savvas.malamas

A nice guy wants to get into my house from my Adobe window (aka Octoshape Grid Delivery enhancement)

After a week or so bookmarked and in between another post I’m preparing (finally a bit technical) I’ve finally found some time to read the very informative post from Flash Magazine about “Plugins for the.. Flash Player“.

It was a few weeks ago when I visited this page on CNN in order to watch a video and suddenly I got a message that looked like that:

I have to admit that I’m not that expert in Flash (Im learning..) but of course I have the latest version installed on all macs @ home (yes my bros’ and parents’ mac on the island too) and my love to the platform is GIANT(wow what a word..). So as you can imaging I was sitting speechless in front of my beautiful Cinema Display wondering.. How did I miss a Flash Player update..?? Then I read the text on the express installation dialog box and I was again like Jack on LOST.. What is this? Where am I? Who are the others? Who is responsible for this and of course what should I do? I mean ok its just the express installation window but what is Octoshape Grid Delivery (which has a beautiful name btw)?

I almost immediately asked my best friend, Twitter, about that. – Don’t worry its ok to call Twitter my best friend as the real ones think that Facecook.. oops Facebook is THE web so.. – @UnitZeroOne reply to me about it and so I almost felt a bit calm.

It is obvious that Flash baby Player uses the express install for installing not only updates for him self but other Adobe goodness but this time was different.. Software for another company wanted to enter my house from my Adobe window. You get the point..

Anyway as you can guess I installed it and then I enjoy CNN but today I read the Flash Magazine’s post and I would like to mention it here just in case anyone else was “terrorized” by this.

A few lines that I would like include here from the original post are:

“Octoshape is developed maintained by a Danish company, located in Copenhagen. The software allows anyone viewing a video stream re-distribute it as well, as part of a Peer to Peer (P2P) network. Everyone that views the stream also offers the stream to other viewers and this offloads the central streaming server allowing for more users as well as huge savings in bandwidth costs. This is not a opt-in solution. If you have the plugin, you are part of the “grid” that broadcasts the stream. The Octoshape add-in for Flash Player will terminate itself about 5 seconds after the flash player has been closed/stopped, so it won’t be a node other than when you use it”

Really fancy, I have to admit!

Laurel Reitman, Sr. Product Manager of Flash Media Server Services asked to FM like that:

“As part of the effort to improve the experience of live events, we have started a technology trial to test grid delivery technology.”

This is great as an idea and technology but I don’t get how the word “trial” fits next to the express installation feature of Flash baby Player. I love Flash Player and Adobe, even more that the fruit company but man this sounds sooo weird. I have to say that I have the debug version so I don’t know if the release version is getting the installation box (but I think it does). To be fair I have to say that Laurel also mentions that:

“Flash Player Express Install functionality is not a general purpose installation mechanism. It is used to distribute Adobe software, such as the developer-initiated player update, Acrobat Connect, and the AIR badge installer, and for security reasons all packages must be digitally signed and delivered from Adobe servers. The Octoshape add-in is delivered during the trial as part of a strategic partnership to test the technology as a way to enhance the live video experience. We have no plans for any further distribution of third party software through the Flash Player.”

I really hope so. I love the baby player so much to see it being accused for problems especially when it’s not related to it (and that is unfortunately already happening for a lot of things).

Anyway the post is really worth reading it because there are more useful information there and for the psycho funs out there you will be able to read the Macromedia word a few times in there.

And YES, it still sounds THAT amazing!

Adobe MAX in tweets!

No, unfortunately I didn’t attend MAX in San Francisco but thanks to my beloved twitters and while stacked on the huge traffic under this unbelievable rain in Athens tonight, I keep on track with whats happening on the other side of the world.

This is Adobe MAX 2008 in tweets:

WOW!

imaging..

Hello.. Anyone in Cupertino listening?

..but Apple’s permission is needed

Is Moscone that far away from Infinite Loop? No one is listening??

Off course..
Apple really needs to bring the other Steve on board..

This is called the whole internet Mr fruit guy..

Can you believe this.. Flash baby Player 10 in your pocket!

“Flash is everywhere, around you”..

Take that economy!

I’m waving…

Hey Mike that was available early in the morning here

No, Carla Bruni is NOT a codename..

The First lady for the First Company?

There is something in the Air again

Not only Flash Player is everywhere.. THIS is called cross platform!

Hmm.. Firefx what?

Not cool Andre..
I would call that AWESOMENESS(not that you don’t deserve it)!

I guess this will bring happiness to a lot of people..

As with Apollo,
I like more the code name but who cares..
Bring Thermo (oups I mean Flash Catalyst) to the people!

I think we need a maxinsider.com or maxrummors.com.

Thank you Adobeans for the live “stream” of info.

To Mike Downey:
after so many tweets I really hope that your fingers will be able to shoot some photos from the conference

Oh did I mention that all these were just from the first day which is not over yet??

Tour de Flex!

UPDATE: It seems that instead of just creating a super hot Flex Component explorer for the desktop the guys are turning it into an amazing community resource! Besides the commercial/non-commercial components, flex skins, FXs, code sample for mashing up with a lot of services and so many other stuff now the community can add stuff too. I can see the bright future of this app. TweetDeck is my most popular Air app so far but “someone” is taking place in there Thanks guys. Check Greg’s post for more info on how to put your mark on this super hot app!   

Greg Wilson, an Adobe Evangelist for Flex, Air, CF and other Adobe goodness blogged about a new super hot Air app (of course) with the name Tour de Flex. It is a Flex Component Explorer application which features a very nice UI as you can see.

From Greg’s post: “The application showcases the core Flex components, AIR capabilities, Flex data access (BlazeDS and LiveCycle DS), numerous coding techniques, cloud APIs, and a growing list of community-developed components, effects, skins and more.  There are 217 total samples in Tour de Flex as of this writing.  We expect to add more every month and have built in a mechanism to easily push out new samples. Each sample has a running demonstration, source code, links to related resources such as ASDocs, community commenting, and more.”

This is the beautiful UI of the app which I have to say that features many nice stuff.

For the Eclipse users and thanks to James Ward (aka RIA Cowboy), the guys also add an Eclipse plugin so now you can directly search from an Eclipse view window!

You can download the app from the right sidebar of this blog or visit the Tour de Flex page which is of course on Flex.org/tour. There is also a pdf guide there

Congrats guys!

A note to my readers: I would like to apologize for duplicating posts but sometimes there are things that amaze me and I just can’t keep my self from not posting about them. Just to be fair I would like to ask you to read the original post from Greg Wilson because besides the specific post, his blog is realy amazing. I should also mention that I really like his WP theme (so much that for a few months I used the same).

Greg I hope you are not pissed off

Thanks for the great app.

360|Flex from San Jose straight to your browser!

As you probably know 360|Flex took place in San Jose from August 18 – 20.

The amazing think is that the guys there decided to record the videos of the presentations and post them on a new hot project that Mr. Flex {aka Ted Patrick} and some other Adobeans are working on. 

You can use the AMP to subscribe to the feed of 15 videos in a very nice quality. 
Some people (including me) are having problems in subscribing to the feed direct from Ted’s blog so Ted was kind enough to share the link to the feed while he is working on it. You can use it to add the channel to your favorites on the Adobe Media Player.
Just in case you want to see the videos asap and you are already here, I have embedded ALL of them below.

All videos are under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 

Thanks to the 360|Flex team and Ted Patrick for this.