One of my past times is to sit and watch various shows on both Justin.TV and Ustream. A person who goes by the name of Ron Knights (from the USA) went on about how he wanted an iPad as he could sit on his couch with the ipad and watch the streams instead of sitting in front of the computer all the time. I tried to explain that streaming was not up to much on the iPad due to the fact there is no adobe flash installed – so it is with this, I made this quick video.

Options available

Justin.TV have a free application that is designed for the iPhone and this shows due to have the 2x in the corner and the blocky appearance. You can go look via category and even sign in and find the stream you want. The problem creeps in though when watching a stream, considering I am on Wireless N and the router is like behind me – there should be no dropping of any signal when trying to watch a stream but after a few minutes it starts to break up and given long enough (10 minutes at max) it will finally come to a stop. What is even more important here is how long it take to finally start the stream – just what is it doing we ask? If it is buffering – then why does it fail when watching the live stream?

Usteam also have an application (also free) which is once again an iPhone version and you have the 2x in the corner. Unlike the Justin Application, this is limited on how you are meant to find the stream you want and the search has proven to not find what I want 90% of the time. Once you do pick a stream though it does start it quickly and plays it without falling apart.

If the streaming is not part of those two, then you are plain out of luck I am afraid. You can go to the App store and buy Skyfire for example which will set you back $4.99 but having tested this already on the free Android version – I can tell you that BitGravity Streams does not work as planned – so save your money.

Is the Android any better?

Justin produce only a streaming App and not a viewer application which means you need to try and view them through Skyfire which works but the quality is not all that good. Ustream works just fine and as I already mentioned, any BitGravity type streams do not work either way. At least with the Android device I do not have to keep buying applications to try and watch streams.

Conclusion

As streaming is hard coded flash type thing, you are going to struggle to replace the desktop to sit and watch streams on an iPad, no matter how magical you think it is, this is one area that is not happening.

At Mobile World Congress 2010 Adobe announced Adobe AIR would support mobile devices by the end of this year.  Adobe AIR, a key component of the Adobe Flash® Platform, enables developers to use a single development platform and reuse existing code to quickly build applications that run outside the browser, across multiple screens, devices and platforms. Because the source code and assets are reusable across the Flash Platform runtimes (AIR and Flash Player), it also gives developers a way to more rapidly target other mobile and desktop environments.

Today we reach another important milestone by posting the Adobe AIR runtime to the Android Market thus enabling our developers to distribute their applications to Android smartphone and tablets.  Some of these apps are already available as AIR applications running on the desktop and iOS.  We are also on track to deliver the next version of the AIR SDK  by the end of 2010.  Additional information regarding Adobe AIR for Android is available at Adobe Labs.

With the support of our Open Screen Project ™ partners, soon Adobe Flash Platform tools will allow for AIR apps to be compiled and delivered to Android, iOS, BlackBerry™ Tablet OS devices and more.    Come see us at Adobe MAX in Los Angeles on October 23-27 for first access to industry leading tools that enable the development of applications across multiple screens, devices and platforms.

Android Device Requirements for Adobe AIR

• Google Android 2.2 Operating system
• ARMv7-A Processor
• OpenGL ES2.0
• H.264 & AAC H/W Decoders
• 256 MB of RAM

Downloading Adobe AIR for your Android device.

You only need to download Adobe AIR once from the Android Market and it will work with any AIR based application on your device. If you download an AIR application to your Android device and AIR is not already installed, the application will take you directly to download the AIR runtime.  In the future, AIR will be preinstalled on many newer smartphones and tablets therefore eliminating the need for the initial download.

Thoughts……

I am sitting here with an HTC Hero Phone which is running V2.1 and no sign of any official upgrade from T-Mobile or HTC. This means such things as Air won’t make it to my device and come to think of it, many devices that are running 1.6 still to this day for example. In this day and age, we have to admit that once a phone is One year old – you shoudl write it off if and upgrade, it’s a pity then the contracts are 18 and 24 months long right ! Time for the Carriers to change me thinks.

