Flash Inc.

Now @ tumblr

2008-07-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

Free Burma!

2007-10-04T02:22:00.000-07:00

Apollo on Techcrunch

2007-01-28T16:42:00.000-08:00

Techcrunch has just published a great post on Apollo [ by Ryan Stewart ]. Dont forget to go through the comments. Its evident that commenters ,just like the dev community,are concerned about security.

Digg the story here.

Desktop 3.0 is here kiddies![and its here to stay!]

Ajax Quick start tutorial II -Handling xml response

2007-01-01T14:23:00.000-08:00

This is supposed to be a follow up tutorial for the first Ajax Quick start tutorial.

Purpose:
In the first quick start[link], all we did was replace a div with plaintext content[if you noticed it,those html tags where internally treated as a plain string] from external html file.In this version, we will see how to receive xml response from server side script[PHP], and how to parse through the XML data in client side Javascript.

Scenario:
Depending on the variable passed, php file will generate an xml response. In this case, city name and population of a city in California is passed to PHP.The xml response from server is fetched into client through an Ajax call, which is then parsed to dig out city name and population values.

Explanation:
Everything is just the same as in first example except:

Now we use responseXML instead of responseText, so that javascript handles the response as an XML Object instead of just a plain string
Once xml response is recieved, its parsed through to extract data.
The example shows two most important tasks of an xml parser.Extract nodevalues, and attribute values.

Consider the following xml response:

<California>
<County population="50000">La Mirada</County>
</California>

Here La Mirada is the nodevalue of County tag
and 50000 is the population attribute of County tag

In the code, this is depicted by the following code:

docx.getElementsByTagName('County')[0].firstChild.nodeValue; -->shows how to extract the nodevalue
docx.getElementsByTagName('County')[0].getAttribute("population"); -->shows how to extract attribute value

The explanation of Ajax portion of example is same as that in the first Ajax Quick start example. Feel free to take a look at it.

You can download the companion file here.To see this in action, all you have to do is unzip the content into a folder in your server, enabled with PHP.

[On a lighter note, all aspects in this tutorial are not fully thought of!If you find something misleading, feel free to post it in the comments .]

Code follows: [or else just download the companion file]

client.html

<html>
<head>
<script>
if(window.XMLHttpRequest) {
xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
} else {
xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}

function requestContent(url) {
xmlhttp.open("GET",url,true);
xmlhttp.onreadystatechange =statusListener;
xmlhttp.send(null);
}

function statusListener() {
if (xmlhttp.readyState == 1) {
document.getElementById('content').innerHTML="loading..";
}
if (xmlhttp.readyState == 4) {
var docx=xmlhttp.responseXML;
document.getElementById('cityname').innerHTML=docx.getElementsByTagName('County')[0].firstChild.nodeValue;
document.getElementById('population').innerHTML=docx.getElementsByTagName('County')[0].getAttribute("population");
}
}
</script>

</head>

<body>
<a href='javascript:requestContent("citylist.php?city=La Mirada&population=50000");'>city 1</a> <a href='javascript:requestContent("citylist.php?city=Irwindale&population=2000");'>city 2</a>
<div id="cityname">City name</div>
<div id="population">Population</div>
</body>
</html>

citylist.php

<?php
$city=$_GET['city'];
$population=$_GET['population'];
header('Content-Type: text/xml');
$return_value ='<California><County population="'.$population.'">'.$city.'</County></California>';
echo $return_value;
die();
?>

Not your usual Flex

2006-11-17T06:14:00.000-08:00

Got bored of the usual Flexy look of Flex applications? Take a look at these:

Noise monitoring system for Amsterdam Airport Schiphol [ via ]
Belgacom TV [via]
Kuler[via]

Cool huh?

Ajax Quickstart -explained

2006-11-11T09:08:00.000-08:00

For those who need further explanation of the Ajax quickstart tutorial,[which was meant to be just a simple indroduction to Ajax] here it is.
[This is a follow up for the original article here. If you havent seen it, try it before reading this.]
You can download the companion files here.
Unzip and open up Home.html in an editor.

Basically, all that the code does is , fetch content of an external html file and relpace the content of a div with this new content fetched.In real world scenario, this can be content from an xml file, or a response from a web service,or something like that.Right now, in our example , to keep things simple all we do is, fetch content of an external html file and replace the content of a div with this external content, asynchronously, through an Ajax call.

