Come join us this summer for Ribbit’s Summer Spawn 08 on Sunday, August 17, 2008 at the 360|Flex Conference in San Jose, Ca. If you weren’t able to attend our 1st spawn event, you can check it out here, but this one won’t be the same. This one is more jam packed with information and new enhancements to Ribbit’s technology.
Recently, Ribbit has released a set of Flash Components, and to not leave out the Flex community, we are coming up with a set of Voice Components for Flex that we will be releasing at this full day of training. With the Voice components, you will be able to drag and drop Ribbit’s technology into your Flex applications and customize them quickly and easily. Not only are we coving Ribbit’s new Voice Components for Flex during the day, but we’ll also cover more Flex specific topics like creating custom components, using AIR, and even a primer on PureMVC which the voice components are built on.
All of this is FREE, yes I did say FREE. If you are attending 360|Flex then you can join us live in San Jose, Ca. If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, get them quick because it will surely sell out soon. You can get 360|Flex tickets here.
If you can’t make it to 360|Flex, don’t worry, we will be broadcasting this live so you can get all this great information from the comfort of your own home.
Click the link below to find out more information and register for this great event.
http://developer.ribbit.com/spawn2008/
Get out of the heat and join us for Ribbit’s Summer Spawn 08.
The Ribbit API is evolving and we’ll be releasing some important changes in the coming months. We’re starting to prepare the developer community as well as our own projects and applications for the new API release.
With several Ribbit AIR apps in the wild, we thought this article about the AIR Updater Framework would be helpful. Adobe Platform evangelist and AIR expert Danny Dura writes about how you can push AIR Application Updates.
The approach uses the AIR Update framework which provides easy hooks to version your app and allow it to check for newer versions at runtime. It is recommended that your incorporate this update ability into your app as early as possible.
If you know of other AIR development tips, please share them with the Ribbit community on our forums: http://developer.ribbit.com/forums/.
360 Flex has anointed Ribbit as the official Army of their conference later this summer, to be held August 17-20 in our backyard of San Jose.
http://www.360conferences.com/360flex/2008/06/360flex-send-team-or-army.html
Yes, there will be a total of 8 Ribbit developers and evangelists roaming the many halls, sessions and bars of 360 Flex. If you are going and you see our army, come say hi. Tell us what you’re doing or what you want to do with Ribbit!
Sending 8 people proved to be obscenely cost effective! If you haven’t registered yet, you must do so before we decide to send 8 more… http://360flex.eventbrite.com/. And if your company is sending 8 or more people, then we’ll see you in the parking lot at 7:00. We’ll protect our turf as the official 360 Flex army.
We’ve heard from good portion of the developer community on how we can further improve their Ribbit developer experience. Kindly spend a few minutes filling out our recently launched survey and help us better meet your development needs. Registered Ribbit Platform developers can take the survey here:
http://developer.ribbit.com/download/
(click on the survey link at the top of the page)
Thank you for your participation!
Join us for our first live session (in a long time) featuring the new Ribbit Flash Components.
Thursday, June 12, 2:00 - 3:00 PM PST. All are welcome to join!
If you have not seen the components nor been a part of the pre-release, here’s a great chance to see these beautiful code babies in action.
You can RSVP here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/374525157
Space is limited, so if you are even remotely interested, sign up now!
I’ll be running through the components, building some sample apps.
There should be time for Q&A at the end. See you online tomorrow.
Our first Spawn, now referred to as Spring Spawn 2008, was held to a sold out audience back on March 16. Among all the other exciting and innovative things we are doing at Ribbit, some talented members of our team actually found the time to put together quite a nice Spawn recap page.
If you weren’t able to attend Spawn, you’ll find the professionally captured (and edited) videos an incredible reference for building Ribbit apps. The videos feature Ted Patrick (of Adobe), as well as Wes Leonardo and myself (of Ribbit’s Developer Platform team). All presentations from the event are also posted.
And if you were at Spawn, re-live that magical day by watching some very well-crafted recap videos featuring event speakers as well as attendees.
http://developer.ribbit.com/spawn2008/
Lastly, there is another Spawn in the works! Yes, we are putting together details on a Summery Spawn. An announcement will be made in a few weeks so stay tuned.
We’ve had a great pre-release so far for Ribbit’s Voice components for Flash. After collecting a first round of feedback and feature requests, we are happy to report that the first set of revisions to the components are underway. We will be inviting another batch of pre-release developers in the first weeks of June, when we expect to start seeing some very cool apps being built. All existing pre-release developers will be invited to stay on the pre-release as their feedback has been so valuable to this point.
To sign up for the pre-release, visit: http://developer.ribbit.com/flash/
When releasing a new extension of our voice platform, we know it is in our best interests to offer the highest quality technology and solutions available. We set a precedent with our Flex SDK, working with Esria and Doug McCune to help us build our first exposed class set for the Flex Developer Community. Packaging the same technology, slightly evolved over the past several months, for the Flash Designer and Developer Community would require the same quality, approach and skill.
