March 28, 2008

Yahoo! Live Upcoming mashup is live

Another Yahoo! Live mashup which pulls data from Upcoming and shows on map. In this case, I used Yahoo! AJAX Maps instead of Yahoo! ActionScript 3.0 Maps.

Currently this mashup is being used on Yahoo! Live WMC site for World Music Conference (WMC).

You can see the mashup here. If you go to Yahoo! Live WMC site, you might notice my name there, Yahoo! Live guys are very kind to give the credit to me by putting my name there, though it's currently misspelled :-)

I generally don't do shameless boasting or self-promotion, but in this case I feel good that one of my mashup makes to Yahoo! Live page :-)


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Posted by Abdul Qabiz at 12:49 PM | Comments (1)

March 22, 2008

Why not Adobe MAX in India? - My opinion

I read Vivek's post on this topic (Why not Adobe MAX in India). I want to add my two cents, probably a different perspective.

It would be great to have event like MAX in India but practically speaking, it might not be successful from organizers point of view. I have attended Macromedia MAX 2005 and noticed things which I have never seen in any Indian Flash/Flex events and others too (except a few). I am optimistic, it would notice similar thing in India, in future.

We hardly notice 70-80% attendance in most of the flex/flash/air events/group-meetings within a city. It would not be good idea to assume people would fly from different cities to attend a two-three days event? Only a few do, and did in initRIA - those guys are probably the right audience for MAX like event in India.

Let's not look the numbers that how many people are using flex/air for development? That way, there are thousands. Only a few of them show up in events probably they can afford time/money and have more motivation (networking, learning and other stuff) to be at events.

I don't mean to offend anyone by saying those who don't attend events are not passionate. There are practical reasons - we can't afford attending events due to time and money. We don't have to prove our passion by registering our presence in any such events or participating in any lists. We are passionate about the technology and programming, we can prove our passion by writing good code and building kick ass-applications. If we can afford time/money - we can participate in different ways (lists, events, group-meetings, etc).

Generally passionate guys do beyond the normal, there is a great example how someone(Gopal) vacated his house and used advance-refund to buy tickets for LCA 2007 - later he has to stay at his friend's place and office. Not many people (can) do that.

I am happy that Indian flex community is growing, but as said I would rather like to see the quality and passion instead of just numbers. I would love to see more contribution from Indian Flex community, including me. Contribution in form of code, projects, libraries, ideas and talks. I hate to say, many of us are still stuck writing code for what is required by client. Many of us just end up getting things done instead of pushing the limits. There are reasons for what we do now, that's how sometimes thing (market) work. This is the reality now, might be different after sometime.

Coming back to the topic, if someone/company organizes a event like MAX (like MAX in USA - that kind of scale), that person/company wants to make sure how successful it would be, considering all the costs involved and speakers (important key people) flying to speak and finding not enough (number and quality) audience?

Now above is my take why Adobe MAX (note - such large scale event) doesn't make sense in India, might make sense in coming years. But I am wondering, why does Adobe think about it? Probably following paragraphs, which I have observed/heard.

How many independent developers in India actually buy original software/license? They want to use a cool software but don't want to buy the software and they also don't prefer to use free software (FOSS or free as in bear)?

I know it's not directly related to the main topic, but probably it makes sense when you are talking about an event like MAX which is sponsored by Adobe (which develops the technologies discussed in the event).

Adobe makes money in India through key accounts like IT/eLearning companies, (Bollywood/advertisement) studios/agencies and banks (for document management servers). Adobe doesn't see huge demand by individuals or smaller companies - anyway most of these use pirated version. Similar case, every second computer runs Microsoft Windows and most of times, pirated version, Microsoft doesn't seem to be bother much about because they make a lot of money from companies and government. What is motivation for companies like Adobe (not talking about Microsoft - they have motivation, relatively larger user-base where they can make more money by converting pirated to genuine) to organize events in India?

Adobe can look at it like this - Most of the companies in USA get their work done in India, the better ecosystem in India would lead more profits for Adobe in long term. Adobe currently pitches it's technologies to US companies via sales channels and those companies put the technologies as requirement for projects (which gets executed by Indian companies). That's how it works most of the time. Now there are support channels - Adobe Evangelists, sales/support guys in India and training partners - for Indian service companies, that's the another reasons not many of developers working in these companies show up in these events?

Whatever I have said so far is my opinion/observation/thoughts I am not judging anyone, neither Adobe nor the flex/air/flash community, here. I would love to be wrong, because as a passionate developer I would want many more events and better ecosystem in India.

It's a long post and with different thoughts, which might sound conflicting with each other. I have gone through various phases in my life and I have noticed different things. All summed together above. I used to travel long distances for half/full day events, even when I was not earning much. I used to be more active on lists/forums compared to what I am now. I think, there are different ways we all are passionate about any things, it all depends on various situations/circumstances. With easy Internet access today, compared to past, I am more connected than I was even after being to all those events. Apologies, if something is not clear - formatting or idea.

Posted by Abdul Qabiz at 03:13 AM | Comments (2)

March 17, 2008

Phase of life - part 2

Around two years back, I was going through similar phase. Things have changed since then, though some new things have come up and some old ones are gone from the list.

I am going to sort out all the issues and bounce back. I would not be active on this blog or else-where until I fix things.

Just wanted to update here, so that you know I am not gone, I am very much here but sorting out issues which are blocking my way to reach where I want to be. I am not giving up.

Posted by Abdul Qabiz at 11:41 PM | Comments (5)

March 15, 2008

Adobe Flex in India - Interview

Shashank Tiwari, principal architect at Saven Technologies and Oreilly network blogger, asked me of my views on Adobe Flex community in India and various other related things (jobs, startups, open source flex, java, ria, etc - all in the Indian context).

