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To everyone saying that Adobe Edge is a flash killer, i have this to say:

No, it is not a flash killer. Let us first remember what Edge does, and is targeted for. Edge is targeted mainly at advertisers on the web. You open edge, create a new document, and the default format is that of a banner ad. Perhaps, it may cause the downfall of Flash as an advertising platform. In my opinion, that would be a great thing. For no reason should a tiny little banner ad on a website use 50% of my CPU when i'm visiting that site. There's no reason for that. It's not because of flash per se, it's because of terrible flash developers trying to run non-optimized content and deliver it to the user. But i digress.

Also, all Edge can do is create animations and basic interactivity. It is not built to make RIA's or mobile applications in the same way that flash is. It is built for creating ads.

It wouldn't be such a bad thing if HTML5 and CSS replaced Flash in the advertising market. Advertisers would be able to reach people on mobile and devices much easier, without the dependency of flash. That makes sense to me. But, to say that Edge and HTML5 will *kill* flash is a complete falsity.

Flash (AIR) is currently, in my opinion, the best mobile app platform that allows users to build one app on one code base and target just about every major mobile platform out there. One cannot do that with HTML5, no sir. You have to use Flash, or Appcelerator or something. But, out of all of the mobile development platforms that i've tried, Flash is by far the easiest. You can create a beautiful mobile app that  functions with speeds sometimes greater than that of a native app, and you get to avoid all of the Java or Objective-C headaches that might come from native development. Plus, with the advent of AIR 3, developers can build native extensions to give their flash apps the exact same functionality of a native app on any platform they choose. 

In short, no, Edge will not kill flash, nor is adobe trying to kill flash with Edge. Flash will live on for a long time, both on the web and on mobile devices. Edge and HTML5 can never fully replace all of the functionality that Flash has built over the years, and it will never equal it's performance or ease of development.

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Well, it's been a long while since I've had something new to announce. I apologize for that, school has to take precedence over blogging and fun, unfortunately. But, i come to you today with something new and exciting to announce!

My second app, Simplenote for Playbook is live in the BlackBerry AppWorld!

This app is a native gateway for the popular Simplenote service, which already has apps on all other major platforms, most notably iPhone. I had, for a while, used the Web based site on my playbook for this app, however i decided that enough was enough, and people needed a good native app. So, here it is.

I spent the first few weeks of summer developing it, perfecting it, testing it, and doing just about everything i could to try to break it. Fortunately, i couldn't. So now, it's live!

Everyone who has a playbook should go and download my app. I know it's shameless self promotion, but I made it for the betterment of the platform, and for the enjoyment of all. So, everyone, go and enjoy it!

I do plan, in the near future, to bring this app to android tablets, and maybe to android phones. Keep watching here, and i'll post all news on future updates, and more!

You might remember how I said that in a few weeks time, i'd be the proud owner of a BlackBerry PlayBook? Well, that time has come. I am now using my playbook on a daily basis, for just about whatever i can. Mostly, my uses revolve around school, as that's what most of my time is being consumed by at the moment.

At first look, this is a really sleek machine. The interface is very well designed, all the transitions are smooth, and everything just seems to flow. Nothing seems to be able to slow down this thing. Flash runs beautifully in the browser, as do youtube videos and other such web elements. The only complaint i have is that javascript is sometimes a bit laggy in the browser. Everything seems to render fine, it just is a bit slow. Other than that, it's perfect.

Still though, as many people have complained, it lacks native email or blackberry messenger. I am able to use the tablet optimized version of GMail in the browser, but it doesn't give me push or fetch notifications or anything. That's something i'm waiting for. RIM says it should be out within 60 days, so i'm holding my breath. The did deliver on the video chat application, so there's reason to be hopeful.

The tablet itself has two cameras, both of which take HD 1080p video. The video quality is incredible. It doesn't do frameskips like other devices (Droid X) do. It captures at full 1080p, 29 frames per second, in all its glory. The picture quality is okay as well. It's not perfect, but hey, it's on a tablet.

There are a few applications that are not present at all in the AppWorld for the PlayBook. One is a twitter app. There is no good twitter app in the app world. All that seems to be there are the basic 'twitter trends search' app that everyone got from the Flash Builder Burrito example applications. Everyone is still waiting on developers for this one. Another one that's missing is Skype. I don't know what the status of this one could be, given the recent MS acquisition of skype, but I'm still hopeful. It does also lack a good Dropbox app. It has BlueBox, which is promising, but it is missing the very important upload feature. Currently the only way to access this feature is through the browser. But that is coming soon, and i can't wait to see it. The tablet did come with the documents to go suite, which is nice. It seems to work great, except it lacks a few features that Docs to go on other platforms has. But i'm sure those are coming in an OTA upgrade in the future.

In all, this is a very solid device. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a smaller tablet to enter their life.

I will post some reviews on applications on the playbook in the near future, to give everyone a taste of what's available on this platform.

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Now that I've officially had my app accepted into the BlackBerry AppWorld for the PlayBook launch, I thought I'd take some time out to talk about my experience on getting my app published.

Let me start out by saying that this whole process has not been easy. From start to relative finish, it's been almost 5 months. What with figuring out the app world vendor portal, flash builder, and the blackberry airpackager and simulator, it's been a wild ride.

Let's start with the beginning. The playbook was announced in december. I began my app development in late december, and submitted it on December 31, 2010. Getting the app packaged up for submission was fairly difficult however. At that point, there was almost no documentation on how to actually package the app and get it submitted to the app world. I had to go off of blog posts and blurry screenshots. But, i got it packaged and submitted.

