E's musings on life, tech and whatnot

Dear Friends and Family,

It’s hard to believe another year has gone by.  It seems like just yesterday that we were spending our days in that lovely cell in Africa. Oh, we can’t thank you enough for all your kind letters and offers of cash. You know, after our guards saw that outpouring of support they got the idea that our friends could help out their cousin the Nigerian prince. I’m sure you all got the emails. Thanks to the hundreds of credit card numbers you sent along, our captors made a small fortune and in a fit of generosity decided to let us go. Can you believe it?

So, there we were all alone stranded in Africa. Luckily, we met up with a group of angry young men on their way to Kismabutti, a small village at the base of the Nile. They kept chattering on about liberating some friends from militant stenographers. I had no idea what they were saying but Tim somehow managed to strike up a conversation with their commander. He was so impressed with Tim’s knowledge of obscure Amish typography that he immediately made him a general in the Esoteric People’s Liberation Army. Wasn’t that incredible?

Tim’s first mission was to capture a warehouse of black-market beauty supplies. Everything was going well until clumsy me tripped over a case of false eyelashes and tumbled into a vat of overnight mud masks, dragging poor Tim with me. I don’t know how long we sat there trapped by the dried mud, but the next thing we knew we woke up in a museum in Egypt. It seems that some archeologists mistook us for ancient statues and shipped us off to be catalogued. It sounds ridiculous but that’s really what happened.

Imagine, an entire team of Ukrainian archeologists mistaking us for ancient artifacts. Why, Tim just turned 40! As an apology, they offered to take us along on their expedition up the Nile. Turns out I was a born archeologist. Honestly, who would be better at digging up old ruins than someone obsessed with dusting?  Within weeks they asked me to lead an expedition to Turkey to hunt for Greco-Roman dental hygiene equipment. It was all so unexpected. I felt like we were living in some preposterous fantasy.

Sadly, our expedition was not very successful. On our first day in Istanbul we visited an ancient underground cistern where Tim turned some knob he shouldn’t have and the next thing we knew we were sucked up into a pipe. When we came up for air we found ourselves in the catacombs of Paris. Somehow Tim had accidentally discovered an ancient toilet system that spanned all of Europe. Seriously, if I didn’t have the soggy underwear to prove it, I would have said it was a ludicrous lie too.

I quickly contacted my archeology colleagues, and they insisted we travel to Kiev so Tim could present his findings at the annual Archeological Symposium on Toilets and Bidets. His lecture was so impressive that the head of the Sam Houston Institute of Technology immediately offered him a fellowship to study pre-Columbian sewage treatment in South America. We couldn’t believe it. I had to confirm the offer twice to make sure it wasn’t a bold-face lie.

Unfortunately, we never made it to our dig in Bogotá. Due to a slight spelling error we ended up on a freighter headed to Greenland. Happily, we soon discovered that our Russian captain was the second cousin twice removed of the commander of the Esoteric People’s Liberation Army. Wasn’t that an impossible coincidence?

After discovering our deep connection, the captain took us into his confidence. Apparently, he’d uncovered a subterranean passage that connected the Frasier Asoff islands to the men’s room of the Newark airport.  As I write this we’re preparing an expedition. If we succeed, we’ll be the first ex-freedom fighting archeologists specializing in pre-Columbian waste management and Greco-Roman dental hygiene to travel from Greenland to Newark by dog sled. I know, I know it all sounds completely unbelievable. But really, who would make
this stuff up?

Tim and Erick

Dear friends and family,

Has it been a whole year already? Well, my oh my it has certainly been a year of change around the Vera-Smith household. Where to begin?

The year started off with a bang, or more accurately an explosion. Yes, our little pottery side business didn’t quite work out. A word of advice, when someone sells you slightly-used kiln, make sure you ask what they were firing. Let’s just say it was not pottery. The hole in the foundation wasn’t that big and really the structural damage was minor. We had too many rooms anyway. Oh and the police were ever so kind about the mysterious cloud of white powder emanating from our little fire. Really, not to worry. The lawyers cleared it all up. We only received a small fine and just a few short years of community service. No really it’s fine.

