Adrian Parr’s Blog

Flash Camp Manchester is tomorrow!

It is a FREE event, but you need to register online before you go.

Here is the schedule …

12:00 | Registration opens

20:00 | EVENT MOVES TO PUB!

See you there!

Visit the website for more details.

Have you ever wondered what version of the Adobe AIR Runtime you have installed on your computer? Well, if you have then you’ve probably found it difficult to find out. Luckily Jason Madsen has built a simple AIR App that will tell you. It does what it says on the tin. Very handy!

BTW, if you want to know what version of the Flash Player you have installed in your browser just visit www.playerversion.com to find out. Thanks Aral.

Adobe have consolidated all their ActionScript 3.0 help documentation for the Flash Platform in to one central place online. It works using search and filters to show you the information you are looking for.

BETA ActionScript 3.0 Reference for the Adobe Flash Platform
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/

Looking forward to 2010, here is a list of dates to put in your diary. Most of them are Flash Platform related, others are more general but still of interest. I will add to this list as events get announced. If you know of an event that I haven’t mentioned, then post a comment at the bottom and I’ll do my best to add it to the list.

January 2010

February 2010

Macworld 2010
February 9th - 13th, 2010
San Francisco, California, US

Mobile World Congress
February 15th - 18th, 2010
Barcelona, Spain

FITC Amsterdam 2010
February 22nd - 23rd, 2010
Amsterdam, Netherlands

March 2010

CeBIT 2010
March 2nd - 6th, 2010
Hannover, Germany

360|Flex
March 7th - 10th, 2010
San Jose, California, US

Flash Gaming Summit 2010
March 8th, 2010
San Francisco, California, US

PushButton Summit 2010
March 9th - 10th, 2010
Salt Lake City, Utah, US

SXSW 2010 - Interactive
March 12th - 16th, 2010
Austin, Texas, US

MIX10
March 15th - 17th, 2010
Las Vegas, Nevada, US

April 2010

NAB Show
April 10th - 15th, 2010
Las Vegas, Nevada, US

FFK10
April 13th - 16th, 2010
Cologne, Germany

The Next Web Conference 2010
April 21st - 23rd, 2010
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Fractal’10
April 23rd - 24th, 2010
Medellin, Colombia

Flash Israel
April 25th, 2010
Tel Aviv, Israel

FITC Toronto 2010
April 25th - 27th, 2010
Toronto, Canada

May 2010

Web 2.0 Expo
May 3rd - 6th, 2010
San Francisco, California, US

Lift10
May 5th - 7th, 2010
Geneva, Switzerland

webdu 2010
May 6th - 7th, 2010
Sydney, Australia

12th flashconference 2010
May 7th, 2010
Stuttgart, Germany

Adobe Developer Week 2010
May 10th - 14th, 2010
Online

Multi-Mania (2M10)
May 10th - 11th, 2010
Kortrijk, Belgium

FutureEverything (formerly Futuresonic)
May 12th - 15th, 2010
Manchester, UK

Flash And The City
May 14th - 16th, 2010
New York, US

Scotch on the Rocks (SOTR2010)
May 24th - 25th, 2010
Location not announced yet

Web Flash Festival
May 28th - 30th, 2010
Paris, France

June 2010

Apple Worldwide Developers Conference
June 7th - 11th, 2010
San Francisco, California, US

GestureCamp 2010
June 10th - 12th, 2010
Lille, France

gotoAndSki();
June 11th - 13th, 2010
Galdhøpiggen, Norway

Flashbelt 2010
June 13th - 16th, 2010
Minneapolis, Minnesota, US

d2w - Designer/Developer Workflow Conference
June 19th - 20th, 2010
Kansas City, Missouri, US

OFFF Paris 2010
June 24th - 26th, 2010
Paris, France

July 2010

Flash at the Lake
July 2nd - 3rd, 2010
Zurich, Switzerland

Flash Camp Manchester
July 8th, 2010
Manchester, UK

TEDGlobal 2010
July 12th - 16th, 2010
Oxford, UK

SIGGRAPH 2010
July 26th - 30th, 2010
Los Angeles, California, US

August 2010

FITC San Francisco 2010
August 17th - 19th, 2010
San Francisco, California, US

The Adobe Flash Platform Summit 2010
August 25th - 26th, 2010
Bangalore, India

September 2010

Flash Camp Birmingham
September 7th, 2010
Birmingham, UK

IBC2010
September 9th - 13th, 2010
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Flash on the Beach ‘10
September 26th - 29th, 2010
Brighton, UK

