May 28, 2008

MAX 2008 Registration Opens

The annual Adobe MAX conference will be in our neighborhood this year - the Moscone Center/Marriott Hotel in San Francisco - from November 16-19th, and registration just opened today so you can reserve your seat ASAP. There's been a lot of work put in already towards making MAX 08 the event to remember in 2008, with a few late-breaking changes to note for this year's conference:

I'll have plenty to show at MAX myself this year (Dreamweaver being a large part of that), and although the final session and track schedules haven't been announced yet, what I've seen of the content so far is absolutely mind-blowing. Hope to see you there!

Posted by sfegette at 12:00 PM | Comments (2)

March 18, 2008

Random News Items

I've been pretty hectic between travel and SxSW the last couple weeks, but a few cool items of note may have slipped past. Catching up now...

Anyway, since I didn't feel like posting yet another dissection of what went wrong in Sarah Lacy's interview of Facebook's Mark Zuckerburg last week (although I missed the beginning of the interview, I was drawn to the trainwreck ending like a moth to a flame), or general 'wish you were here' posts from SXSW, so I hope these tidbits are a little lighter on the fluff. If you want the blow-by-blow from last week in Austin, you can rewind my Twitter stream, after all.

Posted by sfegette at 04:35 PM | Comments (5)

July 17, 2007

Egads, I'm Back.

I'm freshly back in the house at Adobe after an amazing 6 weeks of parental leave, and wow, what a great time I had. I strongly recommend unplugging for a few weeks if you get the opportunity, it's a great chance to pull in some external perspective and pull up from the keys and mice a bit. My son Devin was born on June 1st, so I changed a lot of diapers, too. Cool kid. Aside from a grueling 38 hours of labor on my wife's part, parenthood has been very cool so far. Strongly recommended!

Aside from diaper detail and professional slacking, I spent much of my time off shooting pictures with my Nikon D80 and related glass (some topical shots up on my photostream, if you're interested), and putting Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom through their paces. Before switching to a RAW workflow, iPhoto covered most of my needs, but switching to a DSLR I had to dump it quickly for Lightroom, and will NEVER look back. Nitpickingly, my final reservation was not being able to use the wonderful Flickr Export plug in with Lightroom, but fortunately you can hook up Lightroom's Export Actions (a feature I'm growing to love) to pipe selected exported photos over to the Flickr Uploadr application (which subsequently maintains all your Lightroom-specified tags and metadata, all you have to do is delete the 'default' image title in Uploadr and you're golden).

I also spent a lot of time with the iPhone the latter part of my break. This little device is really shaking up my preconceptions of how and why I use a phone - not to mention my preconceptions of user design and interaction in web development. Quite possibly my only regret over the vacation was being on the road during iPhoneDevCamp (whurley, would have loved to buy you a beer - maybe next time?), which explored exactly these conundrums and hurdles in painful detail. Just my type of gathering. O' well, perhaps next time.

Anyway, I'm now back on the game as part of Dreamweaver's product management team along with Devin Fernandez, and there's a lot for us to get working on. I helped wrangle the AIR Extension for Dreamweaver release before going on break, but now the CS4 planning is ramping up and I'm working on demos and presos for the remainder of the year (including MAX), so it looks like there's no shortage of things to work on for now.

Good to be back!

Posted by sfegette at 05:04 PM | Comments (2)

May 31, 2007

Mothball Alert

Just a heads-up that I'll be offline for about 6 weeks, and probably not posting much - if at all - on my Adobe weblog. My wife and I are expecting our first child at some time over the next day or so, and I'm taking the opportunity to enjoy a little time away from the keys and spend time with my soon-to-expand family.

I'll most likely be posting more to my personal weblog and Flickr photostream in the meantime, in case you're interested, curious, or just plain bored. ;-)

So with that- I'm signing off for a while. Hopefully I won't be incoherently tired and diaper-averse, but given the war stories I've been hearing lately I wouldn't rule either scenario out, either. Talk to you again here in a month.5!

::poof::

Posted by sfegette at 04:51 PM | Comments (4)

March 20, 2007

Topical Dam Busting

So much has occurred in the last 2 weeks it's hard to go into detail - SXSW, Apollo, Spry 1.5- egads! Hence, I'll just let the dam burst and convey what I've been thinking on all these subjects to catch up and get it all off my chest.

The Upcoming CS3 Launch
The big 'announcement of an announcement' event is planned for March 28th, at which time the details and date for the Creative Suite 3 release will be laid out bare for the world to see. Although I shared the same initial reaction to the recursive strategy as did Shaun Inman, I can say from an inside-the-walls perspective that there's been so much pent-up angst about this release (largely from Intel Mac early adopters) that I'm glad some information's getting out. I've been deluged at recent events with the inevitable when/how/what questions, and at least after March 28th I won't have to dodge them anymore. This release is going to be a huge one, and after using the alpha/beta applications within the Creative Suite 3 family for the last 6-8 months I can't fathom what it would be like going back to CS2/Studio 8. Hopefully you will share that opinion as well soon. ;-)

South by Southwest 2007
If I could only choose one event to attend each year, this would be the one. Hands down, no question. To be fair, I found many of the panels a bit substandard this year (for once, the sessions hosted by one or two 'panelists' seemed to have far more focus than the 'gang' sessions)- but the hallway conversations, offline debates and stellar events make SXSW a must-attend. Highlights for me were the Jason Santa Maria/Rob Weychert-delivered 'Beyond the Brief' session on design inspiration- those two guys are freakishly inspirational in their own right, and gave many fantastic examples of ways to live and breathe creativity. Jeremy summed it up quite well- technology deep-dives took a back seat this year to creative, applied uses of those technologies. And I think the event was overall much the better for it.