Take a look at the code between the body tags.See the div with an id, "content" ? This is the div that will act as a container for the external content.See those links with a javascript call? Those are the links which, when clicked , initiate the Ajax call and other related tasks.

Before we dive into the explanation, there is something, very basic,that you need to understand.
document.getElementById(id)
A call like that in javascript, returns a reference to an object[or simply a tag], with the specified id.
document.getElementById(id).innerhtml
This refers to the content inside the tag ,with the specified id.
This is not a read only method,which means that, the call can be used to replace existing values.ie., assigning a value to document.getElementById(id).innerhtml will rewrite the content in that element.

Consider a div as follows:
<div>This is the content inside the div</div>

Calling document.getElementById("myid").innerhtml ,will return , "This is the content inside the div".

If you assign a value as follows, the content of div will be replaced with the new value assigned.
document.getElementById("myid").innerhtml="new content to be filled";

With that in mind, lets get into the Ajax part.
Ajax helps you communicate with server in an asynchronous manner. Which in loose language means that, Ajax helps you load external content into your page , without a page reload.
To start an asynchronous communication with server[ which means, start an Ajax call], you need to first create an XMLHttpRequest object. Lets see how this can be done.
Different browsers use different ways of creating an XMLHttpRequest object.
For Mozilla, and other Gecko browsers, this is done as follows:
new XMLHttpRequest();
For Internet Explorer:
new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");

In our example, this is done when the page loads for the first time, using the following code:
if(window.XMLHttpRequest) {
xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();//for firefox
} else {
xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");//for IE.
}

Now that we have created the XMLHttpRequest object, we can establish a connection with the server,using the open method of XMLHttpRequest object.
The open method takes 5 parameters.
open(type, url, async, username,password)
type[string] refers to the type of connectoin . In our case, we use GET. Other possible options include, POST, PUT, PROPFIND.
url[string], refers to the url to which the request goes.
async is a boolean value which states if we want the call to be asynchronous. By default, its TRUE, which means asynchronous.
username and password refers to the authentication info , you need , in case the site accessing requires authentication.

In our example, we just pass in the three necessary arguments.

Once we open a connection , we need to send the request to server. This can be done using send method.
send(content_if_any);
if you have no content to send, just use null.
[onreadystatechange will be explained shortly]
Summing up, the following code, does all this task in our example:

function requestContent(url) {
xmlhttp.open("GET",url,true);
xmlhttp.onreadystatechange =statusListener;
xmlhttp.send(null);
}

xmlhttp is the variable to which we have assigned the XMLHttpRequest object in our example.

In our case, we have kept url as an argument, so that we can make mutiple calls easily.

So , we have opened and sent an Ajax request to server. How do we handle the response from server?
One of the coolest thing about XMLHttpRequest object is that, it can automatically notify us of the current status of our request to server.To make use of this feature, all we need to do is call onreadystatechange method of XMLHttpRequest object and assign it to a function. This function will be called everytime, the status of the request changes.
So what is status?
Status, simply refers to the state of our request, whether the request is being executed, or is it finished etc. etc. .This will help you show a "loading" message , while the content is being fetched from server.
Basically, what happens is that, depending on the status of request, the readyState value of XMLHttpRequest is dynamically changed.
In our example, statusListener is a simple function which will be called automagically ,every time readyState value of XMLHttpRequest changes. Inside statusListener, we check the value of readyState. The possible values are as follows:
0 = uninitialized
1 = loading
2 = loaded
3 = interactive
4 = complete
[from Apple's article]

So, inside statusListener ,if readyState is 1, we assign the div with a string "loading...", which tells the end user that , some activity is going on.
When it becomes 4, we can confirm that, the request is finished successfully.At that point, we are ready to show the response from server.

The response from server is available by calling responseText value of XMLHttpRequest object.
In our example xmlhttp.responseText refers to the content of the html file , we requested.

In real world scenario, if you requested an xml file, you may have to parse through the response, before using the data.

So that concludes the exaplanation of the example i posted earlier. Hope that helps. Feel free to drop a comment on what you think.

Thanks !

Ajax Quickstart tutorial

2006-10-27T02:43:00.000-07:00

Personally, when i start learning something new, i would usually just skip the text and read the code first.
So in this tutorial, im gonna put the code first. For most of you , this would be more than enough . The purpose of this tutorial is to make you 'Ajax aware' in the least possible steps. And here we go.

