Chuck Freedman

If you're a Flash nut, it's hard not to get excited to see what Sprout continues to do. Their latest and greatest ploy for world web widget domination is a clever little contest with Universal Studios. They have a contest running now (and through June 30) that will award the best "Hellboy 2" widget designed with SproutBuilder.

The prize consists of two rewards. 1) $500 cash prize and 2) the widget will be featured on the official Hellboy 2 site. The latter is just too cool. Those that know a bit about web traffic know that movie sites are some of the top attracting sites out there. This contest could take the most unknown or beginner level Flash designer/developer and turn them into one of the most visible, overnight.

The best part about it is, because of Sprout's abstraction of Flash, the winner of this contest will likely never have used Flash CS3 in the past.

At Yahoo!, I tried very hard to get maps and movies to mate. It wasn't easy. I commend Sprout for forming this, and I'm sure many other, key relationships with the movie industry. Super cool.

More on the contest:
http://sproutbuilder.com/blog/2008/06/18/announcing-sprout-build-hellboy-ii-widget-contest

The 17th Championship run of the Boston Celtics came with it the early emergence of my 15-month-old son into the world of basketball. Watching most of the 26 playoff games the Celtics had to play to win it all, my brother, wife and I watched Chase begin to pay attention and even pick up the ball.

It began with some throwing and catching. Chase brought me his ball and then sat a few feet away with his hands out. He wanted the pass...

Next was shooting. My wife actually installed the Nerf hoop to help my brother and I dispel some game 7 tension by firing shots from the couch. However, one game we noticed Chase had pulled himself up and was trying to shoot the ball just like daddy and Uncle Nate...

So, I picked him up to see what he would do. And he knew exactly what to do, as he dropped the ball right in the hoop and watched it fall.

The shooting continued, and my wife bought Chase his very own hoop. Little KG, as we began calling him, began dunking the ball right away and eventually started making lay-up shots. It was so cool to watch, we had to get some video...

Championships are always special. This was Chase's 2nd Boston sports team to win in his short life so far. I hope it provides for a solid foundation of interest as it did for me just over 20 years ago.

Sergio Pinheiro and I were roommates in college for 2 years, while attending Boston University. Both of us majored in Film at BU's College of Communication. Sergio ventured 'out west' shortly after graduation to purse a film career.

His hard work and persistence has earned him what I'm sure is just the first of many awards. Serg's short film, a thriller in the intriguing mold of a Twilight Zone, is called 'The Procedure'. Sergio produced, wrote and directed the film and assembled a very talented cast and crew. The film is visually stunning, well acted, well shot and the sound and effects are mind-blowing - all extensions of Sergio's incredible talent.

Sergio entered the film in the Beverly Hills Shorts Film Festival. I am proud of Serg for winning not one, but two awards: "Best Horror Film" and "Best Sound Design".

You can watch the trailer for the award-winning 'Procedure' here: http://www.thedonnybrook.com/movies/TrailerfullLO.mov
You can read more about the awards it won here: http://www.thedonnybrook.com/

Serg's next project entitled "Duck n Cover" has a new site with trailers here: http://www.duckncovershow.com/

Sergio and I have remained great friends and were able to hang out most recently for a few Dodgers - Red Sox spring training games in LA. Keep up the great work Sergio and I can't wait to join you on the set one of these days!

So many know me as a die-hard Red Sox fan. After the Sox won the World Series this past season, many were kindly contacting me with congrats. They knew how special that was for me!

Now that the Celtics are in the Finals, my place as a Boston basketball fan has been called into question. It's true that for the better part of 15 years, I haven't really followed the team. But back in the 80's, growing up near Boston, it was everything Celtics.

My Uncle Alan, with season tickets, was great enough to take me to A LOT of games -- and I was a Celtics fan long before I fell in love with Fenway Park and the Red Sox. A huge contributing factor to me being a Celtics fan was a rare and valuable connection my uncle had at the old Boston Garden. He happened to be very good friends with the late, great Celtics court side photographer Dick Raphael (who sadly passed away just last year). Mr. Raphael, who ended up being one of my first paying customers when I started out doing web design in 1996, was also gracious enough to take a few 'special' photos of me.

This photo, recently dug up from the Chuck Freedman archives, is of me at the age of 10 with then Celtics shooting guard, #44 Danny Ainge. The photo was taken on the historic parque floor of the old Boston Garden in December 1987, the last year the Celtics were in the Finals. Danny Ainge is now the Executive Director of Operations for the Celtics and is credited with building the championship caliber team that is the 2007-08 Boston Celtics.