You want to create your own Adobe Air Application which you can distribute to your friends, say for example an application to let people watch your stream? I followed a quick guide online using nothing more then Notepad and dos prompt and ended off with an Application that runs on all platforms.

Step 1 – Install Adobe AIR & the Adobe AIR SDK

If you haven’t done so already, head over to Adobe to download and install the Adobe AIR Runtime, and the Adobe AIR SDK.

When you install the Adobe AIR SDK, you will want to add it’s bin/ directory to your environment path.

Step 2 – Create Some Directories

Next we need to create some directories for our code, create the following directories:

/appname/
/appname/source/
/appname/source/icons/
/appname/build/

Step 3 – Create an Application Descriptor

Your application descriptor is an XML file that sets some properties for your application.

Let’s call this file application.xml and place it in /appname/source/

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<application xmlns=”http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/2.5″>
<id>com.example.fullysquared</id>

<version>1.0</version>
<filename>FullySquared</filename>
<initialWindow>
<content>index.html </content>
<visible>true</visible>
<width>608</width>
<height>435</height>
</initialWindow>
<icon>
<image16x16>icons/Victor_16.png</image16x16>
<image32x32>icons/Victor_32.png</image32x32>
<image48x48>icons/Victor_48.png</image48x48>
<image128x128>icons/Victor_128.png</image128x128>
</icon>
</application>

It should be pretty obvious what to put for all the values, the icon values will be used as your application icon, you can omit these if you don’t really want to create the PNG’s, but it’s kind of cool to see your own icons.

http://www.iconarchive.com/ – Good Place for Icons

There are a lot more optional tags you can add, check out the templates/descriptor-template.xml file in the Air SDK.

Step 4 – Create your Application

The next step can be as detailed as you like, but really all you need to do is create an index.html file.

<html>
<head>
<title>FullySquared</title>
</head>
<body>
<object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ width=”400″ height=”320″ id=”utv243923″><param name=”flashvars” value=”autoplay=false&amp;brand=embed&amp;cid=2352803″/><param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true”/><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”/><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.ustream.tv/flash/live/1/2352803″/><embed flashvars=”autoplay=false&amp;brand=embed&amp;cid=2352803″ width=”600″ height=”400″ allowfullscreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” id=”utv243923″ name=”utv_n_129718″ src=”http://www.ustream.tv/flash/live/1/2352803″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” /></object>
</body>
</html>

If you want to add CSS, JavaScript, or images, you can create subfolders in your /appname/source/ folder for those assets, and use them just like you would in a normal web application.

Step 5 – Test your Application

You are probably getting pretty anxious to test your new Adobe AIR application, to do that it’s pretty simple.

Open up a command prompt, or shell and navigate to /appname/source/ then run the following command:

adl application.xml

If all goes well your application should launch. There is a good chance however that you ignored my suggestion to add the airsdk/bin directory to your system environment path, in which case you got something like adl not found. If that is the case then simply append the full path to your SDK bin to the command, for example:

c:\air\bin\adl application.xml

Step 6 – Package Your Application

Once you have tested your application, or are ready to show your friends, or just want see how your icon looks in the Dock you are ready to packing your Air Application.

This step will be a bit cumbersome the first time because all Adobe Air application code must be digitally signed. Code signing, is a bit like using SSL, you get a certificate from a trusted source, and then people will know who wrote the application. This is important because the Adobe AIR platform allows you to access local files, and do all sorts of things that could really screw things up.

Chances are you really just want to show your new application to a few people, and not the entire world. If that’s the case then you can easily create a self signed certificate. It is important that the Certificate is not placed in your source directory, so let’s place it in the root of our application: /appname/

adt -certificate -cn SelfSign -ou Dev -o "Example" -c US 2048-RSA cert.pfx password

Now once we have a code signing certificate we can create an Air application Package. Change directories back into source and run:

adt -package -storetype pkcs12 -keystore ../cert.pfx ../build/FullySquared.air application.xml .

