This weekend I will be packing up and heading over to MXDU, last year I had to cancel last minute but this year I will be there for sure. I’m giving two sesssions at the conference. The first “Integrating Flash and .Net on the desktop” is a new session that covers embedding Flash in a .Net WinForm application which will allow people to build custom projecters that meet their exact needs. The other is “Creating Components using the V2 component architecture”, a session that I have given before and has always been popular.

The speaker line-up, the venue, the Xbox Gaming Room, all reason someone should attend. I’m looking forward to my first time in Australia. Make sure to say hello if you will be there!

I’m I the process of moving some of our applications to Subversion from CVS, and while doing so I thought I would take the chance to think about standardizing on a directory structure for our applications/source code. Although it seems like a simple task, it has turned out to be a lot more complicated than I initially thought it would. The main application I work on has many parts, and makes use of many technologies (Flash, ASP.Net, WinForm .Net, C++, Flash Remoting, FlashCom, SQL Server).

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For today I would like to discuss the important of a “Product” vs software consulting, and how that can lead to different requirements/focus. If you have worked as a consultant developing applications for a specific client, generally the most important item is usually to meet the requirements, and make sure the application works well. Although this on its own is important, when you are developing a “product” there are other factors that suddenly become important. I have found developing products to be truly an enjoyable challenge.
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You might have heard about Sapien’s New Years special

“On December 31, 2004 starting at 12:00 noon PST and ending at 11:59PM PST, PrimalScript 3.1 Download Version Only, will be offered at $129.00.”

Well, the Sapien guys were kind enough to allow us to offer a special for our blog readers. Purchase PrimalScript during the new years special and during checkout enter in the coupon code “ChaficRocks” and you will get an extra $31 off. That results in a total of only $98. If you have been waiting to purchase PrimalScript, this is the best time.

This was inspired by a slashdot article the other day

I’m so tired of Flash bashing on slashdot. I find it funny that an audience that generally doesn’t care about a user friendly UI can comment so much about a product aimed solely at that market. The reality is that 99% of computer users are not software development geeks like us, until software developers understand that they will keep bashing Flash and i’m tired of it. I’m not obsessed with Flash, I just think that there is a proper time to use it and a proper time not to. Here are some realities that people who don’t have extensive experience with Flash need to keep in mind
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