The brilliant people at Adobe have just let us know that Flex Builder for Linux has been alpha released on labs. Why does this matter? Allow me to present my perspective: While statistically small, the Linux userbase is very influential and represents disproportionally influential users who use and recommend advanced technology. Linux is a serious desktop Operating System and market share for Linux based systems continues to grow.

I recently slicked the development environment on one of my laptops and reinstalled everything; ColdFusion, Flex Builder, Eclipse etc. While testing, I found I could create and run basic projects but creating a Flash Remoting project does not work. Even if the new application contained simply an mx:application tag and a mx:panel tag, it would throw two runtime errors: Error #1 VerifyError: Error #1053: Illegal override of subtopic in mx.messaging.Consumer. at flash.

Does anyone remember my posting a while ago about Adobe purchasing Flex books from Amazon Wishlists? I remember quite a few people doubting it was true. When I originally heard the news, I immediately set up a wishlist and added every Flex resource I didn't already have. After my nice long vacation in the Florida Keys, I came home to a nice surprise! A package from Amazon containing the Lynda videos for Flex! So, yes it is true. Adobe isn't just going Mad Hatter, of course.

The next iteration of 360 Flex is coming in a few months. I saw the speaker/topic list was just posted and the sessions look incredible. If I go to another conference this year, I expect this to be it. I am very interested in: Custom Flex component development.

Bob Tierney spoke to the NYFlex user group about Flex Data Services and Moxie. Bob, along with Kevin Hoyt is a Senior Product Managers for Flex and he came with some interesting and new information. As you know, plans for Flex 3, code named Moxie, are in full swing. Additionally, Flex Data Services is undergoing some significant changes, not the least of which is the name. Flex Data Services will be rebranded to LiveCycle DataServices.

I heard on the latest The Flex Show Podcast that Adobe will purchase and send any Flex books on Amazon wishlists. I just loaded up my wishlist with all the Flex books I don't currently have. Any books I get I will review on this blog. Also, if I missed any Flex books, please let me know so I can add them. Thanks in advance Adobe!

I recently purchased Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex and Java. At 700+ pages, this book is no lightweight. Street price for the book is $119 and this seems like the higher end for technical books. If you order soon, you can take advantage of the Pre-Order pricing of 69.99. Let me tell you why this book is worth the money. The pace of the book suited me well.

Bender is a new project under planning/development by Toby Tremayne. From what I can tell, Bender will consume your Transfer.xml file and generate AS3 classes, generate an AS3 proxy with a Transfer-like API for calling your remote services and also translate back and forth from CF to AS3. Seems very cool for getting information out of a ColdFusion backend and into Flex. There is also talk of a Service layer section to Bender though I haven't seen much information on this piece.

A notice went out from Ted Patrick's blog the other day about Flex Posters. I actually have a nice set of Flex posters thanks to Shlomy Gantz and the fine New York Flex user group. Apparently folks have been emailing Ted directly for posters and a form on flex.org was set up to take and fulfill the requests.

Live blogging. As always, please ignore the typos and all mistakes are mine. Sitting on my chair was an announcement for the Flex Cookbook. The cookbook is a growing resource for Flex questions and answers. Please have a look. The Keynote: Ted Patrick introduces Tom Hobbs from Adobe. Tom begins by discussing Designer / Developer workflow in the context of cycle racing. Cycle racing is not a spectator sport.