Friday, December 21, 2007

WIMAX in Korea ok, but I'm in the UK

Through Facebook I found this view on 2008, based on a visit to Korea. Sounds like video conferencing is a reality somewhere. So Adobe probably plan around their most advanced market. But if people in the USA think their bandwidth is lagging a bit, what to expect in the UK? There is just a sense of multiple realities. Maybe next year I will think about Acrobat Services dotcom as just out there somewhere where dotcom is possible. The UK site will be based on actual observation or news of current reality. WWWatford remains with the Adobe Classic scope, print and 'classic publishing' maybe drifting into the text web and design influenced by flat pages.

Jeff Jarvis thinks beyond text

The Buzzmachine blog includes some thought about video and text. Nothing too definitive but it seems clear that video is gaining mindshare. I have been trying to ignore the Adobe pressure for Flash as I think there is much from the days of Adobe Classic that is sort of incomplete. However I may need to reconsider next year.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Adobe and the video web

It seems the video web is getting stronger. As far as I can tell the Adobe view is to concentrate on this and assume the text web will look after itself, including the existing cashflow.

The Adobe website has been redesigned recently and the home page is mostly a show through Flash. Below is a still screenshot.



Reduced size images of video streams move across the page. The oldstyle menus for other pages really are that low on the area of vision. Convergance of TV and web means the TV has gone. I think that is the idea.

Through the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive I found an old fashioned Adobe homepage made up of text and flat graphics. Most of the time this is easier for most content. Just my opinion of office life. Still, it will soon be time to log off and watch television. (Broadband still not really up to it in the UK)



Recently I was sent a copy of 'Inside Learning Technologies', ahead of the event in January. Steve Allison writes that "it's surprising, but what often passed for e-learning was a web page of text and graphics, or even a PDF of 'the manual'. This led inevitably to some very boring content..." This knocking copy on PDF is in itself surprising as Steve Allison is Senior e-Learning Solutions Engineer for Adobe Systems. They really are trying to move us all on to Flash. My take is that PDF would have a much better reputation as interactive if it were not so amazingly expensive to put the full range of capability on each desktop. The lucky few who can afford this make up an unknown proportion of Adobe cashflow. LiveCycle has continued as so expensive that it is only even promoted to a small number of rich prospects.

Flash Media Server 3 seems reasonably priced at levels many sites could consider. If PDF really is so out of date maybe the relevant server software is due for a price adjustment.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

MyNews India publishes my story ahead of Online Information



MyNews India have published my story ahead of Online Information. I was invited to contribute following stories in OhmyNews. I tend to keep text in draft and am often not sure whether to send in something ahead of an event or to wait for more definite information. So I sent the slightly speculative version to MyNews India and probably the eventual version for OhmyNews will be much the same except for the direct quotes. But who can tell? And they may get some other stories from Olympia anyway. Do send them in and don't worry about a variet of points of view. The editors can cope.

This is not off topic for the printing industry. I include some speculation about what might be happening around the Print and Classic Publishing business unit that Adobe claims is located in India. My current information is probably limited and wrong but the main benefit of citizen journalism is that other people will put you right.