The response to my low-key SXSW day-stage demo of Spry (including a sneak peek at both the now-available Spry 1.5 updates, unobtrusive and progressively-enhanced usage of the framework, and Dreamweaver CS3 integration features) was also very positive. The Spry team is also doing a good job of 'blogging up what they're working on, it's good to see a bit more transparency around these subjects. See more below.

In short- I justify going to SXSW for the panels, but am driven to attend for the amazing attendees and conversations around those panels. 'Nuff said.

Spry 1.5
The Spry framework took early criticism on a number of points, but the team has listened and is doing a yeoman's job of adjusting and compromising to address many of those concerns. With the new features in Spry 1.5 (now available as a preview release) you can build progressively-enhanced sites much more easily. JSON support (including nested datasets) is now part-and-parcel of the data framework, along with the innovative new HTML Dataset feature- allowing you to, through strategically-placed classes and IDs, tag data in your HTML pages that is sucked up and turned into a live Spry dataset in browsers that support it. You can even point it to an external HTML file to suck up the data, making the possibilities quite vast. And of course, you can use this all unobtrusively by adding your Spry attributes at runtime via DOM scripting, which I highly recommend. Always best to keep your behaviors (Javascript) separate from your design (CSS) and data (HTML + server-side logic).

A preferred workflow in Spry 1.5- mock up your page/experience quickly using vanilla HTML, add descriptive classes/IDs to the HTML/CSS so it can be sucked into a live dataset via the HTML Dataset feature in Spry 1.5, then move all the inline event handlers to an external JS file and attach them at runtime. Unobtrusive AND progressively enhanced. Bing. Then we can move to only arguing about whether custom attributes are/are not following the intent of web standards as closely as they are the letter of the standards. ;-)
(Initiatives such as WAI ARIA spec suggest custom attributes are exactly for these purposes- extending XHTML in new directions. But feel free to disagree in comments if you're so inclined.)

Apollo Preview Release
Given that the hype and buzz around this has been pretty deafening over the last few days, I can only surmise if you have no idea what I'm talking about that you really need to get out more. Get the details and bits here on Adobe Labs - the much-speculated Apollo framework is now available for bit-twiddling and fiddling. Although it will eventually enable offline apps built with both Flash/Flex and HTML/JS, right now the former is supported, with Ajaxian goodness to join in the fun soon.

Okay, enough said. I'm back to attacking my burgeoning inbox and to-do lists after being distracted by all the above developments. If I've done my job, I've just passed down my distractions to you- and you find them as equally interesting as I did. ;-)

(note to self: update my Technorati profile.)

::fin::

Posted by sfegette at 02:28 PM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2007

Bulletproof Ajax announced

I just noticed that Jeremy Keith announced his new book today - Bulletproof Ajax. Having greatly enjoyed DOM Scripting, his last labour of love, I'm sure this will be a great read as well- particularly as he notes writing it in a less programmer-heavy and more narrative-focused manner. I, for one, always appreciate a divergence from the expected monotony of dry technical tomes towards something a little more creative.

The book will be focused more on front-end developers than programmers per-se, which is also a nice twist on the expected Ajaxian tome of late. And it also shares an adjective and theme with Dan Cederholm's quite well-penned 'Bulletproof Web Design', becoming a nice extension of the 'Bulletproof' theme that carries Dan's seal of approval to boot.

The companion website for Bulletproof Ajax is now live as well, containing the intro, TOC and some code samples from the book (as well as links to preorder the book itself on the various Amazon regional sites)- so if this has piqued your interest you'll want to wander on over and check it out postehaste. Good stuff!

Posted by sfegette at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)

March 11, 2006

Cote on Corpoblogging

The day seems to be progressing quite well over at the BarCampAustin con (though I'm definitely putting in the hardcore sneaker mileage today between the two locations!) - I'm sitting now in Cote's BarCampAustin session on corpoblogging, which is a very interesting subject to me. At the moment, the discussion is centered on the high-level challenges of being an individual voice amidst a large corporation- great subject, and one I certainly have a few opinions on myself... ;-)

It can be a real challenge to balance the social responsibility of working for a company that supports a blogging culture alongside the need to be honest, direct and 'real' in one's communication. Personally- I decided several years ago to keep my business opinions on this 'official' weblog, and my personal scribblings/annotated del.icio.us links/digg stories/etc. posted on my personal weblog (found here), but there's a lot of varying opinions on what's best for all concerned. As I'd been blogging on my personal website for a couple years before Macromedia even opened the blogging gates, this was more a concern when starting my 'corpoblog' than in changing how I was already blogging on a personal level. Whereas I used to post a few snippets on my personal weblog about the workplace, once I decided to 'go corpo' the split must made the most sense, personally.

Although I sometimes feel incredibly schizophrenic separating my brainstreams and opinions this way, in meatspace I've always made an effort to keep my personal and professional lives as separate as possible, so my blogging habits are really more a mirror of my own reality. I don't often bore my close friends in the 'real world' with day-to-day work discussions, nor am I particularly a fan of opening up my personal life for discussion in the office. But opinions in the room here vary greatly on this topic, and by no means do I find my solution one that applies to other personalities and situations.

