MAX 2005 Articles

Day 2 General Session Coverage: Meet Your Match

Onto the stage, the Casanova in the white polyester suit, circa-70s collared shirt, and Barry White loafers saunters up to the “Macromedia: Meet Your Match” receptionist. To the audience, he asks: “Do I look like I need help finding a date? I’m not just going to work with any software…” It’s Tim Buntel, senior product manager for ColdFusion kicking off the day’s general session.

Figure 1. Tim Buntel, Casanova and host of Day 2’s general session

Recreated on stage is the Meet Your Match video from macromedia.com. Sarah, our wry and prim receptionist files her nails (she’s seen it all), and in the waiting room, Mimi, the hipster mobile and Flash developer wonders whether she’ll ever get to hold her dream phone ever again. Richard pines for the one who will help him be expressive (with Flash Video). Will it be Studio 8? Will it be Flash Media Server 2?

Macromedia believes in matchmaking. Flash interfaces on mobile. Meeting your business partners with Breeze whiteboards. Flex applications on Internet television. Seamless Flash Video on the web, hosted, effortlessly. During Tuesday's general session, developers heard about these partnerships, how Macromedia is helping them make these relationships work through servers and tools, and by showcasing the product of those unions.

Flash Video on the Web

As our Casanova took a seat to fill out his “matchmaker” form, David Mendels, executive vice president of products announced, “if you’re a video professional, this is the right place to be.” With that he talked about major trends that Macromedia has followed over the past year—especially video on the web. With the proliferation of broadband in households, men between the ages of 19-35 are just as likely to be surfing the web as they would be watching TV. Twenty-seven percent watch video online each week. “Consumers are switching to online for their video consumption.”

Figure 2. Dave Mendels on Flash Video

With the ubiquity of Flash Player, developers can count on Flash Video being an “integrated part of the overall experience for the user.” The Macromedia Flash Player 8 engineering team produced a new version that delivered improved quality: the new video codec, font displays, graphic effects, improved performance, and accelerated adoption. Then Macromedia released Flash Media Server 2, giving developers an improved workflow so that developers can edit, encode, author, and deliver video seamlessly. Mendels closed by saying that new partnerships with third-party vendors, such as Akamai, make it easier than ever before for developers to get their video content on the web—and encouraged attendees to visit these vendors at MAX.

A Love Affair with Studio 8

Back onstage, Richard, our single developer, is on his first date through Meet Your Match. He gazes lovingly at his date, a large Studio 8 box, and wonders, “could this be love? You, Studio, could help me be so much more expressive with my digital experiences.”

Figure 3. Richard is in love with Studio 8

Developers next heard all about Studio 8 and how it will help them put digital experiences on the web.

In her five-minute Dreamweaver demo, Jen Taylor, product manager for Dreamweaver showed how simple it is to add video content to web pages. For the audience, she created a personals ad because “it’s great to create your personal ad in front of 3000 people.”

Figure 4. Jen Taylor creates her personal ad: The Web Goddess

She then specified the area for the video, browsed to the video content, picked a skin for her web page, and voila, in the browser, her personals ad displays with some pictures: “Hi, I’m Jen Taylor, a Web Goddess. I like pina coladas, clean code, and getting caught in the rain.”

Steve Kilisky of Adobe gave a sneak peek of what’s in store for Adobe After Effects. He demonstrated a unified interface that users could customize based on their workflow. Then, he demonstrated the improved high-quality alpha channels, text animation and transformation capabilities, and effects for objects on the Meet Your Match video. The audience audibly cheered when he said, “and you will be able to export alpha channels…that is, you will be able to export an FLV. It’s coming.”

Mike Downey, Flash product manager, demonstrated how Flash Professional 8 and Flash Media Server 2 integrate more tightly than ever before. Flash 8 helps developers to display better quality video through the VP6 codec and full 8-bit alpha channels; and improves developers’ experiences of getting video into Flash through a less confusing, more intuitive, and simplified workflow.

Figure 5. Mike Downey sits next to Steve Kilisky of Adobe and chats about video

Flash developers simply specify a location for the video on the Stage, browse to a video file (the video can be in any format, at any location, for instance, at Akamai), and then Flash 8 finds the video, configures its specifications on the page and encodes it for you. You simply tweak its location on the page, the playback settings, and then test the video in your SWF file. Likewise, Flash Media Server 2 brings improved video quality (through the support of the VP6 codec), better reliability and performance, and extensibility.

