A few days ago I spotted a Twitter conversation between Simon Whatley and Christian Heilmann which brought YQL back into my mind. In case you don't know, YQL stands for Yahoo Query Language is 'an expressive SQL-like language that lets you query, filter, and join data across Web services'. In short, it's a sort of API to a lot of other APIs, and then some. It's also very easy to use since it's effectively just like SQL. For example you can use this example query to get details about a specific Vimeo video. But not only can you query web services using YQL, you can even scrape HTML pages which do not expose an API - very powerful stuff.

Flickr is one of the APIs that's also supported and I figured that it would be a great addition to one of my products, Scribblar, if a user could get easy access to all the images for a given keyword which are released under a Creative Commons license. Again this is very easy with YQL using a query such as this one.

I've created a simple Flex app which wraps the functionality provided by YQL and the Flickr API. You can check it out here. The source overview is here, and the downloadable zip here.

I've just received an interesting email from Jaromir Sivic, a czech developer who sent me news about a project of his called 'Radical Flash Chat'.
While I haven't tried myself yet, Jaromir describes it as a framework that enables PHP and ASP.NET developers to build and manage their own Video Chats, Flash Chats and other multimedia videconferencing applications easily in a very short amount of time. The configuration screen certainly looks quite promising, listing both Wowza and Red5 as a Media server option. There's also an online demo that you can try (that's if it is online, which seems to be fairly intermittent).

I encourage you to try Jaromir's product and share your feedback with him, or indeed below in the comments.

I'm happy to post any news about similar projects or other news items, just drop me an email.

This is what happens when you stand on the shoulders of giants - you don't quite know what you are doing, at least in my case.
I've been working on a way to dynamically load images into a Flex app and set them as the tiled background of a Canvas component. Luckily I spotted creacog's work which I adapted a little bit for my needs. You can see the results here.

So far the image loading and displaying as a borderskin of the Canvas works, but as you can see when you drag the box around is that as soon as scrollbars appear the image is no longer rendered and the Canvas's background color it displayed instead.

I'd appreciate any tips on this. You can see the sources by right-clicking the app or directly from here (the .zip is here).

Feel free to use and reuse this code if you find it useful, and remember to credit creacog.co.uk who has done the hard work on this.

The time has finally come to lift the lid on this. As you've probably all heard by now, Adobe today announced a brand new feature for the upcoming Flash Professional CS5: Export as iPhone app. Insane! Essentially what this feature will allow you to do is a cross-compilation from SWF to Objective-C - the resulting app is a totally legit iPhone/iPod Touch app which can be submitted to the Apple app Store. In my case that process has already happened, and the app has been approved!

I will post more details about the development process when things have calmed down a little, but for now I'm super exited to announce the immediate availability of my first application for iPhone and iPod Touch: my good old Just Letters game.
I figured this Flash game of mine which stems back from around 2005 would make an ideal candidate for a touch screen device, and I think I haven't been completely wrong with that assumption. Not only is Just Letters one of the first games built in Flash to ever hit the App Store but I have a feeling it is the very first game that use Flash Media Server to provide the real-time features.

In celebration of the launch I am distributing 10 free voucher codes for the US App Store (sorry, the vouchers do not work on App Stores outside the US). The game normally retails for $0.99. Just leave a comment below and I will pick a random 10 later today (leave your email too!).

Please help me spread the word about this game by blogging about it, tweeting or getting your grandma to buy a copy. Don't forget to review and rate it on the App Store too. please point people to the following age when you link to the game: http://www.muchosmedia.com/justletters (muchosmedia is my company, the 'official' developer behind the game).
Last but not least, if you need the game's icon or some screenshots then you can grab a small zip (1MB) from here. It also contains the game description in text format.

Thanks for your support!

I've had very little experience with Flash Lite to date, but right now I'm working on a project which requires a mobile element to it. Not satisfied with doing the sensible thing and playing it safe I thought it would be great to offer some real-time features on a mobile, either via AFCS or FMS.
So I set out to see what was possible, in particular I wanted to make sure that Remote SharedObjects (RSOs) and NetConnection methods were available in Flash Lite. Here's what I found.

I recently had a requirement for Scribblar (more on that site in another post) to verify if a domain name or page URL entered by a user is valid. Luckily ActionScript 3 features support for Regular Expressions, however my RegExp skills are non existent. So I reached out via Twitter to see if anyone could help. It took all of 10 minutes and a quick session on pastebin for Robert 'Da Man' Hall to sort the problem out for me. In order to preserve this nugget of knowledge for future generations, here it is.

