SDFUG

No plans this weekend? Then consider attending the next Code Camp on January 28th & 29th at Cal State Fullerton. SoCal Code Camp is a free event for developers to come and learn from their peers. For more information, visit: http://www.socalcodecamp.com/

These beta 4 runtimes for the Windows and Mac OS desktop environments can be now be downloaded from Adobe Labs. Note, this does not include a beta version of the AIR SDK to enable mobile, television and desktop application development.

The key features and benefits are:

• Drivers gating for hardware acceleration relaxed (new in beta 4) — Previously, the hardware accelerated content was gated to 1/1/2009, however, we have relaxed the driver gating to 1/1/2008.
• Throttling event (new in beta 4) — This release introduces a new ThrottleEvent. A ThrottleEvent is now dispatched by the stage when the Flash Player throttles, pauses or resumes content.
• Mouse lock, relative mouse coordinates, right and middle click events — Create immersive, panoramic games withinfinite scrolling to enable new classes of content, including first-person games.
• Multi-threaded video decoding (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux) — The video decoding pipeline is now fully multi-threaded. This feature should improve the overall performance on all platforms. Note that this feature is a significant architecture change required for other future improvements.
• Flash Player background updates (Windows) — New versions of the runtimes can now be delivered more effectively to the end user with this enhanced updating mechanism (Background update is only available in the release versions of Flash Player).

Mayor Sanders and the City of San Diego are challenging the software developer community to create new apps using city and partner data. They’re also inviting the public to share their ideas for innovative new apps.

Winners will receive $50,000 in cash prizes as well as promotional exposure. Prizes will be awarded for apps that enhance city services and quality of life for San Diegans, and that use the data in innovative ways. Submitted apps can run on the web, desktop computers, tablets, or smartphones. The public is encouraged to share application ideas related to energy, tourism, economic development, transportation, the environment, health and other areas.

The public will have one month to share ideas for San Diego apps they’d like to see created. Developers will have approximately three months following the challenge launch to build their submissions. A panel of distinguished judges from the tech industry, venture capital, and partner institutions will select winners, and the general public will vote to identify two “Popular Choice” winners.

Challenge Goals:

• Stimulate the creation of innovative apps that enhance city services and help San Diego residents, businesses and visitors.
• Raise awareness of City of San Diego and partner data resources, and engage the public and software developers to help the community.

Adobe is kicking off an international Flex User Group Tour to discuss recent announcements regarding Flex and the Flash Platform. These meetings will clarify any changes to Flex and Flash including updates on the runtimes and tooling. Additionally, the sessions will educate folks about the Apache process and what it takes for Flex SDK, as a project within the Apache Software Foundation, to continue to thrive. These meetings will be the best place to get accurate and up-to-date information about anything related to Flex.

San Diego is was selected to be one of the stops on the tour! The event will be held on March 8th. Exact times and locations are being worked out. I already have a box of swag ready, so mark you calendars now!

Please help get the word out about the event.

As we get more details, we will post them here,

Chris, James and Darius

Our next meeting will be on February 6th (Monday) at the Art Institute of San Diego. Here is the outline of the meeting:

6:00 – 6:30 General Networking

6:30 – 7:00 Roundtable Discussion & Tech News Updates

7:00 – 8:00 Main Presentation: What’s New in Adobe AIR 3

Hope to see you there!

Chris, James & Darius

On January 9 2012, Demian Borba and Doug Saisho got 1st place on the AT&T Hackathon in Las Vegas. Competing against 150 developers coming from all over the world, after long hours in one day of development, their Action X-Ray was chosen by everyone as the best app. Congrats guys! Hopefully, they can give a demo to the user group!

App Contest of AT&T Developer Summit

Happy New Year from all of us at San Diego Flash/Adobe Developers User Groups!

Just a quick reminder that we are NOT having a meeting in January, but will be back in action in February!

Hope to see then, and my 2012 be an exciting and fun year,

Chris, James and Darius

Thanks to everyone who came out the December meeting! It was great to hear everyone’s thoughts about the recent events.

Meetings:
We are going to co-meet with the San Diego Adobe Developer User Group. We have done this in the past for special events. Now that we are co-meeting, maybe we can extend the reach of the user groups. Meetings will still be held at the Art Institute on the first Monday of the month at 6pm

Topics:
We will expand beyond the Flash Platform. There will still be a focus on Adobe-based solutions, but look for presentations on jQuery, Appcelerator, Scala, HTML5. As always, if you have a topic you want to talk about, let us know and we are happy to give you the podium! Also we will try to have a few hands-on sessions.

Agenda:
We are going to try to socialize up the meetings some. The first part of the meeting will be spend in general introductions and networking. Then we will have a ‘News of the Month’ section, then about 7pm we will have the main presentation.

Remember, no meeting in January! But we will be back in February discussing What’s New in Adobe AIR 3. Hope to see you there and have a happy and safe holidays!

Chris, James, & Darius

O’Reilly has published a set of books by Joseph Labrecque: “What’s New in Flash Player 11” and “What’s New in Adobe AIR 3“. These books are companion pieces as there is obvious overlap between what is new in each runtime, but are unique enough to require this manner of separation per volume.

The books are currently only available in digital format (ePub, Mobi, PDF) and can actually be acquired for FREE*! They will soon also be available from Amazon.com (Kindle), Barnes and Noble, Safari Books Online, and other online retailers.

I was fortunate enough to be one of the technical reviewers on them, and they are a great series of overview books.

A security patch for the Flex SDK is now available to address a vulnerability that will cause many Flex applications to be vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.  These applications must be patched in order to protect user data. Please review this bulletin to determine if your applications are at risk and to obtain instructions on how to patch your applications.