Brightcove and Macromedia

“Haven’t I seen you here before?” Buntel asked with a sly sideways glance. As the mystery guest lowered his magazine, it was none other than Jeremy Allaire, currently the CEO of Brightcove and founder of ColdFusion. Jeremy explained the Brightcove Console, an application they built in Flex that weds Internet TV with portals, users, and rich content. The Brightcove model helps developers publish content, affiliate it to other modalities through syndicated packages, and surface the content intuitively to consumers through discovery, sharing, searching. Soon, Brightcove plans to release its Internet TV API.

Allaire concluded his demo with a call to action. “We’re looking forward to working with everyone here” he said, to create an integrated experience for video on Internet TV.

Figure 6. Jeremy Allaire is excited about the possibilities with Macromedia, Brightcove, and Internet TV.

Scorpio Seeks Gemini

Next, Buntel slides next to Allaire and asks him, “You ready for love?”

Allaire answers, “yeah, baby!”

The lights dim and Ben Forta, senior ColdFusion evangelist appears via video feed in what appears to be an online personals ad.

Figure 7. Ben Forta visits from afar

“Um. Hi,” he taps his microphone. He’s wearing every MAX and DevCon badge from every conference he’s attended, and that is a lot.

“I’m Ben, I’m a Scorpio. Ok, no, I’m really not,” he says with a mischievous smile, “but I’m going to get very involved with one later this year.”

Scorpio is the code name for the next version of ColdFusion. ColdFusion MX 7, released earlier in 2005 has sold over 25,000 copies. With the release of the ColdFusion update, or ColdFusion MX 7.0.1, the demand for ColdFusion applications and developers is at an all-time high. Ben ended his ad with a request, “I really hope you pick me! Bye now.”

Communication

The next keynote in today’s general session was by Senior Vice President Tom Hale.

Figure 8. Senior Vice President Tom Hale

Breeze is one of the product families in Tom’s business unit, and Breeze Meeting is the premier solution for online collaboration. The number of Breeze enterprise customers has increased dramatically -- over 1000 new customers in the last four quarters. There are now over 1600 Breeze customers world wide and over 100,000 people use Breeze each day.

Tom then talked about Macromedia’s partnership with Cisco and showed a video of how Cisco has embedded Breeze into their Meeting Place product, which is an audio, video, and web communication system. Cisco chose Breeze because of the ubiquity of the Flash Player, Breeze’s ability to scale, the adoption of the Flash Player, and the applicability of deployment.

Customization is one of the key points that makes it superior to its competitors. There are many different ways to customize and use Breeze, and Tom showed a few examples of how he uses it. He then demo’d a how a Japanese training company called Benesse has customized Breeze in its one-on-one training solutions. Benesse has extended the white board module in Breeze Meeting to be able to insert graphical primitives onto the white board. Benesse has created a whole library of math symbols that can be inserted onto the white board to facilitate online training.

Tom next introduced another example of how Breeze has been extended using what are called Room Extensions. He showed how WGBH and Caption Colorado have developed a closed captioning feature where a dedicated person listens to conversations in a Breeze Meeting, types up the conversation real time, and broadcasts the text in the closed caption pod. This gives the ability for hearing impaired people to participate in Breeze Meetings.

A third example of the customization is the new Breeze Meeting Extensions Sync SWF API and SDK as well as the upcoming public beta for this feature. The Sync SWF API and SDK allow Flash developers to create Flash applications that run inside of Breeze Meeting. When one meeting attendee makes a change to the Flash application running in Breeze Meeting, the Flash application in the meeting “syncs” and all meeting attendees can see the change take place in real time. This takes online collaboration to a whole new level, and with a developer base of one million Flash developers, the sky is the limit to what can be created. The creation of these applications is streamlined with a set of Flash components, which make up the SDK for the feature. The engineer that worked on the Sync SWF feature, Nigel Pegg, and Breeze evangelist, Peter Ryce, demo’d a “collaborative magnetic poetry” application running inside a Breeze Meeting. The application is similar to refrigerator magnets that can be assembled to construct sentences. Or in this case, Peter, Nigel, and Breeze product manager, David Yun, collaborated to create a poem.

Figure 9. The collaborative magnetic poetry application running inside Breeze Meeting

The audience next watched a demo of a Sync SWF application created with Infomersion’s Xcelcius application. With Xcelcius, you can convert a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet into an interactive charting and graphing Flash file that runs inside Breeze Meeting. Visit Infomersion’s site to learn more about Xcelcius.

To learn more about Breeze Meeting Extensions, visit the Breeze Developer Center to read the introductory article on the feature. You can also apply for the public beta where you will be given a Breeze Meeting account to test the Sync SWF applications you create.

