P2P GroupSpecifier Class Explained In Details Part 1
March 11th, 2010
If you’ve tried my tutorial on creating a simple chat using P2P NetGroup in Flash Player 10.1, you might have been wondering what the other parameters you can set up mean.
GroupSpecifier is a very powerful class and ASDocs are good resource to look in, but I thought I’d write few more words on this topic since it’s easier to understand with a little more explanation.
postingEnabled and multicastEnabled
These are self-explanatory. Just a little note: the difference between Multicast and Posting is simply in the overhead used during their management. Posting should be used when you have lots of senders sending relatively little data (like Chat). Multicast when you have fewer senders sending lots of data (Video, Chat).
peerToPeerDisabled
Why should I disable P2P when I am building a P2P application? Obvious question. This one is for IP Multicast.
Application-Level-Multicast (so called P2P Multicast) is multicast established over peers.
Native IP Multicast is multicast enabled in the network - it must be supported by routers and the network itself.
Fusion is Application-Level-Multicast and Native IP Multicast used together.
So, when you disable P2P by saying peerToPeerDisabled=true, your app will use only Native IP Multicast, which is more efficient, but works mostly only in closed networks (like a company network).
serverChannelEnabled
Opens supporting functions from the server. In the basic scenario it enables auto-bootstrapping. Bootstrapping in this context means adding peers to the group. You can do this manually by calling the addBootstrapPeer function or setting serverChannelEnabled=true to make it automatic. In the P2P Chat example it basically takes care of adding peers to a group and establishes communication between them.
groupspecWithAuthorizations and groupspecWithoutAuthorizations
Difference? Security. If you set a posting or multicast password, the one “with” can post or multicast, the one “without” is receive-only.
Remember - GroupSpecifier is technically a String combined of properties and the name. If you change a property you will be in a different group.
More to come soon.
HP’s slate running Flash Player and AIR
March 9th, 2010
You don’t know it yet, but you really want to see this 
With this upcoming device from HP, you will be able to enjoy the full rich web experience.
Go and watch it now!
.
Further reading:
Read the blog post by Phil McKinney (CTO for HP’s Personal Systems)
E-seminar materials: P2P Programming in Flash
March 4th, 2010
As promised, here are the links, presentation and materials I used and covered in my E-seminar on P2P Programming in Flash on Wednesday 3rd March:
- Recording (Connect): http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p44261112
- Presentation: Hello-P2P.pdf
- Source-code: Source-p2p-eseminar.zip
Links:
- Adobe Stratus
- RTMFP Groups on Labs
- Flash Player 10.1
- Developer Connection: Differences between Adobe Stratus and LiveCycle Collaboration Service
- Adobe LCCS
Tutorials:
- Video tutorial - beginning with P2P (FP 10)
- Creating Simple P2P Chat with NetGroup (FP 10.1)
Real Text-To-Speech For Your Flash Apps
March 2nd, 2010
Text-to-speech has been around for many years, but you know it has never really worked properly. It sounded like a metal can, had issues with different languages, and so on. But I have good news for you.
Acapela created a SaaS (software as a service) offering for Text-To-Speech, which finally sounds pretty cool and I was quite amazed by it — even the Czech language is included This could be a very useful usability feature for your games. You can use it to read a story, chat messages, alerts and so on. I can even imagine this in your enterprise apps as a helper. I presume that having this functionality as a service can really reduce the size of your application (the voice bank must be huge) and CPU load, plus you also have all updates included.
They support ~20 languages in nearly 300 voice variations: Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Faroese, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish.
