A few months ago I did a User Group meeting at the Michigan Flex Users Group on the Papervision3D framework available for the Adobe Flex framework. The video below is about an hour and a half and hopefully gives a quick introduction on how to use it, along with some examples. Enjoy!
VoIP, or Voice Over IP is seen as the future of telecommunications. In the enterprise, it took hold about 5 years ago, and about 3 years ago it became the norm for any new phone system. In the highly controlled network environment of the office, the technology flourished and eventually became rock-solid by breakthroughs made by companies like Avaya, 3com and Cisco.
Around the same time consumer-based VoIP products like Vonage started hitting the market. These use the consumer’s internet connection and provided a dialtone like replacement for a standard phone line. Generally these types of connections were less expensive (and in some cases, they were MUCH less expensive), but at the same time they relied on the general internet (without any quality-of-service gaurentees). Recently there has been a lot of fanfare over Google Voice being available on various mobile devices like Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone. This allows users to use their data plans and bypass the cell-phone companies. The funny thing is, even AT&T sees consumers bypassing their services as a viable threat – they filed paperwork to lift the requirements that they provide phone services in their entire claimed market.
There are a few problems with this mass migration from traditional telephony services to this “wild-wild-west” VoIP services.
First off, VoIP has no concept of location-based services. With traditional PSTN “landline” or business services, the phone company delivers your services to a physical location (your home or business). This information is tied to a database which is given to 911 and other emergency services when you need it. Because VoIP connects over the internet, there is no real way to track where a call is physically being placed from — and the problem is exaserbated by devices like firewalls, VPN tunnels and MPLS networks.
Next, there is no concept of Quality of Service for many of these consumer devices. Companies like AT&T in my local market offer DSL service in most areas that has a 1MB download and 256kbps upload. This allows for a descent speed for doing things like browsing the web or reading emails. However, if you try to use a VoIP connection you most likely will saturate this connection — and if you try to browse the internet while being on the phone (something I do quite a bit), you run a huge risk of your connection breaking up or being disconnected completely. More advanced routers and internet service providers offer QoS for connections, but these are not universal, nor are they easy to setup. I won’t go into the reliability of internet connections in storms, power outages, etc. where quality and resiliency is a needed in emergencies.
Compatibility is another issue that is becomming apparent. There are hundreds of different “VoIP” providers out there, each with their own software or hardware application. Companies are all trying to write their own standard (like Skype), or if they use some of the open standards (like Google), they implement them in a way that makes it very difficult to interconnect with others. This is very similar to the beginning of the telephone network where there were lots of different networks, and none of them connected with eachother. The government finally stepped in and created some laws (known as Common Carriage Laws) that required anybody who wanted to be a telephone provider to interconnect with each other. Currently many VoIP providers do connect via the PSTN, but often times they charge users additional fees to do this.
Finally, we need to take a step back at the PSTN system itself. It has become a commodity item, and even further more, it has become a so universal it is considered a utility. In many markets it is heavily regulated by the government and has lots of redudancy, backups and, well it’s a proven technology. As more users disconnect their traditional phone lines and go with VoIP providers, less work is being put into this system and eventually that glue that holds it, along with all the PSTN providers will begin to go away. Not only that, but because it has become such a commidity, you can get land-lines for cheap, and unlimited minutes (both in cell and landline), it makes very little sence to use these technologies other than it’s the “next best thing”. If you don’t believe me, take a look at your VoIP provider, and compare that to a $14 phone line (unlimited local calls, and up to $0.05 a minute for long distance).
Think twice about cheering on AT&T in cutting the cord with land-line service. It’s something that is easy and well understood. Also think about how you plan to get internet access — and how those who are in unprofitable areas can get basic services (like phone and internet services) if companies like AT&T and Verizon are not forced to provide them.
Tonight marks the release of the AIR 2.0 beta to the Adobe Labs! This is truly a remarkable release that I’m sure will allow web developers to continue to build cutting-edge, multi-platform applications that we have come to expect from AIR.
So, what’s new? Well, you can check out some release notes here, or this Adobe TV session from MAX last month.
What am I excited about? Well, there is a whole lot packed into this release, but some of the things that I personally have been playing with are the new API’s that allow us to directly work with the audio we get from the Microphone (check out www.getmicrophone.com for more information about the back story). This new API allows you to get the raw ByteArray data right from the microphone and save it to disk, interpret it, or manipulate it. You can check out my ADC article here.
Another cool feature that AIR 2.0 is getting is IP Multicast support. Yes kids, you heard me right — AIR 2.0 will be able to do peer-to-peer audio and video streaming in a way that allows you to save bandwidth and create highly-scalable video applications. This is one of those things I have been waiting on for years.
Oh, and did I mention that AIR 2.0’s memory and CPU use footprint is 100x better than before? Well, that may be an exaggeration, but lets put it this way. An application that I used to run 24×7 on my server used to accumulate about 10MB an hour, filling up my RAM quickly and crashing out after about a day. The exact same app compiled with AIR 2.0 has been running for about 14 days now, and is still using nearly the same amount of memory as it did when it launched (about 20 MB). Simply amazing!
