Weblog
Just a quick note, but I have changed hosting providers for my weblog. The transition should be pretty seamless, and if you are reading this, then you are all set. It might take a day or two for the DNS to update.
The weblog is now being hosted by MediaTemple. They were one of the partners of the on air tour, and hosted the website. They gave us excellent support, and thus when I started to look for a new host, they were the first people I contacted.
Well, Ted Patrick and I launched video.onflex.org a little over 3 weeks ago, and we are already nearing our twentieth video on the site. If you haven’t checked it out yet, make sure to glance through some of the videos.
Anyways, we are nearing the end of our backlog of videos, and it looks like I have some time this Thursday and Friday to create some more videos, so:
What Flex and / or Apollo videos you want to see on video.
One of the new plugins we installed on the new weblog server is the Quickcode plugin for Moveabletype This is a simple plugin that uses bracketed tags to make it easy to mark up posts.
Instead of typing:
<a href="mailto:mesh@macromedia.com">mesh@macromedia.com</a> I can type:
[email]mesh@macromedia.com[/email] The syntax is easy to use, which is the main reason I installed it.
Once I began using it, I realized it would be useful to create a number of other tags, so I opened up the plugin file (written in Perl) and hacked around until I got some new tags working.
As you have probably noticed, my weblog has moved from markme.com to weblogs.macromedia.com.
The new url is:
http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/
Make sure to update your urls for the site and the rss feeds.
Christian Cantrell’s weblog has also moved, and eventually all of the weblogs on markme.com will be transitioned over.
The biggest changes are that the site has a new look (although not necessarily good). I tweaked the default templates, so they don’t look so hot, but I am going to try to spiff it up some over the coming weeks.
As I mentioned yesterday, we have released an small update to MXNA (our Macromedia Community News Aggregator).
In addition to a bunch of tweaks and bugs fixes, there are some cool new features, including:
New Per-Feed Feed Reports / Summaries (very cool) New Last Day Most Popular Averages Report Listing of most popular posts from last year Listing of most popular posts of all time If you have a weblog aggregated by MXNA, then I think the new feed specific report is the coolest new feature.
We just uploaded a mini release of the Macromedia XML News Aggregator. There are some cool new things in there, but instead of telling you what they are, Christian and I thought it would be fun to have a quick little contest.
So, the first 3 people to post in the comments describing one of the new features / changes to MXNA will win a Flash Timbuktu Messenger bag (these are sweet).
As Christian just posted, we have added a new section to the MXNA 2 beta. The new section is titled Reports, and lists all of the reports and analytics available at MXNA.
The report / charting mini-apps are built using the Flex Framework, and are then compiled into SWF. The ColdFusion page they are contained within dynamically passes info into the chart to configure default parameters. The charts and graphs are created using the components built into the Flex framework, and get their data from the MXNA web service API.
One of the biggest problems we have had with MXNA (or any aggregator) over the past year or so is that they are primarily category based, and not content / conversation based. So, if a weblog is in the Flash category, and someone posts about what they had for breakfast, then that will appear in the Flash category.
While, this is not always a bad thing, as it allows you to get a feel for the people in in a particular community, it can lead to problems.
As Christian Cantrell posted earlier, we have just released a public beta of the next version of the Macromedia XML News Aggregator (MXNA 2).
This version was re-written from the group up with performance and extensibility in mind. While there are already a ton of cool new features, the thing I am most excited about is that we now have a solid platform that we can quickly build on top of and add new features.
We have made a ton of new Macromedia XML feeds available in order to make it easier for everyone to keep up with the latest news, technotes, articles and other information from Macromedia.
Here is a list of some of the products covered:
Breeze Central ColdFusion Contribute Director Dreamweaver Flash Communication Server Fireworks Flash Flash Player Flash Remoting Flex FreeHand JRun You can find out more information, as well as view all of the feed URLs from:
Mike Downey, Macromedia Flash Evangelist, has launched a new weblog. It is, not surprisingly, focused on Macromedia Flash.
Mike already has a couple of posts, and this looks like it will end up being a great resource.
You can view the Mike’s here.
Just a quick heads up. I have added an ATOM feed for the weblog. You can view it here.
You can find more information on ATOM here.
I noticed that a lot of weblogs in the community are getting spammed today. I went through the same attack about a week ago (1200 spams in 24 hours). I use MT-Blacklist to protect against spam and it works pretty well.
So, in order to help everyone getting spammed today, I am publishing my weblog’s black list. If you are using MT Blacklist, you can add them to your system in the MT Blacklist admin.
Robert Hall has put together a PHP script that will allow you to ping the Macromedia XML News Aggregator (MXNA) when your site / weblog has new content. By doing this, you content will get added to the aggregator immediately.
If you are using PHP and not using MovableType (which has support for pings built in), this could be very useful.
You can find more info on pinging MXNA here.
We have made some updates to the Macromedia XML News Aggregator. We have implemented a number of feed filters, which should hopefully make the categories more on-topic, and ensure that websites and feeds that span categories, have their individual posts show up in the appropriate category.
