Sometimes folders get passed around liberally amongst a team of people working on a project that contain SVN data. This can be a pain because some team members may not be fully aware of this invisible data, and more often than not they can end up getting checked back into a repository causing conflicts.
We whipped up a simple little Adobe AIR app to handle this issue. Simply drop a folder onto it and it will clear out all of these invisible files recursively.
Its been a few days since FITC 2009 in Toronto. Once again, the good people over at FITC put on a great conference - with a really diverse speaker list this year. I spent an entire day in front of a mic - speaking on two panels alongside giving a presentation. I have to admit, I really enjoyed the panels - its great to just sit down and have a conversation with friends and let it go where it may, allowing for more audience participation. I took away so much from my fellow panelists and hopefully the audience walked away feeling the same.
This year was a great year for meeting new people - the conference is such a great place to network and I really enjoy meeting new people and hearing about what they are working on. A big thank you goes out to guys of Grand Creative for hosting a really chill bbq at their styling digs. Do yourself a favour and check out their work - they are truly a talented crew.
Thanks goes out to everyone who came to my session , I got some great feedback and plan to incorporate it in the next run. As I mentioned in my session, if you want to take the Konductor platform for a test drive - feel free to shoot me off an email at stacey@teknision.com.
For everyone who makes FITC possible - you guys did a great job as always - congrats to all of you for pulling off yet another wildly successful event.
Let the countdown begin - FITC in Toronto is just a short 3 weeks or so away! I’m going to be super busy at the conference this year - having committed to a presentation and two panels. Both I and Steve will be attending this year from Teknision.
The first panel is one about a topic I’m pretty passionate about - team workflow. Moderated by Joshua Hirsh of Big Spaceship, the panel entitled “There is no ‘I’ in Team… But there is Meat” will discuss how to increase team efficiency in both production and communication. I’m looking forward to hearing the ideas and expertise of my fellow panelists - Dan LaCivita from firstborn, Ulises Valencia from Grupo W, and Mathew Ray from CP+B.
And finally, for my presentation, I’ll be walking through a recent AIR project, Konductor, to highlight the challenges, approaches and discoveries of working on a multi-dev team project that was R+D intensive. “Large Scope/Little Worry” should be a presentation that hopefully the audience can relate to and learn from.
I’m looking forward to seeing everyone- please don’t be shy and come up and say hi!
The Ottawa Flex User Group is meeting tonight at the usual place - the Adobe building over on Prescott Street. Haven’t decided if you are going to FITC yet? Let us change your mind - as 10 FITC conference passes are being raffled off at tonights meeting. Check out the post on the Adobe groups page for more details about how you can qualify.
Tonight’s presenters will be the peeps from JohnnyVoIP alongside our very own Jason and Tony. So come on out, say hi, have a beer and get your Flex geek on.
Where did the black go? We left it behind as we moved forward with a new blog design focusing on a light background and dark text. Bigger, better and a bit more readable. We’d love to hear your feedback about the new look - let us know what you think.
Not only have we refreshed the look of our blog, we’ve made some subtle updates to our site - mostly in terms of the messaging. Check it out and let us know what you think.
Finally, its out in the wild. Our iPhone game, Sayback, just got added to the App store and we’ve been getting some really great feedback.
Sayback is the result of iPhone development R+D we started - we wanted to learn how to create experiences for the iPhone and to give meaning and structure to that process, we focused the efforts on building a simple, yet engaging game. Anytime we start a new R+D task, we try to frame it with definite goals to drive the process and keep it moving forward. As important as discovery is, maintaining focus with natural deviations seems to garner better results than being overwhelmed by something new.
So what is Sayback?
Sayback is the game that will have you speaking backwards. If someone started speaking backwards, think you could understand? Learn to change directions in this puzzle game where backwards becomes the new forward. In Sayback, we focused on discovering how to capture audio input via the mic and then playing that recorded data in both directions. This is something we’ve wanted to do for quite awhile and wasn’t something we could easily accomplish in Flash. We chose to use the iPhone as a player piece - so you play with it, as much as you do on it.
So how do you play ?
Think of something witty – but don’t get too ambitious – your phrase can’t be longer than 7 seconds long.
Get well out of earshot – you don’t want your opponent to be able hear you.
In your very best announcer voice, record your phrase when you’re ready.
The message will then be reversed for your opponent. You can preview what it will sound like when its played backwards.
Happy with how it sounds? Put the pressure on your friend now by challenging them to figure it out.
Your opponent now needs to work in the opposite order to figure out the original message. Then by listening to the reversed phrase you recorded.
Its Sayback™ time! After listening to the reversed phrase, your opponent needs say back and record exactly what they hear.
They can now reverse what they said, to help them figure out your originally recorded phrase.
Feel like checking out the game? You can now search for it in the App Store - or you can check out www.saybackgame.com for more information. We’re always looking for feedback , so if you have some, shoot us off an email support@saybackgame.com
Run, don’t walk to the Apple app store and check out our latest iPhone game Sayback. You can purchase it via this link Visit our Sayback site page to understand how to play the game and see it in action with a video demo.
When I started to pick up Objective-C, one of the first things that stood out to me (other than the unfamiliar syntax) was how very different the help documentation was compared to what I was used to. Coming from a background as a Flash and Flex developer, I think I’ve been spoiled.
Adobe has done an excellent job of providing examples right in their help documents that tell you very clearly how or when to use a function of a given class. This isn’t necessarily the case with the help docs included with the iPhone SDK. There are examples, but they are not included in the help docs - a sample project must be downloaded from which you must search for the relevant line. It loses its context now - and typically doesn’t have any explanation of the code, outside of the obvious, and there’s a chance that the example is obscure and doesn’t help explain anything.
That’s not to say that the Apple’s help docs aren’t useful - far from it. Now that I feel comfortable and familiar with the language, I find the documentation very useful. For someone starting off, however this might not necessarily be the case.
In addition to these resources, Apple is working hard to build up a strong iPhone developer community. You can always search through Apple’s mailing lists, or when Apple kicked off their iPhone Tech Talk World Tour they opened up their beta Developer Forums - available to you as soon as you register for the SDK. The Developer Forums are increasingly becoming the best place for me to search for answers I can’t find in the help docs.
As Flash and Flex developers,we’re no strangers to the concept of file optimization, and when developing for the iPhone most of the same rules apply: keep your images as small as possible, reuse wherever you can get away with it, etc., but the focus or the goal is different.