So... how do YOU manage your professional vs. personal interests and opinions as a 'public voice'? It certainly helps me in volumes that Adobe has maintained a quite open and supportive attitude towards public-facing staffers like myself - so I do feel personally inclined to return the favor by keeping my more caustic and generally work-unrelated banter posted away from their servers - but not having the (mis)fortune of working for less tolerant companies in the past, I'm really curious as to how others have juggled the conflicts of interests that arise as a 'corpoblogger'.

Do tell?

Posted by sfegette at 11:20 AM | Comments (2)

December 21, 2005

Holiday Notes

As many staffers have noted before me, the Adobe offices are going to be closed up next week- and I'll be starting my vacation this evening- headed up through Tahoe to Reno, sampling the snowfall (or rainfall?) liberally along the way. We've got lots of treats coming up next year - for instance, keep your eye on Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Labs in January for some not-so-secret new developments.

On a personal level, John Nack asked some great questions about his weblog's focus, which I'd like to welcome feedback on here as well. What topics, subjects or articles do YOU want to see on this blog over the next year? Studio tips? State-of-the-industry discussions? More podcasts on subjects of interest? Shoot me your comments, critiques and thoughts- and I'll get on it. Promise! I'll always keep posting tidbits of interest as they pop up, but I'm interested in hearing what you'd want to talk about, if given the option. Grab the mic! ;-)

All that being said- have a great holiday season, no matter how you choose to celebrate it!

__EOF__

Posted by sfegette at 04:57 PM | Comments (0)

Internet Explorer Mac - the final days

Well, it's finally becoming official- the Macintosh version of Microsoft Internet Explorer is about to take it's farewell lap and be retired at long last. As announced back in mid-2004, official support for Mac/IE will end this New Years' Eve (12/31/05), and the downloads will be removed from Microsoft's Mactopia site a month later, on January 31st, 2006. The recommendation from Microsoft to current Mac IE users is to migrate to either the convenient built-in Apple web browser, Safari, or the developers' darling Firefox (as you can probably guess, I lean toward the latter).

Posted by sfegette at 04:43 PM | Comments (2)

December 13, 2005

Adobe, Week Two.

Much like Christian before me, I still find it a bit strange to say I'm an Adobe employee, but it's getting more comfortable as the days progress. I've been using Adobe products (Photoshop and After Effects primarily) far longer than I've been using Macromedia products, however- so it's not really that much of a stretch on a personal level. But this week, the second of my 'official' Adobe employment, has been a really positive for a number of reasons.

So... although I would expect the weblogs to be migrating to an Adobe.com address at some point in the near future, things are settling down again pretty quickly. If you've written me in the last week or so, I'll try to respond as quickly as possible but there's still a lot of logistical stuff to clear up- unsubscribing/resubscribing to mailing lists, updating internal docs and materials, sitting in quite a few 'get acquainted' meetings to meet all our new counterparts here in San Jose (and other Adobe offices), and start finding my way around my new (and far larger) employer.

But anyway you slice it, it's nice to be an Adobe staffer at long last- albeit with a bit of nostalgia for the Macromedia name that's treated me so well for the last 6 years or so. It's good to be on board.

Posted by sfegette at 02:56 PM | Comments (5)

November 18, 2005

MAX Hong Kong- It's a wrap!

And what a great conference this one was, too. Fantastic sessions and speakers throughout, stellar after-hours entertainment, and one breathtaking skyline to take in while exploring the nether-regions of the city. I presented my CSS box model session today, and for a change actually talked slow enough for the interpreter to keep up (although for the most part, the audience didn't require interpretation), and streamlined the slides enough to the point that I actually finished my session on time (if you've seen me demo live before, you know I have the habit of running long with lots of 'oh yeah- did you know you can do this?' moments)... ;-)

After the sessions closed down I did some quick shopping for family gifts, then met up with a bunch of the other presenters to board a big diesel boat and motor across Victoria Harbor to a wonderful seafood restaurant on Lamma island. Yet another amazing dinner of local cuisine- the food here has been impeccable throughout.

The boat ride back offered us all a spectacular view of the Hong Kong skyline- with everyone up on the front of the prow with me shooting pictures like crazy from our unobstructed water-bound point of view. But alas, now it's time for packing up for the flight back tomorrow.

My sincere thanks to the MM Hong Kong staff for putting on one of the most enjoyable conferences I've been to in some time - Ida, Carol, Sunny and Mavis (among many, many others) kept everything fixed, figured, and running like clockwork. Kudos to all involved with planning and running the event and my regards to all the new developers I've met this time out- you can bet I'll be back at MAX Greater China again next year if you'll have me... ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 10:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 17, 2005

MAX Hong Kong - Day 2 kicks off

I'll be speaking at MAX Hong Kong from 9:40 - 10:40am today on the CSS Box Model- both theory and tactical uses, and dissecting some common-but-tricky layout paradigms on the spot. Given the amount of questions I fielded at yesterday afternoon's session on Flash Video, I'm really looking forward to seeing what challenges the local developers have had with both CSS in general, and Dreamweaver's handling of it specifically. Although I'm mostly a code-mode kind of guy, it's been great giving these sessions and diving back into Dreamweaver's nether regions again. I must admit, the unified CSS panel in DW8 has become rather indispensible for quick iteration of designs without flipping back and forth between my CSS and XHTML pages.

Christian Cantrell and I did more gadget shopping around the Kowloon district yesterday afternoon, and I did a pretty good job resisting random new toys (came really close to getting a Sony M1 hybrid still/video camera at an UNBELIEVABLE price, but the only one left was the weathered display model- darn). Christian picked up not one but two new watches (bringing his total G-Shock count to around 7!), and almost went with me on a group buy of those M1s - again, foiled by the lack of stock behind the counter.

