DOPEJAM::The Tariq Ahmed Experience
Tariq Ahmed

Greetings! DopeJam is my personal website aimed at keeping family and friends up to date with what's going on, but also serves as a communication vehicle to express thoughts, opinions, and experiences regarding the stuff I'm into (technology, home theater, movies, high end car audio, bass, electronic music, web applications, etc...). I also use DopeJam to host ideas that I experiment with. Read the profile if you're interested in knowing why the site is called DopeJam in the first place. Adobe Community Experts

Flex 3 In Action - Become Effective Fast
Flex 3 In Action Using your existing Web Development skills FiA ramps up your knowledge of Flex quickly and easily by giving you a foundation of understanding and the skills needed to become productive in a short timeframe. Various ways of doing the same thing are explained in depth so that you understand your options… and most importantly, FiA makes learning Flex fun!
Book Status: In Development
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The DopeBLOG of Tariq Ahmed (329)
Lynda.com releases AIR for Flex Developers
Posted on Jul 23, 2008 02:45PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Back in the day when I was starting out on Flex V1 I took some training hosted by David Gassner - very knowledgeable dude. He's teamed up with Lynda to produce his latest work of art - AIR for Flex Developers.


This is David's follow-up to his AIR Essential Training course, and takes a deeper look at how Flex Builder 3 and the Flex 3 framework can be used to build cross-system desktop applications with Adobe AIR. David examines every point of integration with the host operating system, including working with the local file system, creating and maintaining local databases, and managing native windows and menus.


More information on this...


Related Links:



EMC Documentum Releases v6.5 based on Flex
Posted on Jul 23, 2008 08:30AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
A big story in the Content Management world yesterday was EMC Documentum's V6.5 release of their flagship content management system which is based on Flex.


"For the first time, companies will be able to leverage the appeal of newer technologies for users, improve the existing content applications already in use, and power all of these with a more scalable and secure platform than ever before available."


It's currently available as a free online beta which empowers knowledge workers to collaborate using shared work spaces.


Media WorkSpace

A new interface to work with media assets, the Media Workspace is an extension of the Documentum Digital Asset Manager. Built on Adobe Flex technology, it includes such features as:


  • Thumbnail display with zooming
  • Collections and comparison sets
  • Image Annotations and Notes
  • Relevance Ranking
  • Search
  • Metadata access, and more

My Documentum

My Documentum is a lightweight client that is integrated with the desktop. It provides access to content they use most often. In addition, it provides offline access and the ability to work on documents when they are not connected.


A Flex-based authoring interface, the Web Publisher Page Builder is designed for the non-technical users providing a number of tools to create web experiences.


Web Publisher Page Builder

It is essentially a WYSIWYG editor for website creation and content contribution. Features include:


  • Ability to create component-based websites
  • Drag and drop and rich media assets
  • Site preview and editing
  • Thumbnail and template browsing
  • XML management and support


Documentum TaskSpace

TaskSpace is an interface for designing and managing business processes, enabling you to "unite process, content, and monitoring into a single user experience for transaction-centric business applications."


Features in this component include:



  • Process - content unification
  • Configurable and reusable components
  • Role-based applications
  • Interactive forms
  • Task Completion
  • Process Dashboard


Other Tidbits


  • Data is now stored in XML in a native XML database.
  • High volume service
  • Integrates the AVALONidm product - a digital asset mgmt system.
  • Record management
  • Transactional business process - build forms and use dashboards to monitor activity.
DOS Rules - apparently...
Posted on Jul 17, 2008 09:50AM | Comments (1) | Permalink
I recently took a trip to Canada (I'm originally from Ottawa, but live in California), and during this trip I was observing the computer systems that people used.

No one is surprised when they go to the California DMV to see employees using ASCII/ANSI/DOS/VT100 terminal screens; it's the gov't right? Those guys are old school!


But I was quite surprised to see how DOS screens are still incredibly prolific in this day and age. United Airlines, Hertz car rental, the Canadian passport office, Future Shop, etc... all using text only screens. Even back at home prior to the trip I noticed Lexus and BMW dealerships are also using text screens for their service departments.


There's a laundry list of limitations with such a UI, so their longevity is amazing. So the question is why? One reason could be if it's not broken, why fix it? Doing total s/w rewrites is enormously expensive, time consuming, and risky - which thus makes it even more difficult to actualize any ROI. There's also opportunity cost: what else could you have done with that money to improve profits?


A second reason could be that from a data entry perspective it's incredibly fast (at the cost of user friendliness). The limitations actually force the developers to streamline the process to the max. And because of that, have we traded in this speed for the sake of cool looking super advanced UIs that are supposedly more user friendly?


Although emotionally users like the coolness factor which does yield a qualitative value, it's the bottom line productivity of the user is that will benefit the business the most. So when designing a new UI it may be an interesting exercise to at least consider how it would compare against a text only screen from a raw process/efficiency perspective as you try to strike a balance (that you define) that's best for your business between friendliness and raw speed.

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Points of Interest
Honda Prelude SRV:: My now destroyed second car
Memories:: Photos and Old Sites
Zafira:: Our daughter

BMW 745i AC Schnitzer Bodykit

Trance/DNB Stations
DanceHance Digitally Imported
Philosomatika DNB Radio
BassDrive JungleTrain.NET
UK Bass Radio Kunnin Mindz

Coldfusion Contributions
CF_ParseOfficeCSV
Parses Office/Outlook CSV files
ReplaceURLText (UDF)
Changes/Replaces links in text whose display text is the url to something friendly.
DualSelect (CFC)
Create multiple dynamic context sensitive dropdowns/comboboxes
Session (CFC)
Working with Sessions like finding out how many Session instances exist.
convertActiveDirectoryTime
Converts Active Directory 100-Nanosecond timestamps to a UTC Local timestamp CF can use.

Movie Comments
Reservation Road
Nice. 8/10
Dragon Wars
Bad, but fun in a mindless way. 6/10
P.S. I Love You
I admit I watched it, and it's not bad.. 7/10
Sunshine
Decent Sci-Fi Thriller B Movie. 6/10
Simpsons Donut
Good TV to Movie translation. 7/10
Cloverfield
Good stuff!. 8/10
Bella
It's ok. 6/10

My Sites/Domains
Community Adobe Flex
CFLEX - Empowering Adobe Flex Development
Flex In Action
Become Effective Fast w/Flex
FlexCoders.NET
The International Registry Of FlexCoders
Zafira's Site
Pictures and News of my daughter
GoodBye Canada
The Resource for Canucks heading South
afterSHOX
Freelance Website and I.T Services
NIL8
An Online Gaming Team (obsolete)
X-TIB
Community of Ex TIBCO Finance Employees
Coming in the future...
accesstracy.com - Tracy City Portal
nexilo.com - Knowledge Management
nuclearbass.com - Car Audio

Friendly Links
Sosa LandScape
Tracy's Best Landscaping
WoKits
Cool & Unique Kids Toys
KambohTech
Nabeel's Technology Center
Sith Sigma
Business Management Sith Style
SilvaFUG
Silicon Valley Flex User Group

    Copyright 2008 Tariq Ahmed. All rights reserved.