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5 Tips For Flash Unit Testing
By Jesse FreemanNovember 9, 2009
Advanced Flash Tactics or AFTs are techniques that come from deep within the Flash Art Of War, the oldest Flash military treatise in the world. In this AFT I will go over - 5 Tips for Unit Testing. Unit Testing and Test Driven Development are a hot topics in the Flash community lately, especially on Twitter. A few weeks ago, after realizing how complex my F*CSS library was getting, I decided to go back and write FlexUnit test for the library in a hope to use TDD moving forward. Lets quickly talk about what TDD is:
Three Paradoxes of the Internet Age - Part Three
By Joshua-Michele RossNovember 7, 2009
The myth of personal empowerment takes root amidst a massive loss of personal control. Social technologies are cloaked in a rhetoric of liberation (customers are in control, the internet fosters democracy, social technologies propagate truth etc.) that tend to obscure the fact that never before have we handed so much personal information over in exchange for so little in...
Twitter Users Most Followed by the Web 2.0 Summit Crowd
By Ben LoricaOctober 28, 2009
I took the set of users† who posted tweets containing the hashtag #w2s and determined who those users followed. Unlike the list of the most followed users in all of Twitter, the list isn't dominated by celebrities. (A few coders landed in the top 50.) Regular Radar readers will be familiar with many of the users listed below: over 20...
Web 2.0 Summit Starts Today
By Tim O'ReillyOctober 20, 2009
Last year at Web 2.0 Summit, one prominent tech executive responded to our focus on "Web meets World" -- the way web technology is being used to attack the world's problems -- by saying "I don't come to this conference to learn how to do good. I come to learn about trends that are going to affect my business."...
A Conversation with Dr. Walter Scott of DigitalGlobe
By Joshua-Michele RossOctober 17, 2009
Dr Walter Scott founded Digital Globe - a company you are likely not familiar with though you probably interact with their satellite imagery on a regular basis via Google Maps, Bing and others. It is only recently that mapping technology and production has been driven by mainly commercial interests especially in the area of satellite imagery. With this commercialization corporations...
My Conversation with Austan Goolsbee at Web 2.0 Summit
By Tim O'ReillyOctober 15, 2009
He introduces himself as "another tall, skinny guy with big ears and a funny name." Economics adviser to Barack Obama during the campaign, and now a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Austan Goolsbee is a key figure in framing the economic thinking of the Obama administration. Perhaps most...
Google Analytics for the Real World: A Conversation with Sharon Biggar of Path Intelligence
By Joshua-Michele RossOctober 10, 2009
In preparation for the upcoming Web 2.0 Summit I am posting a few conversations with attendees that embody the Web Squared Theme. Path Intelligence uses sensor technology to understand shopping behavior in retail spaces by detecting and tracking the RF signals from mobile phones. As Sharon Biggar, co-founder, succinctly puts it - “we are like Google Analytics for the real...
Four Tips for Avoiding VM Sprawl in the Public Cloud
By George ReeseOctober 3, 2009
You moved into the cloud to save some money. Now it's the first of the month and you're looking at your latest cloud provider bill. It's not at all what you planned. Welcome to the world of VM sprawl, the dark side of cloud computing.
InsideRIA talks AR at MAX
By Jesse FreemanAugust 24, 2009
Everywhere you look, Augmented Reality is a hot topic. With MAX a little over a month away, FLAR will be thoroughly covered in at least 4 different sessions. I was offered an incredible opportunity by InsideRIA to speak at...
Health IT in the Healthcare Debate
By Sarah SorensenAugust 12, 2009
In the face of all the uncertainty around healthcare, one thing that is certain is technology (Health IT) is going to play a large role in the transformation and advancement of the every day health and wellness of individuals around the world.
FLARToolkit and FLARManager
By Eric SocolofskyJuly 21, 2009
FLARManager is a lightweight framework that makes building FLARToolkit augmented reality applications easier. When I first came across FLARToolkit, I was simultaneously excited and stymied -- there seemed to be so much potential, but it was difficult to use and even harder to understand. Augmented reality is still a long way from maturity, and leveraging FLARToolkit on the ubiquity of Flash Player provides a great opportunity for further exploring its possibilities. FLARManager aims to provide quicker entry to the technology, to allow a focus on new forms of interaction via marker detection and augmented reality.
“Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company” -A conversation with Ted Griggs
By Joshua-Michele RossJune 27, 2009
Ribbit bills itself as “Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company.” Recently I sat down with Ted Griggs, Ribbit’s CEO to talk about that tag line, Ribbit’s business and what’s behind their recent acquisition by British Telecom. It will be interesting to see how the telecommunications industry is going to handle the coming disruption as the public becomes accustomed to near-free calling...
