blairsblog

you say Beta I say VHS, you say HD-DVD I say BlueRay

Interesting news  albeit somewhat off topic.  I was too young to live through the beta/vhs wars and really appreciate as a technologist what was occurring, but given I only recently sold my semi=pro Sony Beta SP player I understood the difference in quality ...

Might we be seeing a similar story play out, with HD-DVD regaining ground against BlueRay due to higher device costs?

Which leads to my original thought, I wonder what the OEM / Device markets reaction of Flash having H.264 support, could it lead to more embedded Flash runtimes for set top boxes, DVD / hard disk recorders ? not sure but it's sure exciting to think about it.

Flash H.264 it's about workflow and tools

Don't take my views the wrong way I think today's announcement by Adobe adding H.264 support to the Flash Player is awesome news, period.

But long term I don't think it's going to matter, in my view the codecs overtime will become a commodity, at some point I'm sure Microsoft will give way to the content owners and implement H.264 support in the Windows platform stack as suggested here

What will matter is the workflow and tools for producing video, and in my opinion as an employee and shareholder of Adobe that's where ultimately we have to be successful.  Having a complete story from capturing the raw footage, producing the video, encoding to the various platforms/channels content owners need to support and the final step of digital delivery be it web, dvd or other digtial formats Adobe has a great story today with CS3 and today it just gets better.  As one of our senior executives mentioned in his recent blog post "Time is Money" 

I think it's the most marketing oriented post I've ever produced while working for Adobe, but I'm quite passionate about this space and it's great to see Adobe delivering on the potential it's had since acquiring Macromedia.

kudos to all that made this happen

Adobe changes the digital video game

In what I believe to be a game changing move for the web video industry, Adobe today announced their plans to support H264 video in Flash Player 9 Update 3 which is expected to ship this Fall.

The implications of this could mean a shift for the whole industry in getting behind a single standard which can only be a good thing for content owners, producers and software developers.

I look forward to watching this play out from the sidelines

CFCAMP Australia

Coming to a city near you soon, CFCAMP is a FREE mini conference for ColdFusion Developers by ColdFusion Developers.

See the WIKI for more information ... both Andrew Spaulding AKA FlexDaddy and myself will be speaking, looking forward to seeing what other folks might step up and talk about ...

Flex developers needed in Australia

What with the news of Cynergy Systems setting up an office in Sydney, people send me Flex job openings  on a regular basis and at last weeks ColdFusion user group all the Flex skilled folks telling me they are turning down Flex work on a regular basis, we have a problem on our hands, but it's a nice problem to have ...

We need more Flex developers in the Australian market ... so what are you waiting for, jump on board and get skilled up in Flex you won't regret it! 

I don't understand Nik's point

Nik Cubrilovic discusses todays announcement by Adobe to open source most of what makes up Flex, the framework, compiler, debugger and so on.

He then goes on to tell developers 'not to hold their breath' as the Flash runtime won't be open sourced anytime soon. 

I guess my view here is why would that be good for anyone? Does anyone really want to see a fractured runtime environment as exists with Java on the desktop, where you can't really be sure which Java someone has and how a different version might perform or an application behave in a different manner when using one Java runtime or another

Sure there are some benefits of an open source runtime, but I'd rather have a single common runtime across several operating systems where I can be confident of a consistent experience.

OMG - Adobe did it!

Today Adobe has announced to open source Flex.

You can read more on lots of several other blogs, but I personally wanted to recognize and congratulate the folks involved in Adobe for making this happen, well done!

Let a thousand flowers bloom ...

Adobe Consulting growing in Australia

Some of you may know I’ve been focused on trying to get a Consulting practice off the ground in Australia over the last 12 months. 

It’s certainly been an interesting and challenging 12+ months since that direction change from my role at Macromedia in Asia.

It’s exciting to let people know the practice is starting to gain significant momentum and with that comes growth

Joining the practice this month is Susan Wolfe, who will be assuming a leadership role for the practice, I’m very excited about having Susan’s support moving forward.  Susan has deep experience in usability and user centered design approaches which is a key focus for Adobe Consulting.  She will be a great asset to the practice and personally I’m looking forward to having some support

You also might have picked up that Matt Voerman is joining the team and it’s going to be great working with him in building the technical depth of the practice. Welcome aboard Matt!

With Susan coming onboard it’s going to allow me the opportunity of re-immersing myself in the technology a little more than I have in the past year which is a welcome change, I’ll be focused on supporting Susan with technical leadership for the practice.

Finally we are still looking for a Senior Consultant with deep J2EE experience to join the team working with Matt and I that is passionate about building disruptive applications on our Flex and LiveCycle platform for strategic customers in Australia so if you are interested and based in Sydney or willing to relocate drop me an email.

With what Adobe has planned in the technology roadmap this year I can’t think of a better place to be.

Adobe Consulting Jobs in Sydney, Australia

You may of seen Stephen Webster's post last week on this.

Adobe Consulting is growing our practice based in Sydney, Australia.

We are looking for Consultants to grow our practice focused on the adoption Adobe's Flex and LiveCycle products.

The right people may come from a diverse range of backgrounds but a passion for build great solutions on Adobe's engagement platform is the key requirement.

Skills that may help include Flex, Livecycle, J2EE, agile methodology, user experience, RIA ...

Joining Adobe Consulting will be a fantastic opportunity to help implement Adobe solutions at some of the largest organisations in Australia

If you are interested in learning more drop me a note at mblair "at" adobe.com

cheers
Mark

Adelaide Adobe User Group Meeting this Tuesday

This months Adelaide Adobe User Group meeting is taking place this week on Tuesday.

See the user group blog for more details.

http://www.augsa.org/