Flashbelt 2009 Tickets

Posted on January 13, 2009 by Chris Black

The first 100 Flashbelt Tickets are going for a sale price of $279.

Flashbelt is a yearly conference held in Minneapolis, Minnesota and focuses on RIA development.

Confirmed speakers include:
James Patterson (presstube), Hoss Gifford, Mario Klingemann (quasimondo),
Joa Ebert, Seb Lee-Delisle (plug-in media), Drew Trujillo (dr. woohoo),
Lisa Larson-Kelley, Geoff Stearns (youtube), Jeremy Thorp (blprnt.com),
Koen DeWeggheleire, Veronique Brossier (v-ro.com), Stacey Mulcahey, Julian
Dolce (fuel industries), Robert Reinhardt, Rich Shupe, Niqui Merret, and
Andre Michelle…with more on the way.

For more information about Flashbelt check out the webpage: Flashbelt

10 Steps to Improve Your Online Presence

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Chris Black

I’ve read a number of blog posts about 10 things not to do or 6 reasons why you should do something and I’m finally giving in to the idea of an ordered list as a blog post. One of the pitfalls of the ordered list approach is that everyone is different. The only way everyone could possible benefit from all 10 steps is if they are so vague that they read like a horoscope. We all know that ‘design patterns have a time and place.’ They cause problems when not used correctly. I swear it still hits everyone’s top whatever list. Does something that vague really help anyone? I feel like I’m reading today’s horoscope whenever I see that.

Enough ranting for one day. Back to the topic at hand. Ten things you can do to improve your online presence. Before you read any further write down the type of business your in. What do you do? Who is your target market? Will an online presence even help you? These are things you need to figure out on your own or pay someone to figure out for you. This list will not help you until you know the basics. And there is not a pre-prescribed method for determining the basics.

1. Obviously, Get a Web Page
Or is it that obvious? Why do most people fail at this simple step? Think about this: You have a company with 15 employees who all sit at a desk. Would you buy an office building that can hold 1,000? Not unless you know something I don’t. Simply put, start simple. Build a static page, make it look professional and grow your web page with the company over time (for example PSDTemple). Facebook didn’t start with apps, photos, and videos. They started simple and restricted the user base. Don’t assume it’s a one time cost. The more you try to do at once the higher likelihood that it will fail. Grow your web page with your business. As always there is a friendly web development company near you.

2. Get a Twitter Account
It’s easy, it’s free and will improve your SEO tremendously if used correctly. Post company updates, links to press releases, or even just random tidbits. Link your twitter page to your web page. Take advantage of Twitters strong online presence to help out your company.

3. Get a Facebook Account, Right? Wrong!
Next logical step is to move to the next social networking site? NO, at least in most cases. Facebook is for people. Unless your a Freelancer it really doesn’t benefit to have a Facebook page (if you are a freelancer or working for yourself than get a Facebook account, now!). Maybe a Facebook app though? (for example Sacrifice Your Friends). Maybe your company needs a Facebook fan page? Look at your target market list. What would they want? What would they use?

4. Start a Blog
A regularly updated blog will improve traffic to your site, you can be pretty much sure of that. Again, who is your target market? What would they be interested in hearing? Check out Sierra Bravo’s blog for a great example of marketing towards your customers: Nerdery Blog. Most blog services are FREE. I personally recommend WordPress. Using WordPress, your blog could even be your website. Save some time and money but still get professional results.

5. Track Analytic Data for Your Site
How will you ever know if any of these steps are working? Google Analytics, it’s free and easy to use. Find out what keywords your getting, and which ones your not. Determine how many people are visiting your site from Twitter or viewing your blog. Don’t just stop at Google Analytics. Most hosting companies provide AWStats or WebLog as well. I find that AWStats is better for tracking unique hits / bots and Google Analytics is better for keywords / data presentation.

6. Help People
If your company makes web pages, join a web forum and answer peoples questions. Create an account on Yahoo answers and help people with problems. Join Linkedin and participate in the discussion groups. Nothing says online presence like helping someone else in need. Just make sure to put a link to your webpage, twitter account, or blog at the bottom. It helps you and will let them find out more about your company and services. If you helped them solve a simple problem for free who do you think they will call when they need a complex problem solved?

7. Contribute to Open Source Projects
This one is more IT related and I must admit I have not participated in any open source projects to date. I do, however, see the value in them and plan to contribute in the future.

