BASEMENT.ORG
Posted by Richard Ziade on April 26, 2007, 09:05AMFlex Goes Open Source
This is pretty cool news. Adobe has decided to open source the Flex platform (or specifically, the Flex SDK). Flex is as much a platform as it is a single-purpose piece of software. The result is a pretty vibrant (and growing) community that contributes all sorts of cool components that sit atop Flex.
By open sourcing Flex, Adobe is joining the party and looking to provide even more support for the community. At Arc90, we've got some really talented engineers that immediately chose to go right under the hood and do some really cool things. The result is some really valuable feedback (we've had numerous conversations with Adobe's Flex team) that we're anxious to share. This move by Adobe is welcome because it'll hopefully make this more of a conversation between Adobe and the community. Rather than give feedback and hope for the best, Adobe joins the community.
The buzz continues to get louder around Flex and Apollo. This is about keeping the momentum going and recruiting more developers. Regardless, this is a great move for the platform. Open it up and build on top of it.
Is Adobe becoming IBM? (Heh).
Posted by Richard Ziade on April 25, 2007, 10:46AMSubway Maps & Purpose-Driven Design
Maps are just...cool. They put us two or three miles above the earth and let us peer down, like God(s) at what lies below. By giving us this view, they ground us and give us information and perspective that we couldn't otherwise obtain and digest.
There many types of maps: climate, political, topographical and transit system maps and they all have one thing in common: we overlay information upon the geography to help serve some purpose. A topographical map is of no use to me if I'm interested in zip code boundaries.
Tina Eisenberg's excellent Swiss Miss blog points to a redesign of the NY subway map has been boldly put forth by designer Eddie Jabbour. Here's a little taste of what Mr. Jabbour's done to our beloved subway system map:
You can see a lot more by clicking the above image. A quick stare tells the story: the map has been redesigned with a greater focus on its intended purpose. Mr. Jabbour is clearly cheating here. The paths of the subway lines are downright inaccurate, but alas there's a great lesson to learn here: good information design is about cheating with information if the result better serves the consumers of that design. We're not looking to plot out exactly where the subway lies underneath New York City. We're just trying to make our way around the city, and this revised map is better aligned with that purpose.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority to date hasn't shown much interest. Ah well...
Posted by Richard Ziade on April 23, 2007, 09:39AMAdobe CS3 Video Workshop
If you've locked into the CS3 madness, you'll probably enjoy the pretty large collection of videos that walk through the new features across the products. Pretty nice interface too.
Posted by Richard Ziade on April 19, 2007, 09:57AMMass Media, Mass Murder And The Narcissistic Web
At the end of last year, Time magazine anointed their Person of the Year. Surprisingly, it was you (or us, or me, or whatever). In essence, the Social Web was Person of the Year. The collective community that is sharing ideas, photos, videos, thoughts, writings and such. It's a bold and intriguing choice.
There's an uglier side to this however. An ideal view of the Social Web has us thinking and collaborating together. A less than ideal view casts us as celebrities that feed on the attention and validation of being seen, read or heard. The Last Psychiatrist (a fascinating blog, by the way) said it best:
Being on YouTube, having a blog, having an iPod, being on MySpace-- all of these things are self-validating, they allow that illusion that is so important to narcissists: that we are the main characters in a movie. Not that we're the best, or the good guys, but the main characters. That everyone around us is supporting cast; the funny friend, the crazy ex, the neurotic mother, the egotistical date, etc. That makes reminders of our insignificance even more infuriating.
Youtube, Myspace, Flickr and blogging, they are, in many ways, a massive infrastructure that breeds and feeds an unhealthy level of narcissism. The result is an unquenching desire to be the lead in our own film, the star of our own show. The problem with promising narcissism is that, for some, the notion of not being recognized and acknowledged is nearly unbearable. It's a slippery slope.
During his killing rampage in Virginia Tech, Cho Seung-Hui found the time ship a multimedia package to NBC. It's a disturbing collection of writings, photos and videos that look more like a sliced-up movie trailer than a manifesto of some twisted ideology. It is the modern day Zodiac letters. Except this time, it isn't an article in a local newspaper. It's an all-out media blitz.
Cho knew full well where his media package would end up. This was his movie. Everyone else was an actor. With a bit of work, you could take any one of his photos and turn them into a movie poster. His desire to be seen, to be the star, spiraled to an extreme.
