ksingleton.com

Outsmart has a couple of examples at their website showing some wild 3D visualizations. You can run around a 3D room with Flex charts, video components, slide shows and other components on the walls. It is pretty amazing.

There are also some examples of other 3D animation, and a discussion at their blog about other game focused technology and their place in business applications.

Check out the 3D and components demo at: http://dev.getoutsmart.com/os3d/demos/videoroom/

The 3D rotating earth with depth of field at: http://dev.getoutsmart.com/os3d/demos/earth/

If you are looking for some great resources to make your Flex projects stand out from the crowd, or even stand out like the crowd you should take a look over at scalenine.com. I have also listed direct links to some of the cooler examples at the bottom of this entry.

http://www.scalenine.com/resources.html

Recently some conversations I was involved in turned to Flex Coding conventions for actionscript 3. Most of the guys around my office are from Java backgrounds and they asserted, correctly for the most part that Sun's Java standard doc serves as a good starting point.

This will definately be a great place to start if you have never taken a look at it, or don't come from a strong CS background.

Since it is a good starting point Here is the Java Version:
http://java.sun.com/docs/codeconv/

If you are using Cairngorm, thinking about using Cairngorm for your next Flex project, or just asking yourself "what the heck is Cairngorm," while reading this post, you should head over to cairngormdocs.org.

A new article has been added to the Adobe.com site showing show to create rich Internet applications using SabreAMF. SabreAMF is one of 3 current PHP projects that support AMF to allow access to PHP remote objects.

Renaun Erickson wrote the five part article that walks you through configuring SabreAMF on a PHP server. You will need PHP 5 and PEAR on your web server. His tutorial shows you examples and all of the links to create and connect to a custom AMF gateway built on top of SabreAMF.

View the article here.

Want to see something seriously hot in Flex?

Check out the DisplayShelf component over at www.quietlyscheming.com. Ely gave a fantastic presentation in his MAX 2006 Architecture talk.

Who says that Flex can't look hot... oh yeah I remember.

Basically Ely shows you how to knock off the Cover Browser View from ITunes in Flex. It's like Scott Kelby down and dirty tricks but for Flex! That is a publication I would like to see as well if any of the Technical Editors over at Adobe are listening ( Amy, Craig... ?)

Check it out: Catalog Shelf

Thanks to everyone who presented at MAX and MAXUP 2006 at the Venetian in Las Vegas. All of the sessions were truly top notch and it was a real pleasure to meet a lot of the folks whose blogs, threads, and emails I have been reading over the last year or so.

My initial takes:

• The Flex and Flash content was exciting, I can't wait for more on Apollo.
• Thanks to Roger Gonzalez for working on the Modular .swfs in Flex 2.0.1
• Thanks to Matt Chotin for the sneak of the Mac Builder a couple of days early
• Thanks to Ely Greenfield at quietlyScheming.com for a great talk and great previous examples.
  

Thanks to Ted Patrick, Ben Forta, and Ray Camden you can now test out your skill at Flex coding right in the browser. The flexifier at try.flex.org lets you type in some flex in the browser and immediately see the code compiled into SWF form. You don't even have to download the SDK, builder, or set up a server.

There are even some example code chunks you can start with.

"The FLEXifier allows you to experience Flex 2 for yourself, without needing to download or install anything. Of course, you really should download Flex Builder 2 to truly get a feel for Flex, but until you do so, you may use The FLEXifier to compile and run MXML and ActionScript code. Simply type your code, and click the Try It! button."

Kevin Lynch shows a tour of an early build of Adobe Apollo, think Flex 2 for the desktop, on Windows, MAC, and Linux. OH BABY!!! ( By the way, the promise is this is NOT Macromedia Central )

From the Apollo Developer FAQ on Adobe Labs:

"Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system runtime being developed by Adobe that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) to the desktop."

Essentially, Apollo is Adobe's initiative to bring Rich Internet Applications from the web to the desktop in a way that uses the best of both worlds.

So basically it looks like I am just running down the list of stuff that James Ward is putting out lately. But lets just say it is good stuff.

He shows us some quick code that will allow you to pull out a section of the Flex 2 UI into a PNG image using the PNG encoder and RemoteObject BitmapData and ByteArray.

His example app, Flex Paint will allow you to see the PNG encoding in action ( Just be sure to turn off your popup blocker ). Also you can grab the code at Source Forge.

Thanks Again James!