Radley Marx

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…

Sunday Old School – new mix on Soundcloud

It all started with Sonz Of A Loop Da Loop Era – “Higher” – a super tongue-in-cheek track with a great sample “And I was so high off the ground that I could see for miles around.” This was the B-Side to “Far Out” which had the extra bonus of really creative etching and pressing patterns. I lost my copy years ago and decided it was time to resupply which led me to Discogs.

Three months later I ended up a whole new crate full of records (oh noes!), most of which date back to the pre-internet era (’90 – ‘94). These are the “music before recorded history” tracks that came and went so fast that most never really made the transition to digital significance.

My Sunday Old School mix is just me goofing off and playing my favorites out of the new batch. I made a few of these mixes, but this one was the most blatant and fun. It starts off with some of the most beautiful tracks I’d not heard in years and then takes off at the 10 and 20 minute marks. Tempo ramps from 128 bpm up to 153 bpm, dropping down to 124 bpm to eventually settle in around 134 bpm.

Sunday Old School by radley

Most of these tracks were anthems of the moment, but these moment seldom crossed paths since each was strictly “out of style” by the time the next arrived. These were also the first generation of mash-ups with everyone blatantly ripping each others samples and beats. But that’s history…

Link to mix on Soundcloud

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).]

My Quick Guide to LA for MAX Attendees

I really miss LA… great food, beautiful beaches, and lots of amazing music and culture.

It’s impossible to make a list of “the best of everything” because there’s so much and everyone has their tastes. So I’ve put together this quick & dirty list of places I miss and plan to hit, as well as a couple of sites that I might use to discover what’s new. I hope this can be useful…

Flavorpill (LA)
Great resource for daytime and nightime events

Yelp
Tons of people in LA use yelp

Hipsters:
google “Silverlake”

Food:
(Most of these are a 5-10 min drive from Downtown)

Papa Cristos C&K Importing (arguably the best Greek in LA)
Phillips Bar-B-Que (serious, serious BBQ)
Daikokuya (great Ramen, they usually sell out before closing time)
Chano’s Drive-In (cheap, semi-late night tacos & burritos)
Palm’s Thai Restaurant (Thai food, featuring Thai Elvis live)
Little Tokyo (Various restaurants in the northeast corner of Downtown)
Chinatown (Various restaurants just north of Downtown)
Sushi / Noodle Row – 1st Street & Central (north end of Little Tokyo)

West Side (Venice / Santa Monica / Culver City)

If you have time, I recommend heading out to the west side to check out Venice and Santa Monica, but be warned: both freeways (10 & 405) are usually total gridlock during rush hour. Also, don’t forget LAFlashapaloozastock takes place in Venice on Saturday.

Walk-around, food, & shopping:
Santa Monica – Main Street
Santa Monica – 3rd Street Prominade
Santa Monica – Santa Monica Little Tokyo
Venice – Abbot Kinney
Venice – Venice Beach (rent a bike and ride on the beachfront bike path)
Culver City – Downtown (lots of great food, I suggest Tender Greens)

Art on west side:
Bergomot Station – group of art galleries
Hennessey & Ingalls – giant art book store
Griffin LA – David Lynch: New Paintings

Will Adobe Release AIR for iPhone at MAX?

In regards to the MAX Conference next week, Adobe seems to be taking an all-or-nothing approach to the iPhone. Either they plan to announce (and promptly release) AIR for the iPhone or they’re deliberately blowing off iPhone users. As things stand now it’s the latter, but there’s clues (and assumptions) that have me wondering if this October miracle might happen…

Clue #1:  it’s almost impossible to find and/or follow the sessions at the conference via the iPhone. Both the Session Catalog and MAX Map exist only as Flash apps. On the iPhone you’ll actually see a generic template filler:

Alternate HTML content should be placed here. This content requires the Adobe Flash Player. Get Flash

Clue #2: Today Adobe released the Adobe MAX Companion – a desktop widget for twittering MAX news and gossip as well as following your MAX schedule (doesn’t work for me) and maps of the conference floors. The size and shape of this widget seems to fit nicely into a smart-phone screen (such as the iPhone).

Clue #3: AIR for Mobile has been in the MAX Session Catalog for the past few months. But recent chatter has revealed surprise and some concern from internal Adobe peeps that AIR for Mobile was made public, as if it was a big secret. AIR for Mobile is a cool advancement but not enough to freak employees out, yet AIR for iPhone certainly qualifies.

Assumption #1: AIR for Mobile will definitely be part of the keynote. As such, I predict that a beta will be released at the conclusion for people to download and use during the remainder of the conference.

Assumption #2: For every Palm Pre user at the conference there will be ten Android users and at least 500 iPhone users. With such a low user ratio, at best a special release of AIR for Mobile release would impress ~50 developers (and  maybe ~500 Blackberry  suits) at MAX, but an AIR for iPhone release would benefit half their audience and amaze everyone.

Assumption #3: It’s hard to imagine that Adobe could be so obstinate as to provide zero support for iPhone users. Most websites at least have some form of HTML backup. Even the Adobe Store, which is entirely Flash (!), has an HTML alternative viewable via the iPhone.

I wish I could say in confidence at this point “I predict Adobe will release AIR for iPhone at MAX this year” but it seems like such a long shot. Nevertheless, it’s worth stirring up the hornets nest for this one.

I’ll be crossing my fingers!!