October 2010

Being-Digital ‘10
October 7th, 2010
London, UK

Adobe MAX 2010
October 24th - 27th, 2010
Los Angeles, California, US

November 2010

Bloom
November 18th - 19th, 2010
Cape Town, South Africa

December 2010

The 2010 list can be found here …
http://www.adrianparr.com/?p=115

Ok, I know it is a bit late through the year to be posting this, but here is a round-up of conferences and events that relate directly and in-directly to the Flash Platform and digital media in some way. This give you some idea of what happens when and where around the world and what to look out for in 2010. If you want me to add your event then just let me know about it (add a comment at the bottom of this page).

January 2009

Flex Camp Chicago
January 22nd - 23rd, 2009
Chicago, Illinois, US

February 2009

FITC Amsterdam 2009
February 22nd - 24th, 2009
Amsterdam, Netherlands

FOWA - Future Of Web Apps
February 22nd - 24th, 2009
Miami, Florida, US

Flex Camp Amsterdam
February 25th, 2009
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Lift09
February 25th - 27th, 2009
Geneva, Switzerland

Flash Camp London
February 26th, 2009
London, UK

March 2009

Flex Camp Ottawa
March 3rd, 2009
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

TOCA ME
March 7th, 2009
Munich, Germany

SXSW - Interactive
March 13th - 17th, 2009
Austin, Texas, US

Maker Faire Newcastle
March 14th - 15th, 2009
Newcastle, UK

MIX09
March 18th - 20th, 2009
Las Vegas, Nevada, US

Flash Gaming Summit
March 22nd, 2009
San Francisco, California, US

April 2009

The Next Web Conference 2009
April 15th - 17th, 2009
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

NAB Show
April 18th - 23rd, 2009
Las Vegas, Nevada, US

FITC Toronto 2009
April 25th - 28th, 2009
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

FFK09
April 27th 30th, 2009
Cologne, Germany

May 2009

11th flashconference 2009
May 7th, 2009
Stuttgart, Germany

OFFF
May 7th - 9th, 2009
Oeiras, Portugal

Thinking Digital
May 13th - 15th, 2009
Gateshead, UK

Multi-Mania
May 18th - 19th, 2009
Kortrijk, Belgium

360|Flex
May 18th - 20th, 2009
Indianapolis, Indiana, US

Flash On Tap
May 28th - 30th, 2009
Boston, Massachusetts, US

Flash Camp San Francisco
May 29th, 2009
San Francisco, California, US

BarCampLeeds
May 30th - 31st, 2009
Leeds, UK

Maker Faire Bay Area
May 30th - 31st, 2009
San Francisco, California, US

June 2009

Flashbelt
June 7th - 10th, 2009
Minneapolis, Minnesota, US

Flash Camp Warsaw
June 9th, 2009
Warsaw, Poland

REMIX09 Australia
June 11th, 2009
Sydney, Australia

Flash Camp Birmingham
June 16th, 2009
Birmingham, UK

Digital Media Conference East
June 25th 2009
Washington, D.C., US

Flash at the Lake
June 26th - 27th, 2009
Zurich, Switzerland

July 2009

TEDGlobal
July 21st - 24th, 2009
Oxford, UK

August 2009

SIGGRAPH
August 3rd - 7th, 2009
New Orleans, Louisiana, US

CFUnited
August 12th - 15th, 2009
Leesburg, Virginia, US

Flash Camp Atlanta
August 28th, 2009
Atlanta, Georgia, US

September 2009

ARS Electronica
September 3rd - 8th, 2009
Linz, Austria

dConstruct
September 4th, 2009
Brighton, UK

Flex Camp Rimini
September 5th, 2009
Rimini, Italy

BarCampBrighton
September 5th - 6th, 2009
Brighton, UK

onedotzero - adventures in motion
September 9th - 13th, 2009
London, UK

IBC2009
September 10th - 14th, 2009
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Flash Camp St. Louis
September 11th, 2009
St. Louis, Missouri, US

FITC Mobile 2009
September 13th - 14th, 2009
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The Actionscript Conference
September 14th - 15th, 2009
Singapore

