Kinect + Stage3D + Away3D + AIR = pure gold!
Check. This. Out!
Wouter Verweirder (lector at HOWEST in Kortrijk, Belgium, Adobe Education Leader and wizard owner of/consultant at Happy Banana) recently released an extension for AIR that allows you to use Microsoft’s Kinect sensordata in your AIR applications. To showcase the power of this he just released this video where he’s actually controlling a 3D model (rendered with Away3D on Stage3D in AIR) with his own movements. Pure gold! Can you imagine the possibilities?
InMarket: Monetizing your apps made easy
InMarket makes it incredibly easy to start making money with your AIR applications. InMarket provides a central mechanism to distribute, monetize and manage applications across various channels. In just a couple of easy steps and only a couple of lines of code you’ll be able to add a complete payment and licensing solution to your application.
Once your application is ready you can submit it to the InMarket Portal. InMarket will then submit your application to multiple application stores. Adobe is working with several store partners to provide the widest distribution possible for your applications across devices. Intel AppUp and the AIR Marketplace are the first stores that are supported and we’ll keep adding new stores once they become available. These stores will not only be available on laptops and netbooks but also on tablets, mobile phones, TVs, and set-top boxes. You can also just distribute the application on your own website using an AIR install badge.
One of the biggest benefits of InMarket is that you only need to remember one URL and login/password. If you have an update to your application you can just submit it to the InMarket Portal instead of having to update the file on all the different stores you published it on. The portal also has all the information available about your app and your revenue.
InMarket also allows you to create trial versions of your application. These trial versions can be time based or feature based. You can have a time based trial that gives the user full access to the app for a number of days or disable some of the features of the app until the user buys a license.
For instance, a feature based trial for a game could be one free level. If you want to play more you have to buy the app.
If you wanted you could even build an application that shows a “nagscreen” every x minutes to prompt the user to buy your app.
Adding InMarket to your application is also really easy. The InMarket portal will tell you exactly what you need to do and will even generate the necessary code.
If you sign up for InMarket today we’ll also give you a free code-signing certificate that you can use to sign your applications. You receive 70% of the sales revenue; Adobe and its partners take care of credit card processing, hosting, and marketing.
For more information and registration go to adobe.com/go/inmarket.
Auto update API for AIR Native Installer Apps
If you’ve played around with native installers for AIR 2, you probably already found out that you cannot use the update framework. My fellow evangelist Piotr just released a solution for that.
Piotr’s NativeApplicationUpdater library works in exactly the same way as the update framework you use for AIR applications. When your app starts it loads an XML file that has all the update information. If an update is available you will be prompted to download and install it. Piotr actually uses another AIR 2 feature to launch the downloaded native installer. By opening the package with openWithDefaultApplication() the installer launches and installs the update.
I’ll definitely add this to the next release of my Package Assistant application (an update is coming soon!).
Check out the video where Piotr explains how it works and download the library from Google Code.
If you haven’t played with native installers for AIR 2 and want to learn more, then check out my video tutorial.
New on Labs: Adobe AIR Launchpad
The Adobe AIR Launchpad has to be the easiest way to learn some of AIR’s more advanced features. If you want to learn how to use the auto-update framework, drag-and-drop, sockets, native processes, and more then go and grab this application from Adobe Labs right now.
I think the app is also very useful for experienced developers. With just a couple of clicks you can set up your AIR project without having to rewrite some of the things you probably have in every app. Things like centering the main window for instance or detecting network capabilities and much more.
The Adobe AIR Launchpad spits out clearly written and well commented code that makes it easy to learn the APIs if you’re new to AIR and makes it easy to take a quick shortcut if you’re an experienced developer.
Confirmed: Apple’s “Magic” Trackpad works with AIR 2.0
Yesterday I saw a Tweet from Ralph Hauwert who was wondering if Apple’s Magic Trackpad would work with AIR 2.0. You probably already know that AIR 2.0 supports multitouch and gestures. The trackpad on a recent MacBook Pro supports gestures and these work nicely in AIR 2.0. So… My hunch was that the “Magic” Trackpad… I’m sorry… I just have to put that in quotes. With all these magic products I’m starting to wonder why Steve doesn’t have a show in Vegas yet ;-))) But back to my hunch… My hunch was that the “Magic” Trackpad would also just work.
Earlier today I happened to be walking past the Apple Store in Ginza, Tokyo and I went in and bought one. When I got back to the hotel I updated the trackpad drivers through Apple’s Software Update and paired the trackpad with my MBP. I already had DestroyTwitter running and tried the three-finger swipe on it. Oh… In case you didn’t know… the latest version of DestroyTwitter has support for the swipe-gesture to switch between different canvases. The “Magic” Trackpad worked perfectly with DestroyTwitter. I also tried some of my demo applications and they all worked as expected.
Now that I’ve used it for a while I think I like the “Magic” Trackpad. Especially in “lean-back-mode”. I can definitely see this replacing my mouse on my Mac Mini back home. I have it connected to my TV and use it to watch video content from the web.
So… To summarize: The “Magic” Trackpad does work with AIR 2.0. (Note: Like the trackpad on a MacBook, the “Magic” Trackpad only supports gestures. So no raw multi-touch points).
Now go build some cool touch-enabled apps (and send ‘em to me when you’re done)! Flash on!
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