The conference speakers were treated to a dinner yesterday evening that was mind-blowingly fantastic... a 13-course(!!) meal of traditional Chinese dishes that spanned the gamut of regional cuisines with nimble ease. It was so tasty and filling that I'll be skipping breakfast this morning, thank you very much. ;-) Ben Forta regaled us with stories of yonder days (ah, the early Allaire days really sound like a ton of fun), and everyone seemed to have a blast. Graeme Bull warned me that the air quality wasn't the best for running, so I'll have to let him know he was on the mark- went for a jog along the harbor this morning despite his advice and it was much like being back in Hollywood again. (cough)
One thing's for certain, though- the Hong Kong city lights across the harbor are truly spectacular at night. Lasers, light displays- it's truly a spectacle you'll want to check out if you have the opportunity. Amazing. Pictures can be perused here, of course- at least the ones that turned out.

There's several great sessions I'm going to drop in on later today- particularly Justin Everett-Church's dissection of his award-winning NYC traffic app, and Paul Lamonby's session on Flash Lite game development. This evening we'll be taking a boat out to a traditional Chinese seafood dinner, so I'm prepping up for some photography as well. Should be a blast. But for now- off to the conference floor.

See ya next post...

Posted by sfegette at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2005

MAX Greater China: Getting Started

The last day seems like a blur now- we left Korea yesterday morning quite early to get over to Hong Kong (the Kowloon side of the harbor), and I'm now sitting with Christian Cantrell and Flex kung-foo master Steven Webster in the MAX Greater China keynote session. MAX Korea was a fantastic conference, I was really blown away with the passion and enthusiasm of the local Korean developers- my only regret is that I only had 48 hours or so in the country before moving on to Hong Kong.

Now Hong Kong- wow, what a city. Although Seoul appeared to be very spread out with a lot of open space to be found, Hong Kong is (even to this San Francisco native) massive, with a truly daunting skyline. However, it was almost eerie how things fell in place once we checked into the hotel. Christian, being a watch afficionado, was really hoping to find a few stores that carried the Casio G-Shock watches- and not only did he find some G-Shocks, but an entire store devoted to G-Shocks right across the street from the hotel.

Now myself- I'm a video and iPod/PSP freak, and had been complaining about the lack of good sleeves/cases for my iPod video (with the larger display, I can fit most existing iPod cases - but without a full view of the screen). Whaddaya know- right next to the G-Shock store was an electronics outlet with not only some hot-off-the-production-line iPod video cases (we both picked one up), but one of the most coveted white PSPs.

We're walking back into the hotel and jetlag was starting to take it's effects- Christian noted that a snack would be great. And as soon as we rounded the corner- there was the hotel restaurant with a complementary table full of CRAZY COOL dessert foods.

As I was downing a slice of cheesecake while perusing G-Shock catalogs and playing with my new iPod case, I had the feeling that MAX Hong Kong was going to be a good one, given the luck we'd been having. Well- either that or I just ran out of luck and should be looking carefully before crossing the street.

So- that brings us back to today, where through my coffee-induced haze I'm now watching Tom Hale demo the Yahoo! Maps API on the main stage, and while scanning the audience and seeing all the faces and the excitement they're conveying I can't wait to get to my sessions ("Flash Video and Dreamweaver" today, and 'Layout with the CSS Box Model' tomorrow).

Yep- this is definitely gonna be a great show. Keep posted.

Posted by sfegette at 02:04 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 18, 2005

MAX Day 2 - Checking in

I'm currently in the Community Lounge at MAX 2005 doing the schmoozefest thing, after wrapping my second of two sessions on Flash video and Dreamweaver (thanks to everyone who attended for both the warm response and the great questions!). The show has been amazing so far- with attendance through the roof- last I heard we were around 3,000 attendees this year, well up from last year. Highlights for me so far have been the launch of Labs and the warm reception the Flex 2 public alpha on Labs is recieving, and (to be brutally honest) the opening keynote preso by Ze Frank and his amazingly strange but insanely cool Flash short-form pieces.

I've been spending the between-times both sitting in sessions (Colin Moock's Actionscript 2 session was AWESOME), and talking with all the developers/Team Macromedia members/user group managers in the lounge about both Studio 8, and video in general. One thing that's become very apparent to me after doing these Flash video sessions is that there's a lot of folks who have wanted to get into the new video features in Studio 8, but just have either felt too daunted by it or simply haven't gotten around to it yet. If that's the case, drop a comment here so I can set you straight. ;-)

Today's keynote saw peeks into the new Sync SWF SDK for Breeze (if you're a Flash developer, I can see a lot of jobs/contract positions opening up for applications around this functionality- check it out), In the MAX awards, the developer choice winner this year was an AWESOME Flash app built around the Wedding Crashers movie- where you can crash the trailer by adding your own face to the video. Check it out!

Tonight there's a visibility event at Disneyland in the new California Adventure area, so I expect there'll be a lot more discussions and handshakes while busting up the rides, but for now I'm going to go sneak into another one of the mobile sessions (which have also been getting a LOT of play this year). Keep posted!

Posted by sfegette at 04:17 PM | Comments (5)

September 12, 2005

FOTD 25: Studio 8 - Good Clean Family Fun

Well, as you may have guessed by the title, Studio 8 just jumped free from it's crib- and is available now for poking, prodding and general fun up on Macromedia.com. Which means I can stop teasing you about it with these 'feature of the day' postings- and you can start showing us all what can be DONE WITH IT.