Well, after that little incident we were so ready for a vacation. Seeing as how the house was red-tagged as “Not Habitable,” we took it as a sign to pack up the car and see America! You know, it’s amazing how little you really need on a road trip. I mean, we only had a few dollars between us and just one change of clothes but we did fine. No really, we did just fine. You will not believe all the lovely people we met along the road. Everyone was so kind. One group of healthy youths even took care of our car while we were stopped by road. It seems that they took a real shine to our convertible and well, they really needed it more than we did. I just wish I had gotten their names so we could thank them for introducing us to the joys of hiking. While it would have been nice to have a t-shirt or two, Tim and I got marvelous tans from our days of walking. “Exposure” really isn’t as awful as everyone says. 3wks in the hospital and we were right as rain. In fact, it was a blessing in disguise. Just as we were discharged, we got word that the house was all repaired. See? We were so happy to save on hotel bills. It all worked out just fine. No really, it was fine.

We moved back just in just as the summer was ending. The contractors we hired were real salt-of-the-earth types. They did an almost perfect job. You hardly miss the front door, or downstairs bathroom. Cooking in the master bathroom is just like camping. It was really kind of fun. And you won’t believe how much we saved on water bills. I mean with all the water pouring in through the roof, Tim and I could take refreshing showers every morning courtesy of mother nature. I highly recommend it. It does wonders for the skin.

With winter fast approaching it seemed like a good idea to start thinking about generating a little income. It seems that Tim’s firm was not all that understanding about our mix up with the law. After a short court discussion Tim was ready for new opportunities! I on the other hand, was pleasantly surprised to find out that my firm was quite progressive. Why they went as far as to offer me an exciting position in a satellite office in Zimbabwe. While it would have done wonders for my resume, I decided I just couldn’t part with our little house and all those pesky debts. So now, I too am ready for new opportunities.  I can’t tell you how exciting it is to be completely unfettered by our old life. We are absolutely fine. No, really we’re fine.

Well, with all this free time Tim decided to get even more involved in his church. You can’t believe how overjoyed they were to have someone of Tim’s caliber available to lead a mission. It turns out they were just desperately looking for someone to travel to Africa to convert some Scientologist pygmies. What luck! We just jumped at the chance to help out our fellow man. Unfortunately, with so little time to prepare we had to leave in the dead of night without notifying anyone. I do hope we didn’t worry you. I’m sure the house is fine. The bank was kind enough to take it off our hands just days before we left. You could even say this was our “community service,” . I‘m sure the courts would see it that way.

Sadly, we ran into a tiny snag on our trip to the mission. Well, you know how much I love to travel and international travel just gets me all excited so you can see how I could have forgotten our passports somewhere along the way.  Really, I don’t see why it was such an issue for the customs people in Africa. I think we could have worked it all out if Tim hadn’t brought along some pots for the pygmy families. For some reason the security dogs went wild for those pots. I’m sure I don’t know what it could have been. I mean, I did use some clay that came with that darn kiln, but I’m sure that couldn’t be the problem. In any case, they shipped us off to Zimbabwe to await our chat with the local authorities. So we made it to Zimbabwe after all. Isn’t that a riot! If my chums from work could see me now.

I’m sure there’s no reason to worry. I can’t believe this will take more than a few months to work out. You’ll see, my next letter will be full of all the amazing sights we’ve seen here in Africa. For now, we’re in a rather small windowless room, but really it’s not that big an inconvenience. It’s fine really. No really we’re fine.

Much love,

Erick and Tim.

I’m baaaack. Yes, you can’t keep a good community manager down. So where have I been you ask? I know you’ve all been just dying to know. Well, about nine months ago I started as the Content and Community manager at a start-up working in the exciting field of API development and management. Apigee, whose motto is I <3 APIs, is a groovy provider of API management tools and app services in Palo Alto, CA. 