Check out my two-cents (Interview) on O'reilly network.

I would love to hear, what you guys think about it? Please let me know (comments, emails or IM).

Thanks to Shashank for giving me this opportunity to share my views with a larger community.

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Posted by Abdul Qabiz at 08:49 AM | Comments (1)

March 14, 2008

Google Docs - Post to your blog

I just figured out, you can post to your blog using Google Docs. I love this feature because it solves following problems:

  • most of the times, I start writing something at home and end up posting using office computer or vice-versa
  • end up using some editing cum publishing software (not many are cross-platform - I always feel like writing Windows Live Writer clone in AIR)
  • VIM is handy for writing but who doesn't want a cross-platform WYSIWYG editor, which can generate valid xhtml?

Google Docs can post to most of the blogs (Blogger, Wordpress, MovableType, LiveJournal, etc).

Check out this article to learn - how to post to your blogs from Google Docs

BTW! This post is authored and published using Google Docs

Update (March 14, 2008): Google Docs is buggy, at least with Movable Type API, It didn't post the subject-title properly, I had to remove preview post

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Posted by Abdul Qabiz at 04:05 AM | Comments (1)

March 12, 2008

YouTube announces Upload API, Chromeless Player with JavaScript API and H.264 videos

YouTube has announced a lot of new features:-


This is really amazing, we can build kick-ass applications that would use YouTube's platform for media upload, conversion (trans coding) and delivery, seamlessly.

I am yet to confirm, how easy it is to load and control YouTube's player in our Flash/Flex apps? Controlling loaded SWFs is hard, unless it allows cross-site scripting through Security.allowDomain ("loaderdomain.com"). I hope, some day Flash Player would have more Security APIs, which would let us expose a set of interfaces to loaders (SWF loads another swf from different domain).

In any case, we can overlay iframe/div to show the video. That's what I am doing for Yahoo! Live Mashup.

Update (March 12, 2008): YouTube's chromeless player can be loaded in Flash/Flex applications and can be controlled. That's what I heard Geoff Stearns, Flash Engineer in YouTube and SWFObject developer, saying in this video.

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Posted by Abdul Qabiz at 05:38 PM | Comments (5)

March 10, 2008

Adobe Online Store - not for India?

I have raised this issue in past, Mrinal Wadhwa raises the same issue, where he is not being able to buy FlexBuilder 3. It's hard to get in touch with resellers, most of the resellers have never heard of FlexBuilder (yeah true) and resellers want four weeks time to deliver, four weeks? I can finish a good small project in that time :-)

I wonder, why we (people from India) can not buy software from Adobe online store? There might be reasons but is Adobe working to solve/fix those issues (tax or whatever)?

BTW! This gives me another reason to evangelize opensource-flex. All the events, I attend, I say: We don't need FlexBuilder, we can do everything with Flex SDK.
Now I am going to say: We don't need FlexBuilder, we can't buy even if we want to, let's not waste our time. Start using Flex SDK - that's all we need :-)

I am very hopeful, we would start seeing opensource tools for flex development. I would love to be part of any such project and can contribute in anyway - hey I am totally cool with Java, so count me in ;-)

BTW! I have got some ideas, I would start some projects soon.

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Posted by Abdul Qabiz at 11:38 PM | Comments (4)

March 02, 2008

Meet the Flex team

Matt Chotin has posted some videos, where he creatively introduces us to most of the Flex/FlexBuilder team members and also talks about various behind the scene things.

It's really nice to see everyone, once upon a time I used to work with them.

In one particular scene, I laughed loud when Alex Harui says "No more questions". Most of the Flex team (Gordon, Deepa, et al) are very active, but Alex is like everywhere on high traffic flexcoders list. There was a time, Matt Chotin, Manish and I could be seen answering most of the questions on flexcoders.

I am always interested in behind-the-scene stuff, be it movies, software or anything else. Thanks Matt for the videos.

Check out the videos

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Posted by Abdul Qabiz at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)

Flex India community grows more

Mrinal posted about the (1000+) numbers, that is, number of members in Flex India community (flex-india). It's really nice to see how number has grown, it surely validates that a lot more companies are using Adobe RIA technologies (Flex/Flash/AIR).

Not very long back, almost same time last year, we started discussing how to build Flex/Flash/AIR ecosystem in India. Though figures are encouraging, I feel, we still have a long way to go. Following are things, I would personally like to see and do:-

  • More participation internationally (via flexcoders, blogs, etc)
  • More code contribution (components, libraries, etc)
  • More innovation (quality discussions, product development, etc)

We know that, most of us (Indian developers) are driven by client's requirement, which means most of the Indian companies are using Adobe RIA technologies because that's a requirement. What I would like to see, more proactive approach towards technology adoption, once that happens, the vision (above points) would come true.

I am sure, it would happen, I have been optimistic. I would try to my bits my way :-)

Congratulations to everyone for achieving this milestone and all the best for future.

Some of my blogs on Indian Flex/AIR community:-

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Posted by Abdul Qabiz at 08:21 PM | Comments (4)

March 01, 2008

Mogulus Grid

I have talked about Mogulus in past, they keep on innovating. I love Mogulus Grid on their homepage. It's just a nice way to see channels.

I had an opportunity to meet Mogulus guys, when they started started development in Bangalore, during our first Bangalore Flex user group. These guys have been working hard, I hope, Google buys them.

Right now watching hazarTV :-)

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Posted by Abdul Qabiz at 03:35 AM | Comments (1)