Chris Pirillo » adobe-air

How to Create and Browse Lifestreams

Chris — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 03:02:25 +0000

How to Create and Browse Lifestreams is a post from Chris Pirillo

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How many people do you keep track of online? And how many different sites do you have to log into in order to do so? It can take a lot of time to accomplish this if you aren’t using the proper vehicle to help you. You’d have to log into each of what seems to be a hundreds sites and check up on what everyone is up to. Who has the time to do that these days?

I’m lucky in that I can have my own lifestream running right from within my blog. The WicketPixie WordPress theme has been developed by some of our community members, and is updated often. It includes a feature that allows you to have things ported right to your site, such as your latest tweets, status, and uploads.

What do you do, though, if you don’t have the necessary platform to run something like WicketPixie? Are you stuck logging into all of these sites one-by-one in order to keep up? The answer is no! There’s a piece of software that is cross-platform, running off of Adobe Air, that can make this task an easy and much faster one.

nomee is, quite simply, social media made simple. Once you register for your own account, you can start following other people you are interested in. For instance, let’s say you follow iJustine and want to see what she’s been up to recently. Click on her name or icon in your list of people you’re following. It will then take you to a page of all of the websites and services she has listed under her own profile. You can see at a glance what she’s updated recently. Clicking on the icon for that particular updated site takes you right to it… such as her Flickr page, or her Twitter account.

When signing yourself up on nomee, you control what others see. Choose which sites you want to have nomee keep tabs on, and that others are allowed to access. Let nomee help you make your social life much easier.

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What is Google Wave?

Chris — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:25:14 +0000

What is Google Wave? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I ran into Ben from Mashable recently, and asked him for his thoughts on Google Wave. Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year.

Ben says that Google Wave is a “very, very interesting project”, and that it could be the next big form of communication. His favorite feature is Windows – style editing. Say you have a group of friends and want to plan a party. Instead of sending a bajillion emails back and forth, you can just edit the original email in the bottom “pane”. You can edit messages at any point, and see everyone’s conversation at once. It’s a completely new way to communicate, and more effective.

With Gmail and Exchange… it’s just different. For attachments, you would have to click, add the attachment, download the attachment… blah! With Google Wave, you simply drag and drop whatever you need to share among the group. You can embed your own Wave into things like YouTube, your blog, and more. It can replace a normal commenting system! There’s even an iPhone App being released along with Wave.

Google Wave is open-source, so you can build anything you want with it. Create desktop apps, web apps, an Adobe Air app… or make it work for your Exchange account (like I rely on!). This is definitely going to be something to watch unfold, and sounds like it’s going to be an absolutely amazing service.

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The Best Free Desktop News Ticker

Chris — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:28:28 +0000

The Best Free Desktop News Ticker is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I don’t really watch the news anymore, unless someone sends me a clip of something. I snack on news headlines, and dive deeper into whatever interests me. I like to just get a taste of what’s going on. I don’t know how you digest your news. One suggestion is to use a news aggregator. I also have another suggestion to make, potentially something that can augment your ability to digest the news as it comes in through RSS feeds.

This solution is cross-platform, and runs on Adobe Air. Snackr is an RSS ticker that pulls random items from your feeds and scrolls them across your desktop. When you see a title that looks interesting, you can click on it to pop up the item in a window. Currently it checks all feeds on startup, and after that it waits at least 45 minutes between checks of a given feed. This way, you aren’t overwhelmed with items every couple of minutes! You have time to snack on them in between having new ones brought to you.

Snackr sits on any edge of your screen (top, bottom or sides). It scrolls the latest headlines across your screen, much like any news or stock ticker. It tells you how long ago they were published, and where. It also comes with a default set of feeds. You can, however, easily configure it. Remove ones that are there you may not want, and add whatever it is you DO want.

The exciting part is watching the headlines as they scroll by. It only takes a moment to do, and you can then dive deeper into anything you may need or want to know more about. It’s easy, and it’s free! Add to that how configurable it is, and you have something excellent to add to your desktop – and your day!