Ok, so when I started I did not <3 APIs, I really had no use for them other than creating reams and reams of API docs for Flash development. Turns out APIs are everywhere and everyone is using them and if they’re not, they will be. The dawn of the app economy has made APIs a neccesisty for any kind of modern company. You know how everyone these days has an app on you phone from Amazon to Zappos? Well, those apps all call APIs to get and send information to the mother-ship or backend. That’s a real simplification, but you get the picture. So, the point is that with all those cool APIs floating around companies need someone to help them develop and manage their APIs and that’s where Apigee comes in.

Ok before this post starts sounding like a sales pitch let me tell you where I come in. I was hired to write docs. That lasted like 5min. It became pretty clear that we needed a doc team to not just create docs but do community-driven content.  We’re on the ground floor here. We just released our first self-serve product and with it a brand new Doc site my team created. 

It wasn’t easy. In nine months I had learn how to program Drupal, talk intelligently about RESTful APIs and remember how to use Illustrator. We’re a small team so I was art director, editor, designer, developer and manager. It’s been super fun and nerve-racking. In any case, I can now proudly point the world at our site and open it up to real users. We’re live now so this is where the community part kicks in. Once again, my team is venturing out in the forums, twitter-land and blog-o-sphere. We just getting started but it’ll be cool to see if the learnings I gained over at the big Adobe machine can be applied to API developers and enterprises.  

Should be interesting at least. The tales continues over on the Apigee Doc team blog.

How do you stay motivated when you’re not really all that motivated to move from the couch? 

Bless me trainer for I have sinned. It’s been 4 days since my last visit to the gym. I confess. I just didn’t feel like it. Not only did I not go to the gym this weekend, but I ate…pizza and pasta! Yes! Clutch your pearls in shock! I have no excuse, I just felt like being a sloth. That’s all.

This is not new. I’ve been on this particular roller-coaster a few times. You get all motivated and you hit the gym solidly for weeks. Then one day something shakes you out of your routine and …BANG. You’re fat and flabby again (ok more flabby).I tell myself the same thing each time: “It’s not the end of the world.” “Your body hasn’t forgotten how to be fit. The next time you hit the gym, you’ll be back where you were in no time.”

Of course that still leaves the big question: “What’s going to get you back in the gym?” For me, it’s simple —CASH. I actually pay someone to be there waiting for me on a regular basis. I make the minimal commitment to never flake on my trainer and he agrees not to give me too much grief for not working out every day. See? Everyone’s happy.

You know the other thing that keeps me motivated? The inescapable truth that if you eat anything you crave after 40, you will get fat. Oh and you won’t just get fat all over. NO. It will all go straight to your gut. That thing will grow and grow until it cascades over your belt.  After a while, even your big un-tucked shirt won’t hide it. Your blubber will bulge in front of you announcing your sloth to the world. The horror! Think about that the next time you’re getting dressed and tell me it doesn’t motivate you!

I’m paying someone and I like my current waist size so I must go to the gym. I must go but I need not descend in to a shame spiral for missing a day or two. Motivation can escape me once in a while. Like everything else in my life, peace has come from adjusting my expectations to align closer to reality. I will go to the gym semi-regularly and I will look like I swallowed a bowling ball on a semi-regular basis. Peace through balance. How’s that for Zen motivation?

Check out the links to community content we’ve added to Adobe Help. We found these links by talking to customers, going to conferences and checking out blogs and forums. So if you’re writing a tutorial or sample app, we’d love to hear from you. Check out this post to see how to contribute. 

