Flash Twitter and Google Map Integration:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Canvas xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" width="600" height="300"  xmlns:maps="com.google.maps.*" initialize="init()">
 <mx:VBox width="100%" height="100%">
 <mx:HBox width="100%" height="0" visible="false">
  <mx:TextInput
     id="address"
     text="Sydney AU"
     dropShadowColor="0x000000"
      visible="false"
  />
 </mx:HBox>
  <maps:Map 
    id="map" 
    key="yourAPI Key" 
    mapevent_mapready="onMapReady(event)"
    width="100%" height="100%"/>
 </mx:VBox>
 <mx:Script>
    <![CDATA[
	  import com.SampleTitleWindow;
	  import flash.events.Event;
	  import mx.events.MenuEvent;
      import mx.collections.*;
      import mx.managers.PopUpManager;
      import mx.controls.Alert;
	  import nl.demonsters.debugger.MonsterDebugger;
	  import flash.net.*;
      import com.google.maps.services.ClientGeocoderOptions;
      import com.google.maps.LatLng;
      import com.google.maps.Map;
      import com.google.maps.MapEvent;
      import com.google.maps.MapMouseEvent;
      import com.google.maps.MapType;
      import com.google.maps.services.ClientGeocoder;
      import com.google.maps.services.GeocodingEvent;
      import com.google.maps.overlays.Marker;
      import com.google.maps.overlays.MarkerOptions;
      import com.google.maps.InfoWindowOptions;
      import mx.controls.Alert;
      import com.google.maps.controls.ZoomControl;
	  public var nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
	  public var resp:Responder = new Responder(onResult, onError);
	  public var resp1:Responder = new Responder(onError);
      public var obj:Object = { };
	  public var tweetLocN:int = new int();
	  public var geoLocationTwit:Array = new Array();
	  public function init()
	  {
			nc.objectEncoding = ObjectEncoding.AMF3;
			nc.connect("http://yoursite.com/toYour/zendEndpointAMF/index.php");
			nc.call("TwitService.getfriendsTimeline",resp);
	  }
 
	  public function onResult(e:Object)
      {
				var arr:Array = [];
				for (var i:int = 0; i < e.friendsTimeline.length; i++ )
				{
 
					if (e.locTwit[i] != "" )
					{
					trace(e.locTwit[i]+"----------------Pushed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!");
					try
					{
					address.text = e.locTwit[i];
					doGeocodeTwit(e.locTwit[i], e.userTwit[i],e.friendsTimeline[i] );
					}
					catch (epicFail:Error) {
					}	
					trace("EpicFail Caught");
					}
					trace(e.locTwit[i]+"Result Fired++++++++++");
					tweetLocN = geoLocationTwit.length;
                    arr.push(obj);
				}
				trace(obj.loc+"Result END++++++++++");
				//datagrid.dataProvider = arr;
	  }
      public function onError(e:Object)
	  {
				trace("And the Error is !!!!");
				trace(e);
	  }	  
      private function onMapReady(event:Event):void {
        map.enableScrollWheelZoom();
        map.enableContinuousZoom();
        map.addControl(new ZoomControl());
       }
 
 
 
	  private function doGeocodeTwit(event:String, userTwitter:String, userTweets:String):void {
        // Geocoding example
		trace(event+"String is+++++++++++++++++");
        var geocoder1:ClientGeocoder = new ClientGeocoder();
 
        geocoder1.addEventListener(
          GeocodingEvent.GEOCODING_SUCCESS,
          function(event:GeocodingEvent):void {
			  var placemarks:Array = event.response.placemarks;
				trace(placemarks+"+++++++===== Ran PlaceMark");
          if (placemarks.length > 0) {
            map.setCenter(placemarks[0].point);
            var marker:Marker = new Marker(placemarks[0].point);
            marker.addEventListener(MapMouseEvent.CLICK, function (event:MapMouseEvent):void {
				var mainTweet:String = new String(userTwitter + " - User - Tweet:" + userTweets);
                marker.openInfoWindow(new InfoWindowOptions({content: mainTweet}));
            });
            map.addOverlay(marker);
          }
        });
		geocoder1.addEventListener(
          GeocodingEvent.GEOCODING_FAILURE,
          function(event:GeocodingEvent):void {
            //Alert.show("Geocoding failed");
            trace(event);
            trace(event.status);
          });
        geocoder1.geocode(address.text);
      }
 
 
 