If you’re attending MAX this year and want to get hands-on training on creating Sync SWF applications, attend Nigel Pegg’s Extending Breeze Meeting Using Synchronized Flash and Flex Applications MAX session on Wednesday morning from 9 to 10 am.

Mobile

In the next installment of the "Meet Your Match" game, Tim Buntel approached Mimi, a jaded design/developer, languishing on a park bench. "I've been there, done that," she said. "I need change." Host Buntel suggested that she try "the latest, the hottest, the coolest place to be" – and that's where the next part of the session went -- into the revolutionary world of Flash development for mobile devices.

Figure 10. Tim Buntel and Mimi Rosenheim

What's Up with Mobile

Al Ramadan, executive vice president for mobile and devices at Macromedia, said that it's "hard to believe that just 12 months ago at MAX we first outlined our mobile agenda." He went on to talk about some of the key recent happenings for Flash in the mobile space:

• 13,000 developers have joined the Macromedia Mobile Developer Program.
• The first digital camera with a Flash user interface, the Kodak EasyShare 1, has been developed.
• The message "Flash is mobile" became the rage at 3GSM.
• Nokia and Macromedia have formed a strategic partnership.
• Samsung shipped Flash phones in Korea.
• NTT DoCoMo launched the first FlashCast channel, iChannel.

Ramadan also announced the imminent US release of the iRiver U10, which will host Flash content like games and interfaces, in addition to video and music.

Figure 11. Al Ramadan tells developers about the growing opportunities in the mobile market.

And Flash Lite-enabled phones are continuing to become more and more common throughout the world. Ramadan noted that while the Japan market continues to grow, rapid growth in the proliferation of Flash Lite-enabled phones is taking place in Europe as well, exemplified by the creation of a partnership between Macromedia and Nokia. The first Nokia device to ship with Flash Lite will be the N90, with the N91 and other devices following in the near future.

Mobile Distribution Opportunities Grow

One of the most exciting announcements for mobile developers at the show was the great news that mobile distribution for Flash content is increasing:

• Nokia Preminet: Nokia's Preminet Solution will now supply Flash Lite content, so developers can participate in getting their content out to Nokia users.
• Qualcomm and Brew: "We're bringing Flash Lite to Brew," Ramadan announced. He said that a new Flash Lite extension for Brew means that you can distribute Flash Lite content now in the U.S., and if the handset doesn't have Flash Lite installed, the system will automatically distribute it to a handset automatically.

Flash Lite 2.0 Authoring

As Kevin Lynch noted in the Day One General Session, the new version of Flash Lite will offer many new features for mobile developers. (See Jonathan Duran's article Exploring the New Features of the Flash Lite 2.0 Preview for details.) Ramadan added to the fervor over these new features by letting the audience know when they can soon try them out: The authoring tools for Flash Lite 2.0 will be available in Macromedia Labs in January.

Mobile Experience Predictions

As the market for mobile Flash applications grows rapidly, it's hard to keep up with the cutting-edge experiences that are defining the medium.

Figure 12. Categories comprising the new mobile consumer experience

Ramadan outlined three types of experiences he is seeing bubble up in the mobile world:

• Enhanced content, which many developers have begun to participate in creating
• Operator-customized phone UIs, which he called a "great opportunity" for developers
• Converged data services, which use push data technology to give customers quick access to content like weather, sports, etc.

In conclusion, Ramadan said that he "can't wait to be back at MAX in 2006 to see what you've created."

Live Demos of Mobile Applications

Bill Perry, developer relations manager for mobile, showed a new mobile photo-searching application, built by two developers at Yahoo! This application connects to Flickr and can search and display photos based on the metadata entered by Flickr members.

Figure 13. Bill Perry introduces the Flickr demo as Mimi Rosenheim looks on.

Perry first showed the application working in the mobile emulator in the Flash development environment, showing how developers can build and test apps without having to load them onto a handset. Then he ran the app on a real handset, searching and displaying photos relating to the search term "Macromedia."

Josh Ulm, from the Macromedia Experience Design team, took over the stage and demo'd a new interface for a combined data service. Ulm gave some of the reasons why Flash is the optimum mechanism for developing easy-to-maintain, data-driven mobile apps.

"Because it's Flash, we can separate the data from the UI," he said. "That means that we can iterate on changes on the UI only. I can switch out the UI and the logic stays the same."

Figure 14. Josh Ulm addresses the developer audience as he demonstrates a data-driven mobile application.

Ulm went on to show a new mobile application that combined data information services with other phone services such as e-mail and messaging to create a converged communication environment. He noted that the data for the app, driven by FlashCast, gets to the phone through "push technology." This means customers don't have to request data before it's available for viewing. With FlashCast, unlike WAP implementations, the data is already resident on the phone, ready for quick display.