In the meantime, take a look at the content you’ll find in our help right now:

3D and AGAL

On the Working with 3D page we added:

• What is AGAL by Marco Scabia
• How Stage3D works by Marco Scabia
• Vertex and Fragment Shaders by Marco Scabia
• Working with the Proscenium framework by Adobe
• Handling Stage3D scenarios by Thibault Imbert

Text

• Native text input with StageText by Christian Cantrell

Accelerometer

• Accelerometer and Debugging byAntonio Holguin

Geolocation

• GeolocationGeolocation Quirks by Greg Wilson

Strings

• Trimming leading and trailing 00s by Douglas Reynolds

Dates and Time

• Managing calendar dates and times added by Jabby Panda

Security

• Maintaining security with Adobe AIR by Peleus Uhley and Ethan Malasky

XML

• E4X is Good4U by Marc Bir

File references

• Load and save local files by Kevin Hoyt

If you have a great tutorials, videos or code sample you want to share, send it along. We’d love to add it to our content so everyone can benefit from your expertise.

Last week we started publishing two series of articles to help our users navigate the ins and outs of ActionScript and I’m happy to report that our efforts have met with much rejoicing (in the form of many retweets).

We started off by published the first few articles in our Fundamentals series for people learning ActionScript with little to no programming background:

ActionScript Fundementals:

• Syntax
• Variables
• Data types
• Operators
• Numbers and Math
• Functions
• Packages
• Namespaces

This week, we published the first articles in our series on object-oriented programming concepts used in ActionScript:

Object-oriented programming concepts

• Writing classes
• Composition and aggregation
• Encapsulation

Coming soon

We’ll be adding more articles to both series as well a few getting started articles to help you navigate all this awesome content. New articles will appear on the Adobe Developer Center. Hope it helps and let me know if it doesn’t. 

Remedial no more

So when I first started out with my new trainer (referred to as “the Young’n” here within) he took a look at my fitness and said “hmmm….you need conditioning” Ok, no one would mistake me for a tri-athlete, but really, can you tell me I’m not conditioned just be looking at me? 2 minutes into our first workout I knew exactly what he meant. When you’re seeing stars after 5min on a spin bike you have to start thinking that perhaps all is not well. 

I’ve been at the gym fairly regularly for 3yrs but apparently I have not been doing myself much good. This is sadly common. See, for more than 2yrs my old trainer and I had been working on weight training. Which turned out to be something of a joke as I only trained my weight to go in the opposite direction of my goals. It went up when I was ‘leaning” and down when I was “building”. Ain’t genetics great? In any case, I was totally focused on weight training not conditioning. Actually, I had no real idea what conditioning was. It sounded like something real jocks did for marathons or high-altitude mountain climbing. Certainly one did not need conditioning to sit in front of a computer 8hrs a day and play Halo at night. Right? Wrong. Turns out you do!  

Apparently, if you don’t condition your body to do the right things, it gets conditioned to do all the wrong things. Who knew? My body is currently conditioned to sit on my ass hunched over a monitor. My shoulders only roll forward and not back. My back only curves concave, not convex and my hamstrings are so tight they could double as banjo strings. Yet with all that, I was still happily bench-pressing, dead-lifting and power-squatting away. Then “the Young’n” adjusted my form so I was doing those exercises correctly.  Actually, to give my previous trainer his due, “the Young’n” adjust my correct form to be more correct (did I mention “the Young’n” has a degree in Kinesiology?). Frankly, with the adjustments, my exercises looked really stupid and felt really awkward, but low-and-behold, lifting half the weight kicked my butt twice as hard.

As humbling as remedial training was, it seems to be working. 2 months in, I can do a full body workout every other day that truly works my body and I now only start wheezing after 7 minutes on the spin bike. See? I’m soooo conditioned now. 

With we released of AIR 3.0 we added this awesome new feature called native extensions. Trust me these are cool. Essentially, a native extension will let you extend the functionality of your AIR app so it can access the native capabilities of a device. So, by adding some native code you can:

• make a mobile device vibrate.
• change the channel on a TV
• read pressure sensitivity data from a pen table

A native extension is a combination of:

• ActionScript classes.
• Native code. Native code is defined here as code that executes outside the runtime. For example, code that you write in C is native code.

