If you can do it in flash, youknow for sure that you can also do it in Flex since Flex is creating Flash.

That applies to adding a dropshadow filter to your objects.

Here's the documentation from Adobe that shows how to do it with MXML and AS. 

Adding a simple hyperlink in flex is not as simple as using a getURL method in flash.

It's not that much more complicated, but enough to confuse a beginner because it uses a method that takes a particular type of object (URLRequest) as its parameter insted of a string for the URL. So you need to create the URLRequest first before you can call the method to take the user to that URL (the method is called navigateToURL).

If you want to write it all in one line, you can do it as follow (example below show you how to apply the hyperlink to a LinkButton object):

<mx:LinkButton id="sample_button" label="click me!" click="navigateToURL(new URLRequest('http://finance.yahoo.com'), '_blank')" /> 

I find this to be the easiest and quickest way to do this, but it might not be the best way to do it especially if the url is dynamic.

You should also try out the way Adobe folks recommend in the flex documentation so you'd understand the difference. 

You can easily retrieve the URL of the FLV file used in any youtube video by entering the URL of the video in the textfield on this page .

I'm not sure if there's any legal issue around this, but it's an interesting tool neevrtheless.

Here's a good tutorial on using listeners and AsBroadcaster from kirupa.com.

A nicely laid out tutorial that helped me understand how to connect different objects. 

So you want to create your own custom component in flash?

Here's a good place to start: Creating Component documentation  

There you can find the location of the source code of the components that came with your Flash intallation, steps to create your own and checklist to make sure you did it right. 

A text message from mom.

An IM message from a friend in Philadelphia. 

A quick phone call from my parents.

A sweet card from my girlfriend.

A nice wish from a DMV employee 

An email titled "best wishes" from a good friend I used to work with

A comment on my friendster page from a friend in Portland 

A big red announcement on the whiteboard by my cube.

A voice mail from my brother. 

A text and IM messages from a good friend of mine in Australia. 

A lunch treat from my collagues with cream puff as dessert. 

A plant in front my my door (a sweet thoughtful gift from my gf)

A phone call from a good friend of mine in Chincago.

A chat with my cousin in Indonesia

A friendster comment from a friend in Indonesia

An IM message from my friend in Taiwan.

An IM from my friend in Austin.

They all wish me a happy birthday. 

I'm 28 today.

Today as a day doesn't feel special.

Nothing dramatic happened.

When people asked me what I'd do today, I didn't know how to answer since I didn't have anything special planned.

But today is a special day for me.

It's a day filled with reminders of how lucky I am.

I'm loved.

Many people around the globe decided to pause their lives so they can communicate to me that they care about me. Some even did it more than once to make sure I receive the message… or it'd be better to say to make sure I receive their love.

I'm 28 today.

28 years of mistakes and shortcomings has come and gone, but inspite of that I'm still standing here surrounded by love. 

I'm a lucky man.

to shorten then distance between one's imagination and its manifestation in the physical world.

Ted Patrick just shareda custom preloader component that would make your flex application have a more of a desktop appliaction feel when it loads (splash screen).

You can use png,gif, jpg or swf for the preloader.

Unlike many other things in Flex when it comes to customization, implementing this custom preloader is very easy and straightforward. Basically you just need to add the whole package (available for download from Ted's blog) then add the attribute for preloader inside your Application tag. You can literally implement this in 1-2 minutes.

Here's the link to the blog entry where you can also download the component.