Usage

Thanks Robert!

It's a bit embarrassing to admit that it has taken me this long to post this app. I first spoke about it at my talk at MAX 2008 in Milan but then Christmas came and went and I got swamped with work... Apologies, but better late than never.

So what have we got here? My PureMVC Skeleton App is a simple Flex project that uses the PureMVC framework to give you a bit of a head start with your next FMS project. I'm by no means suggesting that this is the best way to build an FMS app but what I can say is that it works well for me. Not only that but since I've picked up PureMVC I have been able to build much larger projects than ever before, and the framework allows me to come back to an app months later and pick it up in no time at all. Everything has its place and it's easy to find your way around, and projects generally end up well maintained.
One thing I should point out is that the app itself has no UI - there's nothing to see when you compile it (hence the skeleton bit in its name). You will however see traces if you compile a debug project, or install Firebug for Firefox so you can see the Thunderbolt AS3 traces I tend to use extensively.

In order to connect to your own FMS application you first need to create it on FMS (mine is called pmvcskeleton) and then go into the ResourceBundleProxy and on line 42 add your corresponding RTMP string. I'm not sure if this is a good idea but I often use ResourceBundles for configuration options such as the RTMP string, I find it quite handy since they usually do not change so I just compile that in.

It helps if you are a bit familiar with FMS based applications and the MVC design pattern. For everything else check out the PureMVC website, it has tons of info and a lively community. Or why not sign up to my FlashMedia List, there's always a bunch of knowledgeable people there ready to help.

On this note I will leave you to it, take a look at the app and feel free to post a comment if anything isn't clear.

Massive thanks to Simon who gave me some excellent tips when I got stuck with certain PureMVC nags.

Download the project .zip here.

Here's a Connect presentation that some of you may find useful. Kevin Towes presents on the history, concepts and development tasks of building a media player in Flash.
I think his presentation is particularly useful to less technical people who would like to understand a bit more about the Flash development process, and also get a feel for the challenges in building a video player - it turns out it's not as easy as some may think. And since this is what I have been doing a few times over it makes me look really clever.

My friend Simon has just released a neat little Flex application that allows you to test and troubleshoot a simple RemoteObject connection between Flex and CF. It's mainly aimed at people who are new to Flex (or CF) but it will undoubtedly also come in handy for more experienced developers. In fact I think this would also make a great little AIR application.
Sources are provided and you can find all the necessary information here.

I've spent a few hours over the last week or two on porting Christophe Coenraets' Map Rooms application to FMS, Wowza (and Red5 I think _ I haven't tested that one).

Map Rooms is a Flex application that uses the Google Maps API for Flash in order to provide collaboration features as well as a text chat. You can test drive the application for yourself here.
The original application is powered by BlazeDS, but since I am more familiar with FMS I decided to port it over. All source files are posted here (Zip file with sources is here) and I left some of the original BlazeDS code in there (commented out). The basic differences between Christophe's version and mine is the fact that my application first connects to FMS and then uses SharedObject onSyncs to provide the data sharing features.

Just a quick heads up. There will be some more live webcasting throughout the day today, and we'll also be utilizing the chat a great deal. This was a well received feature yesterday and actually brought tears to my eyes with laughter at times.
The chat is projected up front on the stage and constantly used as a talkback channel to the speakers on stage - a great concept in my opinion.

b.TWEEN is turning out to be a great event. It's my first time in Manchester and which is a great city and a brilliant place for a venue. We're at the Museum of Science and Industry, so there's some cool old school tech to be seen, too. I'll head down to the powerhouse later and check out the steam engines...

I've just arrived at b.TWEEN08 in Manchester.

The official line about the event is as follows: b.TWEEN is a unique cross media gathering where interactive ideas are seeded, shared and sold.
(It uses technology in innovative ways and radical formats to deliver cutting edge, interactive events with networking and business at their core.
b.TWEEN is about knowledge sharing, being inspired, learning from peers and doing deals.

My company muchosmedia has built the text chat that runs alongside the live webcast (all the streaming is being handled by our friends at Kinura). What's unique about the chat is that we've come up with and built a gateway to allow the audience to take part in the chat (which is projected onto a big screen at the venue) via sending an SMS text message to a dedicated number. I'll post some images as soon as I can.

Forget spinning cubes with video stuck on their sides and instead check out the demo below. From Immersive Media, same the guys that brought you street view on Google Maps, comes an innovative new way to navigate 360 degrees inside a live playing video. How is it delivered? Flash of course.

