// Commented Out

O’Reilly’s Flex 4 Cookbook is now on shelves and is the perfect way to get started with the Flex 4 framework. Using the tried-and-true cookbook format, you’ll be up and running in no time. The content is as excellent as the list of folks behind it. Just to give you some insight into the caliber of this book, let’s take a look at the hall-of-fame quality of the authors.

Joshua Noble – @factoryfactory – http://thefactoryfactory.com/
Todd Anderson – @bustardcelly – http://custardbelly.com/blog/
Garth Braithwaite – @GarthDB – http://www.garthdb.com/
Marco Casario – @marcocasario – http://casario.blogs.com/
Rich Tretola – @RichTretola – http://blog.everythingflex.com/
David Tucker – @mindmillmedia – http://www.davidtucker.net/

As inspiring and impressive as that list is, that’s not all. There were several highly influential members of the Community that served as Technical Reviewers as well. Let’s go down that roster, shall we?

Sean Moore – @seantheflexguy – http://www.seantheflexguy.com/
Chuck Freedman – @chuckstar – http://chuckstar.com/blog
Russ Ferguson – @asciibn – http://www.insideria.com/russ-ferguson/
Mykola Bilokonsky – @mykola – http://mykola.bilokonsky.net/

Uh, there is this other guy too. I’ll give you a hint. His name rhymes w–  OK it’s ME! Yes. I was honored to be a part of such an elite group of Flex gurus to help Tech Review this fantastic book. Even if I wasn’t a part of it, I would still be posting this. The people involved, especially those at O’Reilly, are as professional as they are skilled at what they do.

I recommend picking up a copy and digging in. The latest and most-cutting edge development techniques are covered within, including Unit Testing with FlexUnit, working with the new video components utilitizing the Open Source Media Framework (OSMF), secure server-side communication with BlazeDS and AMF, Spark layouts and containers,  declarative graphics skinning with FXG, and a ton more Flex 4 goodness. Actually, writing this reminded me of how packed this book is with awesome. I’m going to go read it right now! Grab a copy today!

UPDATE: I cannot believe the email I just got. My Flash and the City slide deck has been included in the top presentations on the Slideshare.net homepage for multiple days! It’s gotten over 1400 3800 5000 A LOT of views and was officially the most discussed presentation on Twitter at several points!

Check it out! http://www.slideshare.net/ssod

Check out my @FlashAndTheCity 2010 slides posted below, or you can view them on Slideshare
at http://j.mp/SuttleFATC10

Sitting here, after a whirlwind weekend in New York City for Flash and the City, I’m really very thankful. The last 8 months have been intense, and the amount of work Elad, Jose, Jesse and I put into this event is difficult to quantify. What makes it all worth it was all of the compliments and outstanding feedback from the community, other speakers, attendees and sponsors. As a first time conference, (which at times we were all too aware of), I think we made the best possible showing we could. Nothing’s ever going to be perfect, but for our rookie season, I think people were generally very pleased and even more happy that New York has a new event.

I’d like to thank all of you that came to my session (including other speakers), and for the wonderful compliments, and tips/pointers for next time. I am still getting feedback and people who weren’t even there have said that they’ve heard great things. I could not be more humbled or personally satisfied.

I’d like to thank Elad for letting me be a part of this and giving me the opportunity to help shape the future of this event. I can’t wait for FATC 2011. It will be even better with your feedback.

Even more importantly, I’d love to thank my wife for being so patient with me over the last months while organizing the event and for spending part of our anniversary in New York. You’re the best, I love you.

A few weeks ago, I was invited to join a special group of developers in Boston at litl to kick the tires on the web book and preview the upcoming SDK in a hands-on training session. I wanted to take this time to publicly thank them for having me and giving me a sneak peek at the truly innovative work they are doing. I also wanted to mention, that the more people I meet at litl, the more I realize that this is a company that gets what makes a great user experience. As I said on the episode of RIARadio which featured Chuck Freedman and yours truly, litl is a company that is filling a niche that people didn’t even know existed. So, as a developer and an organizer of Flash and the City, you can understand my excitement to have them as a sponsor.

Even more to my point, litl has chosen Flash and the City to make several unbelievable contributions, including an expansion of the private SDK beta, sponsoring the Hudson River Yacht Cruise,  giving FATC Award winners their very own litl web book, and most recently, announcing the launch of a Flash-based web-TV product! According to litl’s Chief Evangelist… Chuck Freedman:

“I can say that we will have a Flash-Based “Web-Connected TV” device on the market, running litl OS as well as ALL channels built with our new SDK.”

“In the coming months, our SDK will be expanded to include “accelerometer movement, video chat, trackpad gestures, and microphone input” that will allow open development of “gaming, communication, entertainment and other experiences.”

“We believe that our platform’s use of Flash will be the best and easiest way for developers to deliver great content and applications to the TV!”

I don’t know about you, but the prospect of being able to develop for Flash-based hardware, including TVs, with an open-source SDK is simply incredible! I’m so grateful that litl will be at Flash and the City to kick off their development platform. @ChuckStar and Katryn Rotondo will be giving an overview of the litl SDK in a new session on Sunday morning at 11am, and several others from litl will be on hand to answer any questions and demo the web book.

Also, if you attend my session, I may be mentioning and or/demoing the sample channel I built. No promises though. A lot can happen and NOT happen in 3 days.

See you at Flash and the City!