FlexDaddy » RIA

Mixing it up in the Pixel Bender WebDU presentation

Andrew Spaulding — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:39:44 +0000

Slides / Demos / Special effects whiz-bangery / Where to learn more

Pixel Bender is so hot right now (having a Zoolander moment) and was a late addition to the WebDU agenda due to demand and interest from WebDU conference delegates. Geoff aptly titled the session “Mixing it up in the Pixel Bender”, but Pixel Bender can be much more than just blending (or is it bending) pixels. Either way, you can bend, warp, create, mixup, mashup not only pixels but all purpose mathematics as well, allowing you to perform complex calculations in a separate thread within Flash.

But it extends beyond Flash!

Pixel Bender provides a common video and image processing infrastructure as found in After Effects. It is the runtime and pixel shader language that allows you to perform cool filters on your After Effects compositions. The latest revision of Pixel Bender also brings with it a plug-in to Photoshop CS4, so now your Pixel Bender kernels can blend and bend in After Effects, Photoshop as well as Flash Player! All filters/shaders are developed with the Pixel Bender Toolkit. Awesomeness!

Take a look at the slides below, as well as the many Pixel Bender demos and resources that follow. Many of these demo’s were shown throughout the session. My favorite, although not applied to pixels, is Myna (the artist formerly known as Digimix) an audio mixing tool that’s part of the Aviary.com suite. Thanks to Alan Queen for demo access.

Presentation:

Demos shown:
Flash Globe using spherize filter and throw physics
Flash Globe using spherize filter and throw physics (source code)
Real time video color keying
Make your own water color painting (uses multiple filters)
JavaScript Pixel Bender explorer
Aviary Myna (the artist formerly known as Digimix) audio mixing tool
Using Pixel Bender to do heavy lifting of calculations

Where to learn more:
Pixel Bender on Adobe Labs
Kevin Goldsmith’s blog
Pixel Bender lab materials from Adobe MAX 2008

Pixel Bender Community:
Pixel Bender Exchange
Follow Pixel Bender on Twitter

Thanks to everyone who attended my Pixel Bender session at WebDU this year. It was a fantastic conference as always, and brought together by another great effort by all the Daemonites. Big thanks to Geoff Bowers as always!

AIR Camp keynote slides

Andrew Spaulding — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 03:05:07 +0000

Below are the keynote slides from the recent Adobe AIR Camps throughout Australia and New Zealand. Thanks to everyone who attended, and a special thanks to both Mark Blair and Matt Voerman who presented at the events as well, and to Mike Downey for presenting the keynote in Sydney while on his visit to WebDU 2008.

Over the next few days I’ll post slides and references to the rest of the content we covered at the AIR Camps.

Building desktop applications with Adobe Flex
Building desktop applications with HTML/JavaScript
Deploying and updating your AIR applications
Data intensive AIR applications

Be sure to take a look at the following links to some great applications. A real nice showcase of what’s possible!

Adobe AIR Showcase
Adobe AIR Marketplace

Begun, the code wars have

Andrew Spaulding — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:58:41 +0000

The inaugural Australia / New Zealand Code War is set to begin at WebDU Day 0 on June 11 2008. I’ve been invited by Mark Mandel and Toby Tremayne to join their team the “KILLER CODING NINJA MONKEYS OF DOOM!” Be afraid, be very afraid, as you dare to face the team from Melbourne as we take on 7 other team in a series of sudden death head-to-head coding competitions developing solutions in either Flex, Flash, ColdFusion, Director or anything else we deem fit for purpose.

Don’t forget to register for WebDU and come and see my sessions on Flex/AIR, LiveCycle Data Services, BlazeDS, CoCoMo, and even using some of the new Flash widget features in Acrobat 9!

More information on the Code War can be found here webdu:Adobe User Group Code War!

Adobe removes all restrictions on SWF and FLV specs

Andrew Spaulding — Thu, 01 May 2008 05:16:38 +0000

Adobe has announced the Open Screen Project http://www.openscreenproject.org/, an initiative dedicated to driving consistent experiences across all devices including mobile phones, personal computers, consumer devices and more

Specifically, this work will include:

Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
Publishing the Adobe FlashÂ® Castâ„¢ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
Removing licensing fees â€“ making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

I wonder how long it will take to see various open source flash players?!