    ]]>
  </mx:Script>
 
</mx:Canvas>

Code

Simple Google Maps and Twitter Geocoding

Simple Google Maps Geocoding

So first off download the zendframework. Configure your zendAMF endpoint.
Create your own ZendAMF endpoint:

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL|E_STRICT);
ini_set("display_errors", "on");
 
ini_set("include_path", ini_get("include_path") . ":/home/toYourZend/FrameWorkHome/frameworks/zendFramework/library/");
require_once('Zend/Amf/Server.php');
require_once('TwitService.php');
 
$server = new Zend_Amf_Server();
//adding our class to Zend AMF Server
$server->setClass("TwitService");
echo ( $server -> handle() );
?>

Now configure your zend Twitter Service
Create Your Twitter Service Class:

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL|E_STRICT);
ini_set("display_errors", "on");
 
ini_set("include_path", ini_get("include_path") . ":/home/toYourZend/FrameWorkHome/frameworks/zendFramework/library/");
require_once ('Zend/Service/Twitter.php');
require_once('VOgetFriendsTimeline.php');
//connection info
 
class TwitService {
	public $tmp;
	public $twitter;
	public $response;
 
	public function __construct()
	{
	}
 
     public function getfriendsTimeline() {
     $twitter = new Zend_Service_Twitter('YourUserName', 'YourPassword');
	 $response = $twitter->status->friendsTimeline();
	 $tmp = new VOgetFriendsTimeline();
	 for ($i = 0; $i <= 18; $i++){
			// array_push($tmp->userTwit, $response->status[$i]);
	 		array_push($tmp->userTwit, (string)$response->status[$i]->user->screen_name);
	 		array_push($tmp->statusPic, (string)$response->status[$i]->user->profile_image_url);
	 		array_push($tmp->locTwit, (string)$response->status[$i]->user->location);
     		array_push($tmp->friendsTimeline, (string)$response->status[$i]->text);
	 	}
	 return $tmp;
	 }
 
	 public function UserPostUpdate($tweet){
	 $twitter = new Zend_Service_Twitter('YourUserName', 'YourPassword');
	 $response = $twitter->status->update($tweet);	 
	 }
 
 
}

Now configure your flash variable object that is exposed by the service.

<?php
class VOgetFriendsTimeline {
     public $user_twit;
     public $pass_twit;
     public $locTwit = array();
     public $friendsTimeline = array();
     public $statusPic = array();
     public $userTwit = array();
     public $text;
     public function __construct()
    {
    }
}

Finally configure your flex project to consume the service.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Canvas xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" width="600" height="300" initialize="init()">
	<mx:Script>
        <![CDATA[
        	import com.SampleTitleWindow;
            import mx.events.MenuEvent;
            import mx.controls.Alert;
            import mx.collections.*;
            import mx.managers.PopUpManager;
            import mx.controls.Alert;
			import nl.demonsters.debugger.MonsterDebugger;
			import flash.net.*;
			public var nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
			public var resp:Responder = new Responder(onResult, onError);
			public var resp1:Responder = new Responder(onError);
			public function init()
			{
			nc.objectEncoding = ObjectEncoding.AMF3;
			nc.connect("http://yoursite.com/toYour/zendEndpointAMF/index.php");
			trace("I was ran!");
			nc.call("TwitService.getfriendsTimeline",resp);
			}
 
			public function onResult(e:Object)
			{
				trace("Recieved Object...");
				//userPosts.dataProvider = e.friendsTimeline;
				var arr:Array = [];
				for (var i:int = 0; i < e.friendsTimeline.length; i++ )
				{
                    var obj:Object = {};
                    obj.text =  e.friendsTimeline[i];
                    obj.from =  e.userTwit[i];
					obj.pic = e.statusPic[i];
 
                    arr.push(obj);
				}
				trace(e);
				datagrid.dataProvider = arr;
			}
			public function zendPost()
			{
				var tweetPost:String = new String();
				tweetPost = twitPost.text;
				nc.objectEncoding = ObjectEncoding.AMF3;
				nc.connect("http://yoursite.com/toYour/zendEndpointAMF/index.php");
				trace("I was ran!");
				nc.call("TwitService.UserPostUpdate",resp1,tweetPost);
			}
 
			public function onError(e:Object)
			{
				trace("And the Error is !!!!");
				trace(e);
			}
 
