360FlexCamp in New Jersey

The guys at 360Conferences are helping to bring a Flex camp to the east coast.  And is that a 1911 showing in the logo?

Yes, The Saj plans to make an appearance…

Way to cool (retro)

Play some of your old favorite arcade games in “Flash Player”

http://yvern.com/fMAME/fMAME.html

iPhone 3G: My thoughts upon… (and rants upon)

I have had my iPhone for a few days now. First off, there is a LOT to love about this little gadget. However, there are several significant annoyances and a number of lesser impediments that truly keep the iPhone from being all that it can be.

A number of these are software related, but a number of the more grueling annoyances exist merely due to restrictive policies.

***

SMS – The bubbles is a nice way to follow a conversation. But there is an element missing. The fact that my wife and I like to keep some of our text messages, in particular those sweet encouraging ones from each other.  The current conversation based messaging setup deletes an entire conversation.

What I’d like to see…a means to add a text message as a “Memory”. Give a little heart option, whatever. And it could be saved in a separate folder. And not deleted when you delete the whole conversation.

Overall, the discussion thread layout is appealing and probably worth the loss. But why, when a little modification could make it a full win?

Calendar – Sub-par, while it’s a pretty nifty little calendar. It fails IMHO at calendering. The iPhone’s calendar lacks basic features that a Jr. level programmer could have coded.  Particularly in regards to recurring schedules.  I have a writer’s group that meets the last Thursday of every month. But good luck getting that scheduled into your iPhone.  Create the event, tell it to repeat monthly. And it will, but only on the date of your event.

Contacts – Okay, I think we have a winner. Yes, there are a few things I’d like to be able to do. But very few and very minor. The ability to create your own labels is a gift from the good Lord above. (You know it, how many contacts do you have that are a husband and wife pair, and you’ve got a cell phone for both. Then you call the wrong part of the couple. No more, now you can create your own custom labels (husband/wife, etc.).   Note, that these labels show up EVERYWHERE in contacts as options. So you might want to limit yourself to generic labels. (ie: Beeper versus John’s Pager). Definitely like the contacts. And clicking on address loads up Google Maps.

Oh wait, one grueling aspect is missing. “Groups”  Yes, I’d really love to group my contacts. (ie: Personal, Work, Church, etc) and quickly filter by such.  It’d be a bit easier than scrolling thru a 100+ contacts.

Voice Dial – Some 3rd Party apps but nothing to write home about yet. Truly, I’d love to see Microsoft step in and sell Microsoft Voice Command for iPhone.

Google Maps – Quite a nice little app. There is something to be said to looking up one of your favorite restaurants on your new phone. Touching it and adding it to contacts and dialing the restaurants and placing an order for “Large cheese pizza please!”.

Though, for navigation it pales when compared to my old Verizon XV6700 with Odyssey Navigation using my bluetooth Pharos GPS unit.  I found the GPS to be less than accurate, at least on Google maps.  Often it will show my location as being an entire block off. Kind of a bummer. But this may be a Google map issue. As it probably is not pinging the GPS as much as my old nav software did and it probably doesn’t have the functions for calculating one’s progress (dead reckoning) to help maintain estimates when GPS signal might be blocked.

Safari – Nice browsing, wish it had Flash Player.  That said, I’ve found that a large number of sites I visit serve up mobile editions. Hey, I thought I got the whole internet with the iPhone (minus Flash player).

Bluetooth – Haven’t tested yet, but the rumor is that almost all bluetooth profiles are disabled other than headsets. WHY? WHY? WHY?

Synching – What a pain. If you thought Apple’s iPod was restrictive and cumbersome.  The iPhone is a lot worse, especially if you’re trying to keep songs, files, etc synchronized between multiple PCs. Change a few settings (auto-sync or manage yourself) and the synch will delete files form your iPhone.  The iPhone will only recognize a single machine. (Makes me shudder to thing what would happen if my PC went down. I believe I’d lose everything on my iPhone. Because I’d lose the back up. And if I tried to make a new machine (or re-installed machine) the synch-machine. It will automatically erase everything on the iPhone.

I must be missing something here, Apple can’t be that big of morons – can they?

3rd Party Apps – Some nice offerings, even on the free end. But still a bit weak on some of the productivity.

I’ve been waiting for a tethering app, which apparently one was released only to be quickly pulled (probably from pressure by AT&T). *argh* More restrictions.

