Nathan Levesque

After a couple months working with Adobe AIR, I have come across the single most lacking feature I believe would benefit the framework: Being able to execute other applications, dlls, or even just being able to compile object code down to an AIR application. My main reason for this as a number one feature request is that there is some code that already exists that would be a tremendous labor to port to ActionScript. Also, much of this code runs much faster than its ActionScript equivalent would. Hopefully Adobe will implement this feature later on.

I will be attending Flex Camp Boston on December 7th. I’m very excited to be going as I have spent the last several months becoming familiar with Adobe’s Flex 3 Beta and Adobe AIR. I am presently developing an AIR application focused on providing a way for university faculty/staff to keep track of students’ progress through individual courses and through their achievement of their degree. I hope to have a functional demo available to show at Flex Camp Boston.

The Open Handset Alliance today announced their development of a new open source mobile platform named Android, which had been dubbed by the media as the “gPhone.” Android, however, is not exactly a phone but an open source operating system on a mobile platform. They will be releasing the developer’s SDK next week. It’s amazing to see the strides that open source software has been making these last few years and this is definitely a hand up to the community.

Although there will be undoubtedly a plethora of duplicate applications that come out, I’m very interested in what the developer community will be able to develop that is unique. I can see this new toy making a big impact on the mobile electronics industry.