		]]>
    </mx:Script>
	<mx:VBox width="100%" minWidth="600" height="100%">
	<mx:VBox width="100%" minWidth="600" height="80%" verticalAlign="top" horizontalAlign="center">
    <mx:DataGrid id="datagrid" width="100%" minHeight="150" maxHeight="200">
        <mx:columns>
            <mx:DataGridColumn headerText="Tweet" dataField="text" wordWrap="true"  />
			 <mx:DataGridColumn headerText="Avatar" width="150" id="imgAvatar" itemRenderer="mx.controls.Image" dataField="pic" />
            <mx:DataGridColumn headerText="@user" width="150" dataField="from"/>
        </mx:columns>
    </mx:DataGrid>
 
 
	</mx:VBox>
	<mx:VBox width="100%" verticalAlign="top" horizontalAlign="center">
	<mx:HBox width="98%" verticalAlign="middle" height="10%" horizontalAlign="center">
	<mx:TextArea id="twitPost" width="90%" horizontalCenter="true" ></mx:TextArea>
	<mx:Button x="10" y="10" label="Post" click="zendPost()" />
	</mx:HBox>
	</mx:VBox>
	</mx:VBox>
</mx:Canvas>

Code

Thats it! View the live example here!

Other Cool Twitter Mashup links can be found:

Twitter MashUp Links

Don’t forget to check out Lee Brimelow’s GotoandLearn AMF video.
Zend framework
Zend Services

In other news I gave a presentation to the Lincoln .Net user group on Ruby on Rails it went well and I didn’t stutter too much. Although I did call esb, fsb in a slip (ha ha)  In short we created a simple task list.  You can find the notes and simple example application here.

I have also been looking at the new version of Silverlight3 and it does look pretty sweet they have a few pixel shaders and perspective 3D built in now.  I am sure that silverlight3 will be an excellent skill to complement my C# skills.  I hope the Moonlight Project can catch up to where silverlight3 is currently.  I still don’t think silverlight3 will be as useful as Flex, I guess I just have a prejudice for the Flash Platform.  I really love flash.  I am also looking forward to Flash Catalyst a new product from adobe that will bridge Fireworks / Photoshop directly into Flex which will be great to say the least! I found a cool Netbeans plugin the Flexbean and I personally use Netbeans quite a bit on my Ubuntu box I find it extremely helpful when working with Ruby On Rails or whatever language for that matter.

Accelerated 3D Web via Khronos/Mozzilla 3D is coming to javascript which should be interesting no question about it javascript is very powerful just very frustrating to behave consistenly in multiple browsers.  This should prove to be interesting and with ie8 now I wonder if ie8 will support it?

Does flash matter on mobile devices?  Yes of course it does this is one feature the iPhone and Windows mobile Flash Lite is wonderful but we want the whole enchilada! Well it is coming to the Android Platform for sure! It will only be a matter of time before Silverlight follow suit.  If you didn’t know Microsoft released an iPhone app PhotoSynth for those of you who don’t know photosynth connects multiple pictures of places and displays them in a kind of pseudo panoramic images that are very cool and one can’t help but think silverlight might not be far behind.

Unity 3D for the iPhone why use it?

The numbers speak for themselves people are willing to shell out an arm and a leg for simple racing games Unity3D has been around for awhile and it is developing into a great engine for content on the Wii and iPhone.  This is not the first time I have mentioned this product either.

I have also purchased a book from O’Reilly Head First Design Patterns! The reason is simple not coming from an OOP  background it has been challenging to teach myself OOP and now that I understand OOP it would be ideal for me to become  familiar with design patterns not just MVC but multiple design patterns. I see this as helping myself out in future jobs.  I will be able to look at most corporate applications and just get it (little less time dedicated to the debugger).  This will help me see what their programmers are doing and know why they have programmed in the manner they have.  This book also sheds lots of light on MVC that is used in many frameworks like pureMVC, CakePHP, and of course Rails. is so nice now that spring is finally here!

We are looking forward to going on Taco Ride.  Well Lisa and I have decided to go back to Ireland this summer.  So it should be a fun trip with lots of photos to share with you all.

really cool podcasts:

FlasherMag

Railscasts

This will eventually be incorporated into my new portfolio.  So as you can see I have been very busy. I am also excited to utilize FlashCS4 I love the fact that adobe  has released Pixel Bender.  This will make creating filters a snap and you will be able to use them in After Effects, Photoshop, and Flash.  Adobe has also been working on Flash Catalyst formerly Thermo.  I am also excited to see a new application in the flash family.  I believe this will enable designers to easily port their photoshop documents to Flex without having to write any code(which I am sure they will like).  It will also be nice for developers because it is built to directly integrate into the Flex workflow.   Another development worth mentioning is SWX has released an AS3 Version. So that completely rocks and it makes writing mashups for flash a snap:)  I will be making some of these items flash components and selling them.

