At the last SeaFlex meeting, we combined with the Drupal user group and the Contribute user group. The highlight was the Flex.org Showcase which uses Drupal for the content management and Flex for the front-end. It's a pretty amazing site.

I've started playing with Drupal and am learning it's power. I would have used it to run this blog but I decided on the simpler, WordPress instead. I know I need to do some major customizing (at the time of this entry) but the default is so pretty.

To start out with, I should say I love bacon. And, I love Google and all they have done to create great web apps that just work and look good. Google docs, Google talk, GMail, Picasa, Google Earth. You could pretty much go down the list and find that just about everything Google makes was well thought out and needed to be brought to the public. They deliver. But, Google docs now has some pretty stiff competition.

Enter buzzword. Created by a company called Virtual Ubiquity, buzzword is an online word processor that looks and feels more like a word processor than a webpage. It's created with Flex, so the graphics and interface have that richness that we know and love from flash based web apps. Collaboration is a feature that was nicely implemented - users can upload an avatar that displays next to their name. It shows who is currently editing it, in real-time. Of course it auto-saves but it goes well beyond that. It has a sort of version history built in so you can roll back to a point if needed. The toolbar is organized with only one row, and the tools sections are organized into groups that expand to focus on the tools needed. That reduces clutter and is done in a way that you still can find the tools you need easily. Images placed in the text can be resized and positioned however you want. The text will flow around them very smoothly. I was impressed at how easily image placement was.

Their target will be people who need documents online, accessible from anywhere. People like students, who go from class to class and don't want to bring a laptop everywhere because it could get stolen or broken. Or collaborators who want to easily share documents between others in a group and allow reviewing or authoring by multiple people.

Buzzword is still in "preview" which means it's beta. They're still working out the bugs. So far, it is proving to be a very impressive online app. Google has the advantage of being more and more of a one-stop-shop for e-mail, documents, web search, etc. but I see a strong advantage to Virtual Ubiquity in the usability and style aspects of online document creation that will get them some strong footing in the market.

That's right, I admit it. I'm not one of those guys that sits around all day and night coding actionscript 3 and building custom components. I do that here and there, but I have other interests as well. One of those took up my weekend before the 360Flex conference.

The 48 hour film project is something I've been wanting to do for a while and I was able to participate in it with a bunch of college friends in Portland. I gotta give a shout out to all those that helped out - it was such a great time getting together with old friends and making a few new ones!

Quick summary of what it is:
You get a team together of people who can use a camera, a digital editing system, act, script, etc. and register to participate. The friday that the competition starts, your team draws a genre (we got Sci-Fi) and then all the teams get certain elements that must be included in the film. You then have 48 hours to do everything from coming up with an idea to turning in the finished product on tape. All must be done in the 48 hours, ie. no stock video. The elements were the character Roy or Rachel Schwarz, Quality Control Expert, a balloon as a prop, and the line "do you smell what I smell?".

Here's what we came up with - it's a film called Glitch in the Rose.

Enjoy, and post a comment with what you think of it, good or bad! We know it might not be the best 5 minutes of your life, after all, we only had 48 hours to create it!Oh, and here's the pictures. What a blast we had!

Right now, I'm at the 360 Flex conference in downtown Seattle. It's the last day and it's been a great few days. There's been some great sessions, given by some of the best of the best when it comes to Flex.

The Seattle Flex User Group (SeaFlex) put on the first Flex Charity Code Jam for Northwest Harvest. Northwest Harvest is Washington's own, and only, statewide hunger relief agency. The folks at the code jam developed an online food drive application that allows groups to compete to reach a goal. This will be a big help to their organization. With a donation of $0.53, Northwest Harvest can feed a family of three. That is much more efficient than gathering physical food donations since that requires manpower to gather the food and process all the items. With money, they can purchase pallets of food for much less than the average Joe.

It's been a great chance for Flex developers from all over to meet the people who created Flex along with other companies who have mastered development for large projects.

I've seen a lot of people who look sleep deprived but still smiling. Watch for the conference to come again, and take advantage of the chances to learn, network and code!