You can get all the shiny links and info from here:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/studio/

And don't forget all the new Developer Center content:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/

So alas, my 24-post FOTD series also comes to its close, but I'm certainly open to doing more - on a slightly relaxed schedule of course - if there's interest. What do YOU want to know more about in Studio 8 and it's products? Bang out a comment and let me know- and don't stay up too late playing with all the new toys... ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 09:44 PM | Comments (5)

August 03, 2005

2005 MAX Awards

It's time again- the 2005 MAX awards, to be presented at the MAX '05 conference in Anaheim this year. But before your stellar online experience can win, you've got to submit it for consideration- which can be done here:

http://www.macromedia.com/bin/max2005award.cgi

The award categories this year are:

...and of course, the People's Choice winner, selected from the finalists by all of the conference attendees. You've got until September 9th, 2005 to enter your submissions (and although the awards will be presented at the conference October 16-18, they'll be announced on October 3rd), so get them keyboards rattling and submit your masterpieces for consideration!

Posted by sfegette at 05:02 PM | Comments (2)

July 27, 2005

Mothball Alert

(low priority) I've been pretty nose-down working lately the last few weeks (helping w/the Developer Relations Podcasts and some other super-double-secret internal projects), so haven't been blogging as much as I'd like, my apologies. I'm also out for vacation this evening thru 8/3, so the prospects of posting in the next few days is also nil. No worries, tho- I'll be back clogging up your favorite aggregator in about a week. Seeya then!

Posted by sfegette at 05:17 PM | Comments (1)

July 25, 2005

Quick Facelift

I'm working on a slightly more involved redesign of my 'blogs on the side thru the next week or two, but decided to push up an interim version today to get rid of my old 'default pumpkin' MT template first. I proofed reasonably well in the key browsers/platforms (although it's not a particularly evolved layout), so if you see any weirdness in your particular browser/version/platform please be sure to drop a comment here so I can fix it as I move forward. Thx!

Posted by sfegette at 02:17 PM | Comments (5)

July 15, 2005

MM.com Content Highlights

While I've been nose-down the last few days, quite a bit of new content was released on Macromedia.com you might be interested in checking out. First up, the Developer Center just updated with a slew of new articles worth reading, including:

Also, make sure to check out the Captivate product site on Macromedia.com- which just won the Training 2005 Conference and Expo Software Simulation shootout. If you're not familiar with Captivate at all, make sure to look over the 'Captivate in Action' section and it's demostration/simulation examples. Powerful stuff.

Posted by sfegette at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2005

Lynchian Weather (OT)

If you're located in the LA area, take a moment to enjoy legendary director David Lynch giving you the local weather each day. It's not really a web app (in fact just a QuickTime movie link), and I don't live in LA anymore- but I must admit I'll still probably check it out daily- just in case he breaks out an oxygen mask. Only thing missing is an eerie Angelo Badalamenti soundtrack droning in the background, if you ask me. :)
(stumbled upon via Xeni Jardin's post at Boing Boing)

Posted by sfegette at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)

June 21, 2005

Avalanche of opinions

Microsoft announced the development of Avalanche- a P2P filesharing system hyped as being a potential successor to BitTorrent - at an interesting time, just as hype of BitTorrent proliferating spyware flew across the bit-waves. Coincidence? I don't like to speculate, but given the obvious redundancy of the BitTorrent/spyware hype (ANY p2p mechanism only serves out what's put into it, of course), the fact that Avalanche isn't much more than theory and paperwork right now, and the general timing of the news events, it sure feels a bit suspicious to me.

As you'd expect, Avalanche also recieved a healthy dose of punditry afterwards, specifically a rather pointed public lambasting by BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen calling Avalanche out as vaporware. Sour grapes? Perhaps. Interesting points, however.

My first thoughts on all the news were that MS simply needed to get a stake in the P2P community ASAP, although I found the absence of any DRM-related applications in the Avalanche news interesting, given its context and corporate sponsor. As Alex posed here, I'd also expected Google would jump first into the P2P market, but either way you slice it a migration to distributed transfer methods will definitely help free up per-capita Internet bandwidth and lower the overhead of media proliferation overall. Which can only be a good thing for us media junkies.

But can Microsoft build the right consumer-based application of this technology to gain leverage above and beyond the freely-available and popular open-source P2P alternatives? Should be an interesting project to watch either way... ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 04:22 PM | Comments (1)

June 15, 2005

Applebee's Dunktank

Alex Schleifer of Netymology just pointed me at a cool little Flash-based viral marketing piece he recently worked on for Applebee's called the Dunktank. Upload an image of your face, crop and rotate it into a virtual dunkee, and let your friends and coworkers splash you down. You can even dunk me right here, I won't take it personally- love to swim in fact. And for the record, no, that's not my real hair. :)

Posted by sfegette at 02:30 PM | Comments (2)

June 06, 2005

Big News Monday

Happy Monday- Flash is a platform, open source IDEs are cool, and we've all got some reading to do. The Flash Platform was announced earlier this morning (actually late last evening), putting larger context around the ecosystem surrounding the Flash Player and it's assorted technologies. Make sure to read Kevin Lynch's Flash Platform white paper (pdf, 1.55mb) for the straight story, as well as two press releases on how the mobile ecosystem and broadband telecom providers will leverage the Flash Platform.

