Josh Sager Media: Creative Technologies Blog

The Adobe Max Conference is going on right now in Chicago and the creative software giant has announced some acquisitions as well as new and upcoming technologies. In no particular order

here is a high level list:

• Adobe Share - allows others to view and access documents store by adobe.
  • Users will get 1 gig of storage for Free.
  • Adobe Share will work in conjunction with Acrobat Connect and lets users share screens through the web
• Adobe Media Player - Beta released supported through CBS, PBS and Yahoo and content providers
• Flash Player 10 Announcement - code name Astro. There was a sneak peak at MAX
  • Text Layout support - New Layout engine
  • New Text API’s
  • Building Actionscript libraries using these API’s
  • uses inline HTML tables
  • Supports multiple column layouts
  • Native support for perspective transforms
  • Realtime video playback to with 3d transforms applied to video
  • 3d Tweening
  • You can build your own effects
• Hydra - New programming language for image processing
  • Hydra was used for effects in AfterEffects CS3
  • Get hydra toolkit
• Cocomo - Technology project for hosted collaboration services
• Adobe is looking to add voice communications. Has teamed up with a VoIP company
• Thermo - project for improving work flow between developers and designers for application development.
  • It’s a visual tool for helping to create RIAs

Just in case you missed it a few weeks ago Adobe Announced these things

• “Moviestar”
  • Flash Player 9 update that supports H.264
• Flex now has caching system for it’s components. When a user downloads any flex component for the first time it is cahced for all sites.
  • Which means all flex apps, no matter who develops them utilizes this caching system.

Thank you Mike Chambers!!! I just went through and made my first Air App with Flex. I will upload it later on tonight!!!

Jack Nack’s Blog outlines the details of the decision behind Adobe’s decision to cease development for FreeHand.

Your options are to upgrade and also to upgrade. If those options don’t work for you then there’s always upgrading.

Although I started using FreeHand many years after I was already an Illustrator user, I have really grown to respect what it can do. I used to think it was just a diet Illustrator if you will, but there were a few small projects that requried some multi page design and FreeHand handled it like a champ. I know you might be thinking why didn’t you use Quark or InDesign? Well to be honest I had at my disposal was FreeHand and outside of being slow I was able to get the projects done just fine.

So thank you FreeHand we only went out a few times, but its been fun. I wish you a possible nomination in the underground software hall of fame some day. You’ve served me well.

(ps thanks Jesse from the creativetreehouse for the tip : )

8 minutes.

Thats roughly how long it takes to listen to 2 songs.
It will get me halfway to work.
It’s approximately the time it takes to make a new pot of coffee for the office
All I need to check up on gmail, tiwtter, myspace, google reader, and hotmail

8 minutes.
Also the amount of time it took from blog post to prize giveaway. Congratulations sirpsychosexy! You are officially the first ever winner of swag on Star Dot Star Comics.

Thanks to everyone who participated and thank you for reading. Be on the lookout for more fun games in the future.

Good morning all you bloggers out there. I’ve got a tasty prize for the 1st twitter message, blog comment, or gtalk response I get regarding this fine piece of hat wear.

This hat was given to me from the Pittsburgh Flash Users Group and now it can be yours!

Let the games begin!

This is a must watch! Although it’s a little long these guys do a great job of explaining what will be open source and how everything is tied together.

Scream it from the mountain tops!!!! Flex is open source!Here is the press release to prove it!

This is a really huge step for the Flex community and Adobe in general. Once again I’m impressed at where this company is going. Although I was really disapointed when they acquired macromedia, Adobe’s recent activity has dramatically changed my tune.

With the developer blogs and labs.adobe.com, I feel like I’m more involved in a creative developer community. No longer am I randomly updated skepticism and notes on a news sites throughout the web. I’m getting my information directly from Adobe. If that isn’t enough I have faces with names and direct contact with the people making the tools that I use every day. The personal connection there is a great value to me.

Along those lines, Adobe has opened up the Flex SDK to the entire world in an effort to grow the community and extend the technology far beyond anyones expectations. As a developer the possibility that I can have a hand in that is huge!

Adobe is really in touch with their users and community right now. I for one am really excited to not only see what happens next, but to contribute to it.

Things that caught my eye about the Flex Open Source Announcement:

• The open source Flex SDK and documentation will be available under the Mozilla Public License (MPL).
• Available since June 2006
• MXML™ compiler and the ActionScript™ 3.0 libraries that make up the popular Flex framework

The Adobe Blogs reported that a standalone Flash Video Player.

Here is the press release.

Here are the things that popped out to me.

• Enables higher quality Flash format playback - Very interesting. HD in our future???
• The ability to download and view videos offline - Finally. I’ve been wondering when this was going to happen. I do wonder if this will impact the iTunes store at all.
• full screen playback - Thank you Flash 9
• one-click viewer ratings - I’m more interested in knowing where that info is going. And if it gets embedded in the movie, or just called from a web service.
• A powerful Favorites feature that automatically downloads new episodes of favorite TV shows or video podcasts - RSS!!!!! That is awesome!
• Including RSS and SMIL - See Above
• Including on-demand streaming, live streaming, progressive download, and protected download-and-play. - protected download and play… This is very intriguing. This opens the doors to a Flash + Flex online video store.
• Viewer-centric dynamic advertising and the ability to customize the look and feel of the player on the fly to match the brand or theme of the currently playing content. - Very interesting and very pandora.
• Compile permission-based analytics data - Very cool. Peace out Nielson
• Developed using Apollo - Does this mean that adobe will start releasing other smaller apps? I really like how they are putting their money where their mouth is but developing products using their technology.

The Adobe Media Player will be available on their website later this year. I’m very curious to see how it performs and to see if Adobe re-engineers the interface.

I came across these fun little guys, but unfortunatly it’s only in the Asian Pacific market. Too bad they are pretty cool. I for one would love to have eddi the video editing ninja. Although I do more web stuff the webbi guy looks a little too crazy for my tastes.

For more information on this fun but kind of bizzare promotion go to http://www.adobe.com/ap/offer/mainas.html

Last night was our monthly Flash Users Group meeting at the New Perspective. And might I say it was a really good one. Ben did a demo of Apollo, which I am super sicked about by the way, and Val demoed a Flash and Javascript technique for headlines. For the life of me I can’t remember what it was called, but don’t worry. It will be posted to the pittmfug blog in the up and coming days.

Ben created an Apollo app using the iSight camera in his mac book to display a reflective mirror over top of a CD. Really cool stuff!!!

After the meeting we took the trip over to the Creative Treehouse in Bellevue Pa for the after meeting podcast. Boy did it get intense. Wayne, Ben, and I went at it about Apollo, Flex, and their place in the web development industry. We each had very compelling arguments but the fact remains that it’s honestly still too soon to tell whats going to happen. Which spawned an interesting side bar conversation between Wayne and I about the origin of Flash. When it first came out people knew it was cool, but nobody really knew what to do with it. I kind of feel the same way about Apollo. Mark my words, this “idea” will catch on. It may not be Apollo or even Adobe for that matter who really brings this concept to the masses, but blurring the lines of Desktop Applications and Web Applications WILL change how we all interface with data.

Thanks New Perspective, Creative Treehouse, Ben, Wayne, Dave, Val, Joe, Ian, and Jesse for a great night!