Getting in Contact with Me (Twitter and LinkedIn)

I learned at Flex Camp Miami that many people were not aware that I was on Twitter (and LinkedIn). I am mindmillmedia on Twitter, and you can view my LinkedIn page here.

I am an Adobe Community Expert

I was extremely honored this week to find out that I am now an Adobe Community Expert. I am certainly honored to be associated with such a group of developers and creative professionals. As a part of this program, I will be making even more tutorials and training material available over the next year. Thanks again to Adobe, I am certainly honored!

Enjoy Max – See You Next Year

I have had several people ask me if I am at Max this year. The answer, “No”. While this will be a huge event – and will have many important announcements, we are preparing for a major event of our own here at home. Within the week my wife Shannon is expected to give birth to twins – and we will both enter the world of parenthood (I fully expect that they will be great developers since they are being born the week of Max ). I hope everything goes well at Max – and I will see you all next year (as I will be back on the conference circuit then).

Joining Universal Mind

I have been working on a great project with Universal Mind since I left Georgia Tech in May. During this time I have grown to respect the wealth of knowledge of experience that makes up the team at UM. Because of this, when I received an offer to join Universal Mind as a full-time employee, I gladly (and graciously) accepted it. I look forward to continuing to grow professionally while learning from some of the best Flex developers today.

You can still catch me at DavidTucker.net, InsideRIA, and Adobe’s RIA Buzz Newsletter. However, I will now be unavailable for any outside projects. If you would be interested in having me work on a project, you can always contact Universal Mind – and you can have some of the best developers work on your project.

Keep up with RIA Technologies

For the last four weeks I have been writing a Round-Up of all of the weekly RIA news over at InsideRIA. My goal is to write an article that can be easily read and examined in a short amount of time, so that the readers can stay on top of RIA news. I cover Flex, AIR, Silverlight, JavaFX, and several other technologies. And as always – leave a comment if there are other items that you would like to see covered.

InsideRIA: RIA Round-Up

Corporate Invasion of the Social Web

I recently had some problems with my Internet connection. Actually, I have a LOT of problems. So, one morning after discovering my connection was absent, I ran to the local coffee shop to get some work done. After arriving, I expressed my frustration on Twitter:

To my surprise, only minutes later I get a response…from Comcast:

This was weird, but in all honesty they helped me out. They were able to schedule someone to come again and look at the problem. I know Comcast has a bad reputation, and this doesn’t eliminate it for me. However, it looks like they are making a step in the right direction.

This does bring up another interesting point: The Social Web Being Used as a Platform for the Enterprise. Steven Webster blogged about a Credit Union that is using Facebook as an optional Platform for it’s online banking application. I think the corporate invasion of the social web is only beginning.

Announcing ‘AIR for Flash Developers’ at Lynda.com

I am really excited to announce that my Lynda.com series, AIR for Flash Developers was released yesterday. The series is now available via the Online Training Library, and it will soon be available on DVD.

In this series, you will get to build an entire web browser without ever leaving Flash CS3. In addition, you will build a photo viewer, an online / offline contact manager, and get to work extensively with the AIR API.

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AIR Cookbook – Get Involved!

I am so excited about the upcoming AIR Cookbook. We went and got a great group of authors for this project: Marco Casario, Rich Tretola, and Koen De Weggheleire as well as myself.

The great news: Just as with the Flex 3 Cookbook, the community is going to play a large role in this book.

The Online AIR Cookbook

The Online AIR Cookbook will be your gateway to getting your entry into the book:

Share your knowledge. We’re looking for new and original solutions and work-arounds to common coding problems related to building Flex, Flash, or HTML/Ajax-based apps on Adobe AIR. If you have a solution related to the following or any other topic related to building on AIR: Bridging content from different security sandboxes Using transactions with queries Including a database in an AIR application Consuming eBay Web Services Reading and writing data from a file Making creative use of the Service Monitor Framework …be sure to post it to the AIR cookbook for a chance to have your solution appear in the upcoming Adobe AIR Cookbook to be published by O’Reilly. All posts will receive equal consideration.

CLICK HERE to get all of the information on the online AIR Cookbook and its connection to the book.

Needed Entries

One of the best ways to get your information included in the AIR Cookbook, is to look at the list of entries that we are seeking. I am keeping an updates list of those items here on my site: view the list. Find a topic that you are interested in – and then go to the online AIR Cookbook and submit your entry (be sure to opt-in to the O’Reilly program to be considered for the book).

Pre-Order the Book

If you really, really, want to get your copy ordered early – Amazon already has the book listed (but remember – the book will be out late this year).

AIR Cookbook

No More Commute: Working from Home

Tomorrow starts a new phase for me. I finished up at Georgia Tech last Friday, and now I will be working from home. Like any other developer, I have done a great deal of work at home – but that is drastically different from working from home. Any tips from the home working crowd?

RIA Buzz – New RIA Newsletter from Adobe Developer Connection

The Adobe Developer Connection is creating a newsletter, similar to the EDGE newsletter, but specifically focused on RIA’s and RIA technologies. This new newsletter is called the RIA Buzz. The first issue has not yet been released, but they are accepting sign-ups right now.

Sign Up for the Newsletter

DISCLAIMER: I write a column in this newsletter – but I would certainly be supporting it even if I didn’t. It is great how Adobe is now putting out a newsletter specifically for the RIA community.