When hack day started I was planning to write a Flex UI for Yahoo’s new Mail API’s. I got as far as the lack of a crossdomain.xml file but in the 2 hours I got BBAuth integrated with Flex. BBAuth is Yahoo’s new authentication system for 3rd party site access to Yahoo APIS. The process is very Identity 2.0 and involves using Yahoo’s login as an open identity system. It was pretty easy to get working with Flex and States.

Start Screen – Login State

User Credentials in Flex – MailView State

Feel free to try it out!

In this app, the user is logged in at Yahoo and the user returns with all the credentials for accessing their Mail. As soon as I get a crossdomain.xml file added to the Mail APIs I will get the mail client working.

Cheers,

ted

I wrote this desktop news and weather toolbar from 11PM – 4AM last night. The app reads Yahoo RSS feeds and is customized for your zip code. I had a blast writing this one and will keep updating it.

Larger

Special thanks to Yahoo for hosting this killer event.

Cheers,

Ted

Mike Chambers built this photobooth app in Apollo that utilizes the upload API of Flickr. Using your webcam you snap some photos and it writes images to your local drive. Select the photos you want and upload them to Flickr.

Great Work Mike!

Ted

I am in a session on YMaps now and Chuck Freedman is speaking. The team has launched a polyAPI with Maps and I just got access to the new Yahoo Mail API. I am going to build a Yahoo Mail desktop in Apollo. Hopefully I can locate that mysterious AS3 Yahoo maps codeline, we will see.

When Mike and I arrived on Yahoo campus we passed the audio booth with Beck stickers on the hardware. I would guess that Yahoo campus will be hosting a Beck concert later this evening. As a big Beck fan it looks like I am staying here way into the night.

Code all day, listen to Beck this evening. Yahoo has my vote!

More to come!

Ted

Beau Amber at Metaliq.com showed me a project his team is working on last week. They have written a Subversion (SVN) Client in ActionScript 3 using flash.net.Socket. The application running on Flash Player 9 can read and write head revisions directly into an Subversion repository using the native SVN protocol. The project is part of Beau’s super secret project called FlapJacks which he showed at Flash Forward in Austin.

Flash Player 9 supports a Binary Socket in the flash.net.Socket class and is able to connect directly to any native TCP/IP port provided the server allows this via a crossdomain.xml policy file.

Actually I am working on a MYSQL driver for Apollo using flash.net.Socket so that without middle-wear Apollo can talk directly to a DataBase.

Cheers,

ted

Dave Wolf of Cynergy Systems has a great read on AJAX and RIA. Dave contends that most decision makers do not fully realize that AJAX is DHTML reinvented. It is an interesting read.

Living in Denial with AJAX by Dave Wolf

FYI, Dave Wolf was on the Microsoft BizTalk Server 1.0 team and on the dev team at PowerBuilder/Sybase before that. He knows enterprise software inside out.

Cheers,

Ted

I am headed to Yahoo Hack Day at Yahoo’s Mountain View Campus. Mike Chambers and myself will bring Flex and Apollo with us. Come find us at Hack Day and introduce yourself. We will be making Apollo/Flex mashups with Yahoo APIs all day and night.

See you at Yahoo Open Hack Day!

Once Mike and I find a place to code, I will post our local on campus.

Ted

The MacBook Pro gets hot, so hot you can cook on it. Jokes aside it is a problem but I found a really great solution. I purchased an Antec NoteBook Cooler and moded it for the MacBook Pro. The trick is to remount the front 2 feet on the back of the top of the cooler. Typically the MacBook Pro will create a vacuum against the 2 large USB powered fans and make it ineffective. By moving the bottom front feet to the top back, it slightly elevates the MacBook Pro and pulls the heat from the machine effectively. Basically the MacBook is angled on the cooler to remove the heat better.

I have found this setup is so good that it actually makes the notebook run noticeably faster. I run the notebook all day every day and it never gets hot, not even warm. The case of the MacBook Pro is like a big heatsink, all it needs is an external fan to pull the heat away.

Trust me you will not regret doing this. Ok back to work.

Cheers,

Ted

Flex Engineering has released an AutoComplete Input component for Flex 2. The AutoComplete control is an enhanced TextInput control which pops up a list of suggestions to the user based on the characters entered.

AutoComplete Input component for Flex 2

More to come!

Ted

As an experiment I downloaded the oldest Netscape browser version I could find Netscape 4.8. I installed Flash Player 9 and took some screenshots. Yes that is a Flex 2 SWF running in Flash Player 9 on Netscape 4.8. What is really cool is that this browser is completely unsupported in most AJAX applications. This type of low level reach enables Flash Player to work compatibly while the browser continues to evolve.

Netscape 4.8 Browser Download
Sample Netscape 4 Flex APP (FireFox and Netscape Only!)

When FireFox 3 and IE 8 ship, Adobe Flash Player will be there working compatibly as usual.

Cheers,

Ted