Vivisecting Media

Adobe MAX 2008: Monday – Keynote

Hey all… Aaron and I are sitting at the MAX keynote. They just announced that they have over 5,000 attendees this year, the largest conference yet. I am going to jot down notes that are interesting as they speak. I won’t be adding too much detail just to keep myself sane (and able to pay attention). The notes are getting pretty long so I will put in a cut. Here are some highlights and the complete notes are after the jump.

• NYT is working on an amazing AIR app to deliver news content in a very slick and intuitive UI.
• Adobe is working on Flash Player 10 for the iPhone. Its not ready yet, but they are officially working on it.
• AIR 1.5 is now live and supports Flash Player 10 content, it also is the first production application to use Webkit enabled with SquirrelFish

Full Notes

• Shantanu is talking about changes in the market and looking for a seamless experience across all devices. From handheld to TV interfaces.
• Enterprise is changing due the driving forces of web 2.0 interactivity and clients now want the same UI and experiences with large enterprise applications.
• Multiscreen experience is the near future, and will become much more demand
• The Flash Platform is the focus on the idea of the multiscreen format and content delivery. Because the player is available on so many platforms it enables rapid development that can create a unified experience across multiple devices.
• Code name “Thermo” is now called Flash Catalyst
• Flex Gumbo / Flex Builder 4 / Catalyst preview builds are available to the attendees.
• Shantanu is showing how the Flash platform is being used by education and non-profits. They are showing an example by using Bono’s “Project (Red)” and how Flash and AIR are creating a new form of branding and name awareness which is benefiting Project (RED).
• Kevin Lynch (CTO) is coming up to talk about the main tends that are transforming software.
• Client and Cloud computing is growing and now becoming a blend of both technologies. No longer is it just client
• Social Computing, software is becoming less of a solo experience but a group experience
• Devices and Desktop: multiple platforms that we are delivering to.
• The Flash Platform is enabling content (video / audio / data) to be delivered to your audience in a constant method.
• Kevin is demoing Hobnox, which uses Flash Player 10 to create an interactive experience to make music
• Showing 3D / Audio interaction built by gSkinner demoing audio waveform analysis and rendering the audio changes as a 3D animation.
• Showing PixelBender in Photoshop.com and how they have custom effects that can be applied to the image.
• MLB just announced they are planning on using the Flash Platform for the 2009 season. Now all 4 major american professional sports now stream video via Flash.
• AIR is now launched as version 1.5 which has Flash Player 10 and the first production version of Webkit with Squirrelfish. AIR 1.5 now enables encrypted content within the local SQLLite engine.
• Due to the new text engine in AIR 1.5, NYTimes is looking at AIR as a way to deliver to content. This will be releasing a next generation news reader application that can render content true to printed form. The app downloads and caches the day’s new paper (enabling offline access / reading) and will continue to check out RSS feeds (when online) for new content. As the application scales the content re-renders in a layout that best suits the content (including thumb-nailing of images). Columns wrap, words hyphenate the way you would expect. Keyboard shortcuts enable content navigation and access. The app introduces a browse feature that allows for quick navigation of articles by showing a thumb-nailing system for articles that is similar to an image navigation system. The app supports video and text advertising and also all of NYT video access. The app even has the daily crossword enabled so that you can complete it.
• Kevin is now showing an AIR app that is running on a Linux handheld device that is actually running the NYT app. SICK!
• Ann Lewnes and Maria Shirver (First Lady of California) are coming on stage to talk about the California Legacy Trails, which is focusing on education and integration of new technology. The goal is to show and inform people about the history in California and develop online “Legacy Trails” like the ones created in Boston. Focus on women of history, mission trails, wine trails, movie trails, and enable people to create their own trails. These trails are meant to be read online and then they can be walked or driven. Such as an Author trail that shows you their homes and cities. They are using Flash now (just launched this week) and plan to have an AIR app in 2009.
• Back to the cloud. Adobe is showing a new Flex app called “Tour de Flex” which enables users to learn about Flex and the APIs. It also shows the AIR APIs and cloud APIs with code examples. This is not only Adobe cloud services but 3rd party services. This includes realtime code examples and how it works in the Flex language. Now showing Amazon, Twitter and Salesforce.
• A head of salesforce is talking about how Enterprise is expensive, hard, all about upgrades and where “innovation goes to die”. This is changing very quickly due to technologies like Flash and AIR but also the back-end is changing to a new model. The backend is now becoming more selective about what you want to use instead of having to install and manage it all.
• The movement is moving towards remote services that eliminate having to run your own server system. Pay as you use is becoming the new focus and also enables public APIs to build applications for your clients on top of the cloud platform. This removes the management of the infrastructure and enables better innovation.
• Kevin is now shifting over to talking about social computing. Such as collaboration within Flash platform applications.
• Nigel Pegg (an old cohort of mine @ Macromedia) is on stage to talk all about CoCoMo. CoCoMo is a new Flex / server technology that allows realtime collaboration so that as one user interacts in with the app the other viewers can see the interaction (sharing cursor). CoCoMo also enables webcam video streaming and realtime audio through the Flash Player and the application. This is not screen sharing (passing bitmaps), the data that is being sent over the line is only mouse position or graph zoom levels. This is important because secure / sensitive data does not have to be sent over the wire and can be kept locally in the application. CoCoMo comes with a client SDK / Component set that then is integrated into a cloud service that is provided by Adobe. Realtime features include video/audio (which can be peer-to-peer or through the cloud depending on security needs) file sharing and other UI interactions. The platform is now available as a free beta service.
• Adobe is announcing Adobe Wave. It is a desktop app that enables subscriptions to notification data from services such as Facebook or twitter. The tool has the ability to add new services support a common notification API. Another example is the ability tie into Evite’s notification system to inform you with a desktop alert when someone updates the evite or responds to the invitation.
• Kevin is now moving over to Devices & Desktops. Mobile phones are more then 50% of the online / web enabled devices. PCs are only a small portion of the internet bandwidth. They are seeing a trend of people (younger generation) skipping the computer and going to the mobile as the first web enabled device they use. Adobe is now pushing the concept of “Mobile First” which is about thinking about creating content for mobile apps before building / designing PC based applications.
• Adobe is looking at a browsing the web on moblie devices and enabling Flash on the platform. They are looking to not port Flash to a mobile version but to use the full version on the high-end mobile devices. Kevin is showing a Nokia phone running Symbian using Flash Player 10. The content he is showing is not mobile content, but the full SWF loaded from a site, currently NYTimes. He is now showing a Window’s media player using Opera running the lastFM website using Flash Player 10 to play audio content from the live website. He is now showing the full YouTube site on a mobile device.
• Kevin just showed the iPhone but they ARE WORKIJNG on a Flash Player it, although its not running.
• Kevin is now showing an Android phone that is using Flash Player 10 on the OS. Google is fully supporting Flash in the Android OS.
• Kevin is now showing FlashLite on other devices. The current workflow makes the user launch FlashLite and then navigate to the Flash application and then they user has to launch it. The actual application experience is good but getting to it is not. They are working on a new technology called the FlashLite deployable application. This enables a distribution system to enable create stores or even host your own application on your site which enables download and installation.
• Kevin is demoing an interactive Samasung device that is aware of devices. For example, he points the device to a TV and able to push images from the handheld device to the full screen device. he then pointed to another screen and was then able to send images to the main screen. Another person joined the demo and showed how multiple handhelds work together, This works for audio and video and multiple devices can be pointed to the same screen and shared. Kevin is now showing a game and both handheld devices interact with it.