Christmas simply isn’t Christmas without a good movie to watch with the family, settled around the fireplace / Christmas tree / massive box of chocolates. You may also say that a movie just isn’t a movie if the playback is of sub-quality and jumping all over the place like a rabid kangaroo. Nana wouldn’t be impressed ( with the kangaroo OR the scratchy online movie you’re making her watch )

Luckily there is an answer, thanks to the release today (1st December 2010) of the Flash Player 10.2 beta, which includes the fantastic Stage Video API.

Seeing is believing, and so take a look at this video, recorded at the MAX 2010 Sneak Peek event, which showcases the Stage Video beautifully.

Flash Player 10.2 beta Stage Video API enables stunningly smooth high performance video playback across platforms, and will help web sites deliver best-in-class video across screens and browsers by enabling access to hardware acceleration of the entire video pipeline. Developers will be able to take advantage of this new model to deliver improved playback quality while reducing processor usage by up to 85 percent. This enhanced performance will build on the benefits of H.264 hardware accelerated decoding introduced in Flash Player 10.1.

Check out the official release notes from the Adobe Flash Player Team blog and find out a little more at Adobe Flash Labs.

Every year, the Christmas retail market becomes saturated with ‘the next best thing’ in appliances to enhance your life and to make it easier, richer and more enjoyable..

Before you rush out to start spending your hard earn coins on any half-rate machine that you think your Auntie Margaret would enjoy, be advised that the best device so far hasn’t even been released yet, and wont be out until after the New Year. What device is that, I hear you cry in chorus?

Why, the BlackBerry Playbook of course.

If you missed the Adobe MAX keynotes, or perhaps you havent been able to get onto YouTube recently (running an Apple device, are we?) check out this little gem of a video and see the BlackBerry Playbook in action, running multiple AIR applications including streaming video over wi-fi.

What’s even more impressive and exciting about this sexy little device is this; as it runs Adobe AIR applications, any developer has the means and ability to start developing their own applications. All you need to get up and running is the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK (an updated version of which has been released) and the simulator to test your ingenious, no-doubt awesome applications.

Perhaps you are already an AIR developer; maybe you know your Flex inside out or you OWN Actionscript’s ass. Maybe you havent had a chance to play around with AIR at all due to commitments, timescales or perhaps language barriers. It doesn’t really matter what skill level you have. AIR is incredibly easy to pick up and incredibly enjoyable to develop applications in. Couple that with a fantastic helpful community and no lack of resources to assist in learning, there’s no need to fear the AIR environment.

The RIM / BlackBerry guys seem to have a good grasp on the amount of documentation and details publicly available. Although still in early stages, there is already a wide array of resources available to you to get you up and running in no time.

So, accept the challenge.. come up with the next Angry Birds, or amaze your friends and influence people with your hi-definition video playback application. Whatever you choose to do with the SDK, this little pocket-rocket is going to certainly be on the top of your Auntie Margaret’s wishlist. Put it on yours too.

Christmas. A truly magical season. Log fires, chestnuts, snowmen and candy canes. Children singing in Christian rhyme with logs on the fire and gifts on the tree, a time for rejoicing in all that we see. But let’s stop quoting a Cliff Richard song.

As we all know, Christmas is not just a time for sharing the joys of the festive spirit, but also giving and receiving PRESENTS!

To begin the seasonal cheer, #RIAdvent is giving away one copy of ColdFusion Builder to a lucky competition winner.

To be in with a chance to win, simply Tweet the following message:

“I want to win a copy of #ColdFusion Builder from #RIAdvent Calendar. http://riadvent.mattgifford.co.uk/ #DEC03Giveaway”

One entry per person, and the winner will be drawn at random on Wednesday 15th December 2010.

Good luck to all who enter, and may you receive gifts and surprises aplenty from Santa’s bulging sack.

Web design and development.

How many times have we seen/read/spoken those words? We may be able to code a variety of sorting algorithms, recursive function callbacks and dabble with the delicate art of CSS transitions and DOM manipulation, BUT do we really know what it all means?

