Each Heineken DraughtKeg (can of 5 liters of beer) has got a thermometer drawn on its back. This thermometer  reacts to the temperature of the beer inside the draughtKeg by turning from grey (hot) to blue (cold).
The application helps the beer-lovers to know if the beer is cold enough by scanning the pattern and displaying the result.

I’ve developed this full-native application for megalo&company.

If you don’t have any Heineken DraughtKeg, you can still test the app with these pictures (scan them directly on your computer screen) :

• http://www.cordechasse.fr/detectfraicheur/HOT.jpg
• http://www.cordechasse.fr/detectfraicheur/COLD.jpg
• http://www.cordechasse.fr/detectfraicheur/TenHours.jpg

This application, first official of Human Energy, focus on music and team news.
Users can listen to the official streamed Human Energy radio (using multitasking and the OS music player fonctionalities), watch the latest news of the Human Energy sports team (videos and photos).

Eiie design is behind the great graphics and I did all the development (Objective-C).

Franche-Comté « stars » (Olympic medalist in ski, famous singers etc.) present how great Franche-Comté is, in video interviews.
Users can post their own success-story by uploading videos and photos.

SamYStudiO and I (both at l’étrange fabrique) worked together to develop the front-end part of this full-flash experience website. We worked for Native Communications based in Lyon, France.

The main features of this website :

• fullflash
• immersive homepage with huge infinite paralaxe
• full swfadress (thank’s Gaïa Framework)
• youtube players
• share with Facebook and Twitter
• upload photos and videos
• etc.

If you’ve got challenging/creative/innovative Flash or iPhone projects, I’m your man!

You can contact me : nicolas(at)cordechasse.fr

One of them, which is really usefull, is the FTP task :

<target name="01. Upload to ftp">
    <ftp server="ftp.mydomain" userid="login" password="password" verbose="true">
        <fileset dir="bin"/>
    </ftp>
</target>

If you’ve got the anoying error : Could not create type ftp due to java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/commons/net/ftp/FTPClientConfig, you need to add the commons-net-XXX.jar library in the ANT classpath.

To add the library, open the Preferences window of Eclipse, and add the .jar in the « Ant Home Entries »  via the button « Add External JARs… » :

I would have liked to add the .jar without changing the configuration of Eclipse, such as the ant-contrib :

<taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antcontrib.properties">
    <classpath>
        <pathelement location="/usr/share/java/lib/ant-contrib-0.3.jar"/>
    </classpath>
</taskdef>

but I don’t find a way to do it.

If someone knows a way, tell me!

Instead of updating on your own, here is an Ant task that auto-increment the build version of your application.

It will :

• build a version.property file where the build version is stored
• auto-increment build version at each compilation
• update descriptor.xml file when generating the final AIR file
• generate an AIR file with version included in its name (ex: myApp_1_0_256.air)

Before starting, what you have to know is :

1. A version number is made of 3 numbers : major, minor and build (ex: 1.2.569).
   The ant task will only update the build version, major and minor must be updated « by hand ».
2. I use FDT and FDT Ant task to compile and generate AIR file. You can have a look at the documentation here :http://fdt.powerflasher.com/docs/FDT_Ant_Tasks.

A simple AIR application :

The AS3 code is :

package fr.cordechasse.ApplicationTest {
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.text.TextField;
    import flash.text.TextFieldAutoSize;

        }
    }
}

The ANT Tasks :

We are going to build this set of ANT Tasks :

Build.properties

Then we create a build.properties file which contains all the variables of the ant task :

#####################################################
# PROJECT PARAMS
#####################################################

############### VERSION VARS ###############
file.descriptor = bin/AIRProjectUpdateBuildVersion-app.xml
xml.versionNumber.open = <versionNumber>
xml.versionNumber.close = </versionNumber>
version.pattern = <versionNumber>[0-9]*.[0-9]*.[0-9]*.</versionNumber>


Build.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- **************************************
project : AIRProject - autoUpdate build version
author : nbush
date : 15.08.2011
website : blog.cordechasse.fr
******************************************* -->