Ringtones – Really, you want me to pay an extra $1 to make a ring tone of a song I already own. Excuse me…. you have to be smoking something Steve.

Oh, and I can only make ringtones from those tracks that iTunes says I can.  A whopping 30 songs out of over a 3,000 legitimately owned songs I have in iTunes.

***

All that said, the interface, user interaction, etc. Is a beauty. Even tasks that require more work (such as creating a contact) on the iPhone than my old WM5 PocketPC phone have the pleasure of interacting.

There is tremendous potential with this device. Truthfully, I believe all these flaws are easily curable if Apple and AT&T could get out of their own way (ie: stop with the super-secret, super-restrictive bullcrap that really achieves nothing *)

Why such a critical eye? Because my wife desperately needs a PDA phone. And we’re trying to evaluate whether the iPhone is a good, decent, okay, poor, or lousy choice for her.  The inherent advantage of the iPhone (both her and I would have them, and we could use the same tools) and a wonderful interface, the disadvantages….some major lacks in some major areas.  Might simply drive my wife mad. (Something no husband wishes to do!)

ADDENDUM I:

* Nothing….

Super-secret: iPhone SDK license agreement requires you not to talk to ANYONE else about anything in it. Mind you, the SDK is free, anyone can download it. So what the heck are they hiding. The downside, developer’s can’t create networks or forums to assist each other in coding and improving their software.

Super-restrictive: All the restrictions on moving media files, data files, etc. Between your various 5 active instances of iTunes simply makes things more cumbersome.  It does nothing to prevent digital piracy as their are ways to access all of this information with simple hacks and procedures.  What is does, is piss off users like me who have thousands of $$$ invested in albums. And hundreds of dollars invested in hardware. And am unduly restricted. You want me not to pirate, don’t make legally using my own music harder than if I simply pirated it.

*******************************************************************************************

PS -  I apologize for the long rant. I wish I could use LiveJournal’s  <lj-cut></li-cut> tags. A great feature of LJ. Anyone know if WordPress has a similar tag/function to condense and hide a large chunk of text?

OnAIR Bus Tour Revisited

There must have been something in the AIR yesterday!

Yesterday, I wore my OnAIR Bus Tour t-shirt on to realize my project manager was wearing the same shirt.

Then when I got home I noticed that my wife was also wearing the Adobe OnAIR shirt too!

What a curious coincidence…

- The Saj

“my first iPhone blog”

RIA article by Joe Rinehart in Dr. Dobb’s

I noticed that Ben Forta blogged about Joe Rinehart’s RIA article.

Thought it interesting as this is one of our clients so I thought I’d link to the article in our digital edition.
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/cmp/ddj0808/index.php?startpage=42

Get Your Flex on!

If you’ve never attended a 360Flex conference. Consider it, they draw a strong repertoire of speakers and have a great community environment. The promoters John & Tom are great guys.

While I will not be able to attending this upcoming conference (barring a free ticket landing in my lap) I strongly encourage anyone looking for some good seminars, hands-on training and a great collection of “minds” in a single location – 360Flex is the place for you!

- The Saj

Spread the word….

Apple + AT&T = Worst Service on the Planet (RANT)

I am now convinced that when you combine Apple’s super-secret policies and AT&T employees trained in anti-Customer Service you get the worst experience on the planet. THANK YOU STEVE!!!

Okay, so Friday I was one of those geeks standing at the opening of the nearest AT&T store to get my iPhone.  We waited in line…they came around and asked us to fill out a preliminary form, and to inquire as to which model we were interested in.

Around 9:40 after about 15 people had gone thru the store we were informed that they were out of stock. Apparently this store only had 30 iPhones in stock. And I swear the lady with the four little kids left with 5 of them.

It was quite annoying as the AT&T employees repeatedly refused to specify how many phones they had in stock. Even though they knew that they had twice as many people outside the door when they first opened.  So we waited for a possible 10 o’clock UPS delivery which never came.  The sales guy then offered people to sign up for a drop shipment to arrive in 2-10 days.   Of course for many of us, including the guy from New Jersey standing in line, this was not the best store to drop ship too.

When someone asked when they might next expect a shipment. The salesperson stated 4pm.  But then went on to say that they won’t be selling those until tomorrow.  When asked why, he said because it’d be unfair to us – seeing as we stood (needlessly I might add) in line all morning.  So I then asked, what if we stayed until 4pm.  “No, we still won’t sell them until tomorrow.” So his answer was total balogne.