The basic elements of web design form the foundations upon which we are able to build our skills and abilities, to push the boundaries and to continue exploring new options, techniques and mind-blowing awesome-ness. Yeah, awesome-ness.

Let us not forget these elemental building blocks to which we owe so much.

Bring on "Interact with Web Standards: A Holistic Approach to Web Design"

A perfect book for any web professional of any skill level.. to quote from the book:

"Laying the foundation for a solid understanding of Web design, this book weaves together industry best practices and standards-based design techniques."

#RIAdvent is proud to be giving away three copies of the book this Christmas; imagine the look on your Uncle Bob’s face when he unwraps this little beauty as a gift from you. Best. Christmas. Ever.

To be in with a chance to win, simply Tweet the following message:

“I want to Interact with Web Standards and win a book from #RIAdvent Calendar. http://riadvent.mattgifford.co.uk/ #DEC04Giveaway”

One entry per person, and the winner will be drawn at random on Wednesday 15th December 2010.

Good luck to all who enter, and hopefully you’ll get to see that happy look on your Uncle Bob’s face.

Rest easy.. there are only 19 days left until the big day. You probably have a lot of things to prepare and organise; after all, those presents won’t buy themselves.

Take your mind off of things for the next 3 minutes and 46 seconds and unwind with #RIAdvent Calendar.

Enjoy your first helping of Chocolate.

We’ll get back to the geeky stuff tomorrow.

Mobiles.. chances are we all have one (quite possibly more than one), and with the advent of truly capable smartphones, we now run our lives from them.

Social updates, email notifications and text messaging aside, it is becomming evidentally clear that we need to be designing and developing with these devices in mind.

Whether it’s your website, blog, e-commerce application or photo gallery with images from your sister Annabel’s toga party/skiing trip combination, the ability to successfully tailor the content and serve it up appropriately for the smaller mobile devices is more of a requirement now that it ever has been.

Mobile applications have now become such an intrinsic part of our everyday lifestyle, we would now be hard-pressed to manage without them.

You too can ensure you are keeping your site’s visitors and possible customers up to date through the development of a mobile application powered by Adobe AIR and written in Flash Builder’s latest beta release, "Burrito".

Find out exactly what you need to get started with this superb guide to help you develop mobile applications in Burrito, and follow some amazingly simple tutorials to create visual and powerful applications that will keep people coming back for more.

The end of one year obviously brings about the birth of another, and with that fresh start we look towards the future with optimism in our hearts and firm beliefs in our bellies (as well as 25Kg of Christmas turkey and leftovers), and we start to plan our New Years resolutions.

I’m fairly sure we’ve all done this at least once. The excitement of starting something new, of sticking to a regime, of banishing the beer gut and justifying that monthly fee to the gymnasium.

In doing so, we choose to bring about an era of change; a new way of doing things. Change is a fantastic thing, yet it is not un-common to fear it.

For example, take a look at your working life. Developing a new framework or simply implementing a new process into your daily routine could save you / your company time and money, yet your team members / co-workers / colleagues may fear the change.

Fight the urge to kick them in the shins and shout your way into superiority, for although satisfying, you’ll ensure that you won’t have a team / co-workers / colleagues for long.

Enter Terry Ryan and his new book “Driving Technical Change: Why People on Your Team Don’t Act on Good Ideas, and How to Convince Them They Should" published by The Pragmatic Bookshelf

In this book you’ll discover the importance of understanding any resistance that clients / team members may have, and ultimately help you to fine-tune your approach and to assist in promoting your ideas without forcing them to breaking point.

#RIAdvent is incredibly excited to be giving away two copies of this fantastic book this Christmas.

To be in with a chance to win, simply Tweet the following message:

“I want to Drive Technical Change and win a book from #RIAdvent Calendar. http://riadvent.mattgifford.co.uk/ #DEC07Giveaway”

One entry per person, and the winner will be drawn at random on Monday 20th December 2010.

Good luck to all who enter, and with any luck your team members / colleagues will understand your ideas without the need for that sledgehammer.

Too many cooks spoil the broth, or so the saying goes.