To follow up, Macromedia also announced joining the Eclipse Foundation- while announcing a new RIA/Flex application development environment (code-named 'Zorn') built on the popular Eclipse IDE's architecture. Make sure to check out the Zorn FAQ points hidden down in the Flex FAQ on Macromedia.com, too. I see this as a very positive move for Macromedia developers in general, many of whom have already adopted the platform due to it's robust support, most notably CFEclipse. For the scores of enterprise RIA developers out there, Eclipse support spells a far more standard development environment across the technology they support. Good stuff.

And all this on a day where everyone seems to be talking about what chip the Mac OS will end up running on. Don't worry, the WWDC keynote is coming soon enough with the definitive answer to that question.

Posted by sfegette at 08:13 AM | Comments (13)

May 31, 2005

Flickr

This is a test post from Flickr. Just setting the new weblog up a bit for future abuses. ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

Weblog Updates

My 'blog got converted over to the swanky-fresh weblogs.macromedia.com server this past holiday weekend (thanks, Christian!), so expect to see updates/tweaks/inconsistencies over the next week as I customize things a bit. I'd always meant to go back and add categories to this 'blog, and have both done that as well as started recategorizing all my historical posts- so please let me know (comments are fine) if you see any broken links/etc. in the meantime. Thx!

Posted by sfegette at 01:00 PM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2005

Fontographer News

A bit of breaking news for old-school Fontographer users: Fontlab, LTD is now the exclusive distributor of Macromedia Fontographer. You can read more details on this directly from Fontlab at the link below, including a statement on their plans for future Fontographer development on XP/OSX platforms (yes, you heard right!!):

Fontlab, LTD- http://www.fontlab.com/

Typography and font freaks, you may commence rejoicing now. :)

Posted by sfegette at 04:06 PM | Comments (3)

March 02, 2005

More project management...

... thoughts from indie designer Jason Santa Maria. For some reason this topic keeps popping up in my various haunts lately, and I can't get enough of it- I'm fascinated with individual workflows and efficiencies. Jason gives a great low-fi way of managing his clients at the link provided (an invoicing/tracking system built in MoveableType- classic seat-of-your-pants ingenuity!), well worth a skim if the subject piques your interest. All you indie developers/designers out there- how do you currently manage your own project/client load? What software/techniques are your favorites? (I'm currently using a hacked version of DotProject to manage any side project I work on at home, but must admit BaseCamp looks like it may fit my needs slightly better...)

Posted by sfegette at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)

Project Management (ALA)

Always a topic of curiosity to me- the social quagmire that is project management. Without diving postehaste into UML, specifications, or architectural best practices, this so-far-two-part-series at A List Apart by Norm Carr and Tim Meehan does a solid job of breaking down the fundamentals of use-case-driven project design and scope management. Check out both part 1 ('What is the problem?'), as well as part 2 (Taming Scope). Managing the scope of one's project (particularly with ultra nit-picky and/or fickle clients) is a difficult-to-master art- if you've ever struggled in these areas, these two articles may be a well-needed breath of fresh air.

Posted by sfegette at 04:55 PM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2005

Nokia and Flash

Nice! Hot off the presses, Nokia signs a licensing agreement with Macromedia to integrate Macromedia Flash technology into it's Series 60 platform phones and other software platforms. With 1.8 million registered developers in Nokia's 'Forum Nokia' program, that's a lot of potential Flash developers. Collaboration in development tools, support and technical documentation is also planned- all very positive signs for current and future mobile developers looking to leverage the platform.

Given this news, I'm feeling pretty justified in switching to a Flash Lite-ready Nokia 6600 last week... :)

Posted by sfegette at 07:22 AM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2005

Virtual Stan

I somehow missed this in my daily blog trolls recently- Virtual Stan is a hilarious application of Flash video in the vein of the Subservient Chicken, by Rob Weychert and friends. (the face of 'Stan' being web design/standards powerhouse Jason Santa Maria, of course.). Funny diversion for a overloaded work Friday, should you require one... ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2005

MacWorld Keynote Impressions

I've been getting IM'ed a lot last day or two about all the new Apple announcements during Steve Jobs' MacWorld SF Keynote yesterday.
(although I'm completely cross-platform at work, I prefer Macs at home where I do more audio/video work). That being said- here's my post-keynote braindump from yesterday (edited down significantly)...

- Final Cut Express HD.
Did this announcement really surprise anyone? After Final Cut Pro HD was released as a free upgrade last year, I and many others had a strong suspicion they'd be making users of their two lower-level NLEs upgrade to get HD resolution. However, it's still a great 'prosumer' NLE solution at a good price for those looking to graduate from iMovie.

- iWork
iYawn. Consisting of Keynote 2 (presentations) and Pages (word processing), this productivity suite is still missing a dedicated spreadsheet and database application to be a contender against Office. But at $79, the bar isn't nearly that high to begin with. However- as JD reported yesterday, Keynote 2 adds export to Flash, and import of SWFs by way of the QT import filter (which can grok much of the v5 SWF format). Okay, now that's a bit more interesting... :)
Pages seems pretty straightforward- as with other iApps the Apple value proposition seems to be the volume and elegance of their 'starter templates' and less on huge feature sets. Nice looking, though.

