The first distro I tried is PcLinuxOs. Very easy to install on Paralles. It also associated the .air file extension to the Air installer application. AS you can see in the video, you click on the .air file and Posty installs.


/opt/Adobe AIR/Versions/1.0


Finally I tried Knoppix, which was the quickest to boot.

• Distrowatch
• LivecdList

Thanks to Daria, who first tried installing Posty on Ubuntu 7.10 and inspired me to test Posty on other distributions.


UPDATE: An Adobe Air engineer told me that Encrypted Local Store is not yet implemented on the Linux version of Adobe Air.

      Adobe/AIR/ELS/

For example on my mac data are stored in:

      /Users/MYUSERNAME/Library/Application Support/Adobe/AIR/ELS

Of course you can delete encrypted data via code by using:

      EncryptedLocalStore.reset();

Beware, this deletes ALL stored data!

More information here.

ps: I plan to implement a button in Posty to delete encrypted data, e.g. in case you install Posty on a computer which is not of yours and you wanna clean up hard disk from sensible data.

• visible when there are comments/replies
• dynamic, in the sense it switches functionality (and label) according to the state of comments/replied (shown or hidden)

To give you the flavor of my solution here I propose a demo with a button that shows/hides a logo.


Demo (right click to view source).


The solution exploits Flex capability to represent functions as objects. If you check out the code you’ll see a variable declared like this:

	private var _functionToBeCalled:Function = showLogo;;

The application initializes the variable with the showLogo function assigned by default. When executed, this function shows the logo, sets hideLogo
as the function to be called next time and changes the label to “Hide logo”.

	private function showLogo():void {
		logo.visible = true;
		this.linkButton.label = “Hide logo”;
		this._functionToBeCalled = hideLogo;
	}

The hideLogo function does the exact “opposite”: hides the logo, sets the function to be called back to showLogo and changes the label.

Enjoy the trick!

• Become fan of a friend
• if he reciprocates fine
• if he doesn’t, persuade him to unfriend inactive people he is fan of
• if he doesn’t reply for a while unfriend him, because he is not active or does not share any interest with you

In Actionscript

var limit:int = 2; // weeks

for each (stumbler:People in peopleYouAreFanOf) {
	if (!stumbler.reciprocates() ||
            !stumbler.persuaded() ||
            stumbler.getRepliesWithin(limit) == 0)
        {
		stumbler.unfriend();
	}
	else {
		you.sayThanks(stumbler);
		you.interactWith(stumbler);
	}
}

  var xml:XML = new XML(“<data><tag>content</tag></data>”);
  private function parse():void {
	 for each (var t:XML in xml.children()) {
		trace(“tag name: “+t.name()+” tag content “+t.text());
	}
  }

Sometimes you are not the one who establishes tag names, e.g. xml comes from a webservice and you have to use it as it is. In developing Posty I had to parse xml coming from a microblogging service, Tumblr. An sample xml returned by tumblr is the following.

<post id=”30451729″ …>
	  <regular-body>Text of my post…</regular-body>
</post>

Notice there is a dash in some tag name. To render data you parse the xml and extract relevant data. Adopting the same approach explained above, to retrieve the content of a tag you’d write:

  for each (var x:XML in xml.posts.post) {
    trace(“my regular body is “+ x.regular-body);
  }

You will not be able to run this code. The compiler will say: access of undefined property body. What! I can’t parse xml with dashed tag names? No you can’t. More evidence from here[link]. The solution is to exploit a different syntax, which allows to access data in a dashed-name tag:

  for each (var x:XML in xml.posts.post) {
    trace(“my regular body is “+ x.child(“regular-body”));
  }

The compiler will be happy and your xml will be parsed successfully.

• write a message a post it to each service with one click
• browse personal and public notes
• reply to twitter and pownce notes
• full browsing of tumblog, with rendering of audio, video, conversation, etc.

Download Posty.

A screenshot of the main interface.


A screenshot of the twitter interface.
To run Posty you need the Adobe Air installer.
For any comment, suggestion, curiosity or feedback: posty AT spreadingfunkyness.com.

• Play songs
• Synch with ipods/iphones/apple tvs
• Get covers/titles from the internet
• Manage podcasts (what an effort!)
• Sell songs
• Rent movies
• Play streaming radio
• Soon I will sell iPhone apps

Darn! Stevie. Nobody helps me. Can’t you devise a new software to do some of my duties?