PaperVision3D Picasa Album Reader Alpha
MediaRSS AS3 Code Library
Pixel Bender Tutorial

Recently Adobe announced Alchemy they have been talking about it for years but it is now out on their labs site for download. So what is Alchemy it enables the developer to utilize any c/c++ code that is open source and automagically convert it into something more useful an SWC file that can be utilized in flash! So you can now execute the code in the Flash Player and this of course rocks. You have already seen people utilizing it and creating games with it like Doom in flash. I think is well worth looking at some of those old c/c++ projects over on sourceforge and experimenting with Alchemy.

Now to be fare they are not the only company to think of a solution like this. If you look at silverlight you will find that you can utilize the Dynamic Language Runtime(DLR) and this allows developers for the most part to pick and choose their favorite programming language and work with it like ruby, java, or php you get the idea. At first I must admit I really hated the idea of Silverlight but over the years and after studying the new release I am sold. I have been working on applications for a new version of my portfolio and I will be utilizing both Silverlight and Flash. One thing I might add about the dynamic language runtime is it is different from Alchemy. Why? The dynamic language runtime allows developers to utilize multiple languages in a project when it is done it is sent to the compiler and becomes bytecode. When you use alchemy you are using LLVM it actually converts the code into AVM2 bytecode. I would suggest reading Nicolas Cannasse’s blog it will give you a clearer perspective at what Alchemy actually is and what it means. I am anxious to see what Alchemy can do and as a result I have installed in on a virtual Ubuntu machine. One thing that is nice about the DLR is you can mix different languages into the same project you can also share the same variables across multiple languages while this may not be good for large projects and could generate unmanageable code I can see it coming in handy in a pinch. One thing I might add about silverlight is I believe that Microsoft is going to port lots of .Net to run in silverlight.

So what platform do you develop for? I say both. Everyone loves flash and flash will be on ARM devices soon. It already has Android and Windows Mobile devices. Adobe engineers will make it work! For now their seems to be no sign of Apple’s iPhone or iPodTouch devices utilizing flash which really sucks for the user but is evidently good for Steve Jobs. It seems apple is destined to make the same mistakes over and over again. What developers really want is to create something once and run it anywhere and everywhere. Silverlight will soon go mobile too and I would expect them to run into the same issues on apple devices which is a shame for the consumer I guess they will be able to sell more iTunes app this way though.

Thoughts on Alchemy it took sometime to install I had to change the default config file that Alchemy came with for Ubuntu it was looking for the syslinks for LLVM in the wrong spot in short just change the location in the config file than run it also make sure you have all your paths correct in .bashrc once you have these you should be good to go some of the information on the labs website is maybe a little difficult to interpret. I also found these links (Alchemy has arrived eventually! And Solution for nothing on Linux) and they helped solve my problems. If anyone want I can post my .bashrc and config just let me know.

In other news:
Processing is now out of Beta!
You can find books on Processing here.

Links of Interest:
Alchemy on Adobe Labs
Understanding Adobe Alchemy
Nicolas Cannasse Weblogs on Adobe Alchemy
Doom – Quake – How to edit Quake Code in Visual Studio
X2O Project
Ensemble
Flash Goes Mobile

• Install Flash Develop by Downloading it here.
• Configure your compiler and download the Flex SDK if you haven’t yet.
• Go to Scalenine.com find a skin.
• Now create a new Flex Project AS3.
• Connect all libraries or SWC by adding them to the project.
• Go through the css and make sure everything is linked to the correct asset, image, etc.
• Copy the MXML in the sample and place it in the Main.mxml of your project.
• Now build. It’s that easy.

So now you can examine the template and modify it if you like. It is a fairly painless process and with flash develop you can now see how to use the skin with the default .mxml file. So that should be enough to get you working on building cool interfaces for your flash develop project. You can see this example here and you can download the flash develop project here.

