Nate on Tech

Communicating through and about new technology can be fun, educational, and sometimes quite annoying. Those of you that know me have heard me say on more than one occasion how much I can’t stand buzzwords, and “Web 2.0″ is no exception. I’ve always had a hard time describing exactly why buzzwords bother me so much. I know it’s primarily that encapsulating broad, diverse, or even disparate concepts into a single phrase tends to be misleading, and often misused by those that do not understand the underlying concepts.

Whatever the reason, I read today (and nicely enough was personally referenced in) an article that opens the discussion on the “Web 3.0″ phrase, and presents a worthwhile plea to just stop the obsessive labeling already. Read it yourself: A Preemptive Strike: Death to Web 3.0 (and 2.0 while we’re at it)

Adobe’s coming to Minneapolis for a short 1-day conference all about AIR, the new desktop runtime for Flex apps (previously codenamed Apollo). It’s happening the evening of Thursday, September 27. Free information, beer, caffeine and snacks.

More info is online: http://onair.adobe.com/schedule/cities/minneapolis.php Click on the registration link next to the photo of the venue. (You know you want to… though I got a server error the first 4 times I tried to submit. Fifth time’s the charm I always say!)

I’ve gotten the question lately, “Is Silverlight going to be a Flash/Flex killer?” and thought I’d just put up my thoughts where everyone can see.

Everyone always wants to see or hear about a “___ killer” (insert popular app/company name). I think that new apps on the market are rarely, if ever, competition-killers - it’s just typical publicity/media buzz. However there are a few things to note about Silverlight: Continue Reading »

Well Adobe has finally released Apollo for developer preview, as an Alpha release. I, for one, will be starting to play with desktop apps using this Flex-based ActionScript3 engine ASAP. From a platform standpoint, deploying Apollo applications seems to be similar in structure to desktop Java applications. You need a platform-dependent runtime-library, but on top of that runs your platform-independent applications. Then you package your application as an AIR file (like a JAR or WAR file) and make available for the users/consumers.

Features such as allowing for sometimes-connected data and local storage, a rich UI library, web browser “display object” (meaning it can be manipulated as a movieclip could be), and a very easy to develop in model that separates the UI structure from the code - all mean Apollo will bring about a ton of very cool desktop-connected applications.

Further reading: my Adobe Max notes on Apollo features, Apollo on Slashdot, and Adobe’s wiki entry on Apollo

Looks like Adobe is getting ready to release the official beta of Apollo this month. Dave and I got a great preview of some Apollo features at Max last year. It will be good to see desktop derivatives of the more popular online services popping up soon. (sooner than later, I hope!) And - don’t forget about the mashups! I’m sure the local flash/flex community will be all over this new platform. (Check out my notes from the Max Apollo session)

But it’s not what you think. Continue Reading »

“Why don’t you say something? Maybe I will.”

If you have never fully understood the HTTP protocol, or for that matter, what “REST” is and why you want to, um, have to, use it every day, you must read this post:

http://tomayko.com/articles/2004/12/12/rest-to-my-wife

Ryan does an excellent job outlining the basics of HTTP and how it relates conceptually to our human languages.

I don’t know how many people have told me lately they’ve read some article about AJAX security issues that have cropped up recently. Here’s the deal. Continue Reading »

Flex 2 is built to support any back-end web server as a source for data, and .NET is no exception. Chafic Kazoun was one of the presenters at Adobe Max 2006, though I did not attend his session. The topic was (of course) how to integrate Flex 2 RIA’s with .NET data services. Continue Reading »

Dave writes about the Caesar Shift, and gives a code snippet for an example… I was bored and decided to make an example shifter using Javascript. (and post a devious reply for Dave).