Flashbelt’s line up of speakers, topics, and workshops is as good as any other conference you might consider flying out of town to attend.

I had to go New York a few years ago to see people like Erik Natzke, Rob Reinhardt and Jared Tarbell speak. These and many other nationally known guys will all be at Flashbelt with our home town Flash hot shots tackling both cutting edge Flash Platform topics like AIR and 3D in Flash, as well as the things you might be trying to study up on like Actionscript 3 and Game Production.

Check out the line up

I’ve been going for the last few years and it’s always been a really good time. The networking opportunity alone is invaluable. Also, plan on consuming at least $80 worth of free food and drinks.

Last time I checked, there were only 100 tickets left and you’ll be get a copy of Flash CS3 Professional Video: Studio Techniques for signing up in May. They added a new video workshop with the author of that book and I’m sure it will be popular. There are a few different pricing options.

Hope to see you there.

Check out some of what Adobe’s got planned for the next Flash Player release. Will we be able to compete with “Microsoft Sparkle” (aka Silverlight) ?

For those that like Video

http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/31/switched-on-apples-brash-flash-clash-rehash/

I find my mac loyalty waning as they become a bigger player in the world of consumer electronics. Has anyone noticed that Best Buy is now an Apple Authorized Reseller? I’m sure that has something to do with CompUSA closing half it’s stores, but I digress.

I was excited when I heard about the iPhone and although it’s way outside my budget and not really a necessity, I’d been thinking that an iPhone was in my future somewhere. Now that this Flash support issue has been a present for over a month and there’s some possibility it may not get resolved anytime soon, as a flash developer I’m thinking this may not be the phone for me.

Now I’d still tell you any day of the week that Apple is on so many levels, a better company then Adobe. Don’t even get me started about Microsoft. That said, I’ve got to start to consider what (from a Flash Developer’s perspective) is the best mobile device competing with the iPhone? Any thoughts?

If you still can’t decide if you want to go, there might be a few passes available for walk up pricing, but that’s $100 more.

This is going to be the best flash conference that Minneapolis has ever hosted and I’m excited to be going next week. I’m sure a few of you are too.

Judah Frangipane has worked in the web industry for the last 12 years. During that time he worked at Roxio and Parsons and is currently employed at Yellow Book. He’s been using and teaching Flash for the last five years. Judah’s worked on some Flash projects that you can see here http://www.drumbeatinsight.com

Saviz Artang has worked in technology for about 12 years. The first five
years were at Intel Corp. in CA and the rest at Thomson Corp in Eagan, MN
where he is currently holding a technology manager position. Saviz has been involved with Flash for the past two years making a toddler PC game. You can see his work at: http://artangco.com

Saviz and Judah are hoping to draw some big numbers for their first meeting as leaders on Wednesday, April 18th. They’re going to have Dustin Tauer from Easel Training demonstrating some of the exciting new features in CS3 including new features of Flash CS3, Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS3 and After Effects CS3. He’ll focus on work flows between applications within the new Creative Suite.

After the presentation they’ll have a copy of CS3 for people to play around with.

(Note: there will be armed guards protecting the CS3 cds.)

As always, free pizza, beer and pop will be provided.

Also, They are taking requests for demonstration of any features or products. Feel free to post you requests to the FlashMN Yahoo Group.

If you managed to miss this somehow:

http://www.adobe.com/creativelicense/

Go ahead and Preorder today, but I don’t think they’ve made any promises about when it will actually arrive yet. I’d hope it will show up before Flashbelt.

They have gone as far as telling me my plan to upgrade a copy of Flash 5 that I bought off a guy for $40 on Craigslist and planned to upgrade to Flash CS3 will not work.

Personally I’m most intrigued by a new flash feature that attempts to make the designer to developer workflow easier by allowing us to export tweened animation in Flash as Actionscript code…

( sorry I decided to post to another blog I contribute to, but seems to sort of fit what we’re covering here as well )

We’re forming a new group in the twin cities that is focusing on Flash and Flex programming topics. This group is in no way trying to take over the FlashMN group, but should be seen as a compliment to an already great Flash group. The new group is dedicated to programmers and programming topics and takes on a study group approach as opposed to the lecture style of the FlashMN meetings. The Flash Platform now includes a wide variety of designers and developers and I feel that the two flash groups are better equipped to meet the needs of both types of Flash professionals. If you’re interested in this new group, please check out our web site (www.mnswf.com) and sign up on the mailing list. Our kickoff meeting is Dec 5th and will be held at Target headquarters. (Ham in the Fridge has sponsored food and beverage.) RSVP is required due to security restrictions. To RSVP, please send an email to
info@mnswf.com, subject line: “MN.SWF RSVP – 2006-12-05 – first name, last name.”

Thanks,
Danny

I’ve always liked the fact that they let you listen to every show they’ve ever made for free as long as you streamed it off the web. The only problem was you had to use Real Player, which we all know is on it’s way down the tubes.

Luckily, I assume that partially due to an influx of popularity, leading to a forthcoming television show, leading to a better budget for the website, They’ve upgraded to a Flash Based MP3 player. Now you can actually jump the playhead to the part of the show you want to hear, and your stream is MUCH more reliable.

Also, They’ve started Podcasting all their New Shows, which we can assume will boost the sales of their old shows on Audible…

It’s just great to see that people are gradually getting this whole internet thing.
ROI for Podcasting hasn’t really proven it’s self, but I’d bet This American Life is making some money giving their product away for free.

It’s the Number One Audio Podcast on the iTunes Music Store, and it’s the Number Two Podcast Overall.

Meaning anything hosted by YouTube is a ’silent’ movie. Sometimes that’s fine. Though, mostly it’s not (especially with the recent unBooming).

I’m always looking for a ‘download’ link, or a QuickTime option – some alternative to the embedded Flash. None to be found. So, YouTube is YoUseless to me.

UPDATE: Peter in the comments pointed me to a MacOSXHints.com page that solved the audio problem (”the voodoo fix of launching and then quitting Garage Band.”) – it’d be nice if I could download the video and not be tied to a browser and internet connect to enjoy them.