Radley Marx

EL Disco Chair

(via Fubiz)

Clever Gestural User Input

Two MIT guys, sixth-year grad student Robert Y. Wang of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and Associate Professor Jovan Popovic, have come up with a brilliant and inexpensive hand-tracking interface.

(via Core77)

Video Visionaries at NewTeeVee Live ‘09

Spent the day down in Mission Bay at GigaOm’s NewTeeVee Live Conference. This was my second time at the broadcast-meets-internet-video meet-up and this year was equally enlightening with the usual news and announcements of upcoming tech gadgets and progress.

I could go into details but most of it was already blogged and publicized: Boxee is releasing a box (but not showing it until Dec), Comcast is releasing “on Demand Online” – their version of TV Everywhere (but not until Dec), Adobe Flash (… Dec), and YouTube is going 1080p (not Dec, next week actually). The biggest takeaway is *everyone* is doing menu systems with Netflix – game consoles, TVs, DVD & Blu-ray players, over-the-top boxes, …and even toasters.

I think the most revealing bit for me was being a 40-something sitting in a roomful of other 40-somethings and hearing everyone express the same ideas I’ve been having for the last six months: aggregation, social dynamics, multi-screen, better remote, etc. As a 40-something working exclusively with 20 & 30-something Facebookers who dream solely of virtual goods, I had presumed my ideas were unique.

Saying this, will I return next year? Certainly. But for now I’ll be taking  time to re-examine my current projects to determine if they’ll truly be innovative (or even relevant) by the time they would come to term…

Best of MAX ‘09 on Adobe TV & Max Online

This year’s MAX was a blast. Lots of great announcements (but not many releases) from Adobe on what’s in store in the coming year. The best part: almost all of the sessions are now available as videos on Adobe TV and  MAX Online.

The big announcement was Flash-based app development for the iPhone which came as a great surprise for everyone. I’m very surprised how close I came in calling it in my pre-MAX blog post. If blogging was pool, my post would count if we’re playing “call pocket” and not “call shot”.

Most of my planned sessions focussed on P2P, AIR for Mobile, Collaboration, and Flex. Only a few ended up ditch-worthy (I’ll never attend “roadmap” sessions again, bah!) and in one case fell happily into a great iPhone session with AIR-master Arno Gourdol. In the end, I attended mostly P2P, video, iPhone, and Flex courses… yet there are more than a few that I missed.

This is a very subjective “best of” list based on my personal interests and skills. Thus, I’ve compiled a list of the best sessions I attended (*) as well as those recommended by others that I’ll catch up on over the next few weeks.



Flash / iPhone

XML based FLA: The New Flash File Format (Jeff Ahlquist)

Designing Flash Applications for iPhone * (Arno Gourdol)
(aka Designing Applications for Desktops and Mobile Devices with Adobe AIR)

Optimizing Flash Content for iPhone Applications (Scott Petersen & Chris Brichford)

Building Applications for iPhone with Flash Professional CS5 * (Aditya Bansod)

Multi-Touch and the Flash Platform * (Daniel Dura & Matt Bugbee)

Secret Session: Flash Professional (Richard  Galvan, long video: session repeats due to scheduling)

ActionScript 3.0 Tastes Good (and Is Good for You, Too!) (Phillip Kerman)

Things Every Flash Developer Should Know (Grant Skinner)



Video / P2P / OSMF

P2P on the Flash Platform with RTMFP * (Matthew Kaufman)

Social Media Experiences with Flash Media and RTMFP * (Tom Krcha)

Introduction to Adobe’s Open Source Media Framework (Will Law & Edwin van Rijkom)

Netflix on TVs Using Flash (Matt McCarthy & Michael Hoch)

Encoding Best Practices for H.264 Video Using Flash (Fabio Sonnati)



Flex / AIR

Preview: Flex for Mobile Devices (Ely Greenfield & Greg Burch)

Flash Builder 4 Advanced Tips and Tricks * (Scott Evans)

Effects in Flex 4 (Chet Haase)

What’s New in Flash Builder 4 (Tim Buntel)

Moving from Flex 3 to Flex 4 (Joan Lafferty)

Multitouch Development with Flex (Andrew Trice)

A Deep Dive into Flex 4 Lists and Layouts (Glenn Ruehle)

What’s Coming in Adobe AIR 2 (Christian Cantrell)



Flash Catalyst

Working with Flash Catalyst Projects in Flash Builder 4 (Andrew Shorten)

Prototyping and Interactive Wireframes Using Flash Catalyst (Peter Flynn)



Flash Platform

Killer Text in Flash with the Text Layout Framework (TLF) (Doug Benson & Rusty Williams)

Flash Player Internals (Lee Thomason)

GPU Acceleration in the next Flash Player (NVIDIA)

Adobe Wave: Increasing the Use of your Websites and Applications (John Shapiro & Joerg Beckert)

SEO Secrets, Technology, and Magic Behind Flash (Duane Nickull & Rich Tretola)



Design

Hot Tips and Cool Tools in Illustrator CS4 (David Macy)

Photoshop CS4: Hidden Gems and New Technologies (Brian O’Neil Hughes)



[Update: New videos and missing links added. A few session videos didn't get posted to Adobe TV, but are available via MAX Online (thank you @mesh).]

Art & Copy

(cpluv.com) Art & Copy is a powerful new film about advertising and inspiration. Directed by Doug Pray (SURFWISE, SCRATCH, HYPE!), it reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time — people who’ve profoundly impacted our culture, yet are virtually unknown outside their industry.brilliant campaigns for everything from cars to presidents.

Link to tour schedule