// labs

The Victorian Zoos Mashups site has been updated to include some new features that we had a bit of fun implementing. A couple of simpler improvements, including mashup ratings, staff picks and an updated gallery view, along with some new functionality to record from your web camera, using a Red5 installation!

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So I went to update all my CS5.5 last night and ended up spending hours trying to get the application manager to actually allow me to update. I kept getting an error saying "You are already running the Adobe Application Manager. Please close all instances of Adobe Application Manager in order to continue with this installation."

Now I had been getting this error for a while, on two (OSX) machines so I decided that enough was enough and needed to get this running. I knew I only had one instance running, I had checked top multiple times to confirm this. So after much research I figured out that it was simply a permissions problem, so who better to alleviate a permissions problem than my good friend sudo.

sudo /Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/OOBE/PDApp/core/Adobe\ Application\ Manager.app/Contents/MacOS/PDApp


And that was it! The Application Manager ran without that annoying message.

So as many people know, I've been promising an update to the KML Loader for a while now, and even to the point where I've had some local revisions and haven't had the time to check them in (I know, I know, bad practice!)

The major update has been to enable the ability to load linked assets. Initially this just extends to ground overlays and custom icons, but now that I have the structure setup to do this I'll be able to add in linked files and styles easily.

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This is just a quick post on how to retrieve your iPhone/iPad/iPod UUID (Unique Device Identifier).

We use this UUID to allow your phone to use development versions of our applications.

There are several ways to do this but the simplest is using Apple's flagship tool, iTunes.

• Open up iTunes and plug in your device
• Select your device in the "DEVICES" list
• Select the Summary tab and you should see the Serial Number as in the screen shot below:

• Click on the Serial Number label and it should change to reveal the UDID:

• You can then either just hit Ctrl/Command-C, or go to Edit / Copy to copy the UDID to the clipboard

You should then be able to paste it into an email etc so we can add your device into our allowed development device list.

Shane and I have been busy the last few weeks putting together the Zappp applications. We're hoping to have something up in the coming weeks. We've really been surprised by the performance and ease of developing mobile applications in Flash Builder and it's getting us very excited about the future!

With all this going on I just had to share a few sneak screenshots of the apps we're building, one for Grinspoon:

And one for Josh Pyke:

As you can see we're developing a series of applications for bands. Really exciting times for us and can't wait to show you the results!

Just assembling a quick list of some of the shortcuts I use everyday in Eclipse. Let me know if you have any other favourites!

• Code hinting: Ctrl + Space
• Change view: Cmd + 3
• Open any file quickly without browsing for it in the Package Explorer: Cmd + Shift + R
• Open a type (e.g.: a class, an interface) without clicking through interminable list of packages: Cmd + Shift + T
• Go directly to a member (method, variable) of a huge class file, especially when a lot of methods are named similarly: Cmd + O
• Go to line number N in the source file: Cmd + L, enter line number
• Go to other open editors: Cmd + E
• Go to a type declaration: F3 or Cmd + click on declaration

Note: Cmd == Ctrl on Windows/Linux

We've recently updated Lachlan's site with some new features, including an introduction slideshow, and integration with RoyaleCMS. The CMS is a powerful, rebrandable CMS for any XML driven website or web application. It's a flash/php based CMS and provides a very simple and clean interface especially good for gallery and image based websites.

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For an upcoming project we needed to stream content from the user's webcam to be recorded on the server. In theory this sounded like a basic operation, having used FMS to this end before, but actually installing and setting up the Red5 server proved to be a little tricky. So I just wanted to outline the process I went through to get a Red5 Server running on ubuntu and how to setup your first recording stream.

Red5 is a powerful Java based video streaming and multi-user solution for the Flash Player. Red5 includes support for the latest multi-user API’s including NetConnection, NetStream and SharedObject’s while providing a powerful RTMP / Servlet implementation. It is basically an open source Flash Media Server.

We're going to go through two major steps here, firstly installing Red5 on Ubuntu and then building a simple application to record the webcam.
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Distriqt has recently entered into a new relationship with One Meaning Communicated Differently. The new entity called Zappp will develop a mobile application platform for musicians in Australia. The project is an exciting development for us and we'll be moving quickly into large scale mobile development over the coming months.

Here's the press release:

We are very pleased to announce the launch of ZAPPP a new company that creates intuitive and engaging apps for mobile, tablet and desktop devices. We are even more pleased to announce that we will be buildings apps for some of the best Artists in Australia including Angus & Julia Stone, Josh Pyke, The Getaway Plan, Little Red, Grinspoon, Illy, Gold Fields and Icehouse(Yes, the Icehouse).

Says co-founder Jai Al-Attas “The whole point of starting ZAPPP was that we didn’t want to just create mobile versions of band websites and call them an App. We think that Apps are useless unless they provide value to both the user and the Artist, so we created the ZAPPP feature which allows the Artist to have a direct & meaningful relationship with the User by offering them exclusive incentives and rewards through the functionality of our Apps”.

Mobile Apps really took off in 2010 and they’re only going to get bigger in 2011 & beyond. At the moment 43% of the Australian population use a smart phone and worldwide they expect app downloads to go from 10 billion in 2010 to over 70 billion in 2014.

ZAPPP is a partnership between creative agency ONE MEANING COMMUNICATED DIFFERENTLY and development whizzes DISTRIQT; who between them have done work for Bands and Brands such as the ABC, Fox Interactive, Victoria Zoos, KR3W Denim, Ford, Bic Pens, V8 Supercars/Tony Hawk, Sparkadia, Bag Raiders, Little Red and Korn to name a few.

Contact us for more information or head over to the Zappp site.

I've been trying out the latest beta of Firefox (4.0b11) which is seeming nice but still has a few little issues (the old no hand cursor issue that chrome had for ages seems to be one of them).

But one thing that was making it impossible for me to work was the timeout crash on the flash player while I was trying to debug.

The default timeout for plugins is 45 seconds which can easily be changed in the about:config page:

• Type about:config
• Look for the dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs
• Set the value to -1

And be blessed with no crash reports for flash debugging. Note however this affects all plugins and operation of the browser, so it's not suggested for normal browsing.