- iPod Shuffle.
Jury's still out here, although if you follow the rumor mill sites, this also shouldn't have come as a shock. On first glance I'd have no use for one (as a 40GB iPod owner). The part I can't get over is the lack of control- I would go crazy without being able to browse/play by genre/artist/album/playlist on the fly. However, the cheap price and micro-small footprint are pretty compelling arguments to the contrary... ;)

-Mac Mini
Hate the name, love the box. In fact, I'm purchasing one- not for myself but for my wife, who's about beat her old Powerbook into the ground, and doesn't require tons of horsepower. No audio in that I can see (only headphone/line out jack), which means you're stuck with a separate USB or FW interface if you need audio-in capability (or perhaps an iSight). Makes sense, tho - in the interest of keeping costs down. Time will be the ultimate judge, but this is really the first Apple solution to the 'cheap PC' dilemma available in quite some time. We shall see whether the shrewd strategy of wooing PC users thru the iPod translates to actual sales or platform conversions now, indeed.

- iLife '05.
Good stuff. I'm not sure this is as much a 'revolutionary' upgrade as as an 'evolutionary' upgrade, but it's still a great suite for the price to bring strong media editing and management down to a consumer level. Highlights include:

1) GarageBand's new pitch correction and 8-simultaneous-input capability (on that note- what happened to the rumored audio interface that was to be announced?). But it doesn't stop there, MIDI input (sweet), notation view, an instrument tuner, and 'save as loop' features round things out nicely. A new orchestral Jam Pack (i.e. loop library) was also announced, which (based on a quick review) sounded rather well put together. This app is finally getting to where it can finally play well with other audio editing/DAW systems, and is my favorite app in iLife right now.

2) iMovie adds support for HD video and 16:9 aspect ratios (again, not much surprise there) and lots of performance enhancements/expanded transition libraries. The 'Magic iMovie' feature sounds frightening on a creative level, however- connect camera, hit a button and have iMovie capture, place, and export your automatic iMovie to iDVD for burning. Not being a fan of push-button art, this isn't too scintillating for me, but iMovie's still great for general consumers looking to do something with all those DV tapes.

3) iPhoto 5 adds a long-needed feature- calendar-based searching of your photo archives - along with RAW format support, additional book sizes and styles (including paperbacks), and some performance enhancements (always nice). Not a huge upgrade in my opinion, but solid nonetheless.

4) iDVD adds many new themes, a Map view (showing DVD components and their relationships more directly), better drag-and-drop support for clips, and (as with iMovie) a 'OneStep DVD' feature allowing you to connect a camera and stick a blank DVD into the drive and let iDVD do the work. This may work for archiving or doing 'preview discs' of uncaptured footage on tape, but honestly I see these one-button solutions as a recipe for creative disaster. On the other hand, you can also archive a project as a Disc Image now, which could be quite handy for making backups too.

5) iTunes appears to be the unchanged since the recent update (v4.7) which added iPod Photo support and (secretly) iPod Shuffle support. But it's free anyway and you probably already have it installed, so not much to add.

My iLife summary- still a solid suite, but it's new feature curve is starting to flatten over time.

Well, there you have it- my post-keynote braindump. Comments?

Posted by sfegette at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)

January 04, 2005

Your Next Tour Guide?

By way of the USC Interactive Media Division's weblog, I discovered the Node Explorer v2, a location-aware, embedded-Linux handheld device that provides contextual information (maps, audio annotations, etc.) based on your current location. The twist? As opposed to consumer-based urban references such as restaurants, wifi hotspots, etc.- the waterproof, wireless, touchscreen enabled, card-sized Node Explorer is geared more for assisting site and visitor management at parks/national monuments/etc.- basically wide-open spaces that would normally require guided tours. The entire solution includes the Explorer, the Node Dock (for updating devices with new contextual info and recording back a visitors' trip data for analysis, as well as the obvious closed-loop monitoring of visitor admission/registration that becomes possible with such microdevices) and the Node Engine- a software platform for both monitoring visitor behavior as well as updating and managing the content that's provided to the handheld devices.

Considering the crappy (but oh-so-promising) experiences I've had with CD and RF-based physical tour guides, I'd like to try wandering around Yosemite with one of these little devices! Has anyone actually tried one of these out in meatspace?

Posted by sfegette at 04:11 PM | Comments (2)

NetNewsWire does podcasting

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you had a good holiday season and spent some time away from the keys.
A few developments of note this morning- first, NetNewsWire's new beta adds podcasting support, so users of this Mac-based feedreader can get their podcasting jones on in a common environment with their RSS feeds. Nice update and I'll check it out for a while, although personally I've settled down on Sage again after brief trips thru NetNewsWire, PulpFiction, FeedDemon (which I still do use from time to time) the combination of Sage and Firefox Bookmarks Synchronizer keep all my machines in synch rather nicely. Since I'm an audiobook junkie, I don't listen to podcasts *that* often anyway. Check it out ASAP if you're a NetNewsWire junkie, tho- although I had a few little bugs here and there it seems to be shaping up nicely. If you're not RSS-wired, you may note that recent surveys show the mainstream web world is becoming much more interested in exploring the 'blogosphere in recent months. Great time to engage!

Posted by sfegette at 09:54 AM | Comments (2)

December 17, 2004

CSS podGuide

Feel the need to get introspective on CSS floats while on your morning run? Then you need a copy of Style Master's podGuide, a handy lil' version of their 'Complete CSS' reference you can tote around on your iPod. Categories include an overview of CSS concepts, as well as detailed information on all the various CSS 2.1 selectors, properties and @rules, it's a very helpful guide indeed. Play safe, now- and always keep your eyes on the trail when jogging...

Posted by sfegette at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2004

Dusting off...

