I just noticed that we have posted some new Apollo articles on labs.

• Using HTML in Flex based Apollo Applications Edward Mansouri
• Working with Binary Data in Apollo Ben Stucki
• Taking Apollo Applications Offline John Bland II

You can view all of the articles, as well as the rest of the Apollo alpha documentation on the Apollo documentation section on labs.

We have a ton of Apollo Stickers, which we have been giving out at Apollo Camp and other conferences. I know that not everyone can get to the conferences, so I wanted to give everyone a chance to get some Apollo schwag.

So, if you would like some Apollo stickers, just send a self addressed envelope to me at:

Mike Chambers
C/O Adobe Super Apollo Sticker Bonanza
601 Townsend St
San Francisco, CA, 94131
United States

Twitter really began to take off right before we launched the Apollo alpha. At the time, it seemed that everyone (myself included), was creating an Apollo based Twitter client. I tried them all out, as well as some non-Apollo clients, but none of them really felt right, and I ended up not using them.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon Tweetr (I think I saw it from one of Scoble’s tweets), and have been using constantly since I found it. I can’t really put my finger on why I like this one so much more than all the other Twitter apps, but I think it has something to do with the simple UI, ease of use, and application focus (it just does Twitter and does it well).

Just a quick fyi, but the Flex team has just made downloading the Flex SDK much easier. You can now go directly to the download with the following URL:

http://www.adobe.com/go/flexsdk2_download

Before this change, you had to login to Adobe.com (and create an account if you didn’t have one), and then search the download page for the SDK. This link will take you directly to the download page.

Thanks to the Flex team for making it so much easier to download Flex.

Now that Flash CS3 is available, a lot of people have been asking when they will be able to author Apollo applications with it. We are working closely with the Flash Authoring team on a set of extensions that will make it easy to author Apollo applications directly within Flash CS3.

However, you can author Apollo content from within CS3, but it does require a bit of hackery. Fortunately, Guy Watson has released an extension for Flash CS3 that makes it much easier to test Apollo content directly from Flash CS3. So, if you are loving Flash CS3, and are interested in Apollo, then check out Guy’s extension.

Well, as I am sure you have heard by now, we announced last night that we will be releasing the Flex Framework and SDK under the open source Mozilla Public License (MPL). I am not going to go into too much details on the announcement, as it is covered in depth everywhere else (Ted Patrick has a post with a good over view and collection of links, and Robert Scoble has posted some videos about the news (1 and 2)).

Well, Apollo Camp was so much fun, we decided to do another. Adobe, along with creation chamber and xyleminteractive are putting on Apollo Ranch next week in Boulder Colorado (not too far from Denver).

The event is:

Saturday night, May 5 at the Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado, Boulder

We have a complete line up of sessions covering Apollo and I will be giving the keynote. If you want to get up to speed on Apollo, or just hang out with a bunch of other developers, then make sure to sign up.

You can sign up for the eBay Apollo application (code-named San Dimas) beta here.

You can view a video of the application here.

As you have probably noticed if you are reading this on my site, I have moved my weblog to a new server and domain.

http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/

All links and posts from the old weblog should redirect to the appropriate post on the new weblog. Existing RSS and Atom feeds should also continue to work.

I am still working out some of the kinks, so if you run into any issues, then please let me know in the comments.

Well, I know it took forever, but I have finally released the source and an AIR file for Ascension, an Apollo based mp3 player and music explorer. You can download the latest AIR file, as well as grab the source, log bugs, and discuss the player from the Ascension project page at Google Code.

All of the source is included, and is released under an open source license.

I am sorry it took so long to release, but I am usually reluctant to release source code that I feel needs more work. Ascension was one of the first Apollo applications, and as such, has under gone a lot of changes since I first built it. Because of this, the code does need some refactoring, but I figured that in general, it was more valuable to everyone if I released the source now.