VoiceMail service for web sites based on Ribbit, are you interested?
By Mirza HatipovicApril 16, 2009
As you already may know, Ribbit is a relatively new technology that allows developers to integrate voice and rich communication features into websites or applications. Still, there are not many products out there where end users can take advantage of...
iPhone Dev: IOKit - The Missing Public Framework
By Erica SadunApril 13, 2009
A lot of fuss has been made about Apple's public and private frameworks. Did you know that there's actually a public framework that you're not allowed to use? Here are the facts.
Introducing Enhanced Flex Components from Clear Toolkit Framework
By Yakov FainMarch 5, 2009
The goal of this article is to give you a brief overview of some of the objects from clear.swc, which is a part of the open source Clear Toolkit framework available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/cleartoolkit. Component library clear.swc includes a number of...
Concept Management
By Eric LarsonJanuary 30, 2009
Distributed version control systems have brought up some pretty important questions. A DVCS adds a good deal of complexity to an already complicated system. Source control is rather sticky business as it not only deals with complex content, but the...
Trains, Planes and Automobiles: Or why Infrastructure IS an IT issue
By Kurt CagleJanuary 30, 2009
Before we load up on more highway projects, more unnecessary bridges, and more downtown renovation projects, it may behove us as a society to ask the question about whether it will be more beneficial in the long run to use our brains (real and virtual) and the marvellous networks that we have created with our brains to solve these pressing problems in a way that will benefit not only ourselves but our children's children.
The Army, the Web, and the Case for Intentional Emergence
By Jim StogdillJanuary 27, 2009
Web 2.0 isn't really about specific technologies, it's about enabling large scale emergence. The Army should replicate the kind of generative platforms found on the web and intentionally enable emergence in the enterprise.
Analysis 2009: The Financial Crisis Hits IT Hard
By Kurt CagleJanuary 6, 2009
The recession that started in January 2008 looks to be four phased. The first phase, The housing collapse, actually started in August 2007. The financial meltdown hit in September 2008, and likely will continue through to March 2009 or...
Needed: A New IT Employment Model
By Kurt CagleDecember 24, 2008
It's Christmas Eve as I write this, but after having put the children to bed and turning off the tree lights, I find that my thoughts are not on Santa Claus tonight ... at least not in a very positive way.
Why Ribbit is a Big Deal
By RJ OwenDecember 22, 2008
If you've been hiding under a rock for the last year or so, Ribbit is a platform for voice - a strong platform that allows developers to manage and process voice content in ways we couldn't before. Ribbit is well positioned to radically change the way we view voice communication, and if you're a developer you should probably dig into it. Besides learning a great technology, there's $100,000 in it for you if you can make something good. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Stuck Together
By Simon St. LaurentDecember 15, 2008
Bailouts are an awful thing, an admission of drastic failure. They're also a safety valve that can lessen the impact of disaster in a given area on the rest of the system. In the immediate and short term, we need to recognize that it's not just a given group whose boat is being bailed - we're bailing a very large boat that we're all riding.
The Lawsuit Ain't Over Til the Fat Lady Sings
By James TurnerDecember 1, 2008
Last week, the final judgment was issued in the SCO v. Novell lawsuit. No big surprise, Novell took the day, with SCO ordered to fork over around 3.5 million dollars. This lead many to declare SCO dead, that truth and...
“Technology is the 7th Kingdom of Life” - A conversation with Kevin Kelly
By Joshua-Michele RossNovember 24, 2008
Kevin Kelly doesn’t need much in the way of introduction to Radar readers. He is a big thinker looking at the intersection of biology, technology and culture. Kevin gave a great High Order Bit at the Web 2.0 Summit and I caught up with him afterward. This interview covers: The impact of the web on our recent elections The rich...
Huffington, Newsom, and Trippi talk politics in a Web 2.0 world
By Sara WingeNovember 22, 2008
"Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be President," declared Arianna Huffington from the stage at Web 2.0 Summit, the day after the election. In "The Web and Politics" session, moderator John Heileman explores the new world of running for office--and governing once you win--with Huffington, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and veteran politico Joe Trippi. Politicians...
Shai Agassi on Electric Cars
By Ben LoricaNovember 12, 2008
One of my favorite sessions at the recent Web 2.0 summit was Tim's half-hour conversation with Shai Agassi, the CEO of Better Place. Better Place aims to make electric cars widespread ("the electric car as the de facto standard") by addressing major issues that have held back electric vehicles: affordability and convenience. In a relaxed conversation with Tim, Shai described...
