The widget also allows exporting to OPML, so you can leverage Filtrbox technology in multiple resources. Its FREE and requires no login, so give it a try. Go Team USA!

As we can see, it has been back and forth with Obama and McCain. The Olympics have also followed a similar trend. These trends can inform us that bloggers don’t like to post on Sundays, hype for the Olympics is falling as it moves to opening day - witch it might shoot back up again, and there may be a correlation between Olympics and the presidential elect. Clicking on a point will also allow us to get a better idea for what may have spurred the peak or the valleys. So if we look at August 1 when Obama has a total of 359 mentions, we can communicate that these are mostly responses to McCain’s attack ad and defending Obama’s persona.

This now leads to the title of the post, Filtrbox Fights. A Filtrbox Fight is a basic trend analysis game, that who ever has the most mentions in the day is the winner (This is not supported by Filtrbox and is something i thought would be of interest). I am hoping to keep track of the presidential candidates and see if there is a correlation between who wins and who had the most internet traffic. This does not mean that if Obama had  the highest internet traffic and is the next president, that there is a definitive correlation, but we can infer that the internet would be a good place to campaign in, and also which interent sources provided the information - Twitter and other social networks are changing how people interact and react to information. Thanks for reading and hope you try a Filtrbox Fight of your own - very rewarding

package com.filtrbox.widget.vo{
import com.adobe.cairngorm.vo.IValueObject;

[Bindable]
public class FeedVO implements IValueObject{
public var feed:String;
public var name:String;
public var type:String;
}
}

Alright, with the VO setup, its time to read in preferences. First, lets set up a reference to the XML object we will be using, called “applicationSettings”.

[Bindable] public var applicationSettings:XML;

Now lets create the XML scheme that we will use to add data to and create the default structure. This same structure that is also used to process the data.

public function createXMLSchema():Void{
applicationSettings = <preferences/>;
var beijing:XML = <beijing/>;
for each(var feed:FeedVO in model.allFeeds){
beijing.@name = feed.name;
beijing.@feed = feed.feed;
beijing.@type = feed.type;
applicationSettings.appendChild(beijing);
beijing = <beijing/>;
}
writeXMLData()
}

Lets now look over what we have done. We have created two nodes - preferences and beijing. Since we are using E4X, we can use node values like “feed” and “type”. In the model, an Array Collection has been created that will contain all feed information and thus is called “allFeeds”. So for each value object in the “allFeeds” array, we will recurs and append the result to a new beijing node. After the last result has been added, we will want to write the data to the XML file.

private function writeXMLData():void
{
var outputString:String = '\n';
outputString += applicationSettings.toXMLString();
outputString = outputString.replace(/\n/g, File.lineEnding);
stream = new FileStream();
stream.open(applicationFile, FileMode.WRITE);
stream.writeUTFBytes(outputString);
stream.close();
}

When reading the preferences, we will follow the same structure:

private function processXMLData():void
{
applicationSettings = XML(stream.readUTFBytes(stream.bytesAvailable));
stream.close();
for each(var beijing in applicationSettings.beijing){
var feed:FeedVO = new FeedVO;
feed.name = beijing.@name;
feed.feed = beijing.@feed;
feed.type = beijing.@type;
model.allFeeds.addItem(feed);
}
if(model.allFeeds.length<=0 || model.allFeeds == null){
var defaultFeed:FeedVO = new FeedVO;
defaultFeed.name = 'Olympics 2008';
defaultFeed.type = 'event';
defaultFeed.feed = 'lEpq5xVyDq5UtjtNOboOyQ==';
model.allFeeds.addItem(defaultFeed);
}
}

When reading the preferences, we will recurs the biejing node and separate each value to add as an object. Once we have created the object, we will add it to our “allFeeds” array in the model. We also want to handle a first time use case where there are no preferences and load a default feed, which is handled by the second “if” statement. So I quickly showed you how to recurs tubular data in order to read or write to and XML file. When you are using the AIR environment, you may also want to use SQLite, which will follow a similar format in how you handle the objects.

When using the Filtrbox RSS, you have two options, either consume the RSS as is, or if you are passing the feed through flash embed variables, you will have to base 64 Decode the content. Using the feed in Flex is as easy as an HTTPService request. Here is an example of a Base 64 decoder to use:

import mx.utils.Base64Decoder;
var decoder:Base64Decoder = new Base64Decoder();
// this is decoding the embed variables that are passed in
decoder.decode(Application.application.parameters.source);
var byteArray:ByteArray = decoder.flush();
var src:String = byteArray.readUTFBytes(byteArray.length);
mw.source = 'http://www.filtrbox.com/rss/'+src;

So lately I have been interested in the Tour de France and wanted to create a quick app centered around that. The requirement of the app was to display the most up to date quality news about the Tour de France on my desktop as a widget. With the power of Filtrbox, I can add exclusions like steroids or other thing that i really dont want to deal with.  If you just want to add the feed to your personal blog, you can embed code for the Filtrbox widget from the Filtrbox dashboard, that is built in Flex and is constantly developing and expanding into new semantic search territory.

Now thats some sweet press. We really enjoyed building the UI and have really incorporated great features and components from Flex and the Flex community. It is great to have the new UI out and functional and highlighting the great features that Filtrbox has to offer. Stuff like Importing of Google analytics, the ability to search through archived news, seamlessly create, add, group filtrs( a Filtrbox search term), and analysis. Just to clarify, we do allow Google Alerts imports, and that is one of my favs. So now you can imports your alerts, and Filtrbox will consume them, in a easy to use interface that allow for sorting and filtering of archived data - hell ya.

We still have some awesome features up our sleeves, and you may possibly see a Filtrbox icon on your desktop (its and Adobe thing) soon. Many have wondered what presence Flex would play in Web 3.0 and what it means for a truly rich internet experience, but i hope at least some of these questions have been answered by Filtrbox and their commitment to an awesome user experience. This blog will become a place that highlights new features, thoughts, code examples, and over all news on what Filtrbox is doing and what it means to the Flex community.

Just a quick history if you dont want to read it at Filtrbox.com : Filtrbox was conceived by Ari Newman(The man with a plan) and Tom Chikoore( Mr. T - “I pity the fool”) and built by their main code monkey, Bruce Deen (Drinker of the Zima). I came on recently and redesigned the present UI that we launched with today. The new UI was completed in less than a month, thank you Mountain Dew for your support, and i hope that it can be considered a positive step forward for the integration of semantic search and RIA UIs. The application was conceived to bring about a new cost effective way to manage semantic news by giving you the ability to control your information and presentation.   Being a small company, most of us have been awake for almost 48 hours, testing and deploying the application for you. I look forward to comments and feedback from user experiences and am just happy bring a new niche for Flex to the market.

Take some time out of your monday and check out Filtrbox.com