Lift Asia 09
September 17th - 18th, 2009
Jeju, Korea

Flash Platform Code Camp Wellington
September 19th, 2009
Wellington, New Zealand

Flash on the Beach
September 20th - 23rd, 2009
Brighton, UK

London Digital Week
September 21st - 27th, 2009
London, UK

i-Design 09
September 24th, 2009
London, UK

FOWA - Future Of Web Apps
September 30th - October 2nd, 2009
London, UK

October 2009

LAFlashapoloozastock IV
October 3rd, 2009
Venice Beach, California, US

FITC Unconference @ MAX
October 4th - 7th, 2009
Los Angeles, California, US

360|MAX Unconference
October 4th - 7th, 2009
Los Angeles, California, US

Adobe MAX
October 4th - 7th, 2009
Los Angeles, California, US

Flashpitt
October 15th - 16th, 2009
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US

Flash Camp Egypt
October 17th, 2009
New Cairo, Egypt

PLAY :: The Berkeley Digital Media Conference
October 17th, 2009
Berkeley, California, US

FITC Edmonton
October 17th - 18th, 2009
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Scotch on the Road
October 19th - 29th, 2009
Munich, Germany
Zurich, Switzerland
Milan, Italy
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Brussels, Belgium
London, UK

Digital Media Conference West
October 28th, 2009
San Francisco, California, US

Playful
October 30th, 2009
London, UK

November 2009

VIEW Conference
November 4th - 7th, 2009
Turin, Italy

Flash Camp Philadelphia
November 7th, 2009
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US

Latin Flash Tour
November 7th - 18th, 2009
Santiago, Chile
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Lima, Peru
Bogotá, Colombia
San Jose, Costa Rica
Mexico City, Mexico

RIA Unleashed : Boston
November 13th, 2009
Boston, Massachusetts, US

FOWD - Future Of Web Design
November 16th - 17th, 2009
New York, US

Flex Camp Wall Street
November 16th - 17th, 2009
New York, US

CaT London
November 19th, 2009
London, UK

FITC Tokyo
November 28th, 2009
Tokyo, Japan

December 2009

RIAdventure 360
December 6th - 13th, 2009
Depart from New Orleans, Louisiana, US then cruise around the Caribbean

A blog focussing on the Open Source Media Framework has just been launched. Product Manager Sumner Paine has posted a couple of blog posts. I’d recommend adding their RSS feed to your aggregator of choice.

Find out more …

• http://blogs.adobe.com/osmf/
• http://www.opensourcemediaframework.com
• http://opensource.adobe.com

Last week Mike Downey announced that he has taken a new job with the Microsoft Developer & Platform Evangelism team for Silverlight. Those of you that have been in the Flash world for a while will know that Mike was Flash’s senior product manager for a number of years. He has always been a great advocate of Flash, Interactive Media and RIAs. His departure from Adobe at the end of 2008 came as something of a shock and I was sure that we hadn’t seen the last of him. I think Microsoft have made a shrewd move employing the talents of Mike and I wish him well with his new position. The competition from Silverlight can only be a good thing for the Flash Platform and the RIA industry as a whole.

You can follow him on Twitter here.

Adobe have launched the Adobe Flash Platform Blog.

To quote their ‘About‘ page …

“Welcome to the Flash Platform blog from Adobe. This group blog provides the latest news, updates, and insights into the technologies, tools, and partners across the Flash Platform. Join the conversation on the latest topics with our experts, engineers, product managers, and others on the platform team.”

I find it is not very easy on Adobe Labs to quickly and easily see what all the current projects are. Just seeing a list of names like Durango and JamJar doesn’t really tell you very much at a glance, and it takes a little while to click through each one in turn to find out what they all are. So here is a list of all the current projects and a short summary (copied and pasted) from their respective pages.

Acrobat.com Presentations

A better way to create, edit, and share presentations with others online. Built on the Adobe® Flash® platform, Acrobat.com Presentations looks and behaves like a desktop presentation application but operates inside a web browser.

Acrobat.com Tables

a better way to work with others on data and information — such as task lists, schedules, contacts, sales numbers, etc. — that are typically created and shared in spreadsheets or simple databases. Built on the Adobe® Flash® Platform, Acrobat.com Tables looks and behaves like a desktop application but operates inside a web browser.

Alchemy

Alchemy is a research project that allows users to compile C and C++ code that is targeted to run on the open source ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2).

