1.9. Conclusion
While writing this book, I met online with the other authors to
discuss our project. I used some of the sample applications I wrote
for the book and another Macromedia application built on top of Flash
and FlashCom: Breeze Live. One of the earliest conferences I had was
with Robert Reinhardt. I was at home in Toronto, on eastern standard
time, and he was in Los Angeles on Pacific time. It was dark in
Toronto and the sun was about to start setting in L.A. Aside from the
immediacy of our conversationsomething more akin to being in
the same room than being on the phone or using text
messagingthere was something compelling about seeing the light
gradually change on the other side of the continent as we spoke. In
later conferences with Giacomo Guilizzoni, I was impressed with how
helpful it was to be able to share code and make notes that we could
both see and edit while we discussed what parts of this book each of
us should work on. Communication applications that include live
video, audio, and data make collaboration at a distance more
immediate and effective. Flash and FlashCom together provide a
platform that can be used to build a wide range of compelling
communication applications. Whether you need to build a shared
simulation to enhance an online course or a simple video conference,
text chat, or video-on-demand application, you'll
find a rich toolbox of classes and components to create it described
in detail in the chapters that follow.
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