Chuck Freedman

I was on, live at 3:00 PM PST with Sarah Austin from pop17 (http://www.mogulus.com/pop17) talking about Ribbit, Flash and Flex.

I join the broadcast about 18:00 into it. It was lots of fun, and she was super nice to talk with on camera.

Here's a video of me earlier today (when I had lots of energy) from our booth at MAX 2008.

With some fancy editing, Rainer (our talented cameraman) put my VO over other footage of me workin the booth. Make no mistake, there was only one 'me' at MAX. However, there were many key Ribbit folks there helping hundreds of eager developers and attendees learn about Ribbit. It was a kick ass first day. With my session well attended and out of the way, tomorrow is only gonna get better. I have it on good authority that tomorrow's keynote is going to be killer!

I love it when Techcrunch delves into our little world and writes about things Flash-related. On the eve of Adobe MAX 2008, they have broken a story which is pretty interesting (and not in any way surprising). Adobe is no longer going to use the name "Flex" and now all things Flash-related will be referred to as the "Flash Platform".

Ever since Flex 1.x was replaced with Flex 2.0, I've been saying the 'framework' deserves a new name. The product we knew as FlexBuilder has really just been a much more code-friendly way to build apps for Flash. This name-changing effort will clear up a lot of confusion, especially to those new to Flash that didn't quite understand how/why two differently named products ended up producing the same thing -- a SWF.

While the name change is very logical from a product stand point, I have to wonder if some company using Flex in their brand (say Ford) may have had a hand in this. Anyway, it's a good move all around, and I hope it helps unify what sometimes seems like a very divided Flash Platform community.

Reporting live from MAX 2008, where I will be speaking in just 16 hours...

UPDATE: Here's a video of the entire world of Adobe Flash Platform products revolving around Flash Player.

Check out the sweet new Ribbit shirts we just got in. We'll be giving these away, but they are in very limited supply. If you're going to be at MAX, swing by our booth and show us what you're building. We'll be happy to give you a shirt! I'll also be throwing out some shirts (Papplebon-style) during my MAX 2008 session.

In honor of Election Day, here are my top 5 favorite movie presidential portrayals:

	1.The American President I love Michael Douglas' turn as President Andrew Shepherd. A very like-able leader forced into a character debate over his relationship with a lobbyist. The movie marks a reunion of Douglas with Martin Sheen, who would become a president of his own in The West Wing. It also features Michael J. Fox in a very cool role prior to Spin City.
	2.Dave Kevin Kline is very believable as a presidential look-alike who stands in for office and does a better job running the country than the actual president. He's got great chemistry with first lady Sigourney Weaver and walks away from the role in the end, only to run for city council. Features Sir Ben Kingsley as VP and Laura Linney as 'special' assistant to the president.
	3.The Rock/Armageddon Stanley Anderson, in a reoccurring role of Michael Bay films, plays a great president. Three words: "Air strike approved!"
	4. Independence Day Forgive me for this one, but Bill Pullman rocks as president. He's young. He can motivate an air field full of pilot citizens. And in the end, he grabs a helmet and leads a squadron against the giant alien spaceships. It sucks that his wife dies in the process, but adds to resolve to why he risks it all to fight for the country. Quite a speech when he proclaims, "We will not go down into the night".
	5.The Contender Jeff Bridges, as President Jackson Evans, plays a kick ass president who picks a woman (Joan Allen) to be his VP (what a novel idea). Gary Oldman really steals this movie as the 'evil' congressman trying to bring down the VP selection. The scene between Bridges and Christian Slater in the White House is worth watching.

Did I miss your favorite movie president?

* Images from imdb.com. Movie plots proudly recalled from my own memory.

I'm about to interview someone for an ActionScript-related position here at Ribbit, and in my preparations, I thought I should post my top 5 favorite sets of questions to ask candidates. I have done a lot of interviewing in my 10 year Flash career, and these questions usually engage the candidate in a unique and effective way:

1. What do you like best about Flash or Flex? What can you do with those features you can't do in another technology?

[This first set of questions shows a general appreciation for the technology.]

