Recently, a co-worker of mine, Val from thisisportable.com, showed me a great use of a free Bluetooth server and Flash. Some of you may have seen the server in action at FITC Amsterdam. The server is called Roomware. It is a free Bluetooth server that will run on your Mac or PC. After brainstorming a bit we came up with the idea of a ThemeSong server. Basically, we thought it would be awesome to walk into a room and have our own theme song be played.

After some work, I have an initial release of ThemeSong available fo those interested in using it for themselves. ThemeSong is written in Adobe AIR and leverages the Roomware Server in order to detect Bluetooth devices in proximity. ThemeSong provides the ability for you to remember devices (mostly phones) and to assign entrance and exit theme songs that you would like to have played when that device is present (discoverable) or absent (undiscoverable). My distribution of the Roomware Server uses a modified config file to make the server poll the list of devices more often than it does by default. You will however, be at the mercy of your computer's hardware limitations for the number of queries it can do in a given amount of time.

Enough Talk - How Do I Install this Thing?

What You Need:

• A computer with Bluetooth capabilities (most Macs have this built-in these days - you can try a Bluetooth dongle though they seem spotty with the Roomware Server)


• Bluetooth devices to detect (your cell phone with the Bluetooth on and set to discoverable)


• Some MP3s to assign to devices


• Some speakers on your computer


• If on a PC you may need to install a JRE


• The Adobe AIR Runtime


• Download ThemeSong with the bundled Roomware Server

How to get the Roomware Server Running:

The download consists of a zip file containing both an .air and .zip file. Please unzip the roomware-server.zip to a folder on your desktop or somewhere you will remember the location. This should give you a folder on your desktop called roomware-server. Inside of the roomware-server folder there is a README that will let you get the Bluetooth server up and running using the Terminal or the Command Line. Once the server is running you should see it processing any Bluetooth devices in the area. Below are screenshots of what you would need to type to get the server running on your Mac and PC:





Installing and Using ThemeSong:

Next, install the AIR application and press connect. It should query the devices in the area and eventually assign the Friendly name to them in the list. You can click a device in the list and pick and entrance and exit mp3 sound that will play when that device is seen (someone walks within 30 feet of your computer with their phone) or goes away (someone leaves the area with their phone).



The mp3 is copied and stored by ThemeSong. ThemeSong does what the name implies. It plays the ThemeSong assigned to a device. Make sure to hit Remember This Device's Settings to store the info and to remember the device for when you run the server later.



Conclusion

I hope you enjoy ThemeSong. It has been a lot of fun in the office to hear the Imperial March play whenever I walk into the room. This was a proof of concept we wanted to do so please don't take it too seriously.

Just like the Roomware Server, this software is released as follows:

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

FlashPitt Reminder: Tucker the FlashPitt Puppy!



FlashPitt is right around the corner boys and girls! Have you got your tickets yet? I am really excited to give my session on AS2 to AS3 Migration! Especially with the recent announcement of Flash CS4. AS3 is more pertinent than ever!

I hope to see all you loyal blog followers in Pittsburgh on October 10th!
As you can see above, the badges have been ordered and Tucker, the official FlashPitt dog, is really enjoying them!

If you want more details and want to buy a ticket, hurry on over to FlashPitt.com!

In the meantime, if you are in the Pittsburgh area this Thursday, be sure to stop at the PittMFUG meeting for our CS4 Prerelease meeting!

As you might have gathered from the banners on my blog, I'm speaking at Flashpitt in about a month.

I'll be doing a session with Wayne called AS2 to AS3 Migration. This will be a great session for anyone still making the move, or not sure about making the move, to AS3. Don't worry, this presentation isn't going to be like reading a textbook; we're planning to have some fun with it!

We're on pretty early on in the day which means I'll actually get to go to a lot of other people's sessions. There's a lot of great sessions on the schedule, but here's the ones I'm looking to catch:
Papervision3D - 3D on the web is definitely an up and coming trend that's going to be around for a while. What better way to find out more about papervision3D than from one of their team members?

For Position Only - While I haven't been doing a lot of design work lately, I'm not going to pass up the chance to see a place like Big Spaceship show off what some of their "in-progress" work looks like. They do some amazing work and I'm hoping to pick up some tips about their processes that I can use myself.