This may well be true when it comes to the kitchen and a concoction of varying culinary skills and styles. After all, your Nan’s take on a cheese and herb sauce may differ greatly from your Mother’s version. The both of them vying for position as head chef, each adding their own spices and flavours. All flair but no communication. Then what have you got? A disturbingly offensive-to-the-tastebuds *cheese and herb sauce. No one want’s that to happen.

*Please feel free to substitute cheese and herb sauce for something more your taste in this example.

However, in terms of design and development, creativity is not hindered or marred by too much input; in fact, very much the opposite.

Through sharing, communication and collaboration with other creative thinkers, we can simply and effectively enhance our personal skills and understanding, as well as gain new perspectives and outlooks on various issues and techniques.

The best way to mingle, interact and meet other “creatives” would be to join a group of some description. If only something like that existed...

BOOM!

Introducing Adobe Groups.

There are many fantastic groups set up and managed by Adobe product users, community professionals and dedicated creative minds.

With currently 700+ groups worldwide, there is undoubtedly a group suitable for you, guaranteed. A product-specific group, focussing solely on one single product from the Adobe family, or a general user group, open to all products and technologies; whatever you need, there are groups for you.

Why not start your New Year with a visit to the Adobe Goups site and join a group. Meet new people, share your ideas and collaborate on projects. Let those creative juices flow!

It’s a fast-paced world we live in. Constant streams of information from Twitter, Facebook and other socially-driven, rapid-delivery sites provide us with fresh data minute by minute.

Don’t be left out in the cold this winter. See how you can take advantage of current technologies and trends to create feature-rich web applications implementing real-time chat and content push by getting your hands on a copy of “Building the Realtime User Experience - Creating Immersive and Interactive Websites” written by Ted Roden and published by O’Reilly.

This book shows you how to build realtime user experiences by adding chat, streaming content and including more features on your site one piece at a time, without making big changes to the existing infrastructure. You’ll also learn how to serve realtime content beyond the browser.

#RIAdvent Calendar, with thanks to the Adobe Community Team, has one copy of the book to give away.

To be in with a chance to win, simply Tweet the following message:

“I want to build a Realtime User Experience with #RIAdvent Calendar. http://riadvent.mattgifford.co.uk/ #DEC09Giveaway”

One entry per person, and the winner will be drawn at random on Monday 20th December 2010.

Good luck to all who enter, and may your stream always be constant and valid.

Getting straight to the point in today’s #RIAdvent entry.

CFDude has become a synonymous visual icon for the modern-day ColdFusion developer - he rocks, as does ColdFusion. Oh yeah.

#RIAdvent has two CFDude t-shirts to give away.

To be in with a chance to win, simply Tweet the following message:

“I want to win a #ColdFusion CFDude tshirt from #RIAdvent Calendar. http://riadvent.mattgifford.co.uk/ #DEC10Giveaway”

One entry per person, and the winners will be drawn at random on Monday 20th December 2010.

Good luck to all who enter, and may you be wearing your CFDude t-shirt with pride (and a festive beer in hand).

Televisions... long have they been the staple form of entertainment within the majority of households across the world.

With such a wealth of content available to view (not all of it good, admittedly) we find ourselves gathering around the flickering image box throughout the festive period, relaxing with family and friends in front of a good movie, comedy show or courtroom drama.

With the advent of improved technologies and consumer requirements, we now strive to get the most out of our televisions; on-demand content, high-definition video playback, wireless connectivity and networking.. the list is endless.

The fantastic news for AIR developers or RIA developers wishing to extend their product base is the fact that Adobe AIR can also be consumed, deployed and run on certain next-generation television models.

Check out Kevin Lynch showcasing the Google TV running AIR flash streaming at MAX 2010.

Pretty impressive, right? Uh-huh.

So, how do you get involved in developing the next-generation of applications that will run on your television?

Head on over to the Adobe devnet site and take a look at the Flash Platform for TV summary, which contains all of the FAQ, demos, guides and tools to get you introduced to the next-level of device development.

It’s what John Logie Baird invented the television for.

Ok, we’re getting closer.. there are only 12 days left until the big day. Time to make sure you’ve got everything you need to get; after all, you won’t want to be stuck in a last-minute shopping frenzy.

