Adobe MAX social media & DeadDrop challenge

Posted by Serge Jespers on Oct 2, 2009 in MAX2009 | Comments Off

I’m sure that by now you will have noticed that Adobe MAX is literally just around the corner. The pre-conference show starts this weekend and the countdown has started to Monday’s first keynote. I have managed to sneak in to some rehearsals this week in the San Francisco office and I was absolutely speechless when I saw the amazing things we have lined up for the keynotes and sneaks.

I’m sure some of you will not be able to join us in Los Angeles and that is why we are doing everything we can to make sure you don’t miss out. I’m sure you already know that you can watch the keynote sessions live wherever you are but the conference will also be covered on the Adobe MAX blog, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Photoshop.com. For a complete list of social media resources, check out http://max.adobe.com/resources/

We also published a list of official and community driven Twitter-tags on http://bit.ly/adobemaxtags as well as a list of interesting Tweeters to follow http://bit.ly/adobemaxtweeters. For a full list of Adobe employees and products on Twitter, check out http://bit.ly/AdobeOnTwitter.

If you are in L.A. and are taking pictures, make sure you add them to the Adobe MAX Flickr group (http://bit.ly/adobemaxflickr) and check out the Flickr photostream (http://bit.ly/adobemaxphotos). I’ll try to add some backstage shots whenever I can.

And last but certainly not least, Lee Brimelow has put together a new DeadDrop challenge, which will start at noon on Tuesday October 6th. The winner will receive the grand prize (a US$7,500 value) including an Apple MacBook Pro with Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection and Adobe Flex Builder Professional fully loaded, a conference pass to MAX 2010 with 3-nights of hotel accommodation, and more. For details, watch the video at http://adobedeaddrop.com.

I hope you are as excited about Adobe MAX as we are!

No Twitter support outside US?

Posted by Serge Jespers on Jul 17, 2009 in mtwit, Rants | 1 comment

I know this is a bit off topic but it’s something that’s been bugging me. As many of you know, I am working on a Flash Lite based Twitter application (mTwit) that will run across all devices that have Flash Lite on board. Even though my account and my server have been whitelisted on the Twitter service, this is now the second day that my Twitter account gets suspended “due to strange activity“. I’m not sure what else I can do to make sure that a) Twitter doesn’t suspend me while developing the app and b) my server back end gets accepted as a Twitter proxy. I’m pretty sure I did all I was supposed to and did all I can.

In dealing with the Twitter support people, I noticed that it seems that there isn’t a single support representative outside the US. That means that getting support outside the US business hours seems to be a big no-no. I wonder how many people outside the US use Twitter. I bet it’s a massive number.

This is rapidly becoming one of my pet peeves… Companies/startups should start thinking outside their borders! Especially when they are active on the Internet. The Internet doesn’t stop at the border!

So… Because of no support outside US business hours I won’t be on Twitter (and won’t be working on my app) until they reinstate my account.

mTwit progress update

Posted by Serge Jespers on Apr 10, 2009 in devices, Flash, mobile, projects | 3 comments

I know, I know… everyone is doing Twitter clients these days. It’s the new “Hello World”! With this “Hello World”, I want to show the possibilities of the Flash Platform for mobile phones. I am building “mTwit”, the Twitter client for all recent Flash-enabled phones. I decided to publish it with our new distributable player. Right now, that gives me a potential install base of 27 million users… Now, if they all donate $1, that would make me very happy ;-)

Right… about the app now. I basically started from scratch after I found out that I completely over-architected the app and that I was stuck. After reading up on a few best practices, I decided to use the Feather Framework. Although I did need to tweak it quite a bit, this framework and its components are an excellent starting point. I am also building this application so that it automatically and optimally uses the available screen size. Below is a screenshot of the app running on a Nokia E71. You can see that the components automatically adapt to the wider screen size.

I also recorded a quick sneak peak of the current build of the application. I recorded this from a Nokia N95 and I hope that it gives you a bit of an idea on the performance.

The application is far from ready though. There’s still a lot to do, but I think I am making good progress. Some people thought I was going to release it today… Now don’t get me wrong… I do appreciate your enthusiasm! However, I don’t want to rush things. I want to make sure that everything works and that the user experience is just as good as other Twitter apps you may be using. So… stay tuned! I will update you on my blog when I have more…

mTwit sneak peak: Flash Lite Twitter client

Posted by Serge Jespers on Apr 6, 2009 in devices, Flash, mobile, projects | 2 comments

Eating our own dog food is a big part of being an evangelist. I also like to challenge myself every now and then and so I started building a Flash Lite Twitter client that can run on most Flash Lite enabled phones.

This is just a quick sneak peak and it’s far from ready but I’ll update you on the progress through my blog. I don’t really have a deadline. However, the sneak peak you see here is the result of just 2 days of work so I should be able to finish it soon.

I hope Jonnie from DestroyToday doesn’t mind me using the DestroyTwitter color scheme. I really love how clean that design is and I’m trying to bring some of that to my mobile client.

Stay tuned!

Adobe on Twitter

Posted by Serge Jespers on Feb 18, 2009 in adobe, Popular | 72 comments

I thought it was a good idea to compile a list of Adobeans on Twitter. It was quite surprising to see how big this list turned out and I’m pretty sure there must be even more of us on Twitter.

If you know of someone not on the list, feel free to add them in the comments! I will keep updating the list when I find more Adobeans on Twitter.