  <!-- create AIR file -->
  <fdt.release.AirApplication projectname="${FDTProject}"
  output="${app.airfilename}"
  descriptorpath="${FDTProjectPath}/bin/AIRProjectUpdateBuildVersion-app.xml"
  certificatepath="${FDTProjectPath}/bin/TempCertificate.p12"
  certificatechoosen="1"
  certificatestorepassword="password"
  assetfilelist="${FDTProjectPath}/bin/AIRProjectUpdateBuildVersion.swf;AIRProjectUpdateBuildVersion.swf"
  assetdirectorylist="${FDTProjectPath}/bin" />
</target>
</project>

How does it work ?

To update the build version, we create a version.properties file. At each call, the version number is incremented :

<propertyfile file="ant/version.properties">
<entry key="app.build" type="int" default="0" operation="+" />
</propertyfile>


Then, when we create the AIR file, we update the descriptor file :

<target name="05. Create AIR file" depends="04. Update Descriptor file">


, and generate an AIR file with a name that includes the build version :

<!-- get the air file name -->
<property file="ant/version.properties" />
<property name="app.airfilename" value="deploy/myAIRApp_${app.major}_${app.minor}_${app.build}.air"/>


Sources Files :

You can get the source files here : http://blog.cordechasse.fr/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/AIRProject-UpdateBuildVersion.zip

The website was released in march, but today, I just found that it was in the top 10 extraordinary websites according to www.wemakethemclick.com!

On this project, I lead a team of 2 flash developers.
I made all the architecture, the « diamond engine » (display of pictures in diamond shape, transitions, etc), and few other parts.

Here are the slides :

In fact, I haven’t written anything because I’ve been really busy at work (I’m working for Megalo(s)) with huge and interesting projects and I’m teaching AS3 at a fabulous multimedia french school : Gobelins (recently renamed CCI Formation).

I led the flash development of fullflash websites, most revelants are :

De Dietrich HouseHold appliance(team of 3 developers)

PureDKNY fragrances Teaser (team of 2 developers) : water your plant and it grows, share your plant and it gets flowers.

Pure DKNY fragrances Reveal (team of 2 developers)

Let’s bring this blog back to life, so in the next post I’ll give my Gobelins slides, talk about FITC in Amsterdam, talk about ant Task…

Actually, Apple did a tremendous work with iPhone OS. It’s quick, reactive, ergonomic, easy to use… It’s hard to a new system (even designed by Google) to beat Apple.

Ok, it’s not as good as iPhone OS but let’s discuss some points :

1. iPhone OS is only for Mac mobile phone

There is a point that we mustn’t forget : iPhone OS will only run on a Mac mobile. And for the moment, only one mobile phone (if we consider that the iPhone 3G is only an upgrade of the iPhone) runs this OS.

2. Android is OpenSource

The big difficulty when designing an OS is running this OS in different hardwares from different builders.
And this is where Google is really strong : he provides a mobile OS that can run on multiple hardwares. This OS is quite good : efficient, reliable… And most important thing : Android is OpenSource. That means, every mobile builder (Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG… ) can put Android on their mobile phones and modify the source.

Android may become the new standard OS for mobile phone. They can all have the same basic, and (surprise) Google is behind that.

3. Android Programs are written in Java

An other thing which is also really important, is that Android implements Dalvik (a java virtual machine). That means each application for Android is coded in Java. The community of Java developers is so huge, we can easily foresee an exponential increase of Android homemade programs (whereas when coding an iPhone application you must learn a specific language Cocoa).
Google has already provided all the tools to developp an Android program (an Android SDK, full API, eclipse plugin, debugger, tutorials… ).

So, disappointment or not?

Is Google Android a disappointment? If you strictly compare with the iPhone : the answer is YES. But if you look a bit further more on what Android is, what it provides, what is its future, Android is NOT a disappointment. Android may be the new standard OS for mobile phones. It might grow bigger and more efficient thanks to the help of an active community of opensource and java developers. In fact the real opponent of Android is not iPhone but Windows Mobile.