Apollo : Too Simple

I've just gotten back from webDu and there are too many things to write about. But there is one thing that has been on my mind since day one : Apollo. Oddly enough I feel a bit let down by Apollo. I suppose I imagined myself going to Apollo presentations and having a moment of revelation; as I had with Flex at MXDU, 2005. But I didn't have a moment of revelation at the conference.

Don't get me wrong. Apollo is very exciting. It will have a major impact on how the desktop relates to the web. We will probably need to coin a new buzz word to describe all the Apollo applications that will soon appear. But Apollo doesn't represent a new development paradigm the way Flex did. Apollo changes the world because developing desktop applications just became a whole lot easier, especially when you consider that you will be able to build it once and deploy to Mac, PC and (eventually) Linux.

I guess I feel let down because Apollo is too simple (if you understand Flex). All the interactive potential of Apollo is the interactive potential of Flex. All the web services you can access from Apollo are the web services you can access from Flex. Sure the html component is new (and very exciting). But it is just a new Flex style component as straight forward to use as many of the simpler Flex components. The File class is new. But it is just another Flex style class with a familiar workflow. Of course, Apollo will evolve to include many new features. But they won't be new because we will be familiar with them from existing desktop applications and because using them will be similar to using existing Flex components. Really the hardest part about learning Apollo will be learning Flex. So I feel a bit let down. I was steeling myself for the learning Apollo journey only to find myself in the arrivals lounge collecting my luggage.

Amie St : Funk and Functionality

I like Amie St a lot. But there is one thing I find odd. It has all the features of a good web 2.0 company but none of the functionality. Before I explain myself I guess I better give a brief Amie St overview in case you've never heard of them.

Amie St is on online music store with a difference. For a start all songs start out free. A songs price can go up to a maximum of 99 cents based on how many times it bought. Which means everyone has the opportunity to pick up great music at a great price. You can also earn extra credits by recommending songs. The more your recommended songs go up in price the more credits you earn. The other great thing about Amie St is that anyone can get their songs published. Which means it provides a great space to discover new music and for great music to be discovered.

To go back to my original claim. Some of the best things about Amie St is it's web 2.0 features and one of the most frustrating things about Amie St is it's lack of web 2.0 functionality.

When I talk about web 2.0 features I mean that users have a say in what matters on Amie St. A purchase is like a vote and it earns songs a higher value and makes them more visible to buyers. Your recommendations can further promote the songs you like and the system rewards you if users respond to your recommendation. Amie St's web 2.0 features make it a killer app for me. Which is a good thing because I'm finding it's web 1.0 functionality a bit frustrating.

The defining feature of web 2.0 applications is that the action happens within the browser page. You don't need to make a new page request to take some action. In that respect they are similar to desktop applications. But Amie St is all about page requests. Your playlist opens in a little popup window. You need to open a new window or leave a playlist to manage your purchases or to make a recommendation. The only web 2.0 like feature is the tiny dialog that appears to confirm a purchase. But this functionality doesn't exist in the player. There are lots of other things I could point to. But hopefully you get the idea.

Of course Amie St isn't the only web 2.0 service with web 1.0 functionality (most of del.icio.us is very web 1.0). In fact it's this distinction between features and functionality that has made "web 2.0" our best option for a name to describe current trends in web development. If all web 2.0 services offered social networking features without page requests we might have settled on a name that reflects the social aspect of web 2.0. Alernatively if all web 2.0 services had been RIA's (Rich Internet Applications) without a social element we probably been happy with the RIA acronymn. Which begs the question : if a web service can't be considered a RIA does that mean it should be considered a PIA (Poor Internet Application).

If you are wondering where the funk went in this post let me recommend : My House Is So Funky by TnBy.

My Dots Disabled

BlueDot has a tool that will automatically create a blog post from your days Dots. For the last few days I was trialling this here on the blog. Here's some examples :

• My Dots for Monday, March 12, 2007

• My Dots for Tuesday, March 13, 2007

• My Dots for Wednesday, March 14, 2007

But I've just turned it off again as I felt it was generating unnecessary noise. It gets particular weird when you are also getting BlueDot to generate Dots based on your blog entries. Because you start to see you blog entries show up on your blog as Dots. Still it is an interesting feature. It allows you to add tags that you want to use to filter the Dots (i.e only add Dots with these tags). It would be nice if you could exclude by tag (i.e don't add Dots with these tags). That way you could ensure your blog entries don't get regurgitated. It would also be nice if you could filter based on your rating (i.e add Dots with a rating greater than 3). Finally more frequency options would be useful. I'd be interested to have a weekly list of Dots. This could be particularly useful for users who Dot infrequently.

My Dots for Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Last.fm – The Social Music Revolution

Quoted: The world's largest social music platform. Show off your taste, see what your friends are listening to, hear new music, get personal radio, recommendations, and downloads, all for free.

[tags: music]

Pandora Internet Radio - Find New Music, Listen to Free Web Radio

Quoted: Pandora is the music discovery service that helps you find new music based on your old and current favorites. Create custom internet radio stations, listen free.

[tags: music]

Amazon.com: Essential ActionScript 3.0: Books: Colin Moock

Quoted: Essential ActionScript 3.0: Books: Colin Moock by Colin Moock

[tags: actionscript, flash, Flex, book]

Slacker

New service aims to be a cross between iTunes and Pandora

[tags: music]

Flex LinkButton : Transparent Backgrounds?

Quoted: For a current project I have a container which has a gradient background. Within this I have a series of LinkButtons. I only want the text color of the LinkButton to change on rollOver. If the background of the container was solid I could set the rollOver color to match the background. But the gradient makes this impossible. So I went to the styles

[tags: geekglue]

Adobe - Developer Center : Unit testing and Test Driven Development (TDD) for Flex and ActionScript 3.0

[tags: flex, actionscript, programming]

See the rest of my Dots at Blue Dot

Flex LinkButton : Transparent Backgrounds?

For a current project I have a container which has a gradient background. Within this I have a series of LinkButtons. I only want the text color of the LinkButton to change on rollOver. If the background of the container was solid I could set the rollOver color to match the background. But the gradient makes this impossible. So I went to the styles for LinkButton expecting to find a backgroundAlpha property. But it seems the LinkButton lacks this or any similar style that I could use. It took me a little while to realise there is a relatively simple solution. Which is to create a skin with a transparent background and to use this for the LinkButton's overSkin and downSkin. I already had a few skins that I was embedding from a swf so I just created a new movieClip which contained a transparent object and added a linkageID of clear_bg. Exported the swf and defined a new style for my LinkButtons. Simple and yet effective. I'd love to hear if there was a style I could have used to get the same result.

  LinkButton {
      overSkin:Embed("my_skins.swf#clear_bg");
      upSkin:Embed("my_skins.swf#clear_bg");
      downSkin:Embed("my_skins.swf#clear_bg");
  }