Pictures From Adobe MAX 2008
December 17th, 2008
Finally getting around to posting a full set of photos from Adobe Max 2008. Props to Emily and Amanda for manning the Sapient booth!
Archive
Archive for the ‘Adobe’ Category
Adobe Corporate Cutbacks
December 5th, 2008
TUAW (The Apple Unofficial Weblog) is reporting that Adobe is cutting back on its booth at MacWorld. The bigger news is they are also cutting 600 jobs, including Mike Downey; The Adobe Flash, Flex, and Air evangelist.
One of the successes of Macromedia (Now Adobe) as a company was it’s connection with the developer community. I think that his exiting can have an “emotional” (I use that word, but I think it is different degrees) effect on the developer community. Their passion for technology and development is influenced by the likes Mike and his blog. At the same time, it is jarring to watch the company that produces most of the tools I use to do my job, go through this process. Just another reminder of how bad the economy currently is.
What do you think?
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/03/adobe-trimming-expo-budget-possibly-jobs/
Earlier today Mike Chambers posted on the changes at Adobe. Included is the official revised forcast for the company. It is lowered expectations due to the lower than expected sales of CS4.
Idle hands are the devil’s play thing
December 3rd, 2008
The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings
As we enter what should be a happy time (the holiday season) there is a downside to this holiday season. With the economy being what it is, you may not be as busy as you would like to be. Now’s as good a time as any to take that nervous energy and start creating something or mashing something.
I am going to try and compile a list of API’s that would be exciting to sink your teeth into (instead of another deviled egg!).
To start, here is a list compiled by Ted. It is a list of ActionScript Cloud APIs. I am going to try and get sometime myself to get into these, they seem like fun!
RIP Pownce
December 2nd, 2008
I received an email today from Pownce stating they were ending service:
“We are sad to announce that Pownce is shutting down on December 15,
2008. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or new
pro accounts.
To help with your transition, we have built an export tool so you can
save your content. You can find the export tool at Settings > Export.
Please export your content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not
be accessible after this date.
Please visit our new home to find out more:
http://www.sixapart.com/pownce
Our thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the Pownce community,
The Pownce Crew”
Pownce was a free social networking and micro-blogging site. It launched on June 27, 2007, and was opened to the public on January 22, 2008. It was one of the 1st AIR applications out there. I remember trying to get an invite when it was still in BETA…..RIP Pownce, let’s see what sixapart will do with it now.
PermissionTV at Adobe Max
November 25th, 2008
While attending Max, I stopped by the PermissionTV booth. If you have not heard of them you should check out their product. It is a software as a service firm that has created video distribution platform. From a developer standpoint they have a Platform Development Kit (PDK) that you can get access to for free. They are also looking to build up their developer community, so any obstacles you may encounter will be addressed swiftly.
Adobe Max Keynote Day 2
November 18th, 2008
Started with Flex Product Manager coming out with Ben Forta in a 007 scenario. The idea being Q or headquarters working to beat the status quo of development
Start off showing an AIR app that controls the power supply and air systems of a house. The whole idea being that we need to expand our applications, to beat “Status Quo”.
Discussion of productivity in CS4
InDesign: exports something called XFL, that imports into Flash and keeps everything editable.
Tweening in Flash: They have re-introduced tweening, not so code heavy. The motion path is a lot more manageable, creating curves and multiple points along the way.
Kinematics and bone structure. allows for “joint” controll within the Fash environment. With CS4, you can now import animation sequences without editing. Flash animators working with flash developers.
Photoshop: Using several images to combine them and get the sharpest image by combing the sharpest areas of each image.
Thermo/ Flash Catalyst: A new professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating application interfaces and interactive content without coding. The code that is created in MXML is well formed not like the old days of wysiwig dreamweaver. Mac only preview release available today. Early next year mac/pc will be put up on Adobe Labs.
