It’s Here!  For about a year I worked with a team of smart guys (Andrew Trice, Joseph Balderson, Peter Ent, Jun Heider, Tom Sugden, David Hassoun, Joe Berkovitz) to create what we think is one of the best books out there on Adobe Flex.  It’s around 1400 pages, nearly 5 pounds, of comprehensive knowledge.  It’s available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.Com, and probably your local bookstore or wherever Wrox books are sold.

I’m proud of this book.  It was hard to write and took way more time than I thought it would.  But the end product is outstanding.  It’s one killer book that covers a lot of the internals of Flex, including the extras like Cairngorm, unit testing, AIR, Flash Media services, FXG, Flex Builder, Subclipse, custom components and the component lifecycle, skiing, Flash integration, etc…  It’s all covered.

I was responsible for writing about Adobe AIR and a lot of the server side data stuff, especially in regards to open source, Java, and .NET.  I did a lot of work to show the flexibility (no pun intended) of working with Flex and a variety of back-end technologies.  Specifically I have demos in there working with server-side data using:

• PHP and the Zend framework over a RESTful-based framework
• Java WebServies created using Grails and Groovy.
• .NET with WebServices

I have some follow ups that I want to write about.  Specifically, I want to port the Zend framework samples to use the new AMF support.  And while I’m at it, I’d like to port the Grails example to use AMF, too.  BTW, I believe GRAILS is the Holy Grail (dang, another bad pun) for Java Developers wanting some syntactical-love in their lives, yet at the same time harnessing all those enterprise APIs and existing operational infrastructure that seem to chain them down.

To get you started, Andrew Trice, one of the co-authors, has posted a nice excerpt from the book: Chapter 67: Application Performance Strategies.

While Flex 4 and Flash Builder 4 are on the horizon for being released, they both still rely on the fundamental technology presented in this book.  This book will be a great addition to your team library, especially for getting your new developers up to speed, or your existing developers to learn some advanced techniques.

Go forth, read, and build great applications.

In Boston, it can get quite humid in the summer time, not Washington or Florida humid, but nonetheless….  Coupled with the fact that I live in the top floor of a brick building that heats up to incredible temperatures (its 90 in here right now).

I had to move my office up to the roof deck:

In case you don’t see the specific details and want it priced out:

1)   $19.95 for kiddie swimming pool at local hardware store.

2)   Smuttynose Summer Ale, $8 for 6.

3)  Blackberry, no cost counted since it’s in my pocket regardless of office location.

4)  A green laptop table, $49, courtesy of Target.

5)  Sunglasses that someone left here at the last BBQ: Free.  (Sorry Frank, had to borrow them.)

Total cost, $78 + roof deck.

Ok, back to some real work.

Since the site is Flash, I assume they’re using the new Flash HD streaming capabilities that Adobe released in early December for streaming the HD content.  There’s a couple of HD demos of the new Flash Player showing off the new HD capabilities on the web, but ABC.Com is the first mainstream content provider I’ve seen to use the technology.  And I gotta say, it works and looks spectacular.

They have a few 30 second commercial breaks (sponsored by LG), interspersed throughout the episode I watched.

The stream came down to me at 1388 kbp/s and it looked fantastic.  I only have a 180 KB/s Internet connection and it didn’t stutter once upon playing, compared to when I last tried the NetFlix WatchNow streaming service in which I could only get the medium quality option because of my crippled Internet connection.  Back with the ABC Video Player, there was some initial interlacing when the stream started playing and my initial reaction was “this isn’t HD”, but after about 20 seconds, probably when buffering caught up, it looked really, really good.  Did I say how good this look?  We’ve come a long ways since the days of Real Media over a 56.6K modem!

This is a huge step forward in content sharing.  Companies are interested in fulfilling the niche market of letting people watch television on their own schedule.  I can’t wait until some form of devices that sit on our television can play all this content like this.  Blu-Ray, HD-DVD players….bah…just let me stream the content directly from a source.  We know it’ll eventually get here.

To me, the DVR is a temporary hack.  The future is going to be all about watching the shows/movies you want to watch, when you want to watch them.  I’m not interested in maintaining my own media, media servers, remembering to get a season pass to a show, etc…  I want everything to be onDemand.  And with Flash player streaming HD content smoothly and a mainstream content provider offering up premium content, we’re well on our way.  ABC’s putting LOST up on the web (obviously to promote the new season coming out) in HD is one little step closer to my media dreams.