Over the coming weeks, you may notice that all of your posts don’t show up, or they show up in different categories (depending on what you post about).
As some of you have noticed, we have launched an XML / RSS news aggregator. The site aggregates RSS and other feeds from sites which might be useful / interesting to developers and designers who use Macromedia products.
We have created a comprehensive FAQ which has information on the aggregator, how to integrate your feed / weblog with MXNA, and how the elements of the aggregator work.
Some of the features of MXNA include:
We have launched a new Macromedia DevNet Center RSS feed. We still have the old feed, but it should be considered deprecated. If you are using the old feed you should switch over to the new RSS feed.
The new feed is an RSS 1.0 feed, and has a lot more information than the old feed.
You can view the feed here:
http://www.macromedia.com/go/devnet_rss
You can find more information on the feeds here.
We have launched a new Macromedia DevNet Center RSS feed. We still have the old feed, but it should be considered deprecated. If you are using the old feed you should switch over to the new RSS feed.
The new feed is an RSS 1.0 feed, and has a lot more information than the old feed.
You can view the feed here:
http://www.macromedia.com/go/devnet_rss
You can find more information on the feeds here.
Josh and Daniel Dura have released a sneak peak of their super RSS Aggregator app in the making. It is named FlogSpot, and currently has two main features. First, it is a great Flash weblog aggregator, on par with Flog and Full as Goog. Second, and the thing that really sets it apart, is that it is also a forum auto populated from the various RSS feeds. Pretty sweet.
They have hinted at some more features, but it is already pretty useful as is.
Mike Williams, the Flash product manager for Macromedia, has set up his own weblog. He is aiming to use it to initiate discussion on Flash and its future.
You can view his weblog at:
http://www.macromedia.com/go/blogs_mwilliams
Mike is in charge of driving the development and progress of Flash MX. He is THE man to speak to about Flash and the direction you would like it to move toward in the future.
As you can see, my weblog has a new server, url, and most noticeably, a new look. Thanks to Josh Dura who put together this kick ass design for my site.
When linking to the main page of this site, please use this URL:
http://www.mikechambers.com
The domain name will probably change soon, and that URL will always redirect to the current site.
So why a new server and blogging tool? The main reason I moved is that by using MovableType on my own server, I have complete control over virtually everything.
Thanks to everyone who offered their services as a designer in response to my request. The position has been filled and you should see the results of the work in the coming days (it is pretty sweet).
Also, there will be some changes with my weblog in the coming weeks, possibly including a new URL. If you link to my weblog, please use this URL:
http://www.mikechambers.com
as that will always point to my weblog, even it it moves.
Christian Cantrell, the new Server Community Manager for Macromedia has just launched his weblog.
You can view it here.
The weblog system is a temporary one that he put together (using CFMX) over the past couple of days (although, I think it is pretty impressive). We are working on a more permanent, long term solution.
Jeremy Allaire, Macromedia’s CTO, has started a weblog. Here is what Jeremy has to say about it:
While I’ll sometimes post Macromedia specific content here, the intention is really to explore the broad technologies, ideas and companies that are working on the converence of media, communications and applications.
You can read his weblog here.
[via quasimondo]
Another interesting read on the Macromedia weblogs, and corporate blogging in general. This one focuses on the importance of trustworthiness in marketing on the Internet.
One quick correction to the article, the weblogs were an initiative of the community managers (mostly JD’s idea); we were not asked by Macromedia to create them. Although that may seem like a subtle correction, I wanted to make it clear that we were / are not required to maintain the weblogs.
The contest winners for the Macromedia XML Resource feed contest have been announced. And the winners are (drum roll please):
Most Creative : Phil Chung Best Site Integration : Shane Elliot You can find more information, including links to the other entries at the contest page.
In case the statement at the top of the site that states that i am the Macromedia Flash Community Manager is not clear.
I am an employee of Macromedia.
I am trying to put together a comprehensive list of all of the Flash related weblog / news sites so I can link to them from here. If you have a Flash related weblog, list it in the comments, and I will update my site with the links.
Wired.com has an article up today discussing the Macromedia weblogs. Myself, Branden Hall, and Dave Winer are all quoted, and over all i think that it covers exactly why we are doing this. It allows us to communicate faster and more efficiently with our community.
It was John Dowdell who really drove the idea internally at Macromedia. Also, David Burrows’ FlashBlog really helped me to realize how useful a tool the weblogs could be.
Check out the new DWTeam DesDev Dreamweaver MX extension. It makes it ridiculously simple to add information from the Macromedia XML Resource Feed to web pages when creating them with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. Simply open the panel, check the data you want to display, and you are done.
I also wanted to point out the Harnessing XML with Custom Tags or ColdFusion components articles at the ColdFusion MX Developers center. This uses the Macromedia XML Resource feed to show how to manipulate XML in ColdFusion MX.
One word of feedback: Bravo!
[davenet.userland.com]
