Android phone with Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR installed on it. Thus we can enjoy a good cup of coffee on a cold day (something that we’ll pretty soon miss :D) and talk about the latest Flash Platform and mobile device news.

You can register here. See you next Tuesday.

June 17, 2010 | Filed Under Conferences | Leave a Comment 

Adobe MAX Awards 2010

The Adobe MAX Awards 2010 competition is open (the deadline for project submission is August 13th – hope you are not superstitious :D). This year’s categories are:

Good luck!

June 15, 2010 | Filed Under Conferences | Leave a Comment 

Adobe Flash Platform Summit 2010

This August (25th – 26th) if you live in India and you work in the IT field then you really should consider attending Adobe Flash Platform Summit 2010 in Bangalore, India.

This is a two day event, and more than 2000 people are expected with tens of sessions and international speakers. You can read more here and you can register here (you can save 60% if you register before June 25th). If you want to propose a session then hurry up because the window is closing on June 21st.

June 14, 2010 | Filed Under Conferences | 1 Comment 

Going Multi-Screen with the Flash Platform Webinar

It seems this summer that webinars are highly fashionable. The App in a Week European webinar hasn’t finished yet, and we’ve announced another one: Going Multi-Screen with the Flash Platform. The webinars will take place between June 22nd – 24th and you can register here.

I guess after attending these webinars you should be ready to create multi-screen applications when Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR will be available for the Android platform (now they are still in beta).

This is the complete schedule:

Enjoy!

June 9, 2010 | Filed Under Others | 1 Comment 

Flex and PHP webinar goodies

As I promised at the end of my webinar here I come with the projects I used:

You can use the Import > Flash Builder > Flex project wizard to import these two projects into Flash Builder. However, to make the second project work, you need to copy the PHP files from inside the project (you’ll find a folder named eva_services with a bunch of files) to the root of your PHP server. Next you have to create the database (there is an SQL dump inside the same folder) and change the connection credentials from eva_credentials/db.php to match your local settings). Actually you can read more about this in my article on Debugging Flex and PHP projects.

I know that I squeezed quite a lot in my webinar and I had to move quickly between the topics. But you don’t have to worry because you’ll find articles and screencasts below that go into great detail on all the topics I covered:

Finally, the recordings for the webinars:

Again, I want to thank all of you who took the time to attend my session. Until the next time, Ciao!

June 7, 2010 | Filed Under Presentations | 4 Comments 

goToAndSky() Norway

June 10, 2010toJune 12, 2010

On June 10-12 I’ll be in Norway attending goToAndSky() conference. My session is about debugging Flex apps.

May 26, 2010 | Filed Under Events | Leave a Comment 

Drupal Camp Timisoara

June 4, 2010toJune 5, 2010

On June 4th I will present on building Drupal modules with Flex at the Drupal Camp Conference from Timisoara, Romania. More info here.

May 26, 2010 | Filed Under Events | Leave a Comment 

Flex Camp Cluj-Napoca, Romania

June 2, 2010toJune 3, 2010

I will present a session on Designer/Developer workflow on June 2nd in Cluj-Napoca. Also, if you want to see Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR running on Nexus One join me :)

You can register here. The event will start at 18:00, June 2nd. The location is Vitrina Business Center, Str Constantin Brancusi 67-69.

May 26, 2010 | Filed Under Events | Leave a Comment 

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