8. Buy Some Ad-Words
Notice that most of the items I’ve listed so far have been FREE. It’s amazing how few people realize that online presence has very little to do with money. This one is not free but very useful. Buy up some keywords in Google Ads. You will probably never see the light of day on a search result for ‘pet food’ unless you pay for the advertisement. Facebook advertisements are a great way to target specific people based on their profile information.

9. Time
Only time will build your online presence. All of these items will help expedite the process but as with everything in life, there is no guarantee. You may be in the business of making money but I assure you that time will be on your side if you truly attempt to help the internet community. If you are nice to the internet it will be nice back to you.

10. Don’t Assume Design Patterns will Always Make Your Life Easier
You can’t have a top 10 list without this one Please just read this wikipedia article.

I would love to hear any other suggestions on improving online presence. Here is your chance to help out others and start promoting your online presence today! How cheesy did that just sound? I feel like I’m selling a book. This is what I get for creating an ordered list blog post…

A few companies highlighted in this post:

Twitter
Sierra Bravo
Facebook
PSDTemple
Burger King
Google
WordPress

Skinning Flex Components – Part 1: CSS

Posted on January 6, 2009 by Chris Black

This will be a three part series on skinning Flex components. For part one I have chosen to desolve the myth that Flex 3 can’t truly cascade styles. This three part series will start simple and get more complex with each post. You can use this code to mimic descendant selectors, dimensioning and multiple class names within Flex.

Problem:
Flex can’t do true cascading styles like HTML (for example a black play button)

Solution:
YES, flex can do cascading styles. It just requires a different approach. A programmatic approach. Don’t worry, I assure you that even a non-programmer can pick this one up.

Lets dive a little deeper. Cascading styles refers to the ability to start with a button, style it into a black button then go a step further and make it a play button. First, create a button and use some CSS to style various properties of that button.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" xmlns:text="flash.text.*">
	<mx:Style source="css/styles.css" />
	
	<mx:Button label="Click Me"/>
</mx:Application>

Button {
	cornerRadius: 12;
	fontSize: 15;
}

Simple enough, right?

Next we want a black button:

package com.cb
{
	import mx.controls.Button;

	public class BlackButton extends Button
	{
		public function BlackButton()
		{
			super();
		}
	}
}

There it is. All the actionscript you will need. And to think it was all auto generated!

Actionscript Class Generation

Add the MXML and CSS:

...
<button:BlackButton label="Click Me" />	
...

BlackButton {
	fillAlphas: 1.0, 1.0;
	fillColors: #000000, #000000;
	color: #FFFFFF;
}

Now we have a black button. This process can be used as many times as you want to continually inherit properties from another object. You could have a small, blue button with red text all styled at each level.

Lastly, we need to add the play icon:

...
<button:BlackButton label="Click Me" styleName="playButton" />	
...

.playButton {
	 icon: Embed(source='assets/play.png');
}

Now we have a black play button. Add a stop, pause, and mute button as BlackButton’s and they will all be updated when you modify the style for either the base Button class or the BlackButton class. Again, this tutorial is not very technical but the next two will be. This is meant to be the first step in bridging the gap between design and actionscript using Flex 3.

The number of comments I get on this post will exponentially increase the likelihood of part 2 coming out sooner

Sample

Source View

References:

The Woes of Flex

CSS in Flex is not real CSS at all

Adobe Bug Page

Validate Twitter Credentials in AIR

Posted on December 21, 2008 by Chris Black

Problem:
Your AIR application needs to validate the username / password and handle failure gracefully within the application. If the user enters the wrong information you do not want them to be prompted with a windows prompt asking them to enter their Twitter username / password. If the application needs to hold on to the credentials for any reason the windows authentication to the API will break the AIR application.

“The server twitter.com at Twitter API requires a username and password.”

Windows Authentication Pop up message.

Solution:
The URLRequest object has a property called ‘authenticate’ that must be set to false.

/**
 * 
 * Setting result.authenticate to false prevents the operating system from
 * taking over and prompting the user to authenticate.  It allows the AIR
 * application to take the correct action.
 *
 */		 
private function twitterRequest (url : String):URLRequest
{
	var result:URLRequest = new URLRequest (url);
	if (this.authorizationHeader){
		result.authenticate = false;  // <--------- Most Important Line of Code!!!!
		result.requestHeaders = [this.authorizationHeader];	
	}
	return result;
}

Most of the code from the example attached below is from the Google code repository:

http://code.google.com/p/twitterscript/

Here are the source files to an example AIR application that uses actionscript to verify Twitter credentials without prompting a windows box on failure:

Source Files

I would like to give credit to Clayton (file_cabinet) for coming up with the solution to this problem. Thanks Clayton!