got irock?

After seeing all the cool things you can do with Adobe® Flex™ 2 (click here for demos), I decided to dive in by creating an online wishlist application which I semi completed a week before Xmas. A few of my friends and family found it quite useful even with the late launch, but look forward to seeing it’s full potential for the next holiday season.

After you register, you can create multiple user profiles with each having it’s own list. This comes in handy for creating separate lists if you have kids that aren’t quite old enough to use the computer/internet. You then can add items to your list(s) by completing a form. (Notice the cool Flex client side validation?) You can reserve items from other user’s lists, edit/delete your users profiles, edit/delete items you added, sort and print lists, and create, join, and manage groups (not fully functional). There is also a functional secret santa feature that is built into the backend, but I haven’t integrated it into the UI yet…an inspiration I got from my buddies that wanted to do a secret santa gift exchange thing this year, and kurtiigeek (who I think is working on a Secret Santa app of his own powered by Ruby on Rails).

I used Flex for the front end with a PHP/MySQL backend. There are still a few bugs and a lot more features like sorting and groups that need to be added, and graphic/animation changes, but so far it works okay. The book I used to get started in Flex:

Some useful sites include: Flex Developer Center, Bruce Phillips’ Blog, Forta.com - Blog, PHP.net , and http://www.deitte.com/archives/2006/02/embedding_html.htm to embed html into a flex application which is pretty neat.

I’ll most likely make the source available once I get everything fixed and features added, which is a nice feature about the Flash Player 9 and Flex.

A writer from wired.com wrote a Perl script that goes through MySpace.com profiles and matches them against a national database for sexual offenders. It’s not full proof but it is a very neat idea. Maybe Famster can buy or duplicate that code and offer it as part of its “Protect your Family” campaign.

Read the entire article here, where an actual registered sex offender was caught due to the Perl code.

Woot! I’m finally registered for the Adobe Max conference taking place in Las Vegas, NV at the end of October. I can’t wait. I’m expecting to learn a lot and brush up on my knowledge of Flash, Photoshop, After Effects, CSS, and more. What I’m really eager about is learning more about the Flex 2 technology, something I’ve been playing around with for a couple of days now.

Edwin San Juan is the most talented Asian comedian I’ve seen. The very first time I saw him was on Asian Street Comedy while flipping channels on tv a few weeks ago. His stand up comedy act made such an impression on me that I had to find a live show. My friends and I tracked the comic down at the Sandwich Bar in Santa Fe Springs, CA.

Imagine this situation, 4 Asian guys walking into a small dark bar filled with just Mexican people. It was a packed house, and we were the only ones with “slanted eyes”. The first thing I said to myself was how is this Asian comic gonna pull this comedy show off in this situation? I had my doubts. But then 10 minutes later, this “stoned Mexican” looking guy got on stage and tore it up! The entire bar was rolling with laughter, it was insane! Edwin was able to take the similarities AND differences of our cultures and present it in such a hilarious way. After the show I felt stupid for even doubting him. I seen him perform for an all Asian crown on TV and for an all Latino crowd and he did great at both. What adaptability.
If you haven’t seen his show you NEED to see it, preferably live of course, but you can also get his dvd. You can get it on his website and also get a list of events there. He also hosts a comedy troupe called Slanted Comedy. You can view their schedule on myspace here.

I’ve been an avid Mixed Martial Arts fan for quite some time now. After watching yet another lack luster UFC Pay Per View Event tonight, I’m quite disappointed. BJ Penn lost the fight to Matt Hughes after the third round of fighting. BJ was clearly the winner of the previous two rounds, but Matt pulled it off in the third round because he had more “gas in the tank” than his opponent had. It seems to me that the UFC has become a game of who is the better “conditioned athlete” than the better “fighter”. I have to agree with George St. Pierre’s comment to Matt Hughes at the end of the fight, “I wasn’t impressed by your performance.” BJ Penn clearly was the better “fighter” displaying his superior striking, submissions, and take down defense. But because Penn worked and fought harder in the early rounds, he tired out in the third, dropping his guard and allowed Matt to take the win. All Matt had to do was weather the BJ storm for two rounds and he knew he could get the victory in the third. Watching UFC lately is like watching a marathon. I’m glad PRIDE FC is coming to the US. What a breath of fresh air. UFC should be changed to UCC, Ultimate Conditioning Championship.

I was meaning to post this a while back, but I got a little sidetracked. I’ve been hard at work on the Famster project.

I remember when I first got added to the project. I mentioned to the other designer at that time that the site/application would be an award winninng one. There were a lot of doubts but a about a year and a half later Famster receives the Adobe Site of the Day Award!

On a side note, Famster was featured in articles on the popular user driven site Digg.com. Two of the articles made it on the front page of Digg which in itself is quite an accomplishment. You can read the archives here:

http://digg.com/design/Famster_A_safe_way_to_upload

and

http://digg.com/tech_news/Famster_increases_storage

About a month ago I got a call from my sister asking me if I had recieved the emails she had sent me. I checked, and no luck. She was trying to send me some video clips of my niece and nephew, and other family whom I haven’t seen for about 6 months. She seemed quite frustrated because sending the clips through email did not work. I rolled my eyes, and said to myself “oh crap, now I have to walk her through a site like youtube.com or videos.google.com.” (I’m one of those that everyone in their families call if they have an issue with their computer or need help with the internet. Some of you might relate.) But then I thought why would I want to have a video of my little niece floating around in public cyberspace for everyone to see? I know my sister wouldn’t have bought that idea either.

So a light bulb immediately went off in my head. I had been working on a project with my company called famster.com. In a nutshell, it’s an online flash application that allows families to create and manage a family website. So I suggested to my sister that she use http://www.famster.com/nardo , a famster I created for my family. I told her I would walk her through uploading a video when I would get home later that night. Then I get a call a little bit later from her, telling me to check out our famster site. I got on and saw my little nephew jumping into the deep side of the pool for the first time and my niece doing a butterfly/robot dance. My sister was able to log on to famster and upload videos without any instruction at all. Not only that, I was able to view a photo album of her new home that she had just bought, the calendar was filled with birthdays I would have otherwise forgot, and important addresses that I did not previously have were in the address book.

I was impressed, not so much that she was able to do that, but how easy and powerful a tool like famster could be. Yeah there are photo sites, video sharing sites, calendar programs, address books, etc.. But to have them all on one convenient, safe place that everyone in the family can be a part of is just godly.