Check out this demo. Once the main content starts to play you can click inside the video and drag your mouse into the direction you want to view. Make sure you check out the snowboarders at about 1 minute in - and follow them as they go over the kicker.

There are more demos here.

I spent a couple of hours today on getting my good old Scratchpad application to run on Facebook - a rather pointless exercise I know, especially since I hardly use Facebook at all. Still, please do me a favor and add the app to your profile so it gets some eyeballs - I need at least 5 users before I can submit it to the application directory. Thanks!

Or maybe I should say pseudo-stream... but hey, at least the headline got you to read the post :-)
I'm sure that by now you all know about this popular PHP approach to serving FLV videos progressively, but with the added benefit of being able to seek to any part of the video more or less immediately - something that traditional progressive delivery is not capable of.
The PHP approach (which in the meantime has been ported to many other server side languages such as ASP and ColdFusion) is targeted squarely at FLV delivery, a format which may lose a bit of its popularity over the coming months as H.264 support for Flash video becomes more widely available.
But fear not, because the clever guys from code-shop have alread been busy developing a H.264 pseudo streaming plugin for Lighty, a very light weight and performant webserver. The plugin allows Lighty to serve up H.264 encoded video content in an almost identical way to the 'old school' PHP method. The implementation as a webserver plugin is also much more efficient than the script based approach (which itself is not bad at all).
You can check out a demo here.

I've recently started working with Cliff Hall's PureMVC ActionScript framework (an alternative to Cairngorm or ARP for example) and after investing in a day's training and some sit-down-and-read-the-docs time I really started to like it. I believe it fills a gap in the market for coders like myself who know their way around AS, Flash and Flex but who struggle sometimes with implementing a good architecture. And that's where frameworks such as PureMVC come in - they force you into a best practices approach and to me that's exactly what I needed. You end up with an application that is much tighter, better structured and scalable, yet easy to maintain.
PureMVC is a bit of a new kid on the block when it comes to MVC frameworks so it's great to see that it stacks up well against the alternatives, so well in fact that it came out on top during a shootout at the Silicon Valley Flex Users Group (SilvaFUG).
PureMVC is my chosen framework for the time being and I am using for all my current projects.

The most popular post by far on my site is the one covering pseudo video streams via PHP. In a nutshell, this method allows you to provide a streaming-like experience to your users without having to deploy a streaming server. This offers the benefits of a low cost architecture using only a webserver which runs PHP or one of the ports that users have posted in the comments, including .NET, ColdFusion and others.

Lorenzo Benjamin of xmoov.com has taken the PHP approach to the next level and added a bunch of nice features to it. He's also providing a productized offering around it which add some real value to anyone who's looking for a turn key solution. He's also followed my example and open sourced his PHP code. Nice job Lorenzo. I've seen other 'companies' take the code I posted and use it for commerical purposes without as much as an attribution, let alone posting their modified sources.
It's therefore even better to see all the efforts that people are putting into this concept, posting their findings, sharing their code and writing about their experiences. It also shows a clear need for a low cost streaming video platform for Flash video.

Another video on Adobe Media Player is making the rounds. You can check it out here. Deeje Cooley from Adobe not only demos the player but also talks about the branding features, RSS integration amongst other features. Well worth checking out.
Adobe's upcoming Player certainly appears as the new (and better) iTunes for web video.

More footage on the Adobe Media Player - Craig Barberich demos a preview of the upcoming player at Streaming Media East with a little preview of some of its interactive features. I'm not sure how stuff such as the clickable jacket will be possible without some serious manual intervention or setup but nevertheless this is once again showing us were it's all heading. Way to go Adobe!

If you are using Flash Media Encoder to stream the live video portion of your application but you also need to accpt 'normal' user connections in the same app then this code snippet may be helpful to you.
This code checks the Client.agent property of a connecting client in serverside ActionScript (typically in your main.asc file) and determines if FME 1.0 connects. You can base the rest of your connection logic around that. Likewise if it's a normal user connecting you may run other logic. Take for example a Peoplelist: you wouldn't want FME to show up in there as an undefined user would you?
This will trace either 'FME connects: true' or 'FME connects: false'.

Maybe this will help someone.

Here's one I made earlier.
This simple Player uses the new FLV Captioning Component in Flash CS3 (note: Flash CS3 is currently available as part of some of the new CS3 Suites. The standalone product will follow). It's a simple demo but you got to admit that it's pretty neat - consider also that the captions are read from an external file.
No sources this time (sorry) as this is part of a commercial project I'm working on. However it will be easy to recreate once you got Flash CS3.