Links of Interest:
Flash Develop
ScaleNine
Silverlight Skins
Flash Develop Project Files to Download

RIA Technologies:

Flash/Flex
SilverLight/MoonLight
AJAX

Ok so thats nifty. Which one of these technologies should I choose? Well wouldn’t it be nice if you could have a standarized way of comparing these technologies side by side. Guess what people are out their right now implmenting just that take a look here. Your next thought is ok what is all of the fps stuff well it simple frames per second. Do you ever notice how your desktop is not a static enviorment. It doesn’t just sit their you are constantly interacting with it. It’s animated to give it that Microsoft patened “WOW” effect (insert sarcasm where ever). If you are a good student than your next resonable deduction of this brief look at RIA benchmarks is hey that flex/flash is out performing it’s competitors. So can you give me some examples..

Here is one innovative new application A.vairy just sit back and contemplate what this is and what it is capable of.

In case you haven’t heard all of the big players in the game are all in a race to place their applications on the web qucikly. Adobe, Microsoft, etc.. are all locked in a race to place their applications on the web. With the help of Moores law you will have small devices everywhere that communicate with the web. Do you know where Apples next fronteir is going to be? Your Home.

People also use Flash in particular to generate new and innovative art. For example study the use of flash in generative art:

more art from Eric Natzke

Adobe Announces Flex Going Open Source
Open Flex Source Files

You can find an excellent article by Justin Girard here on how to integrate drupal with Flex using amfphp!

For those of you in the wordpress camp you can also enjoy a flash front-end!

Drupal and WordPress developers have also been working on an extension that integrates the administration featuers directly into firefox with

http://groups.drupal.org/node/1331

http://www.schloebe.de/firefox-extensions/wordpress-helper/#english

ScribeFox

Through the use of amf-php it would also be a good idea to develop an Apollo authoring application.

Side Note on M$ Silver Pile of Poo:

Lets make it simple it is not cross platform otherwise it would support Linux. You don’t even get all the advatages of using it if you are an Apple user. It is simply too little too late for microsoft. I personally wish they would stick with their operating system and not bother with creative applications that should be left to the professionals at Adobe. Maybe with their free time they could make ie7 better..

11Years of Flash – Long Live Flash!

Other Cool Sites:

PaperVision3d
OSFlash
RIAForge

Why because an open source commodore 64 emulator is way cool (after all it was a flashforward finalist this year). Darron Schall and Claus Wahlers.out did themselves with this creation that utilizes the flash 9 player and flex 2! I highly recommend checking it out after all it is open source so at least you can see what makes it tick! Flex 2 has a great deal to offer developers. The over all strategy for Adobe right now is to enable developers to create highly dynamic applications that are for the most part operating system free.

This week site of the week is a tie between IFBIN and MTASC (Motion Twin). The ifBin is an excellent resource for flash developers there is a considerable amount of code to learn from, it also happens to be one of the only areas on the web where you can download source files for Flex projects. If you are a developer I strongly encourage anyone learning Flex or Flash to dig through the ifBin and see what you can find. The ifBin has some pretty neat projects like a FLEX news aggregator that is cool. This site also used to charge a $250 membership fee; now you can receive all the projects for free!! Motion Twin is an action script library open source compiler. This means you can create .swf by simply writing the code and compiling it. This is great if you know exactly what you want to do and can code it. I am also interested to see if anyone tries to create a gui for it and then it would be great but one thing at a time is fine with me! The bottom line is both of these sites are worth your time so check them out. Click Here for ifbin in aciton?

The end of the desktop has been upon us for awhile now but Adobe is really getting their ducks in order. If you have noticed lately they release Flex 2 which supports Action Script 3 and MXML (Introduced by Adobe/Macromedia for the Flex line). They have had the beta available for download for some time so if you didn’t take advantage of the Beta I guess it kind of sucks to be you.. (Kidding) If you have been paying attention to Microsoft and its sparkle (Interactive Designer) uses XAML. I guess I would compare MXML to XAML because they do share many similarities. The benefit of using MXML is of course you don’t have to have the windows presentation foundation running on your machine it just uses the flash player! Adobe had been focusing all of it energy toward the Apollo Project its goal to render the desktop obsolete. Flash has had the ability for awhile now to create executables that connect to the internet and gather information. When you combine Flash with Flex you have the ability to create enterprise level applications. I can see flex being used in the financial area soon it has a seemingly endless shelf life and a massive amount of potential. I am also excited to see flex working with PHP relatively easily! They also demoed a Flex interface for Drupal recently. So the next wave of web applications is almost here in the next few years the web will rapidly change and hopefully become what it was originally intended for connecting us all easily and cost efficiently! I highly recommend getting a Flex server it has vast potential.

Useful Links:
Discussion
Flex In Action