||moock-updates|| next book and Adobe acquisition

[colin@moock.org]

/**
 * Adobe acquires Macromedia
 */
Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia completed on December 3, 2005. One key 
impact on the Flash Player is the integration of Adobe Reader. Quoting from 
the Adobe web site:

"How long will it take to integrate Flash Player and Adobe Reader?
It will be a multiyear effort. Ultimately, our goal is to combine both in a 
single client. Combining PDF and Adobe Reader with Flash and the Flash 
Player will allow us to deliver a truly ubiquitous platform that sits on 
virtually every device. We will build on that to create compelling customer 
solutions."

Read all about the acquisition here:
http://macromedia.com/
http://www.adobe.com/
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia_faq.html

/**
 * Announcing Essential ActionScript 3.0
 */
ActionScript 3.0 has launched on labs.macromedia.com so I can officially 
talk about my new book, Essential ActionScript 3.0. In fact, I recently 
posted a brief preview of it in the labs ActionScript 3.0 wiki here:

http://labs.macromedia.com/wiki/index.php/ActionScript_3:ImageViewer_Sample

Essential ActionScript 3.0 will be an update to Essential ActionScript 2.0, 
once again focusing on the core language and object-oriented programming 
with some coverage of the Flash Player API.

If you haven't investigated ActionScript 3.0, Flash Player 8.5, and Flex 
Builder 2 yet head over to labs.macromedia.com as soon as you can. There's a 
Flash programming revolution coming and luckily this time everyone gets to 
learn all about it in advance.

Here's a good collection of links on ActionScript 3.0:
http://www.franto.com/blog2/collected-links-to-actionscript-30-examples

André Michelle also has some great experiments:
http://blog.andre-michelle.com/

Darron Schall wrote a VNC client in ActionScript 3.0 using the new binary 
Socket:
http://www.darronschall.com/weblog/archives/000192.cfm

And here's a PNG encoder posted by Tinic Uro, a Macromedia engineer:
http://www.kaourantin.net/2005/10/png-encoder-in-as3.html

Neat stuff!
Colin