Blueprint

Blueprint is a plugin for Adobe® Flex® Builder™ 3 and Adobe Flash® Builder™ 4 that allows users to query for Adobe Flex and Adobe Flash code examples found on the Web directly inside of the development environment.

BrowserLab

BrowserLab provides web designers exact renderings of their web pages in multiple browsers and operating systems, on demand. BrowserLab is a powerful solution for cross-browser compatibility testing, featuring multiple viewing and comparison tools, as well as customizable preferences. Since BrowserLab is an online service, it can be accessed from virtually any computer connected to the web.

ColdFusion 9

The ColdFusion 9 public beta release unveils three main themes: unrivaled developer productivity, deep enterprise integration and simple work flow with Adobe Flash® Builder™, Adobe AIR® and AJAX to create expressive applications.

ColdFusion Builder

Adobe ColdFusion Builder is an Eclipse based IDE for ColdFusion development that is deeply integrated with ColdFusion 9. Now you can manage your entire ColdFusion development cycle from concept to production all in one easy to use tool.

Configurator

Configurator is an open source utility that enables the easy creation of panels (palettes) for use in Adobe Photoshop® CS4. Specifically, Configurator makes it easy to drag and drop tools, menu items, scripts, actions, and other objects into a panel design, then export the results for use inside Photoshop. These panels leverage the support for Adobe Flash® built into Photoshop, making it possible to drag and drop audio, video, images, and even other SWF files into a panel design.

Distributable Player Solution

The distributable player solution enables developers to create rich applications for the latest version of Adobe® Flash Lite® and directly distribute their content to millions of open OS smartphones, providing a better on-device user experience.

Durango

Durango is a framework that allows developers to build Adobe® AIR™ applications that can be customized by end-users. Durango allows developers, designers and end-users to easily mashup independent components to create new applications or extend existing Durango-enabled applications. These “mashable” components can be visual or non-visual (e.g., web services). Designers and developers can rapidly create prototype applications and then generate Adobe Flex® MXML source projects for further development. End-users can take parts of their favorite applications and bring them together in new ways.

Flash Builder 4

Welcome to the Adobe® Flash® Builder™ 4 (formerly Flex Builder) public beta release on Adobe Labs. The first thing that you’ve already noticed is that we are renaming Flex Builder to Flash Builder. This name change will create a clear distinction between the free open-source Flex framework and the commercial IDE.

Flash Catalyst

Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ is a new professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating user interfaces without coding. Transform artwork created in Adobe Photoshop® and Adobe Illustrator® into functional user interfaces. Create interactive prototypes with the ability to leverage them in the final product. Publish a finished project as a SWF file ready for distribution. Work more efficiently with developers who use Adobe Flash Builder™ 4 to create rich Internet applications (RIAs). Designers use Flash Catalyst to create the functional user experience then provide the project file to developers who use Flash Builder to add functionality and integrate with servers and services.

Flash Collaboration Service

Adobe Flash Collaboration Service is a Platform as a Service that allows Flex developers to easily add real-time social capabilities into their RIA (rich Internet applications). Comprised of both Flex-based client components and a hosted services infrastructure, Adobe Flash Collaboration Service allows you to build real-time, multi-user applications with Flex in less time than ever before. And because Acrobat.com hosts the service, issues like deployment, maintenance, and scalability are taken care of for you.

Flash Player 10

Adobe® Flash® Player 10, code-named “Astro,” introduces new expressive features and visual performance improvements that allow interactive designers and developers to build the richest and most immersive Web experiences.  These new capabilities also empower the community to extend Flash Player and to take creativity and interactivity to a new level.

Flex Builder 3 for Linux

Flex Builder Linux is a plugin-only version of the Flex Builder that you can use to build Flex applications on Linux. Feedback from previous alpha releases has been very positive, and we are pleased to continue offering this version.

Flex 4 SDK

Welcome to the Adobe Flex® 4 SDK beta release on Adobe Labs (previously code named Gumbo). This release marks an expanded role for the Flex framework, now supporting both developers creating Flex applications and designers using Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ to create interaction design.

Hub

Hub is a client Adobe® AIR® application that connects to Adobe LiveCycle® ES services for the purpose of generating PDFs or assembling different PDFs into packages.  It demonstrates how to connect a client desktop to LiveCycle ES services using Adobe Flex® Remoting. The drag-and-drop client interface allows the user to upload files, watch the progress and retrieve the content back to the desktop with a single gesture. Hub was developed in response to customer requests for a client connector to Adobe LiveCycle ES.