I meant to post this since a couple of weeks... On my little round trip through the blogosphere I spotted this gem on Steve Wolkoff's blog: a pair of Flash apps that will help you get up and running with Flash Media Server.

The applications include one live streaming publish/subscribe piece and one streaming video playback application, including all sources. You can download both from this Adobe Connect room.

Probs to Scott Morgan (FMS Support Engineer) who created these apps for us.

I'm currently working on a video chat app using Flash Media Server and Flex. This will be version 2 of my Ameegos.com excercise and this time I want to add real scalability to the app. It already supports multiple rooms (which users can create) and is based around a concept of one master application instance holding a persistent SharedObject containing all the room information which each room fetches as it starts up.
A very popular UK dating/adult site (URL on request ;-) has bought the code from me and is running a modified version of Ameegos on their site and the chat is proving popular to put it mildly. So popular in fact that a single server couldn't cope with the traffic and was frequently being brought to its knees by around 1500 concurrent video chatters.

Huddle is a new web conferencing service which facilitates users to deliver rich media trainings, presentations, or events in real time and on demand. With Huddle you can schedule and hold a global virtual meeting with dozens, even hundreds of people in a fraction of the time and cost it would take to meet face-to-face.
HUDDLE is now giving away 100 free accounts - all you need to do is sign up and hope that you are amongst the first 100 users to do so.

To find out more about HUDDLE you can check out their website's FAQ and Whatis sections.
HUDDLE is a product of Eli Kirk with fellow developer Jake Hilton as the driving force. You can be sure that this is a solid product and service (after all it runs on Flash Media Server - and Linux I presume ;)).
Feel free to leave feedback here once you have tried HUDDLE. I sure will give it a spin as soon as I can.

Sign up for a free HUDDLE account.

My friend Owen just posted a question on instance to instance data sharing on the Flash Media List. I've sent him a piece of sample code which uses two instances of the same application and the help of a Proxied SharedObject to keep track of the current user count in each instance.
I think this code may be useful to some of you (there doesn't seem to much documentation on Proxied SharedObjects) so here it is.

As promised I am making the main working parts of my Snapshotter application available for download. Note that the zip contains an earlier version of the application and does not include the xml image gallery component. However all the core functionality which is the AS for taking the snapshots as well as the CFC code to make the flv to jpg conversion is included.

The code can be used without restriction under the MIT License. Let me know if you make any enhancements to the application, I'd be keen to see them.

A new experiment based on an application which I created for the London Flash Platform User Group.

Snapshotter will capture a flv snapshot from your local webcam, send it to FMS, invoke a CFC via Remoting which in turn invokes ffmpeg which converts the flv to jpg format. The file is then written to an XML file and a gallery created which in turn is loaded in the swf. Sounds more complex than it is.

I am going to post the sources (fla, cfc) for the conversion process in the next few days.

Check out Snapshotter 1.0

This is not your usual beta test - musical talent is needed (but I guess it doesn't matter if you lack it completely). Internetkaraoke.net is an online Karaoke service which offers over 5000 songs to sign along. The site is live but hasn't officially been launched yet and the developers have asked me for help beta testing the site. If you fancy having a go yourself then go to www.internetkaraoke.net and click on buy credit, then enter code 'fcomguru' to receive 20 free credits.

Please post your feedback in the comments of this post or email them to biffer AT biffcom.com

The site uses Flash Video streaming courtesy of Akamai.

Enjoy.

A big thank you to Andree Malave who has adapted my Flash Video Filters demo app to support captions. The text is loaded from an XML file and synced with the video as it plays. Note that FLVPLayback has been replaced with the MediaDisplay component (although it could also work with FLVPlayback). Download source files

Yeah ok I was a bit bored so I grabbed the latest footage from my Sevenkay comrades (miss you guys), thrown in some ideas from Lee Brimelow's Flash8 Video DVD (*highly recommended by the way*), added Grant Skinner's excellent ColorMatrix class and out comes... well some nice looking video effects I think. The beast is a little CPU heavy and obviously serves no real purpose other than demoing what Flash8 is capable of. You can quite easily imagine some neat transitional effects between several clips in a playlist - or some nice fadeouts a la Gallery Incomplet.

Further down I have added some screenshots. Remember you need Flash Player 8 to view this... or maybe Flashobject's Expressinstall feature works and you're all converted now :-)

Download source files

What do you think to this? Would love to hear your comments.