2008 Check Out AIRmikan, The AIR Based Japanese Virtual Pet
Here's a fun AIR app for you, AIRmikan, from Fuji Television Network. What is AIRmikan? Well, I could never describe it as well as the following quote from the AIRmikan page:
Airmikan is desktop virtual pets of digital comic [mikan seijin gril], which is based on Adobe AIR. This Airmikan is selfish so you need to look after carefully. It will die or become so big and your computer will be running slow. You need to watch out!
Come on, with a description like that, how could you resist?!?
2008 We've Added A MAX ColdFusion Security Session
With the recent spate of hacking attempts targeting ColdFusion sites, we've added a much needed MAX session entitled "Hack-Proofing Your ColdFusion Powered Sites". Scott Stroz will present the session which is not listed on the MAX site yet, but will be shortly.
2008 Microsoft Relying On Flash To Help Sell Vista
I like Vista. I've said it before, and will say it again, Windows Vista works for me, and works well.
But, it's no secret that Microsoft has run into problems convincing the masses to really give Vista a try. And so Microsoft is trying something creative, a fun campaign named the Mojave Experiment. Microsoft assembled a group of users who'd not been exposed to Vista personally, but who seem to have all of those preconceived notions that prevent Vista adoption. Microsoft presented a new version of Windows codenamed "Mojave" to these individuals, and only later revealed that what they were demonstrating was in fact Windows Vista. The videos are fun (well, some of them), as are the participants' reactions. And while I highly doubt that this campaign will change all of those lingering doubts, I really would like Microsoft to succeed at this one. After all, I do like Vista.
But here's the interesting thing. Obviously, Microsoft wants the Mojave Experiment to be viewed as much as possible by as many users as possible on as many machines as possible, and it wants a high quality experience and consistency while ensuring that just about anyone connected to the Internet could immediately view the content. And I am guessing that's why the site is powered by Flash, and not by Silverlight.
2008 AMF Preferred
As a general rule, you want to be using AMF for communication between Flash Player on the client (running a Flash or Flex app) and your back-end server (unless you need messaging and push and data management services, in which case LiveCycle Data Services is what you'll want).
Lee Brimelow explains this (and lists AMF options for different back-ends) in a recent post entitled What the hell is AMF? And James Ward demonstrates the performance implications in his Census - RIA Data Loading Benchmarks.