Marco Casario | RIAvolutionize the web

Flex 3 Beta 3 documentation is not updated to AIR Beta 3 ?

The Flex Doc Team has made an excellent job. Flex documentation is awesome as well as the AIR documentation.
These days I'm spending a lot of time writing some chapters for a book on AIR (I'll give more details next week about this topic). So I'm reading the Flex 3 / AIR 1 documentation very well.
Am I wrong or the Flex 3 Livedocs are not updated to AIR Beta 3  ?
We have to admit that most of the changes take place up front and are very easy to update, but I think that for beginenrs and new developers is essential to have the right and updated documentation.

I'm sure that when the final version will be released everything will be fixed.

Limit users to one session per account in Rich Internet Application

Usually, in a  rich internet application, a logged user is able to do two different logins from two different workstations and maintain two concurrent sessions opened.
In some applications we want to limit the users to one session per account, so we have to take countermeasures.
In our recent project that uses Flex, Granite DS  and Java we've used as a simple solution  solution the  creation of a singleton class that exposes operations on our hashmap.

Emanuele published this interesting article How to avoid multiple per-user sessions in Tomcat/JBoss on the blog.

AIR 1 will be released next month according to Computerworld

Reading this article publised today by ComputerWorld, Adobe is expected to release its Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) next month, ending the wait of organizations such as Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. and American Cancer Society Inc. for a way to tap the best attributes of a browser but without the browser -- to take some of their rich Internet applications to the desktop.
The article worths a reading and as Mike Downey said : "You don't have to be a C++ programmer to build a desktop application any more, using AIR should be a fairly transparent experience for anyone already doing AJAX development."

Go ahead Adobe ! (thanks to Jeffry Houser for his news on Twitter :) )

A report from the Flex 3 and AIR Pre-release tour with James Ward

Yesterday we had James Ward here in Italy presenting at the Flex 3 and AIR Prerelease tour. It was an awesome day spent with James and I had a lot of funny and he showed us a lot of cool demos ! Now I understand much more about BlazeDS and Thermo ! And they are great. We can use RemoteObject with AMF3 for free, without requiring us to buy the Livecycle Data Services license (you need it if you want cool features like Data Management services and other stuff).

The crew that partecipated at the event, came from different development enviroments.There were many Java developers (I extended invitations to the Java Community), PHP Developers as well as Coldfusion developers.
This event was one of the best of the last months organized by Adobe. The location was great, large enough to host more than 100 people. The speaker was awesome (thanks again James) and people were incredibly passionate. It's not so common to see people involved in vertical and developer-oriented technologies like BlazeDS, Livecycle DS and Flex. James received a lot of good and interesting questions that you can read  at the bottom of this report.

We made a cool raffle at the end of the event and we gave a lot of prices : Flex Builder 3 and CS3 Web Premium licenses (thanks to James), books gently offered by O'Reilly and FriendsofED (thanks to FlexGala User Group), Adobe t-shirts, bags, mugs and other gadgets (thanks to Francesca for bringing'em).

It was a great success.
Thanks Sumi, James, Francesca, Adobe and all guys from the community members.

InsideRIA, the new RIA blog sponsored by Oreilly and Adobe

Rich Tretola, the new Community Manager for InsideRIA announced the new project sponsored by O'Reilly and Adobe : InsideRIA.
On this article he offers his insight on the goals and future of InsideRIA introduces the team of experts of InsideRIA. The experts of InsideRIA will explore the many areas of RIA development from web to desktop, the different software choices, the methods for building them, ways to work with data within RIA, etc.

Free AS 3 session for presenting Object Oriented ActionScript in Practice Course

Peter Elst will give a free ActionScript 3 session for preseting his Object Oriented ActionScript in Practice Course at SkillMatters.  So if you are in London on 13th Feb don't miss the event.
The course  has been designed and developed by Peter Elst, author of Object-Oriented ActionScript for Flash 8 (Friends of ED, 2006) and Object-Oriented ActionScript 3.0 (Friends of ED, 2007). Peter is a well known and respected member of the Flash community. Throughout this course you will be introduced to version 3.0 of ActionScript and the OO concepts the language now supports, more importantly real world applications and various tips and tricks will establish best practices for programming and help optimize the development workflow.

360Flex Europe, the rough guide #2: Best Deals for the hotel accomodation

360|Flex Europe (held 7 - 9 April 2008) is the first European Conference purely about Adobe's Flex and AIR technology. The location chosen for the event is Milan, Italy.  The hotel that will hold the 360Flex Europe is the following :
StarHotel Business Palace
Via Gaggia, 3
MILANO, 20139
Italy

The venue is located in the business district of East Milano, 5 km from the heart of the city and 8 km from the Fieramilanocity (Fairgrounds), and a few minutes from the Linate Airport.
In my previous blog post (360Flex Europe, the rough guide #1 ) I gave you some directions to reach the venue from the several Milan airports.
In this post I want to give you some tips and tricks about the hotel accomodations.

Since you would try to find a better deal for the hotel, you can consider to move from the exact location of the event along the Yellow Line of the underground (Line M3).