End result: fetch content from external docment, and update the existing document without reload[without reload! thts the keyword]

<html>
<head>

<script>

//create a XMLHttpRequest Object.
if(window.XMLHttpRequest) {
xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
} else {
xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}

//call this function with url of document to open as attribute
function requestContent(url) {
xmlhttp.open("GET",url,true);
xmlhttp.onreadystatechange =statusListener;
xmlhttp.send(null);
}

//statusListener function is called automatically whenever readystate value of XMLHttpRequest Object changes.
//see xmlhttp.onreadystatechange =statusListener; statement above.
//When readystate is 1, its a loading state.
//When readystate is 4, content is loaded
function statusListener() {
if (xmlhttp.readyState == 1) {
document.getElementById('content').innerHTML="loading..";
}

if (xmlhttp.readyState == 4) {
//xmlhttp.responseText is the content of document requested
document.getElementById('content').innerHTML=xmlhttp.responseText;
}
}
</script>

</head>

<body>
<a href='javascript:requestContent("1.html");'>1.html</a> <a href='javascript:requestContent("2.html");'>2.html</a>
<div id="content">This text will be replaced by external content without reload</div>
</body>
</html>

Explanation:

The whole Ajax thing starts with the creation of an instance of XMLHttpRequest object.
For firefox,new XMLHttpRequest(); will create one, and for IE,new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");

The stuff in requestContent function does the job of initiating the call, and listening to progress.

statusListener function is called whenever onreadystatechange value of Object changes. When its is 4, ie. xmlhttp.readyState == 4, the loading is finished.

Use document.getElementById to replace a divs content with the new content.

update: If you need further detailed explanation , feel free to take a look at this post.

This code was originally written somewhere in mid-2005, based on the famous Ajax tutorial in Apple Developer Connection.In real world scenario, instead of a plain file[as in this example], you will be calling a server side script that returns xml formatted data[After all, thats the X in Ajax is!],which should be parsed through.This is described in the second version of this tutorial[another quick one ;) ].

Download example zip [If the link is not working, just leave a comment.]

Apple developer Connection article.

Adobe CEO,Bruce Chizen

2006-09-25T22:20:00.000-07:00

All about Adobe CEO, Bruce Chizen.

FLASH PRO 9 Preview: FLASH PLAYER 9 : ON AIR!

2006-06-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

Its a me too post.
Flash Player 9
FLASH PRO 9 Preview
Flex 2 is released!

AWESOME!

ADOBE-Ellison's Next Target , says FOOL.

2006-06-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

An article posted by The Motley Fool predicts a possible takeover of Adobe by Oracle.And the projected reason is pretty much the same old stuff, Giant with slow organic growth swallowing smaller faster competitor and blah blah blah.. But the article contradicts in its own claims! It calls Adobe a "fast growing competitor" and then points at declining revenue. While Forbes says the declining revenue is a short term one, since [we] developers are waiting for the next release of flash IDE and other suits[ true in my case],the Fool article doesnt say anything about it. Looks like a quick assignment for Ryan Fuhrmann.

ADOBE BUSINESS

2006-06-17T19:48:00.000-07:00

A great article that touches everything from current business slowdown to future perfect Apollo is here.

Flash in Forbes

2006-06-07T16:58:00.000-07:00

With video content delivery booming,Forbes has published an article about Flash today.Eventhough Flash gets a good coverage, i dont think Adobe is going to get any advantage out of this.Its going to be RED5. {read the article here}

FlashLite has Moved!

2006-05-31T20:46:00.000-07:00

Sorry about about this late notification ,but the flashlite part of this blog has a new home. Go there!!

Fun Cartoon To prevent Child Abuse??!!

2006-05-29T11:16:00.000-07:00

Just came across this campaign by Saatchi & Saatchi for NSPCC to prevent child abuse. But i deeply suspect if it will ever serve the purpose. The campaign features a funny looking charachter, who behaves totally funny when he is being "abused".
The campaign resembles more to tom and jerry show where a rat is being "abused" sooo badly that all of us[we,12 yr olds!] laugh.I think this campaign will have almost the same impact.Its just a failure.Infact, it could even encourage someone try out the " funny side" of child abuse.