We were fortunate to secure the services of Infrared5, our technology partner out of Boston, and leverage their foremost expertise in Flash development towards building our inaugural Flash component set. The Ribbit Voice components for Flash began their prerelease this week and so far, we’re getting rave reviews and feedback.
I was lucky to get some Q & A time with two key players of Infrared5, lead engineer Sir Keith Peters and ceo/founder Chris Allen. Here is the short but exciting interview:
Chuck Freedman (Ribbit): What did you find exciting about Ribbit?
Keith Peters (Ir5): Ribbit is one of the really unique and cutting edge products out there, in a world where a lot of companies seem to be copying other successful products.
Chris Allen (Ir5): Yeah, Ribbit is taking the telephone into the 21st century.
CF: What cutting edge features did you include in the Ribbit Voice components for Flash project?
KP: The layout features were really cool to create. Since each component is almost like a mini-application in itself, there needed to be some way to control how the subcomponents are laid out. Rather than a programmatic layout which would be really hard for a user to adjust, we figured out a way to implement a WYSIWYG layout in the component on stage in the Flash IDE, which would be translated into the final layout in the instantiated component. Also, the inter-component communication was a nice challenge. We wanted each component to be totally stand-alone, so that no component relied on any other component, but also allow for ways they could communicate with each other if needed.
CF: What are you looking forward to seeing developers create with the components?
CA: I see a lot of amazing possibilities with Ribbit technology. Integration with sales or customer support on company websites is definitely something that will be popping up more and more down the road. We at Infrared5 are currently adding a new feature to infrared5.com that allows the user to make a phone call directly to us from the site. Thus allowing our sales person to guide the user through the site while being on the “phone” with that person. I think it’s features like this that will really help make a company stand out from their competition. Obviously this feature also showcases our work, as we were responsible for developing the Flash component used to generate this experience.
CF: Can you compare the Ribbit Voice components for Flash with any other component set you’ve used or created?
KP: Most components are simple controls that perform a single action, such as a button that can be clicked, or even something as complex as a datagrid really just serves to display a two-dimensional set of data. The Ribbit Flash components are each like mini-applications in themselves. A good comparison would be the old FlashCom components like the whiteboard or chat components, or even a video player, that has within it multiple components and contains much more advanced functionality, such that a single component could conceivably be dropped onto the stage by itself and could perform a useful function, such as making a phone call, with no further assets on stage or code written.
CF: What excites you about voice, messaging and contact mngmt in flash?
CA: What doesn’t? It’s quite simply some of the coolest shit out there! Now combine Ribbit with Papervision3D and multi-user interaction using Red5 and you have some of the most entertaining and exciting user experiences to date. A good example of how exciting it is to us is an email I got from Andy after his first time using the Ribbit Flash component, and having him add it to our site: “I have implemented Ribbit into the site now - and it is AWESOME. I have it calling myself right now, so if you want to test it just give me a call”.
On behalf of our team and developer community, I want to thank Infrared5, Keith and Chris for their excellent work on the component set. Learn more about Infrared5 and their industry-leading services at http://www.infrared5.com.
Over the past months, we have produced code solutions and videos on how to incorporate specific elements of Ribbit into your applications. We are starting a new ‘How To’ series on building applications while incorporating the Ribbit technology. So here is the first entry into the ‘How To’ series, coding a phone.
This video is broken up into 3 different parts covering getting started, adding Flex elements to the application, incorporating Ribbit, and then adding sounds and skinning your application.
This end to end solution will have you coding your own phone in no time. If you haven’t yet, download Flex Builder, the Ribbit SWC, and the Ribbit Code Solutions.
Check out the videos below!
 Code A Phone Pt. 1 & 2 |
 Code A Phone Pt. 3 |
 Code A Phone Pt. 4 |
It’s official, our Ribbit developer community has reached 4,000 registered developers. Up to this point, all perspective and active developers have signed up to code on our platform using our Flex Builder component. After a focused prerelease during August and September 2007, the Flex component (SWC) went public beta at Adobe MAX Chicago on October 1.
Our developers have done some amazing things — many featured in the developer site showcase (login to see more). It’s been a great pleasure touring the country (conferences and user groups in Seattle, San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Chicago, Toronto, Boston, New York and Atlanta) talking to many interested developers about the features of the Ribbit API.
Our strong community of developers have done a great job interacting with us and each other. Through our support forums, developers have shared issues, suggestions and feedback with us on the API and service. Developers have also worked with each other, sharing everything from dial tone sounds to feedback on several applications and projects.
As we begin to introduce our brand new and exciting Ribbit Voice components for Flash, a new breed of designer/developer will now be welcome in our community. While support for the Flex component remains a huge priority, new developers will have the option of building Ribbit apps using our drag and drop components in Flash CS3.
We’ll be announcing some great new features in the coming weeks to ensure that our first 4,000 and our next 4,000 developers AND designers in our community have some great tools and features to work with!
