Oscar Trelles

Forrester Research, one of the most renowned research firms in the US, has dedicated a one page brief to what Macromedia Central would bring to the technology market in terms of innovation. For Forrester’s John Dalton, author of the document, its all about OCC (Occasionally Connected Computing) and how it translates in business opportunities.

In addition, DevNet is featuring another article on OCC from Intel. Chris Thomas, an e-Business visionary at Intel, stresses the fact that Occasionally Connected Applications are the next step in computing evolution. We can see it everyday, we experience it everyday, we are going mobile. “(…) the architecture that works best in a mobile environment works just as well for wired devices. Optimizing your applications for latency benefits everyone.”, says Thomas, “There’s no reason to resist”. Absolutly true, and I read it before in Dan Fineberg’s whitepaper. True, Intel wants to create more demand for its new mobile chips, but we can’t ignore our own necessity of more intelligent (and why not proactive) applications, in a not-always-connected world.

Kevin Lynch declared that thousands of request for the Macromedia Central beta SDK have been received, and that it will take some time to define how the beta program will work, given the high demand. The Flash community is already brainstorming, trying to figure out the best uses for Central applications.

Colin Mook, the canadian author of one of the most popular ActionScript books, “ActionScript : The Definitive Guide”, has just launched his very own blog. For many, a long awaited site, the 4 days old mookblog has already many postings featuring news, components and techniques.

Full as a Goog, one of the most popular blog aggregators out there, has changed its face during the weekend. The style remains light on graphics, what makes it really easy to read the postings, and focus on the news without getting distracted. If you haven’t already, go take a look!

So, finally everything is back to normal. I’m living in a new place and enjoying the advantages of a wireless home network; it didn’t come with the apartment, but I had to set it up, since it was necessary to make the most out of my new VAIO laptop. Increasing productivity is key for the future, and so is investing in tools that help you do that.

I’ve been away for just four days, and although the world moves usually slower on weekends, I’ve found many things happening in the Flash community! Following postings will mention some of them, as I continue to catch up with the rest.

I am also back with some new ideas and things I want to do with this space. My blog is evolving as I receive feedback from readers. For instance, I will be making the items on my personal column ‘commentable’. Also, I will be changing the order in which the postings appear here, into something a little more natural… you’ll see what I mean

I’ll keep you posted as things get done!

It’s been about 4 days, but it seems to me like I’ve been disconnected for much too long. There is already many things to catch up with. Updates coming very soon.

This week I (re)started blogging in spanish in another version of my blog. In most cases, I am not repeating myself in both languages, and even if the subject is the same here and there, there may be significant differences. Why is that? well, since I am a native spanish-speaker, I can explain myself better in Spanish than in english…
There are another reasons, but it doesn’t really matter.

So, if your native language is Spanish, or you want to give it a try, point your mouse here.

Al Ramadan continues with a series of reports about the evolution of Macromedia’s website. This week’s review focused on significant improvements in download speeds, mostly for broadband connections.

In addition to Al’s weekly updates, an “under the hood report” written by Jonathan Snyder, Flash development manager for macromedia.com, is available at this time. It’s provides valuable information on how the development team improved the performance of the Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) that run in the web site, specifically: Product registration, Trial downloads, Membership and the Exchanges.

I will be moving to a new place during the weekend, so I won’t be able to post anything until I get everything set up in the new apartment.

[via Greg Burch, DevNet]

Intel’s Dan Fineberg, currently appointed as Project Manager for the Occasionally Connected Computing Solutions Market Development Group at that company, has written a whitepaper on OCC that has been recently published at Macromedia DevNet. There, he makes some points about what Intel understands by Occasionally Connected Computing (and devices) and why we should be already into it. Although the purpose of the document is mostly to promote enrolling on Intel’s Early Access Program (a support site directed to software developers interested in OCC), I think it is a good reading for anybody interested in developing applications for Macromedia Central.

While we are talking about useful little software, let me introduce you a fine spell checker. I don’t remember exactly where I learned about this fine tool, but it proved to be very useful.

ieSpell is a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage. It installs itself as a new item under the ‘Tools’ menu , as well as a context menu item (right-click). As a regular spell checker, ieSpell installs its own dictionary and allows for storage of a personal words list.