Here’s why you might want to write your own extension:

• A native code implementation provides access to device-specific features. These device-specific features are not available in the built-in ActionScript classes, and are not possible to implement using application-specific ActionScript classes. The native code implementation can provide such functionality because it has access to device-specific hardware and software.
• A native code implementation can sometimes be faster than an implementation that uses only ActionScript.
• A native code implementation allows you to reuse existing code.

When you have finished your ActionScript and native implementations, you package your extension. Then, an AIR application developer can use the package to call your extension’s ActionScript APIs to execute device-specific functionality. The extension runs in the same process as the AIR application.

Here’s an architectural diagram of an extension:

Because you can package and reuse extensions, you don’t need to write one yourself. You can use someone else’s. We’ve even set up a handy page where you can find some extensions to get you started. These extension were contributed by both our in-house dev team and our community. Take a look.

If you’re interested in creating your own extension, we’ve created a whole set of content just for you. Check out the Native extensions doc here.

As part of our effort to get more involved in our community, my team has been out there in the forums listening to issues and pulling stats on page views and ratings. After gathering up the data we generated a list of top issues. You know what’s at the top of that list (besides Flash Player crashes)? People are having trouble learning ActionScript. We get tons of questions like: why do I need to learn scripting? Where do you get started? Who can help? 

We can help. We’ve spent some considerable effort to try and make the process of learning AS3 easier to follow. 

So what did we do? Well, for starters we asked our newest community lead, Michelle Yaiser, to employ her awesome training skills to create two series of articles. A fundamentals series that will demystify ActionScript and provide basic information for people trying to pick up the language and an object-oriented programming series aimed at people with some coding experience who want to understand AS3. Michelle is a well known teacher and presenter so she really knows her stuff. You can see the first of these articles on the Adobe Developer Connection right now.

Coming Soon

In the coming weeks, Michelle will be publishing more articles to both the ActionScript Fundementals and Object-oriented programming series so check the ADC regularily. She’ll also be wrapping up the learning articles with a couple of step-by-step learning guides to help users figure out where to start and where to find more in-depth information. 

We really hope this helps get people started with AS and get them building awesome content!

libeledlady:

OK so I’m still at the gym. I’ve got a new trainer and things are going swell. He’s not like my last trainer,but he’s growing on me. The biggest difference between is that my new trainer is way young. It’s fairly humbling, but this 20yr old kid is really kicking my 40yr old butt.

It was really hard taking him seriously at first. I mean, when someone who could literally be your kid tells you that “you can do this”. You got to stop and wonder “could you do this at my age?” Ok, I’m not that old but this guy is reeeeally young. Then I remembered the biggest advantage of being young: you haven’t quite learned that you can’t do everything. Being young, you can still party until 4am with no side-effects. At 40, the day after partying you need large amounts of caffeine and bacon just to roll out of bed.

Youth has the advantage of not knowing better. So, from his point of view, I can do that extra crunch. He can do it so why can’t everyone? When he tells me I can do this, I really should just roll over and die, but there’s this other thing about youth. Its enthusiasm is infectious. For those few minutes I forget that my knees give out when I walk or that my back won’t let me sit in the same position for more than a few minutes. That’s why I do one that extra rep and lift that extra pound. In that moment, I’m 20 too. I won’t even feel this in the morning. Sadly, all those extra years come rushing back that night when I’m adding icepacks to every extremity sitting there watching Murder She Wrote. Hardly seems fair no?

Did you know there are tons of ActionScript examples quietly living within the pages of the ActionScript 3.0 Reference? No, well there are. You’ll find tons of code snippets throughout the reference and most classes have longer class-based examples.  Just look for the View the example link on a page: 

We’re constantly adding new examples for new and updated APIs so check back often to see what’s new. Some of the examples we add were provided by our community so they are awesome and have real-world applications.