Take your mind off of things for the next 3 minutes and 14 seconds and unwind with #RIAdvent Calendar.

Enjoy your second helping of Choco-choco-late.

We’ll get back to more geeky stuff tomorrow.

So, you want to extend your development arsenal and optimize your skills? You want to take the jump into RIA development and start integrating more Flash-based content into your applications?

Perhaps you want to start building AIR applications to push services / features / entertainment out to your users? Maybe you are already a skilled Flash developer but want to finetune your skills?

Whomever you are, and for whatever reason you are looking, we have something that may help brighten up your cold Winter months in the form of "Learning ActionScript 3.0" by Rich Shupe and Zevan Rosser.

This book is a fantastic introductory guide into ActionScript development, and will be provide a fantastic, valuable resource to new aspiring AS developers, or those wishing to fully make the transition to version 3.0. Branded as "the best book on ActionScript ever written" by Lee Brimelow, this is something you are going to want on your bookshelf.

#RIAdvent Calendar, with thanks to the Adobe Community Team, has one copy of the book to give away.

To be in with a chance to win, simply Tweet the following message:

“I want to learn ActionScript 3.0 with #RIAdvent Calendar. http://riadvent.mattgifford.co.uk/ #DEC13Giveaway”

One entry per person, and the winner will be drawn at random on Monday 20th December 2010.

Good luck to all who enter, and may you never confuse your sprites with your widgets again.

Straight to the point. That’s how we like it.

The Adobe Community team do a fantastic job; coordinating events, providing focal points for community members to feedback, organising sessions, managing the group programmes... the list goes on and on, and the tireless work also never seems to end for them.

In a further effort of support, they have provided a few of the fantastic prizes that #RIAdvent has been able to giveaway to it’s lucky festive readers, and today we are offloading giving away the bumper-pack of them all, the Adobe goodie bag!

To be in with a chance to win, simply Tweet the following message:

“I am feeling the #Adobe love from #RIAdvent Calendar. http://riadvent.mattgifford.co.uk/ #DEC14Giveaway”

One entry per person, and the winner will be drawn at random on Tuesday 21st December 2010.

Good luck to all who enter, and may your stockings be eternally filled.

Each Christmas, you’re almost guaranteed to receive at least one book as a gift. It’s an un-written law.

Chances are equally quite high that the afore-mentioned book you will undoubtedly receive will be about something you have absolutely no interest in whatsoever.

Perhaps your Great-Aunt Gladys is hoping you’ll come to her way of thinking and take up cross stitch, with the help of the book she has given you. Hmmm... sounds lovely. As tantalising as that sounds, you’re pretty certain that your interests lie in dealing with other patterns and paradigms (not the stitching / knitting variety).

Enter Matt Gifford and his new book “Object-Oriented Programming in ColdFusion" published by Packt Publishing.

In this book you’ll get to grips with ColdFusion Components, inheritance, encapsulation, gateways, data access objects, beans, service layers and so much more. You’ll see simple real-world examples of implementing object-oriented design patterns and gain a better understanding of the often confusing jargon involved.

#RIAdvent is giving away two signed copies of this book this Christmas.

To be in with a chance to win, simply Tweet the following message:

“I want to OOP my #ColdFusion appllications and win a book from #RIAdvent Calendar. http://riadvent.mattgifford.co.uk/ #DEC15Giveaway”

One entry per person, and the winner will be drawn at random on Tuesday 21st December 2010.

Good luck to all who enter, and may you impress your Great-Aunt Gladys with your knowledge of polymorphism as she drops a stitch in amazement.

Deck your halls in boughs of holly. Fa la la la la la la la laaaa.

Another joyous part of the festive season is the tradition of decorating. We adorn our trees with tinsel, baubles, fairies and so much more. Perhaps a holly wreath on the front door to show your festive spirit to all who pass by.

And the lights! Don’t forget the lights!

Here at #RIAdvent we want to assist you all in starting your Christmas decorations, and to ensure everyone is in some form of Christmas spirit and adding some festive cheer to their screens.

