Registration for Adobe MAX 2006 opens today. This is the first post-merger MAX, so it should be a doozy! 
Save the date! October 23-26, 2006! Las Vegas, Nevada! MAX 2006!
Apollo, the code-name for Adobe's Universal Client, is stating to pick-up steam it seems. I'm sure that the folks over at Adobe have been working their butts off on it, but few details have been forthcoming. In the last month though, that's beginning to change. A big article on c|net, "Flash to jump beyond the browser," in early May really gave the best overview so far. More recently, John Dowdell pointed out an article from PDFZone on a preso at PDF2006 that speaks to the document community's thoughts on such a client. And just yesterday, I saw that Mike Chambers will be offering a workshop at September's Flashforward conference called, "Building Your First Apollo Application."
I was going to wait till I'd had a chance to play with this before writing, but I'm just too geeked out to wait. I saw a session with Robert Hall at MAX called "Flash on Every Screen." Robert showed a lot of cool kiosk-type uses of Flash, but the things that really jazzed me were the "non-standard" input devices he was using with Flash: mag-stripe card readers, infrared distance measuring sensors, etc. He turned the audience on to Making Things, a company that supplies electronic components and the software that allows them to speak to Flash (a light-weight XML server and a Flash class library). Well, I just got my kit in the mail and can't wait to get going with it! I'll let you know where it leads me, but in the meantime, you can check out Making Things' site and more resources from Robert on his site.
The Dev Center posted a really detailed wrap-up for MAX today...at least the two General Sessions and the Sneak Peeks. If you didn't make it to Anaheim, this is a great way to get some ground-level info. And if you were there, this is a great review. It was a lot to soak in, so a refresher is useful.
There's almost too much going on here to get it all out right now. It's been a long day and many thoughts are still percolating, but here are some highlights culled from the General Session (which featured Stephen Elop, Macromedia CEO; Kevin Lynch, MM chief software architect; and Bruce Chizen, Adobe CEO, as well as several product managers and Ze Frank to kick it all off!):
Pre-conference day at MAX on Sunday. I sat in on a Flash Mobile Development course today. I'll post some hints and tips soon, but there was one little tidbit that flashed up on a slide during the preso that I'll pass on here as food for thought. According to Jupiter Research, "Global market predictions estimate mobile gambling will be worth over $18 billion by 2008."
MAX is only two days away. Hopefully, you've all got your registration in, your reservations made and your bags packed...if you haven't left already. But if you just can't make it to MAX this year in Anaheim because you had to walk your dog (I had to get my wife to walk mine while I'm gone, but I think I owe her now...), then do the next best thing: read MaxBloggers.com all week long. This year, instead of having a separate blog site, Chris Cantrell and the guys at Macromedia have created a MAX Smart Category in Macromedia XML News Aggregator (that's actually what MaxBloggers.com points to). So you can get news of all the goings on at MAX without being there! You still won't get the experience of seeing the grins on the faces coming out of the certification testing room, but you will be able to keep your finger on the pulse of the Macromedia community.
Macromedia posted a press release today that says the acquisition of the company by Adobe is all but complete. "The closing of the transaction remains subject to regulatory approval in a few European jurisdictions." They still expect things to finish up this fall.
The MAX Award Finalists have been posted. If you're looking for some inspiration, go check out what your peers have been doing in the last year. Since we're focusing on mobile today, I'll just highlight the Mobile Experiences finalists: Dolce & Gabbana - D&G For Realovers and Metaliq - Terra Mobile Application.
Michael Hagel and the folks over at Deardorff Communications have released their MAX 05 Mobile Conference Guide for FlashLite-enabled devices. I've used PDA-based conference guides before. They're a really useful resource to have. It's a lot easier than flipping through a paper-based booklet. Now if I just had a FlashLite-enabled phone...
As we gear up to MAX, there's lots going on in the mobile devices arena. I'll be posting various mobile-related items throughout the day.
John Dowdell reports that "last night a bunch of us got together at The Fillmore to officially say goodbye to Macromedia." I'm wondering why folks decided to have the jazz funeral at Web 2.0 and not at MAX next week, but then again, I'm sure there will be plenty of this kind of thing at MAX as well. Though there still hasn't been any final announcement (MAX anyone?), this is clearly the writing on the wall. There's been a lot of talk, including right here on FlashInsider, about what the new entity will be named, but the consensus is that the Macromedia brand will be a thing of the past in a very short time. I'll leave you with one last thought from J.D. on what exactly Macromedia means and let you ponder where we all go from here: "One thing I particularly liked was how the CEO toasts by Bud, Rob and
Stephen strongly and clearly said that the "Us" of Macromedia wasn't
just staffers, but was both people who draw a paycheck from the
company, and the greater number of people who draw their own paychecks using what the company produces."
Today, Macromedia announced the release of the next wave of the Flash Platform: Flex 2, Flash Player 8.5 and ActionScript 3. I'm sure you'll hear more about all of it in the coming weeks since the alpha version should be released in concert with MAX in a little over a week. Since Flash 8 was just released though, let's concentrate on the half-point upgrade to the Flash Player for the moment. The press release reads:Flash Player 8.5 adds industrial-strength programming power on top of the expressiveness introduced in Flash Player 8, creating a state-of-the-art, cross-platform runtime. It includes a new virtual machine that offers faster runtime performance, full runtime error reporting, improved debugging, and ActionScript 3. ActionScript 3 complies with the latest ECMAScript specifications, and increases developer productivity by making it easier to find and fix errors earlier.OK, so I let AS3 slip in there, but the basic thrust here is that Player 8.5 will deliver more power in the virtual machine as well as script debugging tools...which anyone who has ever tried to decipher Flash's Output Panel error messages will welcome with open arms. I'll assume the AS3's ECMAScript compliance will come with some stricter coding practices (perhaps case sensitivity will now be required), but the benefits should certainly be worth it.
Just a few weeks left before this year's MAX conference. The schedule for the various Birds of a Feather meetings has just been released. Unfortunately, the Mobile Development and the Flash 8 Team meetings are scheduled for the same time slot, so you may have to walk back and forth a little bit on that Monday night. Meet the folks behind your tools. See what's on deck. Give your input on where things should go next. Check it out! And maybe I'll see you in the halls!
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