Kevin Hoyt

Ryan Stewart and I are crazy about GPS and geospatial information. We both actually carry a Trackstick device wherever we travel which records our adventures. The data file can be accessed via USB as any number of formats, but it is usually XML-oriented. Of course we’re both building applications that use this data, which is when I ran into the problem of waiting for a server to process several megabytes of XML data. Using Flex I was able to monitor the long-running transaction without unnecessarily delaying the responsiveness of the user interface.
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Ethan Malasky, from the Adobe AIR engineering team, joined on AIR Tour Europe crew for the first week of the second leg to present on security in Adobe AIR. As an engineer on the AIR team, Ethan can talk about the security model in a way few others can, often giving insight as to why specific decisions were made. Ethan also has access to the source code, and can do fun things like create custom builds with security turned off, and show you the danger of a world without the security model.
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It is pretty common these days that Flex developers come from traditional programming backgrounds. This means that more and more, many developers leveraging the Flash Player, have never worked with Flash CS3. It also then means that many Flex developers aren’t always familiar with common Flash authoring techniques. Here’s a quick introduction on masking for Flex developers, with some collaboration thrown in for good measure.
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I’ve been using Twitter for a while, and while I can appreciate the ability to see what my friends are doing, I was never really compelled to use the service. Something just seemed missing. Then I was introduced to Brightkite. What Brightkite adds to Twitter is geographical/geospatial data, and I’m hooked! Within my first week of using the service, I was making new connections with people that were simply in my vicinity. While the Brightkite FAQ says that a blog sidebar is coming, I enjoy the service so much that I just couldn’t wait.
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