Basic sample - more samples
* Built using my evaluation account - it should work till 25th March 2010
Basic code for retrieving voice from a string could look like this:
import com.acapela.vaas.BasicVaas; import flash.media.*; import flash.net.*; var myVaas:BasicVaas = new BasicVaas(); myVaas.accountLogin = "your_account_login"; myVaas.applicationLogin = "your_application_login"; myVaas.password = "your_application_password"; myVaas.generateMessage("heather22k", InputText.text); function messageAvailableEventListener(event:Event) { var channel:SoundChannel = BasicVaas(event.target).requestedSound.play(); } myVaas.addEventListener(BasicVaas.MESSAGE_AVAILABLE, messageAvailableEventListener);
- Acapela is a paid service, check pricing.
- API documentation (AS3).
- Check Acapela.tv
Comparison of Flash vs. HTML5 video CPU usage
February 28th, 2010
I’d like to recommend this very interesting comparison article on Flash vs. HTML5 video CPU usage.
Flash Player: CPU Hog or Hot Tamale? It Depends.
Windows test results - check article for more - good reading
(Source: StreamingLearningCenter.com)
Invitation to E-seminar
P2P Programming in Flash Player 10.1
February 26th, 2010
Join me for an online e-seminar on P2P Programming in Flash. I will be covering the basics of P2P in Flash, new P2P features in Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Stratus, P2P bits of LCCS, Multicast, RTMFP Groups and future possibilities.
Free registration here (+ add event to your calendar)
Date: Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Time:
- 7:00 AM - 8:00 AM (San Francisco)
- 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM (New York)
- 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM (London)
- 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Prague, Paris, Barcelona)
- 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM (Abu Dhabi)
- 11:00 PM - 12:00 PM (Singapore)
Prerequisites for a successful seminar:
- Flash Builder 4 Beta 2
- Flash Player 10.1 Beta 3 debug version installed
- Flex 4 Framework
Meeting will be at this Connect room: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p2p-in-flash.
Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro Goes Mobile
February 25th, 2010
Adobe® Acrobat® Connect® Pro™ is a web-conferencing tool and it’s one of the best examples of a realtime collaboration RIA app on the internet.
What if you don’t have a PC with you and still want to attend an online meeting. One of the features Connect Pro has is to connect people on a telephone via VOIP bridge so they can hear and participate by voice. But there are situations, when you want to fully attend the meeting via mobile.
Today Adobe introduced Adobe Connect Pro Mobile for iPhone, which you can download for free from iTunes. You can see the shared desktop (slides, pictures…), watch the live camera and chat. All simplified to fit the screen and usability on the iPhone.
Connect Pro is a nice example of a Contextual App - the app running the same context with adjusted user experience to fit the best on different devices.
All written in ActionScript 3.0
What’s even better is that Connect Pro and Connect Pro Mobile are both written completely in Flash/ActionScript 3.0. iPhone version is standalone app compiled to native bytecode using Adobe Packager for iPhone (available later this year). At Mobile World Congress 2010 we have announced AIR 2.0 for Mobile Devices and previewed Connect Pro Mobile running on Android (Motorola Droid). Which is simply the same code written and compiled in the next generation of Flash Pro to Android and iPhone. Android version was just a preview but it’s supposed to be available in the future for download as well. Together with this - AIR 2.0 is planned to be available in the second half of 2010. Basically you’ll be able to build your apps in Flash Pro by writing one base code and simplify porting to different devices.
Connect Pro running on Mac in browser, iPhone and Motorola Droid.
Video: iPhone apps built with Flash - showing Connect Pro Mobile
Flash Gaming on NVIDIA Tablets
February 17th, 2010
Hello from Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona. Tablet - the word you can hear all around. NVIDIA is actually showing many different kinds of tablets running Flash Player 10.1 as well as AIR. They are running on ARM-based NVIDIA Tegra GPUs and can also play HD video in Flash very smooth. The Flash Player itself is accelerated by this specific hardware. Adobe cooperates closely with NVIDIA (OpenScreenProject partner) on close integration.
Farmville (popular Facebook game in Flash) running on the tablet
So why don’t you just take a ride with one these Flash Gaming Engines and push the limits of web gaming today.
You can also watch MAX 2009 session GPU acceleration in the new Flash Player.