"Finally," i thought, "I'm done with this." Well, that wasn't true at all. Once the app was submitted, i was always nervous, because i didn't hear back from RIM for the longest time. I thought that my app had been rejected or something, and I hadn't been notified. The vendor portal said only "Waiting on Test House" for my product for a long time. Then, one day, i got an email notifying me that (1): My app was approved, and (2): I had a coupon code for my free playbook.

First thing's first. I ordered my playbook right away. That order is now safely placed, and I still await my playbook's arrival. Second, i was also notified that i would have to re-upload my app with a code signing certificate attached to it. Well, like a good developer, i went right over to the page where i could order up my certificate. Well, i did that, and 3 weeks later, i still haven't received a response. I got a notification yesterday telling me that my product was now rejected, since i hadn't uploaded a signed version. Well, i replied right to that email, letting them know that I hadn't received a certificate. I still await a response on that one.

I believe that RIM could have done much better to streamline this process. For instance, they could have had appropriate documentation, or maybe had the appworld functioning when they started accepting applications. I don't know. This is just me speaking from the perspective of a slightly annoyed developer.

All for now!

In this tutorial, I show you how to get an AIR app up and running on your android device in less than 10 minutes!

All for Now!

At the Adobe MAX Conference this year, it was announced that developers would now be able to develop applications for the upcoming Blackberry Playbook. Well, that day is here! Developers everywhere can now start to make apps to run on the Playbook, using the Adobe AIR 2.5 SDK and Flash Builder. To learn more about development for Blackberry Tablet devices, check out this page.

Getting this installed is pretty easy. I was able to get the SDK set up in about 10 minutes. Once you have the SDK, you have to start developing some super neat apps to put up on the Blackberry App World. Blackberry currently is offering a free playbook to developers who get apps published to the App World. I know I plan to take advantage of this super offer.

To help get you started, Blackberry has started a webcast series and posted some other general getting started guides to help you out with development. Those can be found here. So far, they've proved themselves to be very useful.

In the end I strongly encourage any existing AIR developer and even some new guys to go and give this a try. It's really worth your while!

All for Now!

As everyone out there on the internet already probably knows, Adobe this year at their annual MAX conference has given out some pretty fantastic prizes. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend MAX this year, however my father, James, is currently there. So what has he come away with? Well, here's the major things.

First, at yesterday's keynote address, amidst a slew of announcements about new features in the Flash and Flex platform, Adobe gave all MAX attendees a free Motorola Droid 2. Their hope in doing this is that everyone will take these fancy new devices and install AIR and get developing with the new version of Flash Builder that the announced. Flash Builder "Burrito", as it's called, has the Flex SDK 4.5 Hero built in. It has built in a template for an AIR for android AIR application. I have yet to try building for this, as my small Motorola Backflip cannot handle AIR. Once James gets home with the Droid, I hope to try it out and post some videos of how to get an AIR app running.

Yesterday the also announced some fantastic new technologies that will be built into Flash player. First of which was completely accelerated 3D graphic in flash running at 0% CPU. That's amazing. Now, for me, that will not make a difference as I still have an ancient macbook and just watching youtube videos makes my computer's fans go into overdrive. Also they officially announced AIR for TV. I have a feeling that this will eventually be installed onto Google TV devices as an additional platform for building apps.

In addition to this, at the end of the keynote address today, every MAX attendee received a free Logitech Revue with Google TV. This really is a fantastic giveaway. It shows that Adobe is really pushing towards alternative technologies to iOS for entertainment. Again, I haven't tried this out for myself, but once I have one in the house, I will try it out and post some videos.

In all, it seems from afar as if this year's Adobe MAX conference is turning out to be quite the fantastic experience. It's too bad I missed it!

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We all are familiar with the WIndows Aero window previews when you hover over the items in the taskbar. This is the one feature from Windows that I wish was built in in Mac OS. Well now, with HyperDock, it's as close as it gets.

HyperDock does just what you'd expect it to do. Except it also can do more than you'd expect. It does give you a preview of the open windows in an application when you hover over the dock icon. However, it also integrates window snapping. So if you drag a window to a side of the screen it fills that half of the screen. Pretty neat. It also allows you to control iTunes via configurable mouse shortcuts. This little app is packed with features other than that, and best of all at the moment it's free! So why not spend your Sunday afternoon and give it a try? Head on over to the HyperDock site to download this neat little app.

All for Now!

For the past few weeks, I've been trying to install the Adobe CSLive Services update for CS5. However, the update refuses to install. Every time I try I get the same error: "Couldn't install because the package was not applicable". What is this, Adobe? Why do you keep notifying me of an update that isn't applicable to my computer but I can't get rid of the icon from my menubar? I was hoping that maybe there'd be a patch for the update that would fix the problem. It's now been countless weeks since the update first showed up and I've seen no updates or changes to the problem. Hopefully a fix comes out soon for it. It's really starting to bug me.

All for Now!

Image via Wikipedia

"In addition, for the first time we are publishing the App Store Review Guidelines to help developers understand how we review submitted apps. We hope it will make us more transparent and help our developers create even more successful apps for the App Store."

"We are continually trying to make the App Store even better. We have listened to our developers and taken much of their feedback to heart. Based on their input, today we are making some important changes to our iOS Developer Program license in sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.9 to relax some restrictions we put in place earlier this year.

In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need."