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How to Create an Animated GIF: Webcam2GIF

Chris — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 10:09:02 +0000

How to Create an Animated GIF: Webcam2GIF is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I was moving my lips, but I wasn’t saying anything. It’s not a movie, it’s an animated .GIF. It’s a single file with a series of frames spliced together – set to loop forever. I made this in less than a minute! This was done with nothing more than my webcam, and an Adobe Air app called WebCam to GIF.

WebCam to GIF is a tool that lets you to create animated GIF images using your webcam. You can use this to create an animated avatar for forums, social sites and more. If you don’t already have the Air platform installed, you’ll want to do it. There are a ton of great apps available for it. The best thing is that it is cross-platform, and works on even Linux!!

This isn’t the first animated GIF I’ve ever made. I’ve been doing them for years – starting way back when all hyperlinks on the Web were blue. Yeah, I know, I’m getting “old”. GIFs are a lot of fun to play with, and are just another way you can enhance your photos and make them fun.

When looking at the program, you have the live preview on the webcam showing on the left side. On the right side, you have the way to browse the images you’ve taken in the series. You can choose how many times it will loop, and decide the quality and size of your creation. When you start snapping captures, you can move around and change the frames (or even delete frames from the series).

It’s easy to do, and it’s fun. Remember that it’s not a video… it’s a GIF! Take your series of photos, mash them together, and loop them forever! Have a GIF of yourself doing almost anything! Download and play with it, make your own GIFs, and come share them with the rest of us.

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Too Much RSS to Digest? Snack on It with Snackr!

coupons — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 09:01:49 +0000

Too Much RSS to Digest? Snack on It with Snackr! is a post from Chris Pirillo

I don’t know about you, but I follow a lot of different things. Reading your plethora of RSS feeds can be extremely time consuming if any of them are even remotely active. I’ve found a solution, and it can work in conjunction with Google Reader, or another reader you may use – it’s called Snackr.

Snackr is an Adobe AIR application, so it is designed by nature to work cross-platform. It’s an RSS ticker that will randomly pull content from your all of your feeds and display it. If you see something interesting you can click it once and get a preview popup, or click it twice to view that article in a browser window.

Snackr also tells you where the article came from and how old it is. You can set your ticker preferences to show you feed articles up to 30 days old, with the lowest setting being one day. For those of you who need up-to-the-minute news and information, Snackr could be the just right application for you to keep up.

Snackr is very easy to install. All you need to do is go to snackr.net and download the free application. There are special instructions for Linux users to follow, but they say the application may be a bit buggy because of previous AIR problems.

Once installed, the program will welcome you and tell you to get some feeds. It will ask you to start with a sample feed set, import a feed list from another feed reader, or add feeds manually (and tells you how). If you choose the sample feed set, you’ll start getting articles right away, ticking across the bottom of your screen. You’ll be given articles from Adobe, the Dictionary.com Word of the Day, Astronomy pictures, CNET News, and a variety of others. Want to use your own instead? Choose the import or manual option and then you can tell Snackr to open your saved OPML file.

You can dock Snackr on any of the four sides of your screen. To move it, all you need to do is click and drag it to another area of the screen and it will dock to the closest position.

If you are brave, you can download the test builds available at Google Code. You also have the opportunity to sign up for their public beta. Don’t forget, you can also follow Snackr on Twitter.

Do you know of other great RSS applications? What are YOUR opinions about Snackr?

Linux and Adobe AIR – Can They Work Together?

coupons — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:05:39 +0000

Linux and Adobe AIR – Can They Work Together? is a post from Chris Pirillo

Adobe AIR is a great way for developers to make desktop applications full of rich content that can be depoyed cross platform. However, up until today those who tried to run AIR applications on Linux had a rough time. The runtime and Software Development Kit (SDK) for AIR was originally released only for the Mac and Windows. Linux users required their own SDK; a public beta was pushed out earlier this year, and as beta testing goes, it had issues. Through a lot of feedback given by developers, Adobe was able to determine the problems with the software and the needs of the Linux community – just like how any other beta test works.

Yesterday Adobe proudly announced that they have released the AIR 1.5 runtime and SDK for Linux. However, with this comes a few small problems:

Only three distributions of Linux are supported, all open: Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE. There are specific versions supported as well, so you will need to check the details.
The 64-bit Linux distributions are not natively supported. Adobe has posted some information regarding the Flash Player 10 pre-release and a work-around to get AIR onto 64-bit Linux.

