Mike Chambers

Things are still a little slow because of the holidays, so I thought I would reward regular readers of my weblog with a contest. Sometime this week, I am going to place Cartoon Mesh (see right) somewhere in a post on my weblog. The first person who finds him, and then posts the URL where he can be found in the comments section, will win a copy of the Developer Resource Kit Volume 2.
If you are looking through some of the past pages / posts to find the image, and come across a particularly useful post, make sure to post it in the comments. It helps me determine what type of info you find useful for me to post, and it will allow me to put all of the entries in one post.

Some time ago I had done a simple experiment with the Flash Communication Server and my Xbox. I broadcast myself playing SSX Tricky, and Halo to about 50 people via the Flash Communication Server and Flash player. I have had a couple of requests to explain my hardware setup, so here it is.
It is actually pretty simple, and consisted of:
XBox –> (RCA Cable) –> Sony Mini DV –> (firewire) –> Mac iMac — > Flash Player
The Flash Player recognizes the Mini DV as a camera and uses it like a webcam.
I set the Mini DV to VCR and then just started playing the XBox. The Mini DV basically acts as a bridge between the XBox and Flash player.
If you have any questions or would like some more info, post your questions in the comments.

I just noticed that we have a Flash Remoting Application Development Center at the Macromedia Designer and Developer Center. I may have mentioned this before, but we have so many resources online, I can’t remember which I have mentioned.
You can visit the center here.
There are a ton of resources, including some fairly new ones.

Just a quick note, the Macromedia offices are closed this week, and technically I have the entire week off. However, I will try and sneak away every now and then to make some posts.
So, what do i plan to do with all of my time off? I am reading up on writing shell scripts (pretty exciting, heh!), and will try to get some Xbox live gaming in (gamertag : mesh). I am also working on some pretty cool projects that should see the light of day one way or the other sometime in the future. Oh yeah, I am going to finally try to catch up on all of the posts on the flashcoder’s list from the past week.
So what are you planning to do over the holidays? Post your plans in the comments section.
Happy Holidays!

Director MX is now available for purchase and download from our online store.  Among other things, Director MX includes support for OS X, as well as full support for Flash 6 content (including Flash Communication Server and Flash Remoting). If you are trying to create CD roms or other fixed media with Flash then you should definitely check it out.
You can download a 30 day trial here.
We also launched the Director MX Application Development Center at the Macromedia Designer and Developer Center. There is a ton of new Director MX content and resources available, including quite a few articles on using Flash content within Director.
Btw, sorry that I didn’t get this posted earlier, but I was traveling for work for the past week or so.

Just a quick note. Sorry for the lack of updates, there are actually some pretty cool going on’s lately but I haven’t had a chance to keep up with them. I am in San Francisco this week (I normally work out of Washington DC) and am swamped with meetings (ugg).
In the mean time, check out the Flash weblog links to the right. I will try and catch up on posts later tonight. I hope everyone is having a good holiday.

I have started to really dig through the Pet Market Blueprint application and take the code apart. It really is a great resource on how to build complex client / server applications using Flash.
The article provides a very good overview of how the application was put together:
A Tour of the PetMarket Application
However, the app is not necessarily meant as a showcase of Flash best practices. So, if you have looked through some of the code, what do you think could be improved and / or optimized? Post you thoughts in the comments section.