Michael Givens

Flex 2 and the Flash Media Server are a match made in heaven. By combining the two technologies, streaming Flash videos at my office has become a nice part of my daily routine and a good excuse to add another monitor to my desktop. Whether your musical genre taste is classical or rock 'n roll, it's relatively easy to quickly create a desktop library of Flash videos. In this article, I'll describe one approach that will have you streaming in no time. You will need the Flex 2 Builder (with Flex 2 SDK), the Flash Media Server (the Macromedia Communication Server works as well), and at least one or two Flash videos (flv). I will omit the installation details in this discussion and get to the good stuff right away. For a quick demo, try this example: www.insideflex.com/fmsvid... (more)

How I Saved Some Money With A Flex 2 DVD Library Application

I have been collecting DVD movies for years now and, on some occasions, I have forgotten that I already owned a particular movie. More times than I hate to admit, I have ended up with two copies. At my wife and budget's insistence, I created a Flex 2 application with a ColdFusion, CFC-based back end that allows me to store a DVD inventory with the expected data inputs (see Figure 1) into ... (more)

Flex and ColdFusion Hybrid Application with ServiceFactory

Whether it's in factories or workshops, in mines or forests, in offices or homes, or even in our sacred ColdFusion Administrator, anything that impairs the efficiency of workers is always worthy of improvements in the process or changing the way of doing things. Levering ColdFusion ServiceFactory to get work done is one example. Figure 1 is a screenshot of an example Flex-ColdFusion hybri... (more)

Creating a Flex 2 Signature Grabber

By the time you read this, another MAX will be in the history books. In fact, with a record attendance of around 3,500 developers and designers, this MAX in Vegas will also be in the record books. Along with the usual great conference sessions, this year there was a special event referred to as the "BarCamp - The unconference event" called MAXUP. I presented a MAXUP demo, A Flex 2 Signatu... (more)