Tamarin-Tracing: Open source ActionScript3 VM for mobile platforms, contributed to Mozilla’s Tamarin Project. Written in Forth! I personally can’t wait to bring our Flex3 apps down to the mobile platform…
[Update 12-19-2007: fixed name of technology. thanks for the correction.]
Adobe has just released a new preview release of Acrobat Connect, a.k.a. BRIO beta. I can’t claim any credit for its design or development, much to my chagrin. But it is a kissing cousin of SHARE beta, as you can see from the UI design similarities:
BRIO beta is chock full of user interface innovations that make it bar none the easiest to use web conferencing application ever. My favorite is the little sharing panel that comes up when you start sharing:
But there is a lot more to it than just that. The whiteboarding/annotation features are really cool too. You should go check it out – its completely free and it rocks!
As an aside, note you can see my own room’s URL in the screenshot above. Please don’t abuse it but feel free to stop by if you want to check it out – if I’m busy I’ll just reject your entry into the meeting room đ
From a technical point of view, one of the more interesting facts is that it is built on our forthcoming CoCoMo platform. More discussion can be found on the Collaborative Methods blog.
I’ve been a total slacker about updating my blog since MAX at the beginning of October. There’s been no shortage of things to talk about:
But the sad truth is I’ve just been way too busy. Work has been fun but crazy, and my wife and I have adopted a child, Ruby Phuong. That meant I spent three weeks as a single dad to our first daughter while my wife was in Vietnam dealing with the US bureaucracy, and now we’ve got all the fun of a new kid in the household. Bottom line is I haven’t been getting much sleep over the last few months.
But I promise to do better from here on out, starting with my next post. I’m going to try to get back to a once a week minimum posting schedule. Feel free to bug me if I don’t meet that goal…
John Gruber has written an excellent article on the iPhone SDK announcement and what it might mean. I too had wondered whether Apple would try to position Dashboard widgets as the application model for the iPhone, and Iâm not yet convinced that this isnât what they will do. John points out that JavaScript is too slow on the iPhone to make it an adequate substitute for Cocoa. What he didnât consider is that Dashboard widgets in Mac OS X can contain native code, and in fact many of the Apple supplied widgets do exactly that. They could do the same thing on the iPhone.
I have to say Iâm terribly, terribly hurt that I didnât get any linkage on the whole âiPhone runs as rootâ thing. I was way ahead of the curve on that one, and I wasnât even âhystericalâ about it⌠[this is a joke, for those not attuned to such things]
One other cynical point for you, which I didnât blog about. Why did Jobs put out that letter now, 5-6 months before it will be released? I saw someone arguing on their blog (sorry, canât remember where) that it was because Apple has realized there are limits to secrecy. Yea, right. I personally think they did it because they see the iPhone hacking culture getting a little too vibrant for comfort, and they wanted to take some wind out of its sails. Why spend your nights and weekends hacking on something when Apple will make it all easy in a few months? Plus there is no longer the thrill of doing something Apple doesnât want you to do. Will it work? Doubtful.
As a side note, Robert Cringely has written an interesting take on the purported Apple/Google partnership. I agree completely that Apple would never allow a deal where Google got brand supremacy.
Shebanator 