2. What version of Flash Player was most prominent when you started coding? What key features of that player did you target? What features in Flash Player {current version} do you wish you had back then?

[Getting a little more technical, this set of questions reveals the candidate’s history with Flash Player, identifying their awareness of features years ago as well as with new versions of the player.]

3. What is the most efficient (or profound) code tip you've discovered that you always share with other developers?

[A question like this demonstrates code expertise as well as a bit of community/team orientation. I find that a developer who likes to share efficiency tips is a bit more code proficient as well as a more senior member of a working team.]

4. Have you ever coded for a project with bandwidth, file size or other performance limitations? What were those limitations and how did you accommodate them?

[Delving a bit more into the candidate’s experience, this question explores awareness of architecture and code efficiency. Although the bandwidth question is less and less applicable, most ‘seasoned’ AS developers have dealt with it.]

5. Of all the projects you've worked on, which one were you most proud to see launched, and why?

[This is my favorite and a great closing question. I want to work with a developer who loves what they are doing, and this demonstrates passion and focus towards their past efforts.]

Candidates find these questions refreshing, especially after being usually grilled by more 1,0 colleagues of mine. I find these questions bring out the more creative and inspiring side of a candidate. Let me know if you use these questions in the future. Expect positive results!

Kaushal from Ribbit came with me to AjaxWorld and took some video of me demo-ing Joe Johnston's AIR iPhone. The cool part about this is I go off and talk about the complete method/event cycle of how the app works with the Ribbit services to receive, answer and hang up the call.

My next presentation will be at MAX 2008. Can't wait.

RelayMonkey is a super pet project I worked on initially over a year and a half ago. I wrote about it 6 months ago and haven't touched it (let alone thought about it) since then.

Basically, it's a service that lets blog readers receive true subscription notifications by email when a blog is updated.
Once the blogger places the widget on their site, the RelayMonkey:
1) lets readers sign up for instant email notifications when the blog is updated
2) checks the page for new posts as they are written
3) triggers the RelayMonkey service to notify all subscribers by email of the blog's new post, instantly

If you have a blog, and want to try out the free service, get your very own RelayMonkey widget here: http://www.relaymonkey.com

It's a Flash/PHP solution that I was pretty proud of and a service, I'm please to say, with zero nurturing, has grown quite a bit. After 18 months live, here's some stats that made me very happy:

Special thanks to those bloggers and friends that have featured the RelayMonkey widget on their site. Someday, I promise, I'll further enhance the service to include all the cool features I intended.

A little later this afternoon I will be speaking at AjaxWorld 2008, at the San Jose Fairmont. The conference has incorporated 'RIA' in the tagline, and in recent years has opened up to showcasing a lot of web technologies. This includes Flash now so much that there are several notable sessions on Flash, Flex and AIR. Not to mention that Adobe's Kevin Lynch is the keynote speaker.

My session today will be at 5:20 and it's part of the "Future of the Web" track.

Having spoken at MashupCamp, a conference well-attended by Ajax/JS developers, I've enjoyed showing Ribbit as the ultimate argument for having Flash Player on a site.

Should be fun today. If you're in San Jose or at AjaxWorld, I'll see you this afternoon.

I seem to be hyper-aware these days of my corporate surroundings. Silicon Valley, in particular, has more than its share of Costcos, Wallmarts, Best Buys, Starbucks, and more fast food restaurants than I knew existed.

On a mid-morning visit to Peet's coffee this morning, I noticed something delightfully inspiring. Amongst what my friend Brenda Lee called the 'meticulously corporate layout' of Peet's stood a lone, yet bright vase of flowers. Next to it a business card holder promoting a local florist.

I pointed it out to Brendan, who coined a phrase I won't soon forget. The bright flowers and even brighter inspirational act of Peet's to promote a local florist prompted Brendan to proclaim 'finding the flowers in the cracks'. In this case, the statement was literal.

We've been hearing the words Wall Street vs Main Street so much the last few weeks. Perhaps, with the positive action of national chains like this Peet's, Main Street may be embraced by Wall Street in some very effective ways. See if you can find the flowers in the cracks.