Physical Computing - Controlling actual physical things with Flash? Need I say more?

Experience First Approach - Thanks to all the devices out there -- like my awesome iPod Touch --web apps and web sites aren't just for browsers anymore. That makes this topic is relevant to everything I do. I've heard lots of great things about Stacey's presentation style, so I'm willing to bet this one will be entertaining too.

The Medium of Interaction - I hadn't heard of Golan until Wayne introduced me to his work, which is absolutely amazing. Golan makes interactive installation pieces that are shown all over the world and take the idea of interaction and programming to a whole different level. He even built a robot as one of his installations. I think this is going to be a great inspirational talk to end the day with. Nothing like a good reminder that there's more to "interactive" than corporate web sites and the like, right?

If you're going to be at Flashpitt, too track me down and say hi. Grab your tickets on the Flashpitt site if you haven't already, this event isn't one you want to miss.

A few months ago I let all of you loyal Flashers in on the news about Pittsburgh's first Flash Conference. FlashPitt 08 will be Friday, October 10, 2008. Things are approaching quickly! I just wanted to post an update concerning speakers who will be at the event.

We have a lot of the speakers scheduled already including:

• Julian Dolce of Fuel Industries and deleteaso


• John Lindquist of Papervision 3D


• Stacey Mulcahy of bitchwhocodes.com


• Jose R. Rodriguez of JRVisuals


• Craig Swann of Crash Media


• Wayne Lincoln of the PittMFUG


• Ben Pritchard (Me) of Pixelfumes

Also, folks from Adobe and Big Spaceship will be on hand! You can learn more about the speakers here.

Be sure to visit the site: www.flashpitt.com for all of the details and online registration! Hope to see you there!

One new thing about ActionScript 3 documents that you may have noticed is a new behavior related to MovieClips. Prior to ActionScript 3, you could create a button on the stage, lay a MovieClip over it and click through the MovieClip to the button below. Now, at times this was cool - but at other times, like when you want to make an area go modal, it was a pain because you had to add a mouse event to the MovieClip that was the overlay or change that MovieClip to a button in order to prevent clicking through to the items behind/underneath it.

ActionScript 3, by default prohibits you from clicking through a display object to items underneath. So, how do you get around that? I stumbled upon a quick explaination over at Reyco1’s Flash Blog. Check out the demo below... You will see that in order to click through the MovieClip to the button behind we need to set two properties: mouseEnabled and mouseChildren. The mouseEnabled property sets whether or not the mouse registers on the given clip while the mouseChildren sets whether children within the given clip register the mouse. Setting both of these properties to false ensures that we can click through the MovieClip to the elements below.

I am trying to get back into experimenting with different things since I have been so lazy about updates on the blog. Today I finished up a proof of concept that swings a MovieClip on an axis point. In the demo below you can play with the result. If you are interested in downloading the code you can do so here. I got the original code math formula from Blog About Flash. They provided a really nice and efficient way to handle the pendulum motion by simply using the Math.cos() method. My Swinger class basically takes that formula and allows you to work with some interaction and friction settings. As always - should you wish to add to the code let me know and I will post your updates. Hope you enjoy it.

Back in September of 2007 I posted about getting my iPod Touch. I have been in love with it since and use it constantly. Actually, that post has been one of the more visited and commented posts on my blog for some reason. Fast forward to yesterday, the MacWorld Keynote in SF. Apple released the 1.1.3 firmware for the Touch - yea! Then they let everyone know that the apps that I have been craving, Mail, Notes, Maps and Stocks are available for the Touch. But wait - you have to pay $20 for them. Okay, so that wouldn't be a huge deal (though I could argue with the price point) if the following were not true... Apparently if you purchase the Touch today you will fall into one of two categories: 1)If you go to an Apple Store and buy a Touch without the new apps you will get a $20 discount on the price. 2)You will get the apps on the Touch and pay exactly what I paid for the Touch as an early adopter back in September.

I think that is bogus and since this is my blog I took the time this morning to complain about it. So, those of you who waited - congratulations - you get more for free. To boot, I am typing this on the brand new 8-core Mac Pro that just came out... Wonder if I will get punished for getting it so early.