The Flashlite Business

2006-05-24T21:49:00.000-07:00

Motley Fool has published a really cool article[by Bobby Shethia] on Adobe business, and talks a lot about Flashlite,the money involved and more.

Its here

Flashlite in S60 {WHITEPAPER TOO!}

2006-05-18T21:47:00.000-07:00

s60.com has included a section on Flashlite alongside Java. And they have a white paper too !
The point worth noting is that, the white paper actually says :
"Flash Lite 2 will be available for wide implementation in devices starting with S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1.Also Nokia Series 40 plans to implement support for Flash Lite 2."
Aint that awesome??!!

BYHOOK

2006-05-12T04:52:00.000-07:00

Just came across this site with some really cooool animation{video} Requires Flash 8

49 O - RIGHT NOT TO VOTE

2006-05-11T03:55:00.000-07:00

49 O is the right by which, a person can decline to vote for any candidates that represent his locality.This is by far, one of the most extreme of all democratic rights.
This option is available in India, and is granted based on The Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961
Basically, its an Indian citizen's right to NOT VOTE.The bottom line is, if all the candidates in your area are the ones you don't prefer, you can really speak out and say NO to all !! Now thats what you really call a RIGHT :)

related post

SECURITY VULNERABILITY IN FLASH PLAYER

2006-03-15T20:34:00.000-08:00

A press release from Adobe on March 14 says about a security flaw,that could allow a malicious user to take control of a computer. Flash player is installed in more than 97.7% of internet enabled computers. It was distributed with Windows XP SP1 and SP2 updates, which explains how widely it is available. But to find details about this security problem, you have to go to
Home / Developer Center / Security Topic Center / Security Zone /

First of all ,only content developers visit Developer center. This means that you have to be extra ordinarily security savvy and should keep track of these kind of security issues all the time.Does a normal computer user ever do that?? I dont think so.

Again , if you hear about this problem and go to MM site for an update, you have to hunt it down!
They have updated the downloadable player with the new fixed one,but says nothing about an update or anything.

Taking into consideration the penetration level of Flash player,Adobe should act in a more responsible way.They should put information about things like this in BIG BLOCK LETTERS.

Stand-Alone uninstaller for F 8.5

2006-02-02T01:54:00.000-08:00

Here is a very interesting sequenze of events ,which almost lead to the release of F 8.5 standalone uninstaller .[Nah! Im just kidding! ]

FLEX FLEXY FLEXIER!

2006-02-01T01:26:00.000-08:00

Flex 2.0 BETA released! And the spotlight..VIEW SOURCE.The much needed view source.Aint that cool ?? Get it here

MOZILLA NO:1 !

2006-01-25T01:22:00.000-08:00

Might be not in the browser war,but in Google search!
Search for 1 on Google, and the top search result is Mozilla.We are loving it! In case you want to download Mozilla Firefox, use the "Get Fierfox" button on this blog (probably i will get a few freebies if you click on that! ).If you got a blog or something,get one of those buttons for you too!

32000$ DOG!

2006-01-21T06:30:00.000-08:00

So how much does it cost you to feed a dog? Scott calculates 32000 USD! When he bought FARFEL through this classified ad ,he would have never expected that!

NO dot IN GMAIL!

2006-01-18T00:51:00.000-08:00

The email service from the biggest dot com in the world dont recognize dot! If that sounds "interesting" take a look at this

OPEN SAUSE!

2006-01-17T20:26:00.000-08:00

What will you do when you have absolutly no idea what open source is all about,and want to blog on it?Add to it the fact that you are "a small yapping dog frothing at the mouth after being scolded for crapping on the floor".Its there

Farris Hassan - Dumbass of the month

2006-01-13T09:36:00.000-08:00

This too damn good! Its there.

VIDEO IN FLASHLITE 2.0

2005-12-26T01:31:00.000-08:00

For those who havent yet listened to Bill Perry,here is a "shocking" news.
Flashlite 2.0 does not support flv!
Flashlite video support is dependent on device capabilities rather than the flash player capabilities.
Which essentially means that flashlite 2.0 content will support any format your phone supports.There is no phone with flash video support.Which means that ,if you have to provide flash content,make sure that the device has the codec support.
The safer side will be to provide content in 3gp/rm which is already widely availbale.
Video content in flashlite 2.0 can either be embedded into your file or it can be streamed from a server, in case the device support the specified streaming format.