By producing this 21 year-old photo as evidence, I hereby establish my true Boston sports heritage and prove, once and for all, my status as a true Boston Celtics fan. Thanks to Uncle Alan for making sure of that.

If you are a Yahoo! user, like me, you may be wondering why none of the dozens of killer AIR-app conversions that SHOULD BE available by now are nowhere to be found. I'm talking about a cool suite of Flickr, Maps, Upcoming, Del.icio.us, Mail, Sports and Answers that I've wanted but have yet to see. Having no idea what Yahoo! has under development (I doubt very much), an announcement recently came to suggest that the arrival of any cool Yahoo! AIR apps may never happen.

Both Yahoo!'s Next blog AND their Developer Network site are reporting that a new 'BrowserPlus' platform is in the works.

According to the site, BrowserPlus™ is a technology for web browsers that allows developers to create rich web applications with desktop capabilities. Sounds like AIR to me... but in another form, a system Yahoo! can deploy to exploit their existing products.

I have ideas as to why Yahoo! went this way. I sort of had a front row seat, before leaving just over a year ago, to discussions on what potential 'desktop' solution would be pursued. (That's a whole other blog post in itself, I probably should never write.) Yahoo's history is with the browser -- they owe much of their early success to it. Nearly everything they do is on or about the browser. So it's logical that they would go to the desktop through the browser.

Another big contributing factor is the rarity of AIR-capable talent available. This kind of talent has been streaming out of Yahoo! long before the threat (or promise) of Microsoft coming in. Only 2 people from both my Maps and Flash Platform teams still remain (that I know of).

So, I guess if we really want to see Yahoo! products/services in AIR, it's up to us to build them. Most of the services I listed have APIs. Are there any AIR apps out there? Anyone got something in the works. Let me know. I'd love the combination of AIR and Yahoo!. I wish they did too.

I am happy to announce that For Those About to Code, a new training series my wife and I have started, is launching today! The first course will feature world-renowned Flex expert instructor Mike Kollen and me, Chuck Freedman, teaching Flex and AIR.
Here are the details:

For Those About to Code: Flex & AIR
Featuring: Mike Kollen and Chuck Freedman
Dates: July 19-20
Location: Silicon Valley, CA (likely the Domain Hotel, Sunnyvale, CA)
Price: $675

We've got high hopes for this innovative training series, and why not? The demand for talented Flex/Flash/UI/AIR talent in the Bay Area (a.k.a Silicon Valley) has never been bigger.

For Those About to Code is a new kind of training company. Our goals are simple:
- Bring in the world’s best instructors and Flex/Flex/UI/AIR talent to teach you!
- Provide you with a relaxed and optimal training environment using the best published materials possible.
- Offer affordable pricing so that any developer, at any level, working for themselves or any size company, can benefit from our training.
- Ensure your time with us is most productive, by offering training exclusively over the weekends. You won’t miss any work time and be back in the office on Monday ready to code!
- Keep classes small and intimate. Courses require a minimum of 25 students and will be capped at 50.
- Nurture the community by encouraging instructors to engage and support students before, during and after every course through our custom support forums.

If you are in the area and interested in getting started and/or beefing up your skills in building Flex and AIR apps, you should us!
If not, please help spread the word! We've got an excellent course lineup over the next few months (more Flex, including UI/skinning, as well as Flash) and are talking to some pretty exciting and well-known instructors.

Lastly, join me in congratulating my wife Jamie and an outstanding job setting all of this up. With her at the helm, I'm looking forward to doing whatever I can to make For Those About to Code very successful.

The Back to the Future fan site BTTF.com reports that the famous and sacred clock tower and courthouse square on the Universal Studios lot, reported to have been lost in last weekend's fire, were both actually saved!

http://www.bttf.com/index.php?/weblog/more/universal_answers_questions_regarding_fire_near_bttf_sets/

An FAQ posted by Universal Studios discussed some facts about the fire AND confirms that the clock tower was saved.

http://www.universalstudioshollywood.com/firefaq.html

Lastly, there is even a photo proving the courthouse, surrounded by rubble and ash, is actually still standing.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rjhendrix/2547069784/sizes/l/

Good news for Back to the Future and classic movie fans. I've actually seen the clock tower, in person, twice in my life. Once back in 1987, on a family trip to Southern California, and again back in 2001 on vacation with Jamie. I'm glad it's still standing and I will definitely take the tour next time I'm there and hopefully see it again.

I got the idea to try and re-create those vibrantly colored panels you see at the end of the Comcast commercials. It proved to be a pretty simple and fun task with pure ActionScript.