With VERY special thanks to the talented Andy Matthews, a developer / designer within the Adobe community, who rose to the challenge from #RIAdvent to design a simple but festive desktop wallpaper to brighten everyone’s day.

Especially commissioned this year for #RIAdvent, we truly hope you enjoy this beautiful wallpaper.

Download 1600 x 1200 version | Download 1920 x 1200 version

Follow Andy (@commadelimited) on twitter, check out his blog or his freelance site over at commadelimited.com.

We didn’t expect such a big response to the CFDude tshirts. It appears as though he is incredibly popular, and many readers wanted him to join them for Christmas and to adorn their chests with pride.

We don’t like seeing anyone unhappy, and so #RIAdvent has ONE MORE CFDude t-shirt to give away.

To be in with a chance to win, simply Tweet the following message:

“I want to win a #ColdFusion CFDude tshirt from #RIAdvent Calendar. http://riadvent.mattgifford.co.uk/ #DEC17Giveaway”

One entry per person, and the winner will be drawn at random on Friday 24th December 2010.

Good luck to all who enter, and may you be lucky enough to wear your CFDude t-shirt with pride.

Tools are better when they work togther. It’s a well known fact. Take a go-kart, for instance - perhaps the one currently sitting beneath the Christmas tree, wrapped and addressed to your little nephew Johnny. It’s a beautiful machine; sleek, shiny and (to him) the fastest, greatest machine on the earth.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that glorious go-kart. But we can certainly enhance it’s performance with the addition of some new tools. Slicker tyres, improved rear spoiler... and a massive engine. Turbo-charged and ready to roll.

With the additional options, speed, versatility and updates now in place, this go-kart is capable of so much more.

Now, imagine that Flex application you are working on. It too is sleek, shiny and powerful. Dynamically data-driven and covering cross-platform devices, it does the job and it does it well. But how can we help to add a little extra ‘oomph’ to the application’s design?

Bring on Adobe Flash Catalyst

With Flash Catalyst at your fingertips, you have the power and ability to create stunning user interfaces for your Flex application using your favourite Adobe graphic software (Fireworks, Photoshop or Illustrator), and the enhanced ability to add interaction, component layouts and so much more.

Perhaps you lack the design skills needed to bring your application to the next level, but you know the right person who can? Optimise your workflow and collaboration skills with the use of Flash Catalyst. Easily integrate and incorporate the designs into your code to complete your application and release it with the stunning visual aesthetics you always had in mind.

Check out this awesome little video to see Flash Catalyst CS5 in action or dive straight in and start creating a data-centric applications using Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder.

Developed to work seamlessly and harmoniously with your existing RIA development tools and design software, Flash Catalyst certainly adds the extra ‘oomph’ into your applications and gives that go-kart of yours the turbo-charge it needs.

We are so close now.. there are only 5 days left until the big day. Surely by now you have all presents purchased, wrapped and stored beneath the tree.

The only thing now that can make things better is a deliciously decadent wedge of chocolate cake. Feast your eyes (and whet your appetite) on the following 5 minutes and 6 seconds and relax with #RIAdvent Calendar.

Enjoy your third (and final) helping of Chocolate.

We’ll get back to more geeky stuff tomorrow.

Music. What would Christmas be without music? The joyous sounds of Christmas carols fill our ears, the seasonal classics are piped eternally throughout shopping malls and over the radio stations. It would be a bleak Christmas without music.

Introducing MediaSlurp.

MediaSlurp is a desktop AIR audio player built with Flex to ensure cross-platform compliance; everybody get’s to join in the audio fun.

The application consolidates various community audio streams (CodeBassRadio and monkehRadio for example) and community podcasts, truly making this immersive application an incredibly valuable resource and an effective way to obtain your audio fix.

Developed by a dedicated team of music-lovers, the team consists of TJ Downes, Ben Farrell and Vicky Ryder.

A light front-end application needs some heavyweight, powerful back-end processes to provide the remote data services to the AIR-based MediaSlurp and website AJAX interfaces, which is a perfect job for Adobe ColdFusion.

To find out more about MediaSlurp and to ensure your ears are filled with glorious audio provided to you by your fellow community members, check out MediaSlurp to dig a little deeper and to download the application.