Bill Gates in India.

2005-12-08T01:21:00.000-08:00

I dont know what kind of genetic material he is made of but,he dared ask one question while visiting a slum.It goes like this:

"why are there no computers in this slum?"

Holy crap!! Is he really stupid or is he acting stupid?

[This is based on a speech he delivered while visiting India.The whole super human sentence goes like this: "Yesterday, I was with my wife in a slum. I looked around and asked why there were no computers. After all, there was electricity so why can't you teach those children simple computer skills and let them progress up the ladder?" ]

Steve Jobs Speech At Stanford

2005-11-01T02:14:00.000-08:00

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky Ð I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me Ð I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything Ð all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

XML in FLASH

2005-09-08T02:23:00.000-07:00

DOWNLOAD HELP FILE

XML and Flash combination had been around for a long time now.From its crude availability from the time of Flash 5 to the exhuberent features in mx 2004,XML and Flash has come a long way.But still novice Flashers,with a designer background,find it a bit hard to get the concept.Since i have nothing else to do today than just wait for Desperate Housewives to be aired,im writing this beginner tutorial crap.So go ahead and enjoy this sucker tutorial on XML and Flash.

Before starting,let me tell you what XML is.Its nothing other than a sloth brain!!It doesnt even deserved to be called a "techonology".XML is just a storehouse/representation of information,infact "tagged" information.TAGGED? You've seen it in HTML.But in HTML, tags are like commands for the browser.HTML Tags tell the browser "how to display the information between the tags".In XML this is not the case.XML tags are made according to your wish for your sake.Wait a minute.What am i doing here?! Comparing HTML and XML ?That sucks.They are not even comparable!!!HTML and XML are entirely different things except for the tag thing.XML is more related to databases than to HTML(because XML is a way of storing/representing data).It cant do anything on its own.

Unzip the downloaded file.Inside you will find q.xml.Open it.

Well,as you can see its some info related to Cricket(i hate cricket). We will be using it throughout this tutorial. Now to see the stuff inside the xml file in a better HUMAN-PERCIVABLE form,please open it in Firefox.If you have tried ESPN or any other sports channel,you must have noticed the "score-tickers" they showcase.These score-tickers actually work on an XML file just like this.Once you have learned this tutorial ,you too can do this!

The rest of the tutorial shows you how to mix Flash and XML.I assume you have basic concepts of Flash movie timeline,Variables,Dynamic text fields etc.
We have very simple objectives:
Show the content of the XML ,ie. runs from teamA and teamB and batsmen names, in our flash movie.But this involves the following actions:

Getting the XML data into our Flash movie
Waiting for the whole of XML to get loaded
Mining out useful information(ie.,names and score values etc.)
Displaying the values in our Flah movie
Having a cup of tea.

So lets go ahead. First things first.Lets make the basic flash movie.Open Flash IDE and add layers and frames as shown below(if u cant do it,u r a real sucker, kid! Time to learn real good basic stuff.You will get it at actionscript.org).
The first layer named "stop actions" is where you will put the stop(); code.Select frame 1 of bottom layer and add the following code to it.

stop();

This code prevents the movie head from advancing to the subsequent frames until furthur notice!!Do the same to the second frame.
The second layer contains the code that gets the XML and stuff like that into our flash movie.This is the heart and soul of our movie.Done!Now save the movie into the folder where you saved q.xml .

Getting the XML data into our Flash movie & Waiting.
Usually,you load the XML from an outside file into an XML object in Flash.XML Object? Its just a fancy name for a container that will hold the XML inside our flash movie.You can create one for this movie by adding the following code into the first frame of layer2
scorer=new XML();
Thats it! You just created an XML object with a name "scorer"! Fine!But space charachters,retun charachters which are not visible to the naked eye are visible to our new object!.Such charachters are collectively known as whitespaces in the flash realm.Right now,this is bad for us.So we should tell our new XML object not to take care of stuff like that.So add the following code next as the second line:
scorer.ignoreWhite=true;
But we havent told the XML object which file to load the XML from.This is done as follows:
scorer.load("q.xml");
When flash encounters this line,it willl search for the file q.xml in the present directory.Then it loads the file into the XML object named "scorer".