Mary Meeker's Annual State of the Internet
By Brady ForrestNovember 5, 2008
Web 2.0 Summit High Order Bit -Mary_Meeker Get your own at Scribd or explore others: Business Economics marymeeker web2summit Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker just took the stage at Web 2.0 Summit and is presenting her information-rich slides. I've put a copy up on Scribd for all to view. The video of her talk will be up shortly....
Visualization of Interests at Web 2.0 Summit
November 5, 2008
To help make the most of this week's Web 2.0 Summit, I wanted to understand the overall audience gestalt - what are the broad themes, interests, and ideas that are important to the people going to the conference? A tag cloud can be a great (but admittedly imperfect!) way to understand these large patterns quickly, so I used a spider...
Major milestone for ProgrammableWeb & "The Web as Platform"
November 3, 2008
Last week marked an important milestone for the "Web as Platform" as the 1,000 API was added to the ProgrammableWeb registry. John Musser (see: Web2.0 Report) started tracking the first few web service API's back in 2005. How do these 1000 APIs break down by type? The following chart, derived from our database, shows the the top 15 sectors...
The Economics of Cloud Computing
By George ReeseOctober 24, 2008
Cloud computing has been "the next cool thing" for at least the past 18 months. The current economic climate, however, may be the thing that accelerates the maturity of the technology and drives mainstream adoption in 2009.
Git Repositories now offered by ProjectLocker
By Eric BerryOctober 22, 2008
ProjectLocker.com now offers Git hosting as well as SVN
Tim In The LA Times On Getting Serious
By Brady ForrestOctober 11, 2008
As Tim mentioned earlier this week during tough times it's important to work on things that matter. The LA Times dives into Tim's thinking with a piece published yesterday. From the story: O'Reilly argues that Silicon Valley has strayed from the passion and idealism that fuel innovation to instead follow what he calls the "mad pursuit of the buck with...
Over 300 iPhone Apps Use Location Look-Ups
By Brady ForrestOctober 11, 2008
According to Skyhook Wireless over 300 iPhone apps are location-aware as of October 3rd. According to Mobclix there are over 4,000 apps in circulation. If these numbers are correct this puts the location-aware percentage at under 10% -- far, far less than I would have suspected based on my own experience. There were 5.5 location-aware apps released per day...
Vote for a FlexUnit code management improvement
By Mike SlinnOctober 1, 2008
In my previous blog I asked readers to log into the Adobe bug database and vote for an improvement to the Flex Ant Tasks. So far, 16 people have done so. Thank you, whoever you are! The feature request now...
Paulson Plan Will Prove Devastating to IT
By Kurt CagleSeptember 24, 2008
On the 20th of September, Henry Paulson submitted an architectural plan to Congress to provide a foundation for keeping Wall Street functional and prevent the credit markets from seizing up, a task which he has been engaged in pretty much non-stop for at least the last year (since the markets started to crack in August 2007). This architectural plan, one that would involve potentially trillions of dollars and affect the lives of tens of millions of people, was not 1000 pages of detailed analysis, not even a hundred pages of recommendations and "to be filled in with details later". It was 2 1/2 pages long.
Podcast: Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle discuss the upcoming Web 2.0 Summit
By Joshua-Michele RossSeptember 13, 2008
Beginning on November 5th, 2008 a wide array of thought leaders and practitioners of Web 2.0 are converging on San Francisco to attend the 5th annual Web 2.0 Summit. This year's theme, "Web Meets World" reflects how much Web 2.0 has evolved over the past five years. I recorded an informal conversation with co-chairs Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle to...
Advanced Flex Deep Linking with URLKit
By David TuckerSeptember 3, 2008
One of the difficulties for rich internet applications (RIA's), is attempting to preserve the traditional browser experience for the user. With Flex applications, there are several barriers to this kind of experience. First, end users are used to using the back and forward buttons to navigate through an a site. Second, users expect each state of an application to be reflected in its URL. Third, users expect that they can bookmark a specific state of an application and return to it at a later time. URLKit addresses these issues in Flex 2/3 applications, and it formed the base of the deep linking support inside of Flex 3. If you are a Flex developer this a tool that you should certainly be familiar with. Note: URLKit was developed by Joe Berkovitz of Allurent and Todd Rein of Adobe Systems.
