The folks at Marakana did a great job hosting the recent Flash Android event, as well as recording and publishing the talk. As a fellow user group leader, I can appreciate the hard work that went into preparing the video, including some fine editing and splicing by Max Walker (the presentation was not as flawless as he made it look!)

You can view the talk on the Marakana website, or here as an embedded video:

All the slides for the talk can be found on SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/steveonjava/beginning-android-flash-development

Flash Capability Reporter

Also, as promised I am going to start posting different samples from the book. The first of these is the Flash Capability Reporter. It is a simple application that displays your device characteristics in a scrolling text field.  Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the Capability Reporter in action.

Figure 1. Flash Capability Reporter running on the desktop

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I announced the Starcraft 2 Coders Challenge at Devoxx in Belgium. This is a little off topic for my coding blog, but an interesting aside for anyone who enjoys Real Time Strategy (RTS) gaming.

As a genre, I find RTS games interesting for the following reasons:

• Matches are online, testing your skills and wit against other human opponents
• The matches are relatively short (~15 minutes on average), but extremely intense
• After you get the mechanics down, winning is all about strategy
• The options for build order, troop composition, and tactics make it a great discussion topic

The original Starcraft came out back in 2000 and was a huge hit. In the past decade it has become one of the most popular online games in the world, selling over 9.5 million copies. Just under half of those were sold to South Korea where Starcraft and Pro-gaming has become close to a national sport. One of the features of the game is a 3 race system with hundreds of patches and tweaks that have gone into game balance to improve the playability of matches.

I mostly swore off games many years ago to increase my development productivity (as a developer there is a limited amount of focused time you can spend in front of the computer).  However, with the release of Starcraft 2 I started picking up matches between coding sessions as a mental break.  At this point I am probably one of the few people who has bought the game and never tried the single player campaign. However, I am quite skilled at multiplayer matches with a diamond gaming rank.

If you are interested, I am taking challenge matches via this blog.  Simply click on the SC2 Challenge link in the menu and submit your account information so I can arrange a match.  The only criteria is that you can program (Java, JavaFX, Javascript, Actionscript, etc.).  Standard 1v1 quick match rules apply.

The first person to take me down will get their match featured on my blog (I promise not to broadcast losing matches).

As a teaser, here is a short webcast of a recent random match-up I played online (complete with some announcer voiceovers explaining what is happening):

View in High Definition

At some point I will probably post some information on how to capture, convert, and post high quality videos. This was non-trivial for various reasons, but will come in handy with some other coding related videos I plan to post soon (Visage on Android anyone?).

Let the battle begin!

This is the second installation of my Live Streaming Guide, which will go over all the hardware you need to get setup.  While you can spend tens of thousands of dollars on professional gear, it is possible to put together a high quality setup for a fraction of that cost.  You may also be able to reuse some of your existing hardware, further reducing the cost.

This setup is targeted at streaming a live presentation over the internet that includes a speaker and possibly some slides or a demo.  Not all of this hardware is required to get started, so I will present it in order of how critical it is to the quality of the presentation.

If you are just interested in knowing what I recommend and how much it will run you, skip to the Buying Guide.

Choosing a Camcorder

The first thing you will need is a camcorder to stream the video.  The reason to go with a camcorder rather than a webcam is that you will have more options for lenses and zooming, and will be able to get a much higher resolution (as high as 1920×1080 for HD).  HD camcorders are pretty common and fairly inexpensive; a good one can be bought new for around $600.  Also, chances are that you or someone you know already has one that you can take advantage of.

One important consideration for camcorders is the computer interface.  If the camcorder supports Firewire (IEEE 1394), you are in pretty good shape.  This means it will probably support DV or HDV streaming to a laptop that has Firewire, and video streaming software will automatically pick it up as an input device.  A popular model for doing video streaming is the Canon Vixia HV40 which can be purchased for around $650 new:

Canon Vixia HV40

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Recently I have been doing a lot of research, experimentation, and processing of videos for the Silicon Valley JavaFX User Group.  We decided from day 1 that we wanted to take things up a notch by providing high quality web streaming of our events.  It makes particular sense for us, because the JavaFX community is spread all around the world, and we want to be able to reach as wide of an audience as possible.  However, once you have everything setup the overhead is minimal, so it is worthwhile to do for any user group or event.

Video setup for the first SvJugFx meeting with myself (left) and Keith Combs (right) running the rig.

Because this is a fairly in depth subject, I am going to cover it in a 4 part blog series.  Here are the topics (links will be added as each entry is published):

• Part 1 : Introduction – You are reading it!
• Part 2 : Hardware – This will give you an idea what hardware you need (including how to reuse what you have available).
• Part 3 : Broadcasting – A step-by-step guide on how to stream video live from your event and tools to let your remote audience interact.
• Part 4 : Post-processing – How to take the video assets you have and process them for upload complete with slides.

By the end of this series you will be able to walk in to almost any venue and do live streaming on the spot.  You will also be able to post-process professional videos like Hinkmond’s February JavaFX Mobile talk.

Please drop feedback or comments below on anything specific you are interested on hearing me cover beyond what I have already mentioned!