More info here http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/

Slides and demos from my presentations

Andrew Spaulding — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 06:51:28 +0000

Slowly but surely I’ll release a series of posts covering content from presentations I’ve given online and at Adobe events during the past few months.

Some of the content includes:

Using Flex with PHP
Branded applications with AIR
Showcasing local industry applications (customer presentations)
Using ColdFusion messaging gateways with Flex
Integrating MS Exchange with ColdFusion and Flex

We’ve also just finished a 4 city tour around Australia with CFCAMP where I introduced Microsoft Exchange server integration and how to bring this into Flex and AIR.

Slides and demo files for everything over the past month and more will come shortly.

Enjoy!

EDIT (12/12/07) – I’m currently traveling in the US so there’s been some delays in tidying up the demos… but they’ll be ready in time for Christmas!

CFCAMP Australia is more than just ColdFusion

Andrew Spaulding — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 12:17:24 +0000

In the coming weeks get set for a FREE mini-conference for ColdFusion developers by ColdFusion developers. And better yet we’ll have renowned ColdFusion expert Ben Forta joining us along side long time CF’ers Mark Blair, Nick Watson (UK) and the many community experts here in Oz.

Here you’ll see more than just ColdFusion. How about powering your Flex applications and targeting desktop applications with ColdFusion? I think it’s sounds like a winning combination! And that’s exactly what i’ll be presenting on.

Interested in learning more? You’ll want to be there – REGISTER NOW!

Event dates:

November 20th: Sydney
November 21st: Brisbane
November 22nd: Melbourne
November 27th: Perth

Check out the wiki, vote for the community driven sessions, and come along and network with other developers interested in the latest for the Web, RIAs and desktop apps with AIR.

Hope to see you there (whether that’s in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne or Perth)!

Adobe Refresh Australia, learn about MAX 2007

Andrew Spaulding — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:24:35 +0000

Adobe Australia are holding a “Refresh” event for the local developer communities. This is your chance to hear first hand the latest news and announcements surrounding Adobe’s developer technologies! I promise you will not be disappointed! So come and spend an afternoon with your local Adobe crew including myself, Matt Voerman, Mark Blair, Mark Szulc and many others.

Click here to register.

Details:

Join us for an opportunity to connect with the local developer community, whilst refreshing your knowledge on the latest from Adobe at Adobe Refresh 2007.

Over the course of an afternoon, you will hear from the local Adobe team as they present on whatâ€™s new and whatâ€™s happening in AIR, Flash Professional, Flex, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and ColdFusion.

Thereâ€™ll be summaries from the Keynote Presentations at Adobe Max 2007, as well as Community Expert Tables and plenty of time to socialise.

When:

Tue 30 Oct 07
Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre, Darling Harbour
13:30 – 17:00

Wed 31 Oct 07
Telstra Dome, Melbourne
13:30 – 17:00

Hope to see you there!

RIA Comic – Barely Out Of Beta # 3

Andrew Spaulding — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:08:43 +0000

Well the third strip in this series is here with “Barely Out Of Beta #3“. Great work team Nectarine!

Have you missed the previous episodes? Check them out here:

Barely Out of Beta # 1
Barely Out of Beta # 2

Also check out Barely Out Of Beta #4 – one for the game designers!

RIA Comic – Barely Out Of Beta # 2

Andrew Spaulding — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 01:09:15 +0000

Part 2 of “Barely Out Of Beta” went live last week… remember to keep checking back for part 3 and 4 of this series.

Thanks again to Minty @ Nectarine!

Have you missed the previous episodes? Check them out here:

Barely Out of Beta # 1
Barely Out of Beta # 2

Barely out of Beta – New RIA comic!

Andrew Spaulding — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 02:17:40 +0000

The dudes over at Nectarine have released the first of a short series of comic strips around RIA. The first story comes from the recent happenings at Web on the Piste where Adobe and Microsoft had a friendly showdown at the speaker round table.

This comic strip is going to make me famous!!! “Internet” baby yeah!

“Barely Out Of Beta”

Check out many of the other awesome animations at animation.nectarine.com.au