MX Traveler

Tagrolls

Update: there was a spelling error in the title, it should be Tagrolls. What are Tagrolls? From the del.ico.us help page: Tagrolls are a way for you to display your del.icio.us tags as part of your website. :-)

Clockwork is hiring...

I just found out my company is hiring. There are several opportunities across the different business units and openings include:

• Tridion Developer
  
• System administrator
  
• Senior Project Manager
  
• Consultants Mobile Solutions
  
• Software Architect
  
• Senior Technical Project Manager
  

We're one of hollands biggest webfirms with over 150 employees, and we're located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Our client list includes Coca-Cola, Citroen, ABN-AMRO, L'Oreal and Achmea. Besides a Macromedia Alliance Partner, we're also a Tridion and Microsoft partner.

We're part of a much larger IT organisation called Ordina, with over 3500 employees and are active in five main sectors. These sectores are Finance; Utilities; Telecom & Media; Public and Trade, Transport & Industry.

If you ever wanted to work in Amsterdam, in a really cool office, feel free to contact me directly on owen.van.dijk at gmail dot com. More information in dutch can be found on our website which is located at www.clockwork.nl

MX Traveler 1st year ( and Flash Europe versus MAX? )

Being on the road for 3 1/2 weeks, with no internet, laptop, computer books or mags, surely gives you some time for self-consciousness and -reflection and was much needed to put certain things in perspective. Back full on, and i'll try to blow new life into this blog. This post marks the 1st year birthday of MX Traveler.

Ready to conquer the summer?

You might have noticed the lack of postings lately on MX Traveler. No Flex tricks, no tools, no actionscript...nothing.

Macromedia MAX Bloggers?

The annual Professional Developers Conference was probably the most blogged event of 2003. The big thing this year was the information about Longhorn and Avalon. Over 7000 geeks and nerds from all over the world travelled down to the City of Angels and saw over 120 sessions during 4 days. Impressive. PDCBloggers is a website that connects the attendees and bloggers of PDC, and provides aggregated RSS feeds. If you weren't able to attend the conference, you now had a single place to go to, for up-to-date information about the various keynotes and sessions, some of them were updated during the sessions, thnx to Wi-Fi.

The alternative for MX developers is ofcourse the Macromedia MAX 2003 event, 21st of November in Salt Lake City. With 89 sessions and various keynotes during 3 days, there is going to be loads of new and fresh information about the MX technologies. The two new technologies will be Macromedia Central and Macromedia Royale and rumours have been floating around that there will be new bits of information about it on MAX. Unfortunately...i won't be there. Sad...but true.

I was thinking about creating a MAX alternative for PDCBloggers, something called MAXBloggers. However...i don't run my own webserver, and i don't think TypePad has the features to do this. Now i am using the power of the internet and hope someone can use this idea and create something similar to PDCBlogger. Maybe the Goog? MXNA? CentralMX even? I can provide assistance ofcourse. Don't hesitate to forward this posting and spread the word. ;)

Oh..for everyone who does attend Macromedia MAX 2003, hope you have a great time. And please _do_ blog about it! :)

The MX Experience Model: Building for the experience layer

I work at Clockwork, a webfirm based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We do quite some cool projects for clients such as Coca-Cola, Bacardi, Citroen and the Achmea Group. We use a range of technologies, from Java/J2EE to .NET to MM related technologies such as Flash and Flash Remoting. Right now, i am developing one of the biggest Flash projects i've worked on ( think a Flash-based RPG for educational use ) but that deserves a posting on it's own. Actually, Martijn de Visser, has been working on it as well, since he is on the same team ( Hi Martijn... ;) )

Anyway..last week was very interesting as we had a few companies doing presentations on their latest products and technologies. On Wednessday we had BEA Weblogic ( Chief Architect of BEA, Adam Bosworth keeps an interesting debate on Rich Internet Applications on his weblog ), on Thursday was BroadVision, and Friday we had Waldo Smeets from Macromedia. Especially, the presentation of Waldo was of interest, not only because it was about Flash, but because of two slides, talking about the 'MX Experience Model'

MX Traveler: Out of order for awhile

Now wasn't that popup fun? You have to thank this man. And that's for now the last word I said about probably the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen on the web since years. As you might have noticed, updates have been low on MX Traveler for the past week. It's all due to the following:

Last Friday, I decided to move some boxes I keep upstairs, and take them downstairs to sort them out and to throw old stuff away. Earlier, I did the laundry and put the clothes on the stairs, so I wouldn't forget to put them in my closet. The boxes I keep upstairs are these big, packing boxes made out of cardboard you use for moving, and they were quite heavy because they were loaded with old magazines and books. Determined to sort them out, I took _two_ boxes at once, and walked down the stairs. Of course, they were a bit heavy, but I was lazy and didn't want to walk twice. Now here I am, carrying two big boxes, loaded with magazines and books, walking down the stairs, not being able to see where I put my feet. Picture an old Charlie Chaplin movie... Yes....I slipped on a t-shirt I put down on the stairs. I felt forward and tried to break my fall and landed on my right ankle. *knack* (insert loads of swearing here)

The process of writing.

The next following weeks will be very interesting. I'll be flying to London next Friday, to do a presentation at the MMUG Relaunch meeting. That is gonna be an awesome event, with speakers like Peter Hall, Ayo, Martin Wood, Peter Elst, Aral Balkan and yours truly ofcourse. Did i mention it is free if you register on the website? The next day i am flying back to the Netherlands, because i have tickets for Bazar Curieux, a festival in Rotterdam with 2 Many DJ's, Peaches and Quannum. I'll be swinging my hips for sure that night!

I did it...

Yes i did it. I made my own weblog.

And although this isn’t technically speaking my first weblog, it does feel like that. I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time, but there was always this voice in my head saying “Do we really another weblog (about Flash MX)?”. And yes…i think i should do this. Not for ego, but to share knowledge. Everyday i am amazed by (the posts of) very talented and smart people about a new trick, or pointed to a book or document, or just jam together with this network of artists and developers. This weblog is a way to give something back to that community.

Welcome and enjoy.