File this under the better late than never...

On September 26 and 27th, the folks who bring you Flex 360, put on a 2 day "Flex Camp" in New Jersery, which went over extremely well.  I was presenting on Testing with Fluint (formerly known as DPUint).  Of course, I promised my slides and materials would be up on here before the end of the weekend.  Well, realizing its over a week later, I'm finally getting them uploaded now.

So, if you were one of the many asking for those materials, here they are. 

slides
source code

and found the public beta of flash player 10 was out. How cool is that.

I knew this would be coming before too long, but didnt realize that it would be out so quickly. This new version is filled with lots of new features aimed at allowing greater "expressiveness" in flash player content, such as 3d effects, custom filters, enhanced text rendering, and revs to the drawing API. Of course, like each version before it, FP10 also has lots of performance enhancements. What are you waiting for go get it on adobe labs

I'm particularly looking forward to working with the Advanced Text Rendering features, which promise to allow lots of layout possibilities, including bi-directional text!

more later

So, I finally have copies of all 9 books I've worked on in a single location, in case you are interested, here is a picture
Its interesting, as it maps somewhat to the path of my career over the past 8 years, from the Spectra days, till my early days of Flash, up on through the most recent ColdFusion and Flex releases.

I'm a bit late in releasing this news, but our "Flex 3 Training from the source book" was released last week, and is now available from our publisher, as well as the major online bookstores such as Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. Speaking of Amazon, we are currently the #843 best selling of all their books, #15 in the Computers and Internet / Software category, and #8 in Computers and Internet / Programming. Thanks to all of you who have bought our book, and pushed the sales ranks so high.

Anyhow, I know folks have been asking me for months when this book would finally be released, and the answer is, last week.

Enjoy.

Next week I'm off to London to speak at CFUnited Europe, and the following week, I'll be speaking at AJAX World East.  In both places, I'll be speaking about the joy that is Flex 3 in all its forms.  The CFUnited talk is more focused on how Flex can improve the lives of CF Developers, while the AJAX World one is more focused on how Flex can help RIA developers increase their real world Retursn On Investment from RIA's.  On another note, CFUnited has just released the session schedule for their Washington DC Conference in June, and rumor is that the session schedule for WebManiacs should be available shortly.

Thanks to everyone who attended my session. Here are the files from my presentation.

The WebManiacs 2008 conference schedule has been finalized and registration is open. Early bird pricing ends Jan 31. Consisting of a two-day ColdFusion conference ("CFManiacs") coupled with a three-day Flex conference (FlexManiacs), hosting over 70 speakers and 130 distinct topics (some of which are hands-on), WebManiacs promises to have the most comprehensive coverage of Flex, AIR, and ColdFusion at the lowest price. Seating is limited, so folks should register early in order to get into the more popular sessions.

I'll be speaking on building AIR applications in the first few days of the conference.

1/18 - Flex Camp Chicago

1/24 - Flex Camp Omaha

2/24-2/27 - Flex 360 Atlanta

3/12-3/13 - CFUnited Europe

5/1-5/4 - CF.Objective()

5/19-5/23 - WebManiacs

6/25-6/28 - CFUnited

Only a few more days to take advantage of special Early Bird prices. Find all the details at The CFUnited Site

I've been a bit slow in getting this announcement out, as I see several other bloggers have already posted on this, but the rumors are true.  Tapper, Nimer and Associates. Inc. has teamed up with Digital Primates Inc.    Some of you may recall, it was just over a year ago that I teamed up with Mike Nimer to form Tapper, Nimer and Associates.  It's quite an odd experience for me to go from a solo propietorship to a team of 15 or so developers in about 16 months.   With all the great minds from both our companies working together, we will be able to help more customer on bigger and better projects.  

Many of you probably know Mike Labriola for his work on custom Flex Components, he has extended the Flex framework in ways that the developers at Adobe never even imagined.  He is also frequently speaking at conferences and User groups.  Both Nimer and I ran across him at dozens of speaking events across the country, and as we talked, we found there were far more similarities between us then differences. 

One of our first meetings at a conference ended up with him as a co-author on the Flex 2 book.  A year and a half of meeting at conferences later, and we were helping each other out on projects so frequently that it made sense to explore further integrating our companies.  When the opportunity for Nimer and I to join forces with him and his company, it was much too enticing to pass up.

We are looking forward to doing great work together, continuing to build cutting-edge applications for our clients, continuing to teach the world to build better RIAs, and continuing to serve the community.