You should now have an AppName.air file that you can send to your friends, or simply run it on your own computer.

On my trial to run Ubuntu 9.04 64bit for main use on my Laptop and reporting back on really how close it can come to a complete experience as a desktop machine and that I worked with Steve from The Tech Buzz to get Ubuntu netbook remix working a treat – read on to find out how it all went…

The General Purpose Laptop

The Laptop runs Compiz fast enough but I had to fix the CPU scaling so that it stopped running at 800Mhz instead of the 2Mhz, as this caused the fancy 3D Graphics to flicker like mad. XChat worked well enough but no better then the Windows Version I would say, the only good thing is that it is on it’s own screen (4 Desktops with Compiz). I just worked out that the Wireless refused to work, I tried some major Terminal mode typing, compiling drivers and sprinkling holy water over the whole lot but nope – this baby was as dead as any Hackintosh Wireless.

The Volume control jumps all over the place and in the end I use the Task bar to set the volume, the SD Card slot reader has zero chance of working it seems and firefox still sits there at 3.0.11 (3.5.1 is installed but it is not only called something else – Shiretoko but has none of my plug-ins from the other version.   

Adobe flash does whatever the hell it wants, sometimes I can open YouTube and it works, other times I get nothing in the place of the video. Streaming is a no-go, no matter what I have tried, no box comes up or it freezes after a few seconds (Justin.Tv). I blamed 64Bit for this but I checked n my Netbook which is 32bit and the same results, either I am doing something wrong or this is just not a good area for Linux. I have seen people stream from Linux so I know it is possible, I must ask them what they did.

If I swapped back to Windows 7, what would I miss or gain from this Linux Experience? I will not miss the Cube, the snow on the desktop, the mouse catching fire or any of that eye-candy stuff BUT I will miss the Multiple Desktops and the Zoom Feature. I would gain the ability to play games (woot), Stream, run Youtube or in fact ANY flash web site without a second thought.

The ASUS EEE 1005HAB Netbook

Steve from The Tech Buzz fancied a Netbook to mess about with and he got himself the new ASUS Eee 1005HAB, this features the Atheros 813 Network. The problem came about though is that when he installed Ubuntu, he had no Wired or Wireless actually working. After many hours of searching google, we finally found a link which explained what to do. The bottom line of this procedure is you downlaod the Source code of the driver (Wired), Build it and install it – all via command line plus add some extra packages THEN update the system (via wired) to get the wireless working. This would stop most people messing with Linux on that machine and even most Tech savvy users are going to get confused as to having to Build the files from the source code. 

The end result is we did get it going and it never went as smooth as it should, for example loosing the bar at the top and bottom, graphics breaking up and it going slow – Windows by the way Works 100% fine on this machine (it came with XP).

What do we know then?

I managed to learn a lot about Linux and the command line by having to support Linux Servers in a business environment, a case of repeating the same stuff over and over and finally it sank in on how to copy files from one server to another, add user, add groups, manage groups, editing via Vi and so forth.

While the Linux Users will stand there and say how amazing there Distro is and how bad windows is – they either know it inside out and can solve any problem or they are lying to themselves and letting the OS dictate what they can do (as in, cannot stream via 64Bit – oh well, I just wont stream then). I am not writing the OS off as a lost cause, it is good for many things – mainly server side I would say. I am not quite jumping back to windows yet and I can swap the HD’s around anyhow (one has Win 7, one has Ubuntu). I found this an interesting subject to tackle head on though.    

Somebody made mention of this site and the tutorials that I have watched so far look very professional indeed. You need to be into Adobe After Effects for it to be of any use but have a look none the less.

Visual Effects & Motion Design
Learn some stuff, buy some stuff, create some stuff