But wait, there’s more…

We’ve recently started adding even more practical examples on the pages people use most. Just follow the More Examples links for info on applying APIs, and real-world examples:

Want to see it in action? Take a look at the Array page in the AS Reference. 

And even more…

The ActionScript Developer’s Guide also has a ton of examples. Check out a list of all the longer practical examples available on the Using Examples page. You can get the downloadable source code and assets in a handy-dandy ZIP here. 

.

Hello you amazing developers, do you have a cool app or code block you think everyone could use? You do? Well, we’d love to share it for you. Our help pages get millions of hits a month and we can highlight your submission on any page. Our community leads would be happy to add your contribution and link back your blog, website or favorite social media channel. 

We’re already doing it see:

It’s a great way to get your name out there. All you have to do is drop us a line. 

How do you reach us?

Our community leads would be happy to work with you to set up a contribution. Here’s some contact info for you:

• vera@adobe.com
• rwhitley@adobe.com
• jlevy@adobe.com
• kleeburg@adobe.com
• myaiser@adobe.com

Hope to hear from you!

It’s no secret that Apple and Adobe have had their issues lately, but that doesn’t mean we ever discounted Steve Job’s contribution to the whole tech world. I was on the team that worked on the first version of Flash player for mobile phones. We spent years trying to get the player smushed down into a tiny package so it would fit on a phone. Flash Lite was a really big feat of engineering and we were really proud of it, but the phones it runs on are now loving called “dumb phones” and that’s because of Steve. 

The day the iPhone came out we were all collectively stunned. Our whole landscape changed that day. All the amazing things we can do today with the Flash Player and mobile are all due to that one incredible innovation. The iPhone told the world they could expect more from that little computer in their pocket. We are all deeply indebted to Steve’s vision and drive.

Many great innovations are created by standing on the shoulders of giants. So long Steve, you were definitely a giant.

Ok, I don’t want to sound like a traitor to my collegues, but I’ve had AIR on my Galaxy Tab 10.1 for over 3 mths now and haven’t run it once. That’s all about to change now baby! At our big user conference (Adobe MAX) we announced the Creative Cloud which includes a series of touch apps that make drawing and collaborating super-easy.

Now, I’m not in marketing. All I know is that PS Touch is AWESOME. I finally have a reason to spend endless hours playing with my tablet —photoshopping (yes, it’s a word—deal with it). Airbrushing, color correcting and removing unwanted ex’s has never been so butt simple and I can do it with my digits! This is why I love tech. 

Oh and it runs on AIR so it’s got Flash Player goodness baked in. See how I tied it all together there?

But wait. That’s not all. There is this groovy app called Adobe Ideas that let’s you draw with your fingers for reals. Joy-gasm!

OK, I’ll shut up now since I’m starting to sound like marketing.

Over the past year we’ve been out in the community listening to issues and gathering content. The results of our labors have been  links and code samples added to our help pages. While we feel this makes our content more dynamic, it doesn’t do much unless you know it there. So, in an effort to get  more eyes on all this great community content, we’re spicing up our pages in a couple of ways:

• Byline – This icon indicates a link to customer content. See the Enable persistence in a mobile application page for an example of this.
• Adobe recommends – This treatment includes a blurb and an image to help draw attention to the link. See the Displaying HTML content in mobile apps and Network Interfaces pages for examples of the “Adobe recommends” treatment.

In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, here’s a list of some of authors we’ve highlighted so far:

• Brian Telintelo Using Geolocation on a mobile device
• Steven Peeters Detecting network connection types with Flex 4.5
• Sean Voisen Making the most of StageWebView
• Mark Doherty AIR2.5 StageWebView demo – OAuth Support
• Jonathan Campos HTML Web View in AIR for Android
• Rich Tretola Create a basic web browser with StageWebView
• Sönke Rohde AIR Mobile StageWebView UIComponent

If you have a great tutorials, videos or code sample you want to share, send it along. We’d love to add it to our content so everyone can benefit from your expertise.