The good news?

You are now able to run all the wonderful applications your friends that use a Mac or a PC can! Applications like TweetDeck and Twhirl are now available, including countless others. You can check out the Adobe AIR Marketplace for more applications to download.

Are you an AIR developer? How does this change affect how you are developing your application? Don’t forget to leave your comments!

What are the Best Free Adobe AIR Apps

Chris — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:01:48 +0000

What are the Best Free Adobe AIR Apps is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Adobe AIR is Adobe’s entry into the field of widgets. It’s a better idea than just something on your desktop. Developers are able to create a potentially rich experience, and have it run cross-platform. Even though I think the whole Adobe AIR platform is quite ready yet, some of the apps that are available are truly getting there. I found a few of them that I think are pretty good, and I now have on my own computer.

FotoBooth is an application built for fun where you can quickly snap pictures using your webcam. It offers a dozen different filters to distort your images and also integrates with flickr for one click uploads to your flickr account..
iSpy uses your web cam to take a quick snap shot and save it to your local disk whenever it senses motion. If there is a level of motion that exceeds the sensitivity level, it will either take a quick snap shot and display on screen or if “Save pics to disk” is checked it will also save a copy to the user’s picture/iSpy directory.
ReadAIR is an OSX Themed Desktop Client for Mac or Windows.
PandoraBoy allows you to control your music with global hotkeys or your apple remote. Additionally, it supports growl notifications so that you always know what you’re listening to.
ShrinkOMatic lets you resize photos easily. You can set size and ratio limits, change the output format, and then drag and drop your pictures.
WebKut allows you to feed it a URL and you can snapshot it. It will save the page out as a .PDF file with just a couple of clicks of your mouse.
Clevr is a seriously easy way of creating and sharing panoramic photos. It not only helps you create stunning panoramas, but it also lets you turn them into interactive images that you can move around and navigate.
CL Desktop is a user friendly way to browse Craigslist. Setup just the right searches to find what your looking for, and save them for instant access anytime you need. CL Desktop is an application that runs on your desktop to bring you a better view of Craigslist postings.

So those are just a few of the applications available for Adobe AIR that you might want to check out if you haven’t already. What other AIR apps do you use and enjoy? I’d like to hear about them.

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How Do You View FLV File Metadata or Extract MP3 Audio?

Chris — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:24:17 +0000

How Do You View FLV File Metadata or Extract MP3 Audio? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Have you ever downloaded an FLV file? Once you have these files, you need something to view them with. Let’s say you want to extract the audio from the video file? It’s not always easy to do. But, there’s an Adobe Air application that will do this for you. RichFLV allows you to open any FLV file and export any information you want. You can convert it into an SWF file to play in a web browser. You can extract the audio. You can even save an image from the file.

There are a variety of options in there, including maintaining aspect ratios. This type of application is going to give you a better understanding of the metadata inside the FLV. You can even add metadata to it if you wanted to. Not only is RichFLV free, there is no easier way to extract the audio from an FLV. It will run cross-platform, as all Adobe Air apps do. Some of the apps made for Adobe Air don’t look the greatest, I grant you that. However, this one looks great. I’m highly impressed with it.

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What is Adobe Air?

Chris — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:41:03 +0000

What is Adobe Air? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – A few of my friends joined me on Skype last night to discuss some of today’s hot Tech topics. This video covers the release of the second beta of Adobe Air.

Four of my friends joined me for this discussion: Kat, SC_Thor, Wirelesspacket, and last but certainly not least… Datalore.

In this video, we discussed the newest beta release of Adobe Air. Adobe Integrated Runtime is a cross-OS runtime environment for building Rich Internet Applications, using Flash, Flex, HTML and Ajax, that can be deployed as a desktop application.

Users interact with AIR applications in the same way that they interact with native desktop applications. The runtime is installed once on the user’s computer, and then AIR applications are installed and run just like any other desktop application.

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Formats Available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4) Flash Video (.flv) MP3 Audio (.mp3)

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How to Handle Remote Tech Support

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMT

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Network Tools for Windows

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VMware and Parallels for Virtual Machines

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

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chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:56:13 GMT

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