Step 2: Choose a pet project

It's a project I've wanted to start for over a year but could never justify spending any time on it myself. So here goes!

MediaMan (its just a codename!) is an rich internet application that allows users to construct a newspaper front cover using articles from RSS feeds. Users of the application are called "Editors" (consistant with the newspaper metaphor) because they are not writing the articles they are aggregating articles, which leads me to my no-nonsense description: -

"MediaMan is a dressed-up RSS aggregator in the style of a newspaper"

Check out the functional definition of Phase 1 here.

It's still in draft but should give you an idea of what I'm going for.

So that's how I'm going to learn AS3. Eventually (way down the line) editors will be able to build entire newspapers and hopefully interoperate with other online services (YouTube, Flickr, del.icio.us, BBC, etc).

I'm going to get stuck into Adobe's documentation, Moocks Rough Cuts and various web resources (I'll list them all here). Step 3: Learn the damn thing! (I promise no more "steps").