InContext Editing

Welcome to the free preview of Adobe InContext Editing, the first Adobe hosted service developed for web professionals. Adobe InContext Editing is an online service that allows designers to create, manage, and control editable web pages. Web designers can use Dreamweaver CS4 to easily create editable or repeating regions, specify editing options or define CSS styles made available to authors. Content editors and publishers can also use Adobe InContext Editing to update website content through their browser — without learning HTML, installing software, or compromising design integrity.

JamJar

We invite you to see for yourself the kind of interactive, visually attractive, and scalable rich internet application that can be developed using Flex 2 technologies. JamJar provides a private and persistent canvas for small groups to easily exchange digital content in order to Plan events, Exchange ideas, Manage projects, Centralize information and Share files and images.

knowhow

knowhow is a technology preview that delivers single-click, contextual access to relevant help information from a panel in Adobe® Creative Suite® 3 software. knowhow gives users access to a wide variety of information—basic tool descriptions and short cuts, Adobe Help content, as well as community-generated tutorials, tips, and techniques on the web.

LiveCycle Data Services 3

LiveCycle Data Services server makes it possible to easily integrate Flex with Java/J2EE based applications.

Mars Project

The Mars Project is an XML-friendly representation for PDF documents called PDFXML. PDF, an ISO standard format, is the global standard for trusted, high fidelity electronic documentation. The PDFXML file format incorporates additional industry standards such as SVG, PNG, JPG, JPG2000, OpenType, Xpath and XML into ZIP-based document container. The PDFXML plug-ins enable creation and recognition of the PDFXML file format by Adobe Acrobat Professional and reading of PDFXML-format files by Adobe Reader software.

Photoshop.com Mobile Beta

the easiest way to upload, view, and share photos online from your Windows Mobile phone. Getting started is simple. All you need is a supported Windows Mobile® handset and a Photoshop.com membership. Available only to U.S. consumers as a free beta download.

Pixel Bender

The Adobe® Pixel Bender™ technology delivers a common image and video processing infrastructure which provides automatic runtime optimization on heterogeneous hardware. You can use the Pixel Bender kernel language to implement image processing algorithms (filters or effects) in a hardware-independent manner. The Pixel Bender graph language is an XML-based language for combining individual pixel-processing operations (kernels) into more complex Pixel Bender filters.

Spry framework for Ajax

The Spry framework for Ajax is a JavaScript library that provides easy-to-use yet powerful Ajax functionality that allows designers to build pages that provide a richer experience for their users. It is designed to take the complexity out of Ajax and allow designers to easily create Web 2.0 pages. The Spry framework is a way to incorporate XML, JSON or HTML data into pages using HTML, CSS, and a minimal amount of JavaScript, without the need for refreshing the entire page. Spry also provides easy to build and style widgets, providing advanced page elements for end users.

Stratus

Adobe® Flash® Player 10 and Adobe AIR® 1.5 introduce a new communications protocol called the Real-Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP). The most important features of RTMFP include low latency, end-to-end peering capability, security and scalability. These properties make RTMFP especially well suited for developing real-time collaboration applications by not only providing superior user experience but also reducing cost for operators. In order to use RTMFP, Flash Player endpoints must connect to an RTMFP-capable server, such as the Stratus service. Stratus is a beta, hosted rendezvous service that aids establishing communications between Flash Player endpoints. Unlike Adobe Flash Media Server, Stratus does not support media relay, shared objects, scripting, etc. So by using Stratus, you can only develop applications where Flash Player endpoints are directly communicating with each other.

Text Layout Framework

Welcome to the beta release of the Text Layout Framework for Adobe® Flash® Player 10 and Adobe AIR® 1.5. The Text Layout Framework is an extensible library, built on the new text engine in Adobe Flash Player 10, which delivers advanced, easy-to-integrate typographic and text layout features for rich, sophisticated and innovative typography on the web. The framework is designed to be used with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional or Adobe Flex®, and is already included in the next version of Flex, code named Gumbo. Developers can use or extend existing components, or use the framework to create their own text components.