Alchemy: Converts C/C++ to Flash generated in a swf. Using C and C++ sounds libs, you can import and use multiple sound formats. The demo uses ogvorbis, and uses a C lib, (libvorbis) which is run thru Alchemy to play the ogvorbis files! Image files, sound, and other raw multimedia file formats can be encoded in C and tranformed to flash. A demostration of using C/C++ compiler to open a PDF and render it in Flash.They just opened the orignial Quake and Mario Bros. directly in Flash or AIR 1.5! Making for the ultimate rom player!
Gumbo/Flex 4:
New Coldfusion IDE name Bolt announced: Server awareness, stop/start, code hinting that makes life easier. Sign up to be notified for pre-releases on Labs.
In Flex 4 you import the UI components, but then create the data models and mappings into the flex app. Basically getting access to all the data and services on the backend.
Built into Gumbo is a network monitor that logs all the server operations and seeing where the errors are popping up.
Integrate themes directly from builder. download on labs
Ensemble: allows you to build Flex applications in Visual Studio. You can download the preview release on labs. This is directly in response to Visual Studio Developers and Silverlight app development.
Dreamweaver: Now you can include any AJAX framwork within CS4. Previously it was SPRY specific and didn’t allow other AJAX frameworks to be used. JQUERY is used as the simple example.
Flash and SEO? Indexing Content: 2 part solution with Google (Virtual User) and Adobe (Flash Search Player). Virtual User goes and reads, loads up Flash Search Player, loads up the swf and waits. The Virtual users tells it to play. If the Player runs into AS, it reads back to the user and says theres code. The User then “generate event”. More on this tomorrow.
FMS 3.5: Dynamic Streaming with multiple bitrates. This will prevent the audio gliches etc.
New version of flash media live encoder (onLabs). Multiple bitrate incorporated. You can now incorporate liveStreams, as well as download cache. an online DVR for live events.
Flash Player 10 and AIR 1.5: Allows for camera to camera connections without flash media server!
Adobe User Group Community: 423 Adobe User groups around the globe. A new website called groups.adobe.com. A new way to connect all the user groups around the world.The groups site is one site not fragmented across language.
Adobe, Adobe Catalyst, Adobe Flash, Adobe Thermo, Technology Development
Thermo, now Catalyst
November 17th, 2008
Catalyst, previously thermo just hit preview release. It is the goal to create the ultimate proffessional designer interaction program.
It allows the designer to work not only with the skin, but with the user interaction, leaving the developer to focus on the interaction code.
Today adobe gave out a pre alpha version to attendees. With the caviar that “undo” just started working in this version.
A pad design comp can be brought into catalyst. As you do it renders the psd layers and element into mxml and a flex interface. The tool panels within catalyst are similiar to photoshop layers making it familiar to designers. You can add hit states almost like the imageready web buttons. FXP file format works in catalyst and flex 4.
Even in this early version, it looks like there is a lot of potential. Enough that it is worth while to get developers and designers to start thinking about integrating into their work flow.
Celtics - Lakers Finals: Game 3
June 12th, 2008
Building up to this series has been great. I said if the Celtics didn’t make the Eastern Conference Finals the season would be a disappointment. They did not let me down. Watching every game was a heaven. Going from worst to first (the largest turn around in NBA history) was incredible. Watching them run thru the West (particularly the Texas sweep of Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston) gave us confidence. And then it was 2 seven game series thru the East.
Living in LA has made it that much better. There has been a buzz and a little over confidence by Laker fans, those ridiculous car flags, and even the colors purple and gold, all bug the hell out of me. That with the fact every person at ESPN picked the Lakers (except Tim Legler). Then we won both games at home, with some help in game 2 from the refs. Going to LA you knew it was going to be close to impossible to win the first game. Our struggles on the road, compounded by the fact the refs would return the favor made it a long shot to win. It was a must win situation for the Lakers, which made it a great game. The Celtics lost, but that will not take away from my first NBA Finals game. A great experience overall.
Adobe Max 2008