Now the question is, when will the FLASH player be getting embedded into little media devices?  Also, if anyone in the technical know knows the details going on behind the scenes with ABC and their HD streaming, feel free to comment on it.  I haven’t really had any time to dig at any depth into how/what ABC is using for delivery of this HD content, I’m only assuming the new Flash “Moviestar” player.

I’m going to replace my current Dell 700m laptop (which is small, and been my workhorse for a lot of my Flex and AIR development). I think it’s great that I can still run the latest Adobe tools this unremarkable machine. I also have a Dell desktop with 3 gigs of memory (I use a lot of Virtual Machines during development) that I’d ideally retire. New laptop to replace both machines.

I’m having a hard time finding the ultimate laptop because of my requirements:
1) I’d prefer a smaller 13.3 inch screen (like the Sony SZ series, beautiful machines, lacking on graphics power) since it’s nearly impossible to use a 15.4 inch screen on an airplane. However, just because the screen is smaller, I don’t want to sacrifice computing performance, especially on the video side because I most often will work tethered to a big-ass monitor. This means I really want a 2.4 ghz Duo Core, and 256 8600GT or better.
2) ESATA. Why, oh why, don’t more laptops, other than the ASUS support eSata? I don’t want one of those ugly cards protruding from my laptop, either. The speed gains over FireWire 800 are tremendous, especially when connected to external RAID. And since I usually have my development environments housed by a VM Ware image, I need all the drive performance I can get.
3) I’d prefer something with a DOCKing station to avoid connecting all my devices like: monitor, mouse, printer, eSata external drive, external DVD burnder, iPod, etc…every time I hook it up. Now, I realize some of this can be avoided by using a USB hub, but my previous experience is that not all my USB devices work reliably through an USB HUB. And never mind the high-end monitor hookup. Nonetheless, a dock isn’t a deal breaker for me, especially if a computer came with builtin eSATA port!
4) And for the run of the mill that should be supported by most laptops: gigabit ethernet, wireless N, bluetooth.

Some of the interesting laptops I’m looking at are:

• The Sony FZ series. These are beautiful, with great screens. Reminds me a lot of a MacBook Pro, except that I can get one with a BluRay DVD burner in it for about $1500. It seems to sacrifice some graphics power, though. I really like the form factor of the smaller Sony SZ, though, and the SZ has a docking station. No eSATA.

• The new Dell M1530, (and the less powerful, yet smaller M1330). This is a beautiful machine, and Dell’s finally starting to come out with some compelling design. However, the resolution sucks (1280×800, which is the same as my present 12" monitor) for now and I’d rather wait until an LED based screen with a higher resolution. No docking station available.

• ASUS V2S. This seems like the ultimate for me (after realizing I may have to get a larger monitor). It has eSATA, a dock available. However, the V2S has terrible review regarding it’s graphics processor, it seems ASUS has crippled the 8600 in it, probably in the name of battery conservation. I haven’t been able to find a local retailer to check this machine out in person, either.
• Lenovo. The business power-horse for so many years, but really, I’m so tired of that drab-black plastic finish. They’re having a sale and I could get a powerhouse laptop for $1400 or so.
• and, of course, The Mac Book Pro. No dock, no eSata, no 13.3 version. And I’m aware of that ugly 3rd party dock. But there’s something I like about Macs. The fact that I can run Windows software (like Visual Studio 2008) on this via a VMWare image is huge. I get a real Unixy OS. I wish the Apple store would have some Macs on hand running Windows software so I can see how well they work (I don’t trust the blogs that Parallels and VMWare Fusion work totally as advertised). I think if Apple really wanted to boost sales, I should be able to walk in and see Microsoft Outlook running on a Mac Book Pro as I have no doubt in my mind this would cause more Macs to fly off the shelf.

Rumor has it that Apple is adding a machine in January, so maybe I’ll wait to see that. I can’t believe that Apple, who caters to higher end video editors and photographers will continue to ignore the need for eSATA. If I’m dropping $2500 for a laptop, I’m going to expect it to have everything top-of-line. And I’m fully aware of adding eSata through ExpressCard, but it’s just one more thing to hookup.

Anyone else out there with some ideas on some machines? I’m in no rush. At this time I just "want" a new computer as opposed to "needing" one. (It would be nice to consolidate everything, though.) Knowing me, I’ll probably end up waiting this one out.