Hey there’s a new version of the Flash Player out. It’s got cool stuff. Go install it. Wait, didn’t you just install player two weeks ago? Wait, didn’t you just install the player two weeks before that? What’s the deal?

Ok, yes it’s annoying, but trust me you want to always have the latest version of the player. See, not everyone is as nice as we are. Not everyone just oozes trustworthiness like we do. There are some nasty puppies out there who just delight in finding ways to make your life hell. These nefarious types poke and poke at the player until they find what we call an exploit and then they do some nasty and frankly rather creative things. They can take over your machine without you even knowing about it. They can spy on your activities and do other evil whatnot (yes, that’s the technical term).  Our engineers go and plug these holes with a new version, but you’re still vulnerable until you install. So we trigger an update and you get an annoying message to update. Sounds reasonable no? Wait so why do I have to keep installing? Well, we’re playing a security cat-and-mouse. We fix, they exploit and so. I’m not a software architect, so I can’t tell you why the holes exist or how they find them. All I can tell you is that updates help protect you. Oh, and we do throw in really cool stuff too. Check this out: 

http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2011/09/announcing-flash-player-11-and-air-3.html

Today Amazon announced pre-orders of the Amazon Kindle:Fire. It looks super-groovy cool. It’s specs are sexy. It’s Android so it has Google goodness under the hood with added advantage of running Flash and AIR. Best of all, it’s waaay cheap. Sounds like a no-brainer right? Then why haven’t I clicked the “1-click” button on my Amazon account? 

Hmmm..let’s reflect

Could it be that my media cabinet is over-flowing with unused gizmos and components that were once “cutting edge”? Could it be that I’ve been burned by the hype before? Yes Playstation Move and Google TV, I’m talking to you! Could it be that I’m finally becoming fiscally responsible? Ok, the latter is very unlikely, but there is something that’s stopping my finger from clicking that pretty blue button.

ohhhh…so shinny…

On the one hand, I already have a Kindle. On the other hand, it’s a first generation device. On the one hand, I just bought the hubby a brand new Kindle just 3 months ago, but on the other hand my cool Galaxy Tab 10.1 is already looking dated. Arrrggh not enough hands. 

See, this is the problem of working in tech. You just know too much about the back-end. You see all the bright new toys coming down the pipe and everything looses its shine that much quicker. Yes, it’s a tough life. Thank you for your sympathy. 

Whoa, almost clicked the button….

I blame my parents for never buying me that Millennium Falcon when I was a kid. Now that I’m an adult I get to fulfill all those lost little boy dreams. Yes, I am well aware that is a cop out. Ok, I’m NOT going to buy it. 

…Oops. I just did. 

Well, I’m part of the cutting edge again — at least until tomorrow.

So now that my team is embracing the idea of talking to our customers, we’re reading through the tons of comments you’re leaving on the forums and in our knowledge base. It doesn’t take too long to realize that there is a lot of frustration out there. Your game doesn’t work, your video doesn’t play or you just keep being asked to install the player again and again. Yup, I hear you. I’ve been working with the Player for years and even I can’t figure out all the issues. Luckily, there are bunch of really smart guys who do understand the Player backwards and forwards and they do care about your troubles. Believe me, I’ve personally taken customer issues to the team and they fixed them. The thing is they can’t solve every issue. I know that doesn’t help, but sadly it’s true. But, even though we can’t fix every issue, we can do a better job of providing resources to help you out. 

We’re out there in the forums, blogs and social-space gathering up pain-points and issues to improve both our help and knowledge base docs. Let me give you an example. The other day we were reading through comments and we noticed that a lot of frustraed people were coming to us from Youtube. We took a look at the YouTube help page and it turns out that they were sending people to a document about installing the player on a Mac. No wonder they were annoyed! We fixed it so now you go to a document that offers some video solutions. It’s not a big change but hopefully people will now get to the info they need. 