Right now,in our movie,because of the stop command in the first frame of layer one,our playhead would not goto frame two,where we plan to exhibit our variables from the XML object.This can be accomplished by using the world-famous gotoAndPlay command.But if we do that,there is a trap waiting for us.As movie starts playing,when it encounter the load command,it starts to load the specified XML file.As it starts to load,our movie wont wait.It is eager to carry out all commands.It encounter the gotoAndPlay command and will go to the second frame!! There it encouter the task to display the variables from XML object.In case our movie encountered this task before loading whole of the XML file,the variables wont be displayed,instead it will show something like "null" or "undefined"!!To prevent such a disaster,we will check if the whole of XML is loaded.This can be done using the following code:
scorer.onLoad = function() {
gotoAndPlay(2);
};
This code tells the playhead to go and play frame2 once the XML is loaded fully into the XML object scorer.
So now we have our XML data inside our flash movie,in a container called scorer.How can we make use of it? Lets go to the next step.

Mining out useful information.
Its nothing more than getting the values from XML object.For this you need to have a basic understanding of how XML is addressed in flash. Take a look at our XML file.The whole of the stuff is tagged between a "cricket" tab.Since our XML data is inside an XML object called scorer,the cricket tab will be addressed as:
scorer.childNodes[0]
Lets go back to our XML file.Inside cricket tab,we have two tabs,"scorecard" and "batting" respectively."scorecard" will be addressed as :
scorer.childNodes[0].childNodes[0]
and , "batting" will be addressed as:
scorer.childNodes[0].childNodes[1]
Get the point? Isnt it simple?
Back in XML file, inside scorecard you see two tabs,"teamA" and "teamB".Each of these tabs have something called "runs" and "overs".These are called attributes.

Now lets start "mining" data(essentially i mean the addressing method).
The address of the value New Zealand will be:
scorer.childNodes[0].childNodes[0].childNodes[0].firstChild
When flash sees this,it will look for scorer object.Inside it ,it looks for the first tab(now it has reached cricket tab),inside of which it looks for cricket's childNode[0],ie.scorecard,then its childNode[0],teamA;and finally its "firstChild",which is the value "New Zealand".
The same way,for the value " Peninsula",the address would be:
scorer.childNodes[0].childNodes[0].childNodes[1].firstChild
But how to get the address of an attribute?This is done as follows.
If you want to get the runs value of teamA ,just use the following address:
scorer.childNodes[0].childNodes[0].childNodes[0].attributes.runs
The same way for the overs value,use the following address:
scorer.childNodes[0].childNodes[0].childNodes[0].attributes.runs
For the overs value of teamB,use the following address:
scorer.childNodes[0].childNodes[0].childNodes[1].attributes.overs
Just use the same convention for everything!!Its as simple as that.

Now lets display the values we "mined out" in flash.We will be diplaying the values "Peninsula" ,batsman1's name (ie. foobarking) and overs of New Zealand.For this purpose,we use some variables.Take frame two of layer two("info").Open the actions panel and write down the following:
country=scorer.childNodes[0].childNodes[0].childNodes[1].firstChild;
batsman1=scorer.childNodes[0].childNodes[1].childNodes[0].firstChild;
overs=scorer.childNodes[0].childNodes[0].childNodes[0].attributes.overs;

country,batsman1,overs are simple variables to which the values will be assigned.From now on,the variable values can be used anywhere in the flash movie.Create three dynamic text blocks on stage with variable names as country,batsman1,overs itself.Now test the movie.Satisfied?

SCOPE:
What you just learned is the same thing used by stock tickers,news tickers etc.availble on many sites.So go ahead and try more.Have a nice day! Dont forget to have a tea! :-p

Weather Ticker for Kerala

2005-09-07T00:09:00.000-07:00

update: WONT WORK ANYMORE! LINK REMOVED. SORRY.
/*
Download the weather ticker for Kerala.Fully custom made,weather ticker is 100% free of ads .Enjoy!At present ,the ticker provides current temperature for Cochin,Calicut and Trivandrum.PORTIONS OF THE SOFTWARE DEPENDS ON INDIAVISION.COM
*/ [AS THOUGH I COMMENTED IT OUT!

Ajax

2005-09-04T23:28:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered why Flickr from yahoo! and Gmail from Google behaves in a whole new different way??Why are they less irritating than other pages?The reason is simple. AJAX.Right now im working on it,and will probably be posting what i know in the near future.Seems like Flash has got a serious competitor.