The 2005 MAX Awards

Kevin Lynch returned to the stage, and congratulated the developers on the awesome work they've been creating. "We're constructing the platform together," he said. "And what you build really makes the difference.

With that, Lynch introduced the winners of the 2005 MAX Awards. (For more information and presentations about the winners and nominees, see the 2005 MAX Awards page.) And the winners are:

Advertising and Branding Experience

Royal Caribbean International – Freedom of the Seas
Arnold Worldwide and IQ Interactive

In anticipation of the maiden voyage of their new ship, “Freedom of the Seas,” in June 2006, Royal Caribbean International launched a website that keeps visitors up to date on the ship’s construction. Utilizing full-motion video seamlessly composited into 3D architectural renderings, developers created an immersive experience that literally puts viewers aboard the ship.

Media, Entertainment, and Gaming Experiences

New Line Cinema – Crash This Trailer
Tequila Sydney

To mimic the theme of their new film, “Wedding Crashers,” New Line Cinema created an official movie website that allows visitors to “crash” the film’s trailer by uploading their photos and becoming one of five major characters in the film. Flash animates the users’ faces, making it seem as if they’re Vince Vaughn or Owen Wilson in selected scenes.

Mobile Experiences

Dolce & Gabbana – D&G for Realovers
Interpreting.it S.r.l.

Dolce & Gabbana created this rich, cross-platform game to reach their varied customers all over the world. People can play D&G For Realovers on their desktop computers as well as on their PDAs or Flash Lite–enabled mobile phones.

Customer-Facing Experiences

Converse – Converse One
ZAAZ

The Converse One website uses Flash to create a unique Converse experience. The online sneaker configurator allows customers to design and purchase the perfect pair of Converse footwear, starting with the classic Chuck Taylor All Stars.

Business Experiences

SAP – SAP Analytics
SAP

The SAP Analytics website includes more than 100 analytic applications to help make business intelligence appropriate and consumable by the average business user. SAP development and solution management teams built the visually appealing and easy-to-use site with Flex and SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer in less time than any other product in the SAP portfolio.

Government Experiences

Airservices Australia – Flying Around
Airservices Australia

Each year dozens of general aviation pilots stray into controlled airspaces due to unfamiliarity with the area, or lack of awareness of changes to existing airspace areas. This can result in what’s called a “Violation of Controlled Airspace” and the possibility of serious incident. The Airservices Australia website is an informational and interactive visual guide that increases pilots’ awareness of flights in and around controlled airspaces. The site helps pilots plan their routes better so they can operate more safely and effectively. Interactive charts allow users to become familiar with unfamiliar maps and aerial photos reveal new geography of the landscape. Technical information includes transponder and radio frequencies, air traffic control protocols, specific information about capital cities, and tips for avoiding hazards in areas of controlled airspace.

E-Learning Experiences

BMW AG - MINI Brand Management
Interone Worldwide GmbH

In order to provide learning opportunities about the MINI Cooper for sales and service personnel, BMW AG released their innovative, Flash-based MINI World Challenge. Over a six-month period, more than 2000 participants from 20 countries tested their MINI knowledge with quizzes that balanced learning, competition, and knowledge testing in an engaging MINI-themed atmosphere.

Education and Non-Profit Experiences

University of Texas, Center for Energy and Environmental Resources – Trajectory Tool
University of Texas, Center for Energy and Environmental Resources

The Corpus Christi Air Monitoring and Surveillance Camera Installation and Operation Project tracks airborne particles and air pollutants over the city of Corpus Christi, Texas. Built by the Center for Energy and Environmental Resources at the University of Texas at Austin, this trajectory tool provides almost real-time data from a number of air monitoring stations, as well as the ability to zoom in on sections of the city for finer analysis.

Special Achievement

Tian Tian Studios
TinaFlash.com

TinaFlash.com, designed by Tian Tian, features animated shorts presenting fantastic worlds where nature and technology intersect, and characters struggle against the boundaries of ability and disability. Flash provides the palette for this talented artist and her unique sense of color, light, and motion. A sense of hope permeates her work—drawn largely from personal experience—reminding each of us that we are greater than the sum of our parts.

People’s Choice:

Note: MAX Attendees select the People's Choice Award winner by popular vote during the conference.

New Line Cinema – Crash This Trailer
New Line Cinema
Tequila Sydney

In conclusion, Lynch said thanked all the developers for the great work they produce. "Every year, the works get better and better," he said. "It's so inspiring to come back every year and see what's happening."

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