This is the entire route with all stops of the Line M3 of Milan underground:

   1. San Donato Milanese (Station in the sout-eastern suburb and close to the Financial District of Metanopoli)
   2. Rogoredo F.S. (Station close to the Santa Giulia District and the Rogoredo Railway Station)
   3. Porto di Mare (Station along the Corso Lodi-Via Emilia boulevard)
   4. Corvetto (Station along the Corso Lodi-Via Emilia boulevard)
   5. Brenta (Station along the Corso Lodi-Via Emilia boulevard)
   6. Lodi TIBB F.S. (Station along the Corso Lodi-Via Emilia boulevard)
   7. Porta Romana (Station in the heart of a XVII° Century District)
   8. Crocetta (Station in the city centre close to the Ist University of Milano and the Policlinico Hospital)
   9. Missori (Station in a modern neighborhood in the city centre)
  10. Duomo (Station in the Duomo Cathedral Square, the heart of Milano)
  11. Montenapoleone (Station in the famous Fashion District of Milano)
  12. Turati (Station close to Public Gardens)
  13. Repubblica (Station in the biggest square of Milano, close to the Financial District)
  14. Centrale F.S. (Station in the heart of the Financial District and close to the Main Railway Station)
  15. Sondrio (Station in a modern district close to the Main Railways Station)
  16. Zara (Station at the beginnings of the 10 miles boulevard Zara/Testi)
  17. Maciachini (Station in an important square in the popular Northern Suburbs)
  18. Dergano (Station along the old way to Como, in a popular neighborhood)
  19. Affori Centro (Station along the old way to Como, in a popular neighborhood, close to the Villa Litta Park)
  20. Affori FNM (Station along the old way to Como, in a popular neighborhood)
  21. Comasina (Station along the old way to Como, in a popular neighborhood)

These are some hotels not too far from the conference hotel you can consider as alternatives :

Hotel Mistral
Via V. Toffetti 4, Milan 20139, Italy
Average price: €129

Best Western Hotel Major
Viale Isonzo 2, Milan I-20135, Italy
Average price:  €180

Grand Hotel Visconti Palace
Viale Isonzo 14, Milan 20154, Italy
Hotel class : 4 stars
Average price:  €280

Una Mediterraneo Hotel
14 Via L. Muratori, Milan 20135, Italy
Hotel class : 4 stars
Average price:  €200

Hotel Roma
Corso Lodi 4 (corner Via Salmini), Milan 20135, Italy
Hotel class : 3 stars
Average price:  €60

Golden Tulip Crivis Hotel
Corso Di Porta Vigentina 46, Milan 20122, Italy
Hotel class : 3 stars
Average price:  €160

CityLine Hotel Liberty
Viale Bligny 56, Milan 20136, Italy
Hotel class : 3 stars
Average price:  €170

If you want to book a hotel in the centre of the city you can consider the two underground stops Duomo and Montenapoleone. The core of Milan is unmistakably the cathedral square,  Piazza Duomo, with the spectacular cathedral. In Piazza Duomo you find Milan's most important tourist information office (IAT). From here, you're most likely to walk down the nearby, always crowded Corso Vittorio Emanuele.
Via Monte Napoleone is the ideal location for shopping. With the narrow side streets branching off, claims to be the most elegant street in Milan, and one of the most sophisticated in all of Europe. Via MonteNapoleone used to be a must not only for window-shopping, but also to experience the rarefied and exclusive atmosphere of well-heeled Milan.

These are great places to find accomodations but here you won't find cheap fares (starts from 200Euro per night). Here are a list of hotels around the centre :

Park Hyatt Milan
Via Tommaso Grossi 1

Hotel Spadari al Duomo
Via Spadari, 11

Grand Hotel Et De Milan
29 Via Manzoni,

Gran Duca di York
Via Moneta, 1

Grand Plaza Hotel
Piazza Diaz 3

Another good alternative is to book a Bed&Breakfast in Milan. You can search and find great deals on this site : BBitalia.

I use to travel to Milan once a week so my first choice for the accomodation is the Ibis Hotel in Via Finocchiaro Aprile, 2. It's located 250 metres from the Metro Stop La repubblica, on the Yellow Line 3 of Milan's Metropolitan Underground. It's only 3 metro stops from the Duomo and  it is ideally located for quick and easy access to shopping , cultural attractions  and important exhibitions.
On the week end you can take advantage of chaep fare starting from 69 Euro per night with breakfast included.

On demand mobile distribution with MobyMobile platform, now available in english

We've released MobyMobile platform in english at least ! MobyMobile is an innovative technological solution which gives you on  demand distribution and fruition of editorial contents of various genres  through mobile phones, also delivering high quality interactive images and films.

MobyMobile formats contents in a particular way, reducing their weight in KB in order to considerably reduce the download time required; and therefore, the cost for the user is also kept down and his satisfaction maximum.

MobyMobile is the solution finally capable of distributing multimedia editorial contents through a world of 60 million mobile phones active today in Italy (almost triple the number of computers connected to the internet!).

Virtual Reality with Wii remote and a head mounted sensor bar

It's too cool : Using the infrared camera in the Wii remote and a head mounted sensor bar (two IR LEDs), you can accurately track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen. This effectively transforms your display into a portal to a virtual environment. The display properly reacts to head and body movement as if it were a real window creating a realistic illusion of depth and space. By Johnny Chung Lee, Carnegie Mellon University. For more information and software visit http://johnnylee.net

Photos of Nokia N96

I found some first shots of a new Nokia phone that could be identified as Nokia N96. The design is inspired to N95 and N81 and it looks very cool.

No please Nokia ... not now.
I was very happy of my recent N95 8GB