Wave

When a friend posts a status update or there’s new content on your favorite site, be the first to know.  Adobe® Wave™ software gets the information you care about right to your desktop.  Click on the Adobe Wave badge on a website you want to follow and you’re ready to go.  Best of all, you’re in control: you choose which sites can contact you.  If you’re no longer interested, turning it off is a click away — Adobe Wave does not share your email address with websites. With Adobe Wave, get all of your notifications through a single application. You don’t have to worry about downloading a separate notification application for each website. To find out more, click on a notification to take you to a browser pointing right where you want to go.  Built with Adobe AIR® technology that has been installed over 200 million times, Adobe Wave lets you see all your most recent alerts at a glance.

XMP Library for ActionScript

Welcome to the XMP Library for ActionScript v1.0 preview. Adobe® Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) is a labeling technology that allows you to embed data about a file, known as metadata, into the file itself.  XMP is an open technology based on RDF and RDF/XML.

Yesterday I went to Flash Camp London (a free event sponsored by Adobe) where I found some of the sessions useful and enjoyed meeting up with my fellow Flasher friends. But did anyone else there notice the similarity between the cleaner blocks in the toilets and the Adobe AIR logo? Or was it just me

Either this was the inspiration behind the logo design or a cunning marketing drive by Adobe to subliminally get us all to create more AIR apps. You decide.

With the release of Acrobat 9 comes the new Acrobat.com website where you can upload and share documents online. One cool new feature is the ability to embed a PDF file on your website using the PDF Widget. It is basically a SWF movie that works like FlashPaper used to. Thanks to Lori DeFurio for making me aware of this and providing an explanation of how to create one yourself.

Below is an example of the PDF Widget, displaying the ‘Programming ActionScript 3.0‘ document from Adobe.

A free on-day Flex conference has been announced, called FlexCamp - London 08. It will be held on Thursday 28th August 2008 at Conway Hall in London. The nearest tube is Holborn. Sign up now by visiting the Flex London User Group (FLUG) Meetup website.

The sessions will run from 2pm - 8pm and include Building your 1st Flex application, Styling, skinning, designer/developer workflow, Flex and Flash, Flex and ColdFusion, Flex and Java, Who you need on your Flex team, Application development best practices, Introduction to Cairngorm and Flex component development.

Visit the official FlexCamp website for more details.

This morning I finally got around to watching an interview Colin Moock did with Jim Corbett back at Flash In The Can 2008 in Toronto. Jim is one of the software engineers working at Adobe on the Flash Player. The interview is 50 minutes long and has some interesting insights in to the Flash Player, the history and culture of the team behind it and they discuss current and possible future directions the Flash Player will take.

Watch the video here.

The screencasts from the Adobe Developer Week (March 27th - 28th, 2008) are now available to watch online. There are 20 eSeminars in total and they were recorded using Adobe Acrobat Connect. The topics covered include, building AIR applications, ColdFusion 8, Flash Lite 3, Flex, Creative Suite 3 and BlazeDS. If you missed any of these when they were broadcast back in March I reccommend taking a look and watching a couple (though I did find the audio slowly got out of sync with the visuals).

Watch the screencasts here.

Yipee! Ordered my Flash on the Beach 08 ticket this morning. The tickets went on sale this weekend (just gone) and already 150 tickets have been sold. The first 250 tickets can be purchased at the reduced Super Early Bird price of £199 for the 3-day conference pass. They are also holding two pre-conference workshops on the Sunday (28th Sept), I have booked for the Papervision3D session.

Currently, there are 94 Super Early Bird tickets left. So get in there quick if you want to save some money.

At the time of writing, the confirmed speaker list (with links to their personal websites) includes …

• Erik Natzke
• Jeremy Thorp
• Nando Costa
• Robert Hodgin
• Andreas Muller
• Nicolas Lierman
• Peter Elst
• Carlos Ulloa
• Hoss Gifford
• Julian Dolce
• Koen de Weggheleire
• Rich Shupe
• Richard Lord
• Mike Jones
• Joa Ebert
• GMUNK (Bradley Grosh)
• Seb Lee-Delisle
• Branden Hall
• Grant Skinner
• Mark Anders
• Keith Peters
• Rob Bateman
• Rob Chiu
• John Grden
• Andries Odendaal
• Geoff Stearns
• Tink (Stephen Downs)
• Mike Downey
• Mario Klingemann
• Niqui Merret
• Dr Woohoo (Drew Trujillo)
• Chris Allen
• Carla Diana
• Jared Tarbell
• Richard Galvan
• André Michelle
• Mike Chambers
• Lee Brimelow

I’m really looking forward to it. I went to both the 2006 and the 2007 conference and it is a fantastic event. We’re so lucky to have an event like this held in the UK. I always come away from it inspired, fired up and wanting to learn more. Many thanks to John Davey for organising this awesome event every year.