I'll close with another, frighteningly prophetic quote from the same Last Psychiatrist post cited above:
If society chooses to make narcissism the default, it's going to have to deal with society-wide narcissistic injuries - when we suddenly realize that it isn't solely our movie and we're really not the main character. And no one wants to see this stupid movie anyway. This inevitably leads to violence[...]Posted by Richard Ziade on April 17, 2007, 08:58AM
Give Google Reader A Facelift
This is pretty darn slick. Jon Hicks has whipped together a modern Mac-like theme for Google Reader. For Firefox, it requires Stylish, an extension that allows for custom CSS styles for sites.
I don't know about everyone else, but I'm really tired of Google's dumbed-down, preschool look & feel that dominates most of their applications (Gmail, Reader, etc.).
Posted by Richard Ziade on April 16, 2007, 09:01AMFlash, Silverlight & The In-Between OS
This morning, Microsoft (re)introduced their WPF/E platform (Windows Presentation Foundation / Everywhere) as Microsoft Silverlight. Tim Sneath has a nice summary of the feature set.
If anyone doubted that Microsoft is gunning for the a piece of the Adobe Flash empire, there's no denying it now. This is a relatively light, cross-platform runtime that will handle visuals, video and appears to upscale nicely from the HTML/Javascript world. It's Microsoft's version of Flash.
I think what's emerging is a new territory that has seldom been acknowledged before: the in-between OS. It's not web and it's not your desktop. Now that the bandwidth and horsepower hurdles are out of the way, we're seeing Microsoft acknowledge the power of a potently powerful little runtime. Adobe has focused on re-architecting Flash to go from "cool graphics engine" to a world class runtime. Apollo is how Flash ends up on your desktop. One of the key features of Silverlight is that all that code will elegantly work in the real WPF world (Vista).
For Microsoft, this is all about upsell. If they can get web developers to slowly peek their head into the WPF world, it's a big win for them. Ultimately, they want you on Vista. This may well be where Adobe's advantage lies: there is no "light" version of Flash. All the capabilties are everywhere. To really light things up in WPF, you need to be on Vista.
As for the learning curve, Microsoft doesn't have to deal with any old baggage since this is new stuff. The result is a platform that will probably feel more familiar to HTML/Javascript/Ajax developers. WPF/E seems to build upon the same development paradigm that web developers have gotten accustomed to while the Flash/Flex/Actionscript world requires a fair amount of re-learning.
Oddly (but not surprisingly), the press (and Microsoft's PR) seems to be focusing on the video features of WPF/E (cross platform, HD, etc.). This part of the story will be pretty interesting. I guess the day is coming when video will not require a browser open and an Internet connection. That's a good thing.
Microsoft has always had a huge advantage when dealing with competition because they owned the arena (i.e. the operating system) and exclusively possessed the transit system (the precious OS API's). That's changing. The success and ubiquity of Flash is forcing Microsoft to think in a leaner, more portable, cross-platform way. Nobody should underestimate Microsoft's skill or tenacity to compete, but in this case, they're clearly the visiting team.
Posted by Richard Ziade on April 13, 2007, 05:40PMGoogle Is Buying Doubleclick for $3.1B
I think I remember reading somewhere that Microsoft should buy Doubleclick. Well, it's too late, Google has snatched them up for a cool $3.1B.
We're getting to a pretty scary place folks. If we think in the context of mediums, there's radio, TV, print and then there's...Google. I don't have stats in front of me, but I'm guessing that Yahoo and Microsoft are in the single-digit percentages as far as share of market goes. And with this purchase, Google reaches out even further into online advertising. Doubleclick is in a lot of places.
There were rumors flying recently that Microsoft was in talks with Doubleclick. I'm sure this deal is as much about keeping Microsoft's grubby hands off of Doubleclick as it is about Google wanting to purchase them.
The New York Times has more here.
Posted by Richard Ziade on April 4, 2007, 03:37AMGoogle Desktop Lands On The Mac
Google Desktop is now available for Mac. I'm not sure about its value with Spotlight already in place, but nonetheless, it's here. TUAW has a nice review.
Posted by Richard Ziade on April 3, 2007, 02:21AMUmm...Wow.
I don't usually point to stuff like this on basement.org but...wow. (Via the relentlessly great Waxy's Links.)