So, download and enjoy TODAY!
I currently have three close friends that are all looking for jobs (thanks economy!), and are seeking my help with their resumes. Since I’ve been in the hiring position a lot in the past few years (both at small businesses and MSU, an enterprise), I’d like to share some of the tips that I’ve been sharing with my friends. I encourage you to fill the comments with more suggestions and your experiences to share 
Cover letters:
Resumes:
So, I’m back from LA, and the Adobe MAX 2009 conference. Just like the MAX tagline of “Connect, Discover, Inspire,” I truly able to accomplish all of those. This year’s conference packed in a lot of announcements, and gave everybody a good idea of where Adobe is heading in the marketplace. All of the keynotes and sessions were recorded, so make sure to check them out on Adobe TV!
So, lets first talk about some of the major announcements:
A few things that were not released, but were talked about:
I also had the chance to catch up with a lot of the evangelists, and talk shop with a lot of the people I usually only communicate with online. It was great to see everybody, oh, and yeah, I went to a lot of sessions and labs too. I’m hoping to go through all my notes from the action-packed week from my labs and get cracking on some new apps I have floating in my head (yes, I was inspired).
Posted in Adobe, Personal | Tags: Adobe, Android, Application Devlopment, ColdFusion, Flash, Flex, iPhone, LiveCycle, LiveCycle DS, MAX, Mobile, RIM
Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Detroit Java User’s Group presentation from Josh Holmes on Application Simplicity. Walking into the presentation, I, along with most of the people that attended expected the typical UX presentation (keep it simple, stupid! among other common slogans), but I was pleasantly surprised at one of the tangents that we went across.
“If you have to think about how to explain the solution, it is entirely too complex.”
We then went into a great dialog about how you can best arrive to the most simple solution. One of the things he kept drilling to us was this : If you don’t understand what your code is doing in the background, you can’t write good code.
Today, we live in a world of code-hinting, code-wizards, code cookbooks, and frameworks that write our applications for us. Far too often I’ve been asked to help debug an application or help solve an issue where the person really has no idea what their code is really doing in the background. Dragging and dropping a data-grid onto the stage, dragging a database connection to it and publishing the application is great — but can you actually tell me what is happening in the background. Would you be able to explain why it starts to slow down after running the application was running for 5 minutes?
In the United States we tend to have two camps of people who create applications. Some people are based in computer science or computer engineering. These people have taken some sort of formal classes in computer science theory and understand memory management, multi-threaded computing, etc. The other camp is primarily developers — people who typically don’t have formal CS/CE training, and often will require the use of tools or frameworks to complete their projects. The difference is either engineering software or developing software.
Do you know what kind of code your tools or frameworks are creating? How much overhead does storing that variable as a string vs. a boolean have? How about creating your own class? How does your framework / language manage CPU cycles when you store large amounts of data?
Just things to think about. Knowing how your underlying code works, and not just relying on a tool to create your application can help you write better code. Anybody can use a tool to connect a web page to a database, but not everybody can engineer an application.
Posted in ColdFusion, Flex | Tags: Application Devlopment, Computer Engineer, Computer Science, CS
Last week, I had the pleasure of going to the AHECTA conference in San Antonio, TX. This conference was a great opportunity to network with my peers in the Cable Television world, in particular those that support colleges and universities throughout the country. Some of the things the schools are implementing to entertain their students (read: recruit their students to live in the dorms) are really innovative, even with the lack of money that is out there right now. Listening to some of the schools that are sharing content via Internet 2, or implementing IPTV across their campus makes me proud to work in the education industry.
Unfortunately, one of the constant themes of the conference was about the content providers that we deal with. Many of the larger content providers like Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, etc. have become the 1,000lbs gorilla in the room that only want things their way. Everybody is scared of the new, and have a real hard time with innovation. Lets face it, despite going digital (squeezing more channels in the same channel space as before), cable television hasn’t really changed a whole lot. You turn on your TV, you turn on your tuner, and you select your channel. Some new features, such as Video on Demand are really re-inventions of old ideas (Pay-Per-View).
When we start to look at what is happening to the industry — the move to high-def, with highly compressed, loss-less video, and especially the change to new mediums, they seem scared. If you were to approach a Comcast or Time Warner and ask them if you could deploy your campus cable with an IPTV setup, they would walk away right there. If you go directly to an ESPN or Showtime, and offer the same (even including a DRM package like Flash Media Server), they would tell you it is not in their supported model. It’s funny to watch the entire industry clammor for a change, yet the producers of the content refuse to allow the change.
So where does all this leave those of us providing the services to our communities? Well, for the most part, we will provide what the content providers allow us to provide, and will try to innovate to what our communities want. One day, the two will meet, and all will be happy
What types of technologies do you think students would want to consume for their "television" watching?