That link problemo is just one of the things we fixed. We have a whole list of top issues people are facing that we’re working on provide better solutions. Here, check out some of the docs we’ve improved on video: 

• Flash Player games, video, or audio don’t work | Mac
• Video issues | Adobe Flash Player

Hopefully, that will help, but if it doesn’t let us know.

I can’t even say that my trainer was a close friend, yet every time I walk into the gym now I miss …. something. I think I miss having a real reason to be there. I miss the connection to the foreign world of testosterone-driven achievement that he provided. I sat down at a weight machine the other day and it was his voice I heard in my head, telling me to fix my form and push through that extra rep. It was the oddest feeling. Without him did I really belong there anymore? I suppose I had to let it go. My gut was threatening to continue its plans for expansion so I got a new trainer. I guess that’s just the way things go. Still,  it made me stop and wonder. How many other people have had a profound impact on who I am and will I only know it when they’re gone?

A new native extension for Adobe AIR: http://blogs.adobe.com/actionscriptdocs/2011/09/ibattery-native-extension-for-adobe-air.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

This new extension was submitted by our community in the AIR pre-release. It’s part of our on-going effort to get out and collaborate with our users. Many thanks to Todd Anderson

So more about me: I work for Adobe focusing on all things ActionScript and Flash Player. <legal> The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and not those of the company </legal> So while I’m writing about my random thoughts some of them deal with my job. After all, I spend most of my day there so why shouldn’t the occasional work topic pop up.

Anyway, my job has been changing lately. I used to be in charge of a team of tech writers but today I’m in charge of a group of community leads. What’s the difference? Well for one, we’re getting out from behind out desks and talking to the people who use our product and asking them how we can help. Funny, the idea of writing reams of docs that no one reads has fallen out of fashion. Go figure. Instead, we want to create learning material that is relevant to our users’ everyday lives. You know, actually try and help you do more than make a red ball bounce across the screen. But how do we figure out what content to create? How do we know what you need? Well, that’s why we’re jumping into the great social conversation. We’re trying to go where our users are. We’re going to try and experience the same pain-points you’re all having and just listen. In the end, we may not solve every issue but we may be able to help you get that red ball to bounce and spin. 

E

Oh you may be wondering why I’m so loquacious all of a sudden. Well in this amazing electronic age we live in, one needs to be more than just a cog behind their desk. We need to have a social media presence. Our persona must be out there, our updates and tweets must be joined to the other mulittude of voices in the blog-o-sphere so we can be part of the “now”; in touch with the “trending” and ahead of the “next”.

So, it not that I suddenly have a lot to say. It’s just that I now have the means to thrust my random thoughts upon my unsuspecting network of family, friends, acquaintances, co-workers and occasional cyber-stalkers.  My apologies to those of you who are more used to hearing from me as just a “Llike” , but trust me it’s in the service of a greater good. No, really it is. 

It’s good to learn something new everyday no? Well today I learned that brand loyalty is a double-edged sword. Sure you know what you’re going to get every time you buy a product from your favorite brand and that’s a good thing. It’s like a little security in a cruel chaotic world. But wait? What happens when this trusted brand discontinues your favorite product. What do you mean, I can’t those jeans that fit perfect? What do you mean, I can’t get those shoes that look cool and indifferent at the same time? What is this season you speak of? See? I was horrified that my trusted maker of goodness decided to just stop making my particular kind of goodness. I checked Zappos and the “O” on the off chance that one last item was buried somewhere in cyber-space. All to no avail. A tragedy really. 

Now I am forced to try something new. Not a happy prospect. I’ve been burnt before. The new item just won’t be like the last. For a moment I am gripped by ennui. Then I remember I am an American. I am part of the throw-away consumerism that makes this country great. So I reach for that new item with a little sadness, but with the deep knowledge that I will throw this one away next month and fall in love with yet another new brand. That makes me a little less sad.

It’s not much, but it is a somewhat comforting no?