Also, should you reply to this ... let us know what you're brewing. I for one am currently fermenting an Imperial Stout and an ESB. Pretty stoked on the Stout.

Lastly, although I haven't decided if I'm going to go, I think it's awesome that Flash on Tap popped up and that Keith and Chris (fellow Bostonians) are kicking up the Boston pride by naming a local Flash Convention after Boston's favorite crutch. There is an excellent line up of speakers, and I hope there will be a terrific turn out.

Well, at that time, MXNA was down, so only a few regular viewers saw it. So I figured I'd just throw it out there again that our book came out. It's a book featuring eleven applications that you can use "out of the box" and hopefully use to create your own rendition using Adobe Flex 3 and AIR. If you do create your own app based on ours, or found the book useful in guiding your own creation, we encourage you to tell us about it.

Also, you should pick up the Flex 3 Cookbook by friends Josh Noble and Toddly Anderson (again). Another book (that will be awesome) is Adobe AIR in Action and was written by my old co-workers Joey Lott, Katheryn Rotondo, Sam Ahn and Ash Atkins (also the tech-editor of our book).

So now that you're about $80 in the hole, I'll let you be.

What would make that ideal 'special someone?' A designer / developer who has a couple years of experience. Knows AS2/OOP (AS3 preferred). Has some design chops. Would absolutely love to work on projects that involve animation, video, coding, design, the works. Knows what it takes to be a sandwich artist.

Email me if you're interested. marc [at] nobien.net.

In recent months both of you have released wonderful ActionScript libraries that allow us developers to access your mapping services. To have the same power (questionably more) as JavaScript developers is totally freakin' radical. What more can us developers ask for when giant companies give us code for free to use their amazing services...well...for free! Unbelievable and inspiring.

However, while I am totally stoked to have this at my disposal, I am also very annoyed about something. What bothers me even more is that I can't figure out what this feeling is rooted in. Is it because I'm impatient? Is it because I'm concerned for the industry? Am I feeling forgotten about? I'm not so sure yet. But I do know one thing, and that is both mapping API's you have released are described as being for Flash. And I'm sure I'm not the only person that saw this and got excited, only to find out that the API's really are only meant to be used with Flex. Sure, Flex is Flash you say! But Flash is also not Flex.

Ok, so whats the big deal you ask? Flex is great, right? Right! So don't get me wrong, I freakin' love Flex. But I also love plain old Flash too! Don't you? Ok, so maybe you don't, but a lot of people do. And ok, so you say there's at least one way to "hack" the SWC file to get it to work in a non-Flex SWF file. And I quote "hack" because I felt really dirty doing it, even though it was someone at Yahoo! who explained how to do it. In fact, I did this on a recent project at work. It came out pretty good, but c'mon, what a joke! That's no way for a developer to have to write code!

What is the reason for this? Yahoo!, I know for sure you're not utilizing the Flex framework for anything in your API because it works if you "hack" it into a non-Flex SWF. Google, I'm only assuming the same is true for your API. So this begs a question that I'm guessing anyone can safely formulate themselves.

Certainly there are probably other reasons you've only released a Flex SWC, but what the hell are they? Lack of resources? I doubt that. More code security? ActionScript can't be more sensitive than JavaScript. Laziness? Possible. Apathy? Who knows. Maybe I'm just a whining minority in that I'm primarily a FlashDevelop/CS3 user. I hardly ever write code in CS3, but I love the ability to create custom artwork for particular views, components, etc. and write my hinted, OOP code in FlashDevelop. Will I ever see the day that I can easily use your map API's without having to use the Flex SDK or Flex Builder?

But I digress. Hopefully I'm speaking for some other developers out there, and I'll certainly live if this never happens. But what gives guys?

Annoyed developer,
Matt

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{
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