So a couple hours later I then went to another store nearby, this one happens to be on my way to & from work. And therefore much more convenient to drop ship to. Only to be told they’re not taking any more fulfillment orders.

So fast forward to Monday.  I stop into a store nearby my work. They still have no iPhones.  Ask about fulfillment but turns out I need my wife to be involved as well. Problem, I work in a different city than we live in.  A couple hours later I then had my wife (with 1 yr old daughter in tow) go back to the store near us to do a fulfillment order.  They tell her they’re no longer accepting fulfillment orders because the warehouse is backordered.

So then I talk to Apple customer service, waiting 15 minutes for a manager. The customer service rep was quite nice, but when she didn’t transfer the call properly.

Can we say five ***** for failure?

————

For those wondering why I didn’t just wait and to answer Mathue’s very valid question/comment on why I’d wait in line for an iPhone.  Essentially, my contract with Verizon has been over for a few months.  Both my wife and my phones are on their last legs. My wife’s super crappy Chocolate phone died.  We got an old Verizon phone but it’s very basic and the battery doesn’t hold a charge. My PDA phone had died, I got sent a replacement but this particular unit is really buggy.  (Beyond normal Windows Pocket PC bugginess.) It’s battery is also starting to wear out.

My wife also gets a 24% discount on her AT&T wireless bill. So we’ve been planning to switch. Knowing that the iPhone 2.0 was just around the corner – I did not really want to get another phone. So I was looking to finally get some new phones for my family.  Otherwise, I’d not be so intent on purchasing nor so impatient.

Ideas on passwords and security

I was just talking about this issue with my sys admins after being given a new fairly strong password that I will never remember. Have to keep somewhere or ask for repeatedly when needed.

I’ve long advocated multi-segmented password policies for companies.

Essentially you have a personal password plus a prefix and suffix.  Different logins would correspond accordingly.

> company prefix might be ‘wanu3′

> personal password might be ‘catpi11ar’

> site/server suffix would vary
- ‘ved3xob’ (development server)
- ‘mbx’ (mail box)
- ‘navalforce’ (ie: for salesforce)
OR a pattern (such as no vowels).
- dvsrvr3
- mlbx
- slsfrc

***

What this would do is multi-fold. First there is a generic corporate prefix. This can be changed periodically across the board. (Say once a year, or after a big layoff.)

Then there is a personal password, this makes it so that a password is unique to you.  Now in the case of system passwords, you might have a generic for this be it for a sysadmin account or a database authentication virtual user.

Than finally you have a suffix, this distinguishes each device.  It should be fairly simple and easy to remember for all devices (such as a pattern). But this helps make things more secure by ensuring that if one site is compromised (web server) they cannot simply use that password against other infrastructure elements (ie: your database). Because they’ll be different.

Essentially, you’re reducing the passwords to only three significant components. Now your users need only remember three things for all their corporate passwords. The current corp password, their personal password, and the device pattern.

B-I-N-G-O

You can have passwords that are extremely complex from a technical point to break. Symbols, spaces, numbers, etc.  While being easy enough to remember rather than being kept on sticky notes under keyboards, in drawers or text files on local machines.

- Jason

Thanks to Aral Balkan for his recent post which was the inspiration in my sharing on this topic.

Flash Player 10 – Beta

Demos

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/demos/index.html

Links on Flex integration

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Targeting+Flash+Player+10+Beta+with+Flex+SDK+3.0.x

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+3

http://www.senocular.com/flash/tutorials/flash10drawingapi/ (drawing API tutorial)

UPDATE on “_blank” / navigateToURL() issue

Well, this week provided a fair amount of activity on the bug. That is technically a Flash Player bug (Reference #225434). [For those looking for an interim fix, see my blog post here.]

Well, the good news, Adobe’s recent 9.0.124 release fixes this issue for most browsers.

Safari 2, Safari 3, and Opera were all fine on Mac.
IE6, Firefox, Safari 3 were all fine on Windows XP.

The issue does remain for Firefox on OS X & Linux (Unix code versions). Hopefully they’ll fix it in 9.0.25, but it’s nice to know it’s being worked on.

Note – in Firefox on Mac, the first click worked for me, the second click would be blocked. And eventually all clicks were blocked.

http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-12987