Thailand was amazing, and I'm now back in New Orleans typing this from the community pit area at the MAX 2004 conference, which officially opens tomorrow. If you're going to be at MAX, please stop by and say hi- I'll be here all week. More to come...

Posted by sfegette at 07:59 AM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2004

Mothball Alert...

I've been buried in projects lately, so it's rather ironic that my first post in a while is simply a heads-up that I'll be on vacation in Thailand for the next month without the opportunity to 'blog, but will be back posting like mad at MAX New Orleans. See you again in November!

Posted by sfegette at 03:28 PM | Comments (2)

July 28, 2004

OT- 2 Email Utilities

In this digital world, email flows quite freely and can pile up equally as fast. As such, I wanted to highlight one free/donationware utility for Mac, one commercial utility for Windows- both for dealing with email, something I do an increasing amount of day-to-day. I've been trying to avoid OT blog posts lately, but will succumb to internal demons just this once...

First up, X1 Search, a $99 utility for Windows (I really wish this was available for Macs, too- alas, if only LaunchBar indexed email messages this way). What justifies the $99? X1 lets you very quickly search through email messages, file attachments and/or contacts. I was very skeptical, until Alexandru and Bogdan from InterAKT gave me a live demo in a local SF eatery. The discussion had started around Dreamweaver APIs, but once we started trying to refer to earlier discussions, the topic quickly morphed into how difficult it can be to quickly locate random conversations out of our HUGE volumes of archived email. In the next 2 minutes I became an X1 convert. X1 Search runs reasonably silent (a systray icon belies it's presence) and can be put in 'auto-hide' mode across the top of your screen to quickly access it- and in so doing, your years-worth of archived email. X2 supports Outlook, OE, Eudora and Netscape Mail on Windows. If you use any of these clients on Windows and are frequently trying to locate that 'one specific email or file' that's been eluding you- this may be right up your alley. It's become indispensable to me in just a few weeks- check out the demo if you're remotely interested.

Next up, Mail.appetizer for Mac OS 10.3+. One of the most initially-pointless but eventually-handy features of Windows Outlook 2003 for me was the little semi-transparent 'alert' window that popped up whenever I got new email in my Inbox. Mail.appetizer essentially allows you to get similar features in Apple Mail - a somewhat configurable, transparent alert shows up in your location of choosing whenever you get new mail - showing the subject, sender, time and an excerpt of the message itself. Less functionally-handy than X1 by leaps and bounds, but tres cool if you're often nose-down and want a quick glimpse of what's flying into your inbox without switching apps ad nauseum. Mail.appetizer is free- but donations are accepted.

Hope you find these two utilities interesting- I've become a bit hooked on both.

Posted by sfegette at 05:57 PM | Comments (2)

May 21, 2004

- Recap

First, major props to all the folks who packed into the Macrochats this week- it wouldn't have been nearly as fun a Community Week without such overwhelming support from our communities! I only regret I couldn't talk personally with all the people who sent us kind notes and feedback- but we're definitely noting all the suggestions for future events.

On that note- what did you like/dislike about Community Week? Any suggestions for how we could improve next time? Did the Breeze Live format work well for you? Feel free to leave your comments here and I'll be sure to pass them on to the rest of the team.

Posted by sfegette at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2004

In case you hadn't noticed

In case you hadn't noticed yet, next week is 'Community Week' at Macromedia. What's Community Week? It's how we're showing our appreciation for our rich online communities, a subject near and dear to my heart as a community manager here at Macromedia. All next week we'll be hosting free 'Macrochats' with product experts (both from inside Macromedia as well as third-party presenters), not to mention a Worldwide User Group meeting (broadcast to your local user group- check the link for availability in your area) that will offer sneak peeks into upcoming Macromedia technologies and developments. I'll be in quite a few of the Macrochats (and helping host the 4pm PST Dreamweaver team session), so I hope to virtually see you there!

Posted by sfegette at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2004

Hello, World.

Greetings from the ether(net)!
It's admittedly a bit daunting to be in the presence of such master-Macrobloggers as Mike, Christian and JD, but I'm glad to be on board helping to blog what I'm seeing and hearing across the Macromedia communities. My deep sense of curiosity well outweighs my need for self-imposed boundaries- so expect to see a lot of topics showing up in this 'blog, although I'll try to keep them related to Macromedia's products and communities as best I can. ;-)

Who am I? I've been with Macromedia since 2000 (for the most part), and started out as the first 'community manager' for Dreamweaver before Matt Brown took the reins in mid-2001 and I went on to work for Jeremy Allaire on the MM web team. I'm now back in the community manager slot, after taking a little 'round-trip' thru the company.

Before my years at Macromedia, I was a studio musician (primarily bass, guitar and vocals) and directed web/online development at MetaCreations, a (now defunct) Santa Barbara-based graphics software company that was best known for Bryce, Kai's Power Tools and Painter before they were sold to Corel in 2000. I spent from 1994-2000 building intranet and extranet sites there, using everything from Perl to ASP to ColdFusion to JSP. After Meta folded in December of 1999, I had a few good conversations with the DW team regarding the new extensibility API in DW 3, and... well, that moved me up to Macromedia in San Francisco. My prior experience is admittedly mostly with Dreamweaver, Flash and the other Studio products, but I've been spending a lot of time with Flex and Breeze lately - great products, both.

So- hello, Macroworld!
Please bookmark this page- I'm really just getting started...

Posted by sfegette at 05:18 PM | Comments (0)