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BlazeDS allows us to use RPC to access our Java objects from an Adobe Flex or AIR app. This is a simple example that allows you to have a remote java object which you will make calls upon from Flex (or Actionscript). There are plenty of BlazeDS remoting tutorials out there. This HOW-TO shows how to create an actionscript class to handle your remote objects and handlers as well as linking more than one method to a single remote object.
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This is a short example of how to play an audio clip and loop it in Flex, and works with AIR. Some of this code is taken from the Sound class example in the Adobe Flex Language Reference docs.

You can paste this into pretty much any function, like an init():

var soundReq:URLRequest = new URLRequest("someSound.mp3"); 
var sound:Sound = new Sound(); 
var soundControl:SoundChannel = new SoundChannel(); 
sound.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, completeHandler);
sound.addEventListener(Event.ID3, id3Handler);
sound.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, ioSoundErrorHandler);
sound.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.PROGRESS, progressHandler);
sound.load(soundReq); 
soundControl = sound.play(0, int.MAX_VALUE);

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iBatis is a framework used to map a SQL database to POJOs (Plain Old Java Objects).  iBatis is one framework of many out there, others include Hibernate.  Recently I’ve been tasked with a new webapp which will connect to a very old legacy database.  One of the first things I decided to do was look through the database and figure out what data I needed, and then design and create java objects to hold said data.  I chose iBatis for this particular project because I was dealing with a legacy database which I had little control over, and iBatis can give me the flexibility I need in case I need to write complex and specific SQL to construct my objects. 
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I’ve been reading tons of books lately, mostly to do research into technologies I’m thinking about trying out. I have several projects going on and I’m primarily a java developer. For a new project I just started last week I’ve decided to give it a go using PHP, which I’ve never touched before. My main reason for this was, from what I hear, that PHP is good for simple projects that need a fast turn around. This is exactly what I’m looking for, in addition to integrating with wordpress. I starting going through a bunch of lame tutorials on the web, but they’re mostly geared for a beginner and there’s a lot I can skip over. I decided to get a couple of recommended books on PHP and one that I found very useful is called Wicked Cool PHP: Real-World Scripts That Solve Difficult Problemsby William Steinmetz with Brian Ward.
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Setting up your webapp to work with https and SSL encryption when using Tomcat is easier than most people think.  Here’s a very quick HOW-TO to get you up and running…
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