Monthly Archives: December 2005

Thoughts On The Web Platform

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Richard McManus posted yesterday on something that people who read my blog should know I’m very excited about, the Web as a Platform. He extrapolates on some thoughts by Fred Wilson, a Venture Capitalist, and I think he does a good job talking about what the web as a platform means and how it relates to Web 2.0. As he says, it goes beyond the concept of Web 2.0 being about people because it’s that the web provides a new level of innovation for all kinds of industries and services.

Here at The Wharton school, we’re doing things with the Web as a platform that other people aren’t doing. All of our Learning Lab applications are leveraging the Web platform and providing a great learning experience for the students as well as giving the professors an exciting way to teach their concepts. We embraced this concept a long time ago, and it’s very cool to see more and more advanced applications making use of the web. To me, Web 2.0 isn’t just about tagging and blogging, it’s about really using the web to its fullest potential and changing whatever industry you’re in. For us, it’s changing the way students experience learning in the classroom. For others it may be changing the way you use digital photos, changing the way you find directions, or changing the way you do your banking. Richard, which of your categories do learning simulations fit in?

Why Adobe is Going to Make the Web Great

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It’s been a pretty big day, and there has been a lot of information flying around the blogsphere. Everything from worries about the Flash Player and the PDF reader being combined to a post by Bill McCoy (aggregated on MXNA no less) about Adobe, Macromedia and Web 2.0.

Despite the tinge of sadness to the news, I think it’s easy to see that things are going to be just fine, if not better. First of all, I think it’s important to look at who is going to be running things at the new company. I’m not talking about Bruce Chizen or Stephen Elop; I’m talking a little bit closer to the ground (but not by much). Notice that Kevin Lynch is the senior vice president of the Platform Business Unit [FAQ], the division which “will focus on advancing Adobe’s PDF and Flash-based technology platforms as standards for creating, managing, and delivering compelling, actionable applications and content to any desktop or device”. The most important part of this acquisition and the future, the Flash Player, will remain with the best person to drive the platform going forward. I have faith that Kevin can also do great things for PDF technology.

Also take a look at the other huge piece, Flex. There is no question that Flex is going to be an important part of this combined company and David Mendels, another Macromedia veteran, will be running the show in Flex’s division, the Enterprise and Developer Solutions Business Unit. Have you checked out LiveCycle? It’s a very cool product, and it provides a great service to businesses. It makes their lives better and it helps them save money. If that mindset goes into the continued development of Flex, it’s going to make the product even better. This is also going to be where ColdFusion is, which can only mean more synergy with Flex and more great stuff from the CF team moving forward.

So why is Adobe going to make the web great? Because they left the most important Macromedia pieces in the hands of people who know both where the product should go, and how it should get there. Kevin and David are visionaries who can take the Flash platform to the next level. And with Adobe’s mastery of the enterprise, even more large corporations are going to realize the full potential of the web using the Flash platform. Smaller developers will be able to leverage great products to build the future of the web.

At Wharton, we’re very well positioned to take advantage of the best parts of both technologies. Nearly all of our professors distribute electronic information in their classes via PDF, and our development environment is of course, Macromedia-centric. It’s going to be very cool to see what combinations we can come up with and how we can really add to the workflow of our professors and students by combining Adobe technology with our Macromedia infrastructure. I think this is going to have a big impact on educational institutions.

Adobe/Macromedia – The Next Ten Years

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So it’s finally here, MACR ceases to exist as of today. I’ve been tracking my stock account to see when they turn my MACR stock into ADBE. I even have my order in for more ADBE stock so I can bump up my holdings. It’s kind of a sobering thought, and it’s a little bit scary. I’m planning to take the CFMX 7 certification exam next week and now I’m left wondering how much of a priority ColdFusion is going to be in Adobe’s world.

John Dowdell had an interesting snippet in one of his posts. He says “the biggest idea I’d try to get across is to please look at the software architectures which need to be created for the next ten years, not just the software architectures which have been produced for the past ten, twenty years.”

I think that’s the best way to look at this acquisition. So what about the next ten years? I’ve talked a lot in this space about the web as a platform and how Macromedia’s Flash platform is well positioned to be a leader in that space. I think it goes further than that. The Flash platform could become the de facto operating system for all kinds of devices. They are strongly moving into the mobile space and there is no reason why Media Centers couldn’t be built on the Flash Platform. Imagine being able to use Adobe’s video editing and professional design tools to create a great user experience on the Flash Platform.

Here’s another thought. What about building Adobe’s enterprise level design tools ON the Flash Platform. Imagine having a version of Photoshop that runs on the Flash Platform so that it can be used on any machine that has the Flash Player installed. It’s a long shot, and it would be a long way off, but building on the ubiquity of the Flash Player gives companies access to a wider audience and breaks through the barriers of the operating system.

Now I don’t mean to say that Macromedia is going to create its own operating system, but I do think that the Flash Platform has amazing traction as a platform for building software on top of. We aren’t at the point where we could see Dreamweaver, Photoshop or After Effects written in Flash, but in ten years, as the platform matures, I think that’s a real possibility. The Flash Platform just opens up so many opportunities.

The Flash Platform is Jumping

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I’m getting more and more excited about the Flash platform every day. It used to be that people viewed Flash as a pain and associated it with cheesy movies and skip intro buttons (some still do). But the guys at Macromedia have done a great job of seeing the potential of Flash as a full blown platform and really marketing it that way.

Let me give you some examples. In a post over at Crunchnotes, Michael Arrington mentions that Yahoo is now his default map and e-mail service. One of the bigger names in Web 2.0 is now using Flex as his default map application. And it’s not just about “Web 2.0″, it’s about better applications.

The great thing is that people are building these applications on the Flash Platform and interacting with other flash applications. Gtalkr is a great example. It is a Flash interface for Google talk. It doesn’t require any downloads, it integrates the Yahoo map application and it has an open API for other Flash developers to come along and expand the service.

It’s awesome to see some major steps in the Flash platform. It has a great developer community, and now it looks like it’s really starting to gain some traction with people who would normally be using other technologies. With the ease of use, the the ability to quickly deliver a really great user experience, Flash is poised to become the standard in the web application space.