Unit Testing with AsUnit
By Kelly BrownSeptember 3, 2008
AsUnit is an open source framework for unit testing in Flash. AsUnit provides a low level automated testing system that is your first line of defense for catching bugs in your application. The concept of unit testing has been around for a long time as part of the traditional Waterfall model of software development. However, it has gained in popularity recently as one of the main tenets of Extreme Programming. One of the tenants of Extreme Programming is that you write unit tests first and then your code. You also refactor code often as you add features. Unit tests help find errors quickly as code is refactored and can be used as part of regression testing to make sure the new code has not affected existing functionality.
Google Chrome: Not Invented Here Syndrome Invades Mountain View
By M. David PetersonSeptember 2, 2008
It seems Google has decided the world needs Yet Another WebKit-based Browser: Chrome. Chrome? That's the best they could come up with?! Well, more on that later. In the mean time it seems we got a little investigative work to get done. Here's what we've got so far...
C++ for RIA?
By Richard Monson-HaefelAugust 21, 2008
Qt is a powerful and surprisingly pervasive fit client technology that could become the next RIA solution for C++ programmers.
IT Workers and the Gathering Economic Storm
By Kurt CagleAugust 14, 2008
IT workers are in general perhaps better prepared for the upheavals in that emerging world than most - a world where knowledge, flexibility, indepence of action and thought, and an ability to network will prove to be the most desirable characteristics, but that nimbleness comes at the cost of not tying yourself down to the older society's expectations. Even if the economy does manage to avoid the worst of the doldrums, these are traits to encourage in the days ahead.
New O'Reilly Radar Report
August 14, 2008
Open Source in the Enterprise — Using open source in the enterprise — the question is no longer "if," but "how?" The low cost, easy access, and expansive license terms of open source are certainly attractive — especially since IT budgets have decreased 3-5% every year, while software costs have increased, and IT staffs have been tasked to create web services and pursue Web 2.0 initiatives.
New Book: Intellectual Property and Open Source
August 14, 2008
"Clear, correct, and deep, this is a welcome addition to discussions of law and computing for anyone — even lawyers!" — Lawrence Lessig, law professor at Stanford Law School, founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society Most legal sources are too scattered, arcane, and too h
Luke Kanies Wants to Modernize System Administration
By chromatic August 14, 2008
Luke Kanies, author of the Puppet configuration management tool, discusses how to fix what's wrong with system administration and why shell scripts and ssh are the wrong tools to keep your systems up to date.
Al Gore Joins Web 2.0 Summit Lineup
By Tim O'ReillyAugust 8, 2008
As I wrote last month in What Good is Collective Intelligence if it Doesn't Make Us Smarter?, at this year's Web 2.0 Summit, we're focusing on how what we've learned from the web over the past decade can be applied to solve the world's hard problems. That's why I'm really excited to see that John Battelle has persuaded Al...
Suggestions for Web 2.0 Summit Charity Auction?
By Tim O'ReillyJuly 30, 2008
At this year's Web 2.0 Summit, we're holding a charity auction as part of our "web meets world" focus. From the press release: The Web 2.0 Summit team will solicit donations, and donation ideas, from individuals and companies within the community and then choose the 10 most promising and unique offerings to auction after the conference dinner. Lance Armstrong, the...
Ribbit is Acquired by British Telecom
By Andre CharlandJuly 29, 2008
Big news for one of the shining lights in the VOIP, Flex and AIR world this morning. Ribbit was acquired by BT. Ribbit has been acquired by BT one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions and services. This marks the most important day yet in Ribbit’s history. As part of BT will be able to more quickly extend our vision beyond Silicon Valley and bring our products and technology to the entire world. We couldn’t be more excited than to announce this new partnership.
Open Source Code Licenses Review
By Andre CharlandJuly 18, 2008
Grant Skinner has been thinking about and researching open sources licenses. I think this is timely blog post that everyone involved in software should take a look to get a quick high level understanding of the most popular open source licenses.
What good is collective intelligence if it doesn't make us smarter?
By Tim O'ReillyJuly 7, 2008
Two stories I read yesterday morning are worth sharing. The first, an editorial by science-fiction writer Robert Silverberg, was entitled The Death of Gallium, a meditation on the increasing scarcity of valuable elements like gallium, used in flat panel TVs and computer displays, which is estimated to be used up by 2017. Other less rare but equally important minerals are...
Q&A with Susan Danziger, CEO of DailyLit
By Mac SlocumJune 17, 2008
DailyLit has made a name for itself by delivering simple book installments via email and RSS. In this Q&A, DailyLit CEO Susan Danziger discusses the company's philosophy, process, and upcoming services.
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