Posted in Telecom
I already know that this post won’t be popular with my close friends, but I think it needs to be said anyway… Don’t worry, this isn’t a “ColdFusion is dead” article.
I was recently asked to sit down for lunch with two computer science professors from two different schools in my area. For the most part, I was in “a fly on the wall” mode as these professors talked about various things such as how they catch people copying code, to how they teach good memory use, etc. This wasn’t a formal meeting by any sense, but rather just a meeting of two friends who happen to work in the same profession.
About half-way through lunch, I decided to ask about using a more stable language, like ColdFusion (CFML) to teach web programming. Currently one of the schools teach Python (and considering Ruby) and the other teaches PHP for their courseware. After both chuckled at me, I dove into my Adobe taught ColdFusion isn’t dead, ColdFusion has a growing population, ColdFusion has some open-source alternatives, etc. Both sat there and soaked in my sales pitch. One of the two even used to use ColdFusion on some side work in the past.
“It’s not about the servers — it’s truly about the language.” spoke the gent from the larger school. “For a formal, introductory computer science class, ColdFusion [CFML] really doesn’t offer us anything that another language does. And it adds in a lot of complexities and guessing that make other languages easier to teach in the classroom“
As he explained his position, it started to soak in to me — ColdFusion while really easy to pick up and learn teaches some really god-awful practices. And if you take a look at the ColdFusion community at large, it seems to be a real mess. Some of the great points from his argument :
Some of these things are changing in future versions of ColdFusion, I’m sure. Others are just breed from the history of ColdFusion, and for the regular community, that’s not a bad thing. For example, does a web / CFML programmer really want to know how the POP protocol works? No! That’s why they use ColdFusion!
So parting from my experience, I do ask the question — where SHOULD CFML be learned? That is a really tacky question, one that is really hard to answer. From the above, CFML shouldn’t be chosen to be taught in a formal programming class, but how about in a web programming class? Rather than teach HTML, how about HTML and CFML? Should CFML be taught at a community college? How about at the high-school level where programming theory is not nearly as important? What are your thoughts?
Posted in Adobe, ColdFusion, Personal | Tags: Adobe, Class, ColdFusion, CompSci, CSE, Education, Java, K-12, University
At a recent conference I was at, I got in a rather lengthy conversation about Cloud Computing, and its effects on both society and computing. My thoughts were in the minority, but I guess I come from a unique position.
Cloud Computing, for those who are not familiar with it, is the concept that you can load your applications and data into some server "out there" or "in the sky". Your application may reside on a single server, or multiple servers — but you really don’t care. Your data may be under your control, or it may be essentially rented to you for some price (this may not be in dollars, but in ad revenue).
What are my thoughts on it? Cloud Computing is a great concept, but it is essentially taking us back to the old Client/Server days, except we no longer have control of our own destiny. Sure, this may be great for personal, or projects that are no critical, but would you rely your business model on this?
One of the first examples people, or businesses bring up is Google’s gMail service. Google offers a crazy amount of email space which is always available to you as long as you are connected to the internet. They ask for nothing in return, other than to retain your data (email), and serve you advertisements based on the email you get. If you get lots of email on chemistry advancements, then you will get lots of advertisements for test tubes and petery dishes. For most people, they would ask where they could sign up! The two problems I see with this is:
I keep seeing the trend of people moving to these services without much thought of the value of their data. Have you ever read through the license agreement of your favorite cloud service? Did your lawyer? Do you even know where to find it? I am a person who is very tied to many, many laws and regulations in my industry. Not only do I have to worry about education specific laws such as FERPA, but I have to abide by many of the laws and regulations that the FCC and Homeland Security throw my way. Oh, and did I mention that I’m paranoid about my constitutes intellectual property? Michigan State University currently has a set of rules that prohibits the use of many popular cloud services for email or offline storage — a view that seems to be unpopular by the industry for some odd reason.
Another service, which I do tend to like a bit more (and do use for personal use) is Amazon’s cloud services. In their setup, you essentially launch and maintain a computer out in the cloud. You pay a per-minute charge for the amount of usage that you use, but you maintain full control and access to your own data. You maintain the root password, you maintain the encryption, and you maintain the storage. Now, you can still run into the issue of network connectivity, and its facacilities, but this style of service makes both me and my lawyers breathe a bit easier at night — we own our data
This past Wednesday, I did a presentation at 360|Flex in Indy. My presentation was on Flex, LCDS (LiveCycle Data Services), and ColdFusion, and how they all work together. It was a lot of fun to talk about this topic that is so near and dear to my heart. Because it was the last session of the day, I was asked by many of the participants to record it so that they could listen to it later
For those of you that want to ‘participate’ with the preso here:
Also, the screen-share of the entire presentation is available below:
Thanks to everybody who showed up, and also a big shout-out to TechSmith for providing the giveaways at the end of the presentation!
