Steve Rogers

I have now updated Tweedar and created a small "widget" version of the application, it also has a home of its own now @ www.tweedar.com.

I have just uploaded the first version of my Twitter Tweet RADAR (TWEEDAR). You can read more about it at http://www.sbrogers.com/consultancy/node/4, but basically it allows you to select any point in the world using a Google interactive map and then see what people are "Tweeting" about within a given radius that you can set. So it acts like a RADAR for public Tweets from the location that you set up, a MUST for all you conversation voyeurs out that - looking into someone's life anywhere in the world.

I got a mail from Adobe the other day with a link to a great page. The link is http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/videotraining/ and it gives you details on using Adobe Media Player (AMP) to connect to an RSS feed that Adobe publish listing articles and videos on various aspects of learning Flex. If you are curious about Flex and AIR, want to learn it or just have a "how do I do that?" in Flex question then this is a great place to start.

This weekend I decided to investigate what was involved in creating a Facebook application, so after I had actually decided what to do I set about it and now have the first release of FollowMe. I decided that if I was going to do this it might as well be a bit of fun so I decided to try and incorporate Google Maps into it seeing as I have been looking into using the new Google Maps Flash API (and disappointed you cannot use it currently in an AIR desktop application - but thats another story).

I have just finished a customization request for iSixSigma who required a branded version of MagONE. You can find more details of this on my showcase site here.

"Steve is a fantastic business partner. His customized Smugmug Photo Gallery Widget adds fantastic visual appeal and great interest to our websites. It has a clean design and is a snap to implement. I'd recommend working with Steve and implementing his Widget to everyone."
-- Michael Cyger, Founder of iSixSigma.com

I have updated MagONE ,it now features image click through. If you click on the currently displayed photo a new browser window will open and the current smugmug album page is displayed with the clicked image as the current one.

Cool news - Adobe have released version 1.00 of AIR along with version 3 of Flex - www.adobe.com/products/air - I've already put my order in (standard version only - bit expensive otherwise, at least for me).

Suppose I'd better start using it to do some more development now - I have some ideas to update MagONE and a new project MagTWO which will be an AIR based application.

I've also been developing an AIR based application for ShoZu - but more of that in the very near future.....

Well, it looks like the TitansOfTheTrack video and photo archive was more popular that first estimated as the site has started to reach it's preset bandwidth limit.

This is OK for the site as a holding page could be put up, but the video jukebox still played all the videos listed and therefore contributed to the bandwidth usage. Flex to the rescue, I just engineered in another XML file using the HTTPService and set it up to act as source for configuration settings.

This now means that the jump URL on the banner can be changed, the jukebox play functionality can be switched on and off and a site message can be displayed in the player, not bad for 10 minutes work.

I have created a very simple flash movie player using Flex 3. It can be re-sized and it will play single flash movies(flv) by setting up a flashvar call vf.
There is an article in my Adobe AIR Diary ( see the Books menu) or go straight to the article here. I have made the player free to download and use if anyone is interested.

This was quite an interesting "home brew" project I put together over the weekend for my brother. He runs a small engineering firm and has a keen interest in both photography and railways. Add this to my curiosity with what can be done simply with Flex and you have the Video Jukebox.

He is currently building up an archive of photos and videos of railway related subjects for people to access on the internet. So I have created am embeddable video player (a widget to use the web 2.0 terminology) that can play the videos that are uploaded to his site. The list of videos is dynamic so as more are added to the site the available list will get longer. Still in the "Beta" stage at the moment (there you go web 2.0 again), you can see the player in the left hand column.