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Adobe launches CS4 suite of applications
arstechnica.com

Adobe Creative Suite 4 released
blogs.fayobserver.com/techsassy

Adobe releases Creative Suite 4
news.cnet.com

Initial Review: Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection
reviews.cnet.com

Photoshop to get GPU and physics acceleration
tgdaily.com

Adobe officially announces CS4
downloadsquad.com

Have you gotten your hands on the new tools yet? If so, let us know what you think in the comments below. If we like what you have to say, we’ll include your opinions in upcoming posts about the software. You could be [Re]Famous!

So what is it?  And what does it do?  Well, the according to Adobe: “Create engaging, cross-platform rich internet applications.  Flex is a highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems.”

For me, it’s takes all the possibilities of flash, seemlessly intergrates it into about any appication you want, allows the interactivity of AJAX, and does so with a very basic knowledge of ActionScript.  The more ActionScript you know, the more amazing things you can do.  If you’re used to coding in PHP or standard ASP, it’s a completely new and intuative way to look at application development, yet not so farfetched that you’d never catch on.  It almost reminds me of .NET when I first started looking into it, as I wondered where it had been all my life… Yet this is totally cross-browser and platform capible.

So you want to see it in action?  Here’s the demo from Adobe that literally blew me away.  I’ve created video sites on numerous occasions and have used RSS feeds extensively throughout these sites.  I feel like I’ve written very similar scripts using PHP and ASP that took at least a week to create.  With Flex, this demo had the base of what took me at least a few hours done in the first minute!  Check out this demo! FLEX APP

One of the things I love about Flex, and why I think if you’re a serious developer, you need to get in on the ground floor is… It’s a hot technology that hasn’t been exploited.  Look through the job openings for .NET developers and see there is a HUGE need and numerous opportunities.  This could give you the opportunity to be IN DEMAND in the job market and name your own price as one of the oldest and most established Flex developers.  This technology is so new, they haven’t even finished the training course on Adobe’s Website!

And the best part of all, Adobe is allowing a great 60 day trial of their Flex Builder 3.  Take 2 months and play around with this in your spare time.  I think you might find that it’ll not only help you create much better applications but it will increase your marketability and portfolio in no time.

So give it a try… And if you become a top notch developer, be sure to remember the guy who got you started

But even Web 2.0, or at least what many consider the “look” of Web 2.0, is changing.  There’s not nearly as much focus on the :shiney: images and logos, rather a shift to a more creative and artsy design.  While the mirrored logo and shiny look made popular by apple is still very much a part of the culture, many designers, Apple included, has gone to a more free flowing, artsy, creative design.  Here’s the top trends for 2008:

1. Art Work intergrated into the design.  With CSS allowing for more and more creative design, and more developers understanding the importance and sleekness of non-table based layouts, designers are getting much more free reign.  They are taking full advantage, using abstract art work, flowers, drawings, water colors, or just purely drawn layouts to give their sites a personal and fresh look.  Now only your imagination (and ability to draw) can hold you back.

2. Post-its, frames, and image decoration using CSS.  So who wants to spend hours manipulating images in Photoshop?  That’s so 2007!  With the power of CSS, designers now can create amazing effects for their images by wrapping them in a simple CSS tag.  Great things are being done with photo-like frames, posted notes, bulletin board backgrounds, and masks to add flare to your photos.

 3. The Cool Factor!  AJAX allows for much more sleek applications and developers are becoming quite amazing with its application.  With menus that process in real time, forms that auto-fill in based on previous information, menus that are out of this world, AJAX gives developers options to do everything better, faster, and maybe most importantly cooler!

So there’s just a few of the 2008 Web Development Trends.  We’d love to hear what YOU are thinking!

Robots may soon live among us! In the past, scientists thought the best way to create AI was with a body controlled by a central robot brain. New thinking, however, suggests that intelligence starts from the body, not the brain. The starfish above is an example of the latter. When in rough terrain, the starfish robot has the ability to pick different walking configurations and choose which one works the best. When the starfish is turned on, it flops around and chooses the most succesful movement; records it and thus increases its intelligence. This could solve a fundamental problem of creating AI. That is if AI had a central brain, it would be almost impossible to program every detail of the world into it. With this new way of thinking, future robots could not only be able to learn but act and look just like real people.  In his book, Love and Sex with Robots, David Levy predicts that people will be having sex with human-like robots by the year 2050!