Okay so the past few months have been a bit hectic to say the least and the blog has taken a back seat to coaching 6 year olds in soccer; organizing/coaching a basketball league for 9 year olds; finishing up another tattoo; getting the bike ready ride; getting back in shape; getting Travelocity ExperienceFinder^TM into the next stage; finishing up the last bit of freelance work I still have on my plate; and oh yeah, Crucial Limit Chapter Two (coming soon I promise). Even with all of this going on though I still take time to notice the things going on in the industry lately and there has been a bunch going on. I wanted to take a quick minute to offer up my opinion (for what its worth) on a few topics.

First, I have to comment on the death threats directed at Kathy Sierra. This gets a big huge WTF??? Granted, I only just recently came across her work when I read "Don't ask employees to be passionate about the company!", which I thought was pure genius, I was an instant fan. What in the hell would possess someone, or drive them to the point of threatening her for what she puts on her blog?? If you don't like what she has to say or don't follow her way of thinking, guess what moron you can close your browser?! navigate somewhere else. The people making these threats are faceless cowards who have no business conversing with society.

Second, on a much lighter note, Aral Balkan has announced the SWX format for Flash Data exchange. Personally I think its great! Not sure if I'll use it, who knows, but I think anything that offers a way for more people to use Flash the better . And while I think Patrick Mineault makes some good points, I have to agree with Aral in that not everyone developing in Flash is ready for remoting and XML parsing (although I will say I wish they all were). The use of Flash is growing in leaps and bounds, which also means a ton of inexperienced people will be building flash apps (dare I say the wrong way?). From my perspective, SWX becomes just another option to separate the content from the presentation, allowing for a more maintainable app. And from where I sit, options are never a bad thing. How valid this option really is, only time can tell. As Aral mentioned, SWX is still in its infancy, lets wait and see if it becomes a drain on society or a boost, before we completely disregard it as a valid solution to a problem.

And last, Adobe announces CS3. I'm not quite sure where to start with this one. I think Adobe has done a tremendous job with the software. The enhancements and new products are truly awe inspiring. Having said that, I have to say I'm really disappointed in the pricing strategy. Maybe I'm way of base here but Adobe doesn't seem to give much any credit to those who own multiples of their products. For example, I own copies of Macromedia Studio 8 Professional, Flex Builder 2, Contribute 3, After Effects 7 and Photoshop CS2. For me to upgrade to the Production Studio Premium costs $1199. However if I had only Flash Basic I could upgrade to Production Studio Premium for the same price. So someone that has spend thousands on software has the same barrier of entry as someone who spent a couple hundred. Doesn't that seem wrong (at lest for the guy who spent thousands)? So what will likely happen for me is I will upgrade to Photoshop CS3 Extended and upgrade to Flash CS3 individually, or possibly upgrade to the Web Premium suite and continue to use AE7, and rather than switch to Sound Booth, Illustrator,and Encore, I'll continue to use my copies of Acid/SoundForge, Corel Draw, and Nero. So much for converting me to all Adobe products, great job Adobe Marketing team I think you all screwed the pooch on this one.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 1st, 2007 at 11:40 am and is filed under Design, Flash, Misc., Photoshop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.