We have just posted information about FlashCamp San Francisco, a free developer event that we will be holding in the Adobe San Francisco Office on Friday night, May 29th. This will be similar to the ApolloCamp event that we held for the Apollo Beta launch a couple of years ago, although this event will be focused on the next generation of Flex, including Flex 4, Flash Catalyst, and Flex Builder 4.

Register for FlashCamp San Francisco

From the event page:

FlashCamp San Francisco is a free one night event hosted by Adobe covering everything you need to know about getting started with building and designing rich Internet applications (RIAs) with Flex 4, Flex Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst.

Doors open at 5, and we will have plenty of food and drinks (beer is being provided by City Beer Store!). Kevin Lynch is launching the event with a keynote around 5:45, and then we will move into sessions on Flex 4, Flex Builder 4, and Flash Catalyst (all presented by members of the respective engineering teams).

We will also have a dedicated space setup if you want to chat with any of the engineers or team members of the product teams (this has been really popular in the past).

Here is the current agenda:

You can find more information on the event, as well as register on the event page at:

http://flashcampsf.eventbrite.com/

The event is free, but please register as soon as possible as these event have sold out / filled up in the past.

We don’t have a huge marketing budget (we spent it all on the beer and swag for the event), so I would appreciate any help in getting the word out about the event (blogging, twitter, facebook, etc…).

You can follow the latest news and information on the event via twitter at:

http://www.twitter.com/flashcamp

Following up on my earlier post on how to embed Pixel Bender filters within a SWF, here is a super simple example that show how to use a Pixel Bender filter within a Flex application.

Compiled using the Flex 3.1.0.2710 SDK, and requires Flash Player 10.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute"
	applicationComplete="onApplicationComplete()">

	<mx:Script>
		<![CDATA[
			import flash.filters.*;
			import flash.utils.ByteArray;		

			//the file that contains the binary bytes of the PixelBender filter
			[Embed("testfilter.pbj", mimeType="application/octet-stream")]
			private var TestFilter:Class;		

			private function onApplicationComplete():void
			{
				//Pass the loaded filter to the Shader as a ByteArray
				var shader:Shader = new Shader(new TestFilter() as ByteArray);

				shader.data.amount.value = [100];
				var filter:ShaderFilter = new ShaderFilter(shader);

				//add the filter to the image
				im.filters = [filter];
			}
		]]>
	</mx:Script>

	<mx:Image right="288" left="40" top="26" bottom="108" id="im" source="@Embed(source='image.jpg')"/>
</mx:Application>

You can see an example of the filter here.

You can find more information on Pixel Bender here.

You can download the filter from here.

About a month ago, the Flex team announced that nightly builds of the next version of Flex (code named Gumbo) were now available on the opensource Flex site. Along with early versions of the SDK, the team also posted a ton of other information, including specs and API docs.

Below is a listing of links and resources about Gumbo / Flex 4. Going through these will quickly get your up to speed on what is being worked on in Flex 4, and get your ready for playing around with the new builds.

Official opensource project page
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Gumbo

Flex 4 Downloads
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+4

Gumbo Themes
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Gumbo+Themes

An Introduction to the Gumbo Component Architecture
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Gumbo+Component+Architecture

Flex 4 Language / API Reference
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/gumbo/langref/

Videos
The Next Dimension of Rich Experiences (360 Flex Keynote) Mark Anders
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1753161885/bctid1741161343

Flex SDK Next Plan (Matt Chotin)
http://flexorg.wip3.adobe.com/gumbo/gumboplan.htm

Flex 4 Skinning Architechture : Deepa Subramaniam
http://bit.ly/46xv4V

Designer / Developer Workflow in Flex 4 (Ely Greenfield)
http://bit.ly/zM2h2

Feature Specifications

• FXG 1.0 (Graphic Interchange Format)
• Skinning and Skinnable Components
• Enchanced States Syntax
• Group Containter
• Items Component and Selector
• Layout Interface
• Application Component
• Text Primitives
• TextInput Component
• TextArea Component
• ScrollBar Component
• Range Class
• Track Base Class
• Slider Component
• Spinner Component
• Numeric Stepper Component
• MXML 2009

Podcast : The Future of Flex : Matt Chotin on the Flex Show
http://www.theflexshow.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/7/30/The-Flex-Show–Episode-49-The-Future-of-Flex-with-Matt-Chotin

More Resources
Flex Developer Forums
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3c060f85/

Flex Team Blog
http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/

Sean Moore also has a good link round up on his blog.

If you have any more resources or links, post them in the comments.