Hit any key to swap the panels and their placement. I'm going to see if I can use this code as a transition in some other projects.

package
{
	import flash.display.*;
	import flash.events.Event;
	import flash.events.KeyboardEvent;
	import flash.events.TimerEvent;
	import flash.text.TextField;
	import flash.text.TextFormat;	import flash.utils.Timer;
 
	public class ComcastColors extends Sprite
	{
 
		private var _panel1:Sprite;
		private var _panel2:Sprite;
		private var _panel3:Sprite;
		private var _timer:Timer;
 
		public function ComcastColors():void
		{
			addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, onKeyDown);
			_panel1 = createPanel( "Oooh, look at the colors", 0xFF00FF, 1, 1, 300, 300 );
			addChild(_panel1);
			_panel2 = createPanel( "Save Moola", 0x99FF00, 5, 5, 300, 300 );
			addChild(_panel2);
			_panel3 = createPanel( "ActionScript is fun", 0x99CCFF, 10, 10, 300, 300 );
			addChild(_panel3);
		}

 
		private function createPanel( text:String, color:uint, x:int, y:int, w:int, h:int ):Sprite
		{
			var panel:Sprite = new Sprite();
			panel.graphics.lineStyle();
			panel.graphics.beginFill(color);
			panel.graphics.drawRoundRect(  x, y, w, h, 20 );
			panel.graphics.endFill();
			var formatter:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
			formatter.color = 0xFFFFFF;
			formatter.font = 'Arial';
			formatter.size = 40;
			var textField:TextField = new TextField();
			textField.x = x + 5;
			textField.y = y + 5;
			textField.width = w - 10;
			textField.height = h - 10;
			textField.wordWrap = true;
			textField.text = text;
			textField.setTextFormat(formatter);
			panel.addChild(textField);
			_timer = new Timer(100);
			_timer.addEventListener("timer", onTimer);
			_timer.start();
			return panel;
		}
 
		private function onTimer(event:TimerEvent):void
		{
			_panel1.x += .1;
			_panel2.x += .2;
			_panel3.x += .3;
		}
 
		private function onKeyDown(event:KeyboardEvent):void
		{
			swapPanels();
		}
 
		private function swapPanels():void
		{
			var xSave:int = _panel1.x;
			swapChildren(_panel1, _panel2);
			_panel1.x = _panel2.x;
			swapChildren(_panel1, _panel3);
			_panel3.x = _panel1.x;
			_panel2.x = xSave;
		}
	}
}

Feel free to play with/use/improve this code.

Congrats to my brother Nate for getting 5 stars in a review on Yelp. He works as a high-end kitchen expert at CG Appliance in Daly City, CA.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/cg-appliance-express-daly-city#hrid:VlhHtyNpa2oR1YbNywOZaA

Of my brother, the reviewer says these impressive things...

"He answered every question I had, provided insight beyond what I asked, and, if he didn't have an answer to something, would research it and get back to me."

"Nate was the easiest to talk to..."

"He had excellent follow up while I was trying to figure out which distributor to go with, without being pushy."

"I'm now more than happy to give my business to someone who is going to provide excellent customer service..."

It's great to see you brother receive such high praise. Keep up the good work Nate and we're proud of you.

Join me, and what I'm sure will be a collection of hundreds of the more significant Flash platform designers and developers, for this year's Flash Forward Conference in San Francisco, the week of August 20-22, 2008. Registration is now open and I am thrilled and honored to be one of the first announced speakers joining a group of super talented and well-respected folks including Luke Bayes, Hoss Gifford, Robert Hodgin, Eric Natzke, Paul Orthchanian, Todd Rosenberg and Mr. Grant Skinner.

For me, this will actually be the first ever FlashForward that I will attend. FlashForward is easily one of the more prestigious, long-running and community oriented conferences out there. The combination of inspirational sessions and the unique and honored festival have made it very significant to follow over the years. Those I know that have attended always speak very highly of it. And those I know that have presented sessions always regard it as the highlight of their annual speaking calendar.

The timing is very cool for me, because this August marks the 10th anniversary since I created my first swf back in August of 1998. This will also mark the first major San Francisco-based Flash conference held since I moved out here almost 3 years ago.

The conference finds itself under new ownership, based on the announcement a few months ago that Flash community legend Beau Amber (of Metaliq) acquired the conference from long time owner Lynda.com. Having known Beau now for several years, I was excited about the acquisition, figuring it could only mean a jolt of new excitement and advancement for this conference.

I hope you'll join me starting August 20th for this exciting event. The schedule has yet to be finalized, and with more sessions being added, I'd stay tuned. I can only imagine, with Beau's incredible connections and influence, the dozens of exciting speakers that will be announced in the next few months.