About the Authors

Joseph Balderson has been fascinated by computers and programming since picking up LEGOs and disassembling nearly every appliance he could find as a child, progressing on to electronics, microcontrollers, and robotics as a teen. This interest took a detour in his college years, when he attended art school and studied poetry, philosophy, and graphic design. When he discovered Flash 4 in 1999, Joseph found his true vocation, one that would allow him to combine his passions for art and science, design, and programming under one roof.

That passion has led Joseph through an evolution of roles throughout his career, from graphic designer to web designer, to Flash designer, to Flash developer, and finally, today, as a Flex and ActionScript developer. Joseph has held various positions throughout this time, from a jack-of-all-trades for a dot-com in the early days of the Web to a bank employee, Flash freelancer, and hired temp.

Joseph's interests in communication and writing also led him to a position as staff writer and authoring partner at Community MX in 2005, writing biweekly tutorials on Flash and Flex technologies to this day. Joseph also served as Professor of Multimedia Studies at Humber College in 2005–2006, teaching Flash and ActionScript. After a stint as an Adobe-certified corporate instructor in 2006–2007, Joseph resumed his freelance career to focus on consulting and writing. He has since participated as contributor and technical editor on a number of book projects, and has been involved in the construction of Flex and AIR rich Internet applications for a number of startups and consulting agencies.

Joseph is now a freelance Flex and Flash platform developer living in central Ontario, Canada, in the Georgian Bay area. He spends most of his time in his home studio dreaming up ways of making cool stuff with Adobe technologies. Joseph's work and blog can be viewed at http://www.joeflash.ca.

Peter Ent is a Computer Scientist at Adobe, working with the LiveCycle team. Prior to this, Peter worked for Adobe Customer Care as a Flex support engineer and then as a technical account manager. Before joining Adobe, Peter worked in the financial services industry at State Street and Fidelity Investments. He also has experience at two startups, building software applications doing imaging and molecular modeling. Peter holds a BS in Computer Science from Syracuse University.

Jun Heider is a senior developer and technical trainer with RealEyes Media, an Adobe partner company based in Denver, Colorado, with a focus in rich Internet applications. Jun graduated from Regis University with a BS in Computer Networking and has a number of technical certifications.

Jun has worked with ColdFusion since 4.5, Flex since Flex 2 beta, and AIR since it was first available in prerelease. Projects that Jun has worked on have ranged from a large clustered ColdFusion application for a global home-based business organization to internal Flex-based business applications for companies such as Chase Manhattan to large-scale Flex-based online businesses such as Beatport.com, and also AIR-based utility applications such as the Beatport downloader.

In addition to development and training, Jun loves to speak at conferences such as those on Adobe MAX, 360|Flex, and Flexmaniacs. Jun also loves to write; he is an active blogger on O'Reilly Inside RIA and has written articles for the Fusion Authority and Flex Authority.

In his free time, Jun loves to sing for his band Bucket, play his Xbox 360, snowboard, and hang out with his son, Kobi, daughter, Mia, and wife, Michelle, in colorful Colorado.

Todd Prekaski has been building software since 1993 (not including his youthful days programming an Apple IIc and TRS-80). He's been leading application development and strategy for Web-based startups and Fortune 100/500 enterprises ever since, using a panoply of technologies and platform, including Java, .NET, and LAMP. Todd is currently the chief technical architect at Beacon Street Software, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Occasionally, his thoughts show up in his blog at www.simplifiedchaos.com.

When he's not in front of a computer, Todd can be found racing his bicycles around New England, especially in early winter during cyclocross season.

Tom Sugden is a technical architect for Adobe Professional Services. His interest in computers began in the 1980s, programming sport simulators and beep-music on the ZX Spectrum 48k. When the keyboard broke from too much Dailey Thompson, Tom upgraded to the Commodore Amiga and continued to create amateur games (but with multi-channel sound) in AMOS, before dabbling in the black art of Assembly language.

With these foundations laid, Tom studied Computer Science, picking up C++, Java, and Flash 3 along the way. After graduation, Tom freelanced for Domino Record Company, building its first website and encoding music videos. This led Tom to Realise, an early Scottish Internet café turned web company, where he wrote components for a search engine and document classifier known as Glowworm (later disastrously rebranded to KM-Bridge).

The bubble burst. No more Hoegaarden on school nights. Tom escaped to the safe haven of EPCC, a software consultancy and high-performance computing center within the University of Edinburgh. There he worked on various data integration projects, helping astronomers to analyze objects in space, linking biological and pharmaceutical databases, and correlating late bus arrivals with angry customers. During this time, Tom became interested in design patterns and agile methods, and he began lecturing on the Masters Course in High Performance Computing.

When the opportunity came to join Adobe, Tom saw a more commercial setting for the same kind of creative programming that he'd always loved. Flex and the Flash Player were evolving fast and the possibilities seemed endless, as they had done years earlier on the Commodore Amiga. Tom joined Steven Webster's crack team in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he learned Flex 2 and LiveCycle Data Services from the experts, and began delivering rich Internet applications for Adobe's many enterprise customers.

Andrew Trice is the principal architect for Flex and AIR for Cynergy Systems, based in Washington, DC. He specializes in data visualization, client/server architectures, object-oriented principles, and rich application development. He has been developing for the Web for more than a decade, with more than eight years in development for the Flash platform. Andrew has developed with Flex since version 1.5, and thrives off the creativity and rich experience that the Flex/Flash platform enables. Andrew is also a regular author for Adobe Devnet and other industry weblogs. He is known not only for Flex expertise but is also a Microsoft Certified Application Developer and possesses a wide range of knowledge regarding relational databases, AJAX/JavaScript, ColdFusion, .NET, and Java-based Web applications.

David Hassoun is the founder of RealEyes Media, LLC, a digital media firm based in Colorado that focuses on interactive motion media and advanced Flash and Flex platform applications. David has always had a passion for motion media, the power of video, and the challenges of usability and interactivity. David is an Adobe Certified Master Instructor, teaches advanced RIA classes at the University of Denver, serves as the Rocky Mountain Adobe user group manager, and has taught and developed advanced Flash and Flex application courses. As a consultant or while employed with other firms, he has worked for a wide range of companies such as American Express, Chase Manhattan, Qwest, Boeing, Macromedia, Adobe, the U.S. Air Force, Bechtel/Bettis, and many more. David regularly performs advanced code and technical best practices reviews, and has provided directional advice for international industry leaders over the past years — including many technical, courseware, and application reviews as an industry expert.

Joe Berkovitz is president of Noteflight LLC, maker of the world's first online music notation editor, and is a senior software architect with consulting shop Infrared5. With almost three decades of designing and building world-class software, Joe brings creativity and discipline to his work in Flash and Flex. He is a frequent speaker at conferences and is the originator of the popular MVCS architecture for complex Flex applications. Joe has published several ambitious open-source projects, most recently the Moccasin graphical editing framework and Flexcover, a code coverage tool for AS3. Joe is an active pianist and composer, and performs frequently in the Boston area.