Beyond the Button

Flash camp

I attended mn.swf camp. This event was an all-day "Flash camp," held in Minneapolis (organized by the Minnesota Flash/Flex programmer's group and presented by Flashbelt.)

There were about a dozen presentations, mostly focused on using Flex and AIR – two software packages that are positively dreamy for museum interactive developers.

Presentations about slowing down

Two lectures about process struck me. These are rooted in standard software development. One presenter, who talked a lot about ‘tips and techniques’ for developers was Jason Grey. Another presenter talking about 'slowing down' (Danny Patterson, one of the authors of Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns.) Both talked about the benefits of slowing down, and how developers can push back against the development process to enable a better development process. The rest of this entry will discuss techniques presented by both presenters about how to 'slow down' the development process. A lot of the techniques may be standard for managers -- but are filtered by my perspective of a museum multimedia developer.

The tips

IMified: http://www.imified.com/index.htm

from their website -- "Imified is a productivity tool that offers instant access to a growing number of web applications over your instant messaging client. Imified simply helps you get things done faster."

IMified is a service, a buddy on your instant messenger that is similar to SmarterChild, Santa and other chatbots. It helps you keep all your various todo lists centralized (for example from email, IM, PDA, etc.)

It looks like a lot has happened with their business since last March when I first found them (they launched Feb '07). That's kind of exciting. What's most exciting to me is that they are working out kinks of getting various mobile technologies to talk to one another... towards the sort of seamless integration that will actually make all these little apps way more useful. OMG I can't wait.