If you haven’t been before, get your tickets and see for yourself. I’ll see you there …

Adobe have released version 2.5 of Flash Media Encoder. They have added support for the H.264 video codec and the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio codec. The AAC support is via a plug-in which can be purchased from MainConcept ($249).

It’s great to see support for H.264 being rolled out across the Adobe product range.

I just came across this page which I thought was useful and would share with you all.

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Coding+Conventions

It covers topics such as Naming, Language Usage, File Organization, Formatting & ASDoc.

At the Adobe on AIR Tour in London yesterday, everyone was given a cool postcard created by Eboy. Mike Chambers also gave away a couple of posters to people. You can view a high-res version of the poster here.

Just thought I’d put together a list of all the Adobe Flash, Flex and AIR conferences I know of that are going on around the world this year (plus a couple of others that are related, ie. SXSW and MIX). If you know of any other ones that I have missed then let me know and I’ll add it to the list.

January 2008

none

February 2008

TOCA ME
February 23rd, 2008
Munich, German

FITC Amsterdam 2008
February 25th - 26th, 2008
Amsterdam, Netherlands

360|Flex Atlanta
February 25th - 27th, 2008
Atlanta, US

March 2008

MIX08
March 5th-7th, 2008
Las Vegas, US

South by Southwest (SXSW)
March 7th - 11th, 2008
Austin, US

Adobe Developer Week 2008
March 27th - 28th, 2008
Online

April 2008

360|Flex Europe
April 7th - 9th, 2008
Milan, Italy

Scotch on AIR
April 11th, 2008
Dublin, Ireland

NAB Show 2008
April 11th - 17th, 2008
Las Vegas, US

FITC Toronto 2008
April 20th - 22nd, 2008
Toronto, Canada

May 2008

10th flashconference 2008
May 8th, 2008
Stuttgart, Germany

OFFF
May 8th - 10th, 2008
Lisbon, Portugal

WebManiacs 2008
May 19th - 23rd, 2008
Washington DC, US

Flashforum Konferenz 2008
May 21st - 24th, 2008
Cologne, Germany

Multi-Mania
May 23rd, 2008
Kortrijk, Belgium

Web Flash Festival
May 23rd - 25th, 2008
Paris, France

June 2008

Scotch on the Rocks ‘08
June 4th - 6th, 2008
Edinburgh, Scotland

flashbelt
June 10th - 13th, 2008
Minneapolis, US

webDU 2008
June 12th - 13th, 2008
Sydney, Australia

FITC Chicago 2008
June 22nd - 23rd, 2008
Chicago, US

July 2008

none

August 2008

Flashforward 2008
August 20th - 22nd, 2008
San Francisco, US

FlexCamp
August 28th, 2008
London, UK

September 2008

Flash on the Beach 2008
September 28th - October 1st, 2008
Brighton, UK

October 2008

Flash on Tap
October 7th - 9th, 2008
Rescheduled: May 28th - 30th, 2009
Boston, US

Flashpitt 2008
October 10th, 2008
Pittsburgh, US

The Actionscript Conference
October 19th, 2008
Singapore

Singularity 08
October 24th - 26th, 2008
Online

November 2008

Adobe MAX 2008 North America
November 16th - 19th, 2008
San Francisco, US

December 2008

Adobe MAX 2008 Europe
December 1st - 4th, 2008
Milan, Italy

January 2009

Adobe MAX 2008 Japan
January 29th - 30th, 2009
Tokyo, Japan

Don’t forget that the Adobe on AIR Tour is coming to Europe this spring. Starting off in Madrid, Spain on March 31st, and then running through to June 13th in Milan, Italy. Check the website to see if it is coming to a European city near you (it is in London on April 9th at The Brewery).

One other Flash conference that has happened in the past, but it doesn’t look like it is happening any more is Spark Europe.

Today Adobe officially released Flex 3 and AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) for the desktop. I won’t say too much about them here, as there is already plenty of info out there in the blogosphere. If you want to find out more, follow the links provided.