Here's what appeared to be a simple problem, which in the end had a simple solution though with a long path to find it (thanks to Zoe Bloch for pointing me in the right direction). Basically, I needed my TextArea's to maintain the visibility of the text selection even when a user clicks on something else. Under normal circumstances, the selection remains, but isn't visible unless the TextArea has focus. However, the TextField class has a property called alwaysShowSelection that keeps the selection visible, though greyed out a bit, even when the TextField doesn't have focus. Well, TextArea seems to use a internal TextField to render the text but it doesn't make this property accessible. If you extend TextArea, however, you can access it. Here's how.

Returning to my ongoing series of reviews of applications for the iPod Touch, today we will look at a handful of free applications. As with most free applications, none has enough depth to warrant a review of its own. There are enough free applications in the App Store to fill your iPod but are they worthwhile and do they work as well on an iPod Touch (versus an iPhone). This post will look at Twittelator (a Twitter client), Facebook and two games, PegJump and Cannon Challenge.

In the prior edition of my review, I covered the first half of the first issue of Flex Authority. However, as I said in that review, this issue is so full of content that it couldn't possibly fit into a single review. In this edition we will cover articles by Charlie Key, Theo Rushin Jr., Lief Wells, Johnny Boursiquot, Giorgio Natili and yours truly.

No new releases and five updates this week. Doing a search of my blog it would appear that the last time I posted about no new releases was in December of 2006 - is that possible? Anyway, it is the end of marathon birthday weekend in the Rinaldi house today with my birthday (16th), my son Sam's (17th) and my wife's (18th). Thankfully we have a couple week break before my older son's (Sep. 2) because I have had my fill of cake.

Thanks to Judith Dinowitz, I received an advance PDF copy of The Flex Authority, the new Flex-focused quarterly journal by the people behind Fusion Authority Quarterly Update, Fusion Authority and House of Fusion. Jeffry Houser of the Flex Show podcast is the editor of the new journal. The first issue is set to be released at 360Flex which starts next week and I have an article in it onNahuel Foronda and Laura Arguello's Mate framework for Flex. We all know that my article will be outstanding (hey! be nice!), but how is the rest of the content? Let's take a look at some of the content. Below I give brief reviews of the first half of the articles; I had hoped to review the entire journal but it seriously includes so much content I just didn't have time to get through all of it (and it would have been too long). I will cover the second half in a second review to come in the next few days.