On Friday I blogged about Megite and said that I had helped set up a Megite section with MXNA content. I watched it over the weekend and Monday and wsa kind of disapointed in the lack of conversation. The Megite algorithm seems a little strange to me, and I’ll have more feedback for those guys this week, but all in all there just weren’t a lot of conversations on MXNA.

Well today we finally got some news that people are talking about and Megite is covering it pretty well. What do you think? Could this help more discussion pop up on MXNA?

[tags]Megite, MXNA, Flash Lite[/tags]

Over on TechCrunch I noticed that Om Malik has a new blog which is tracking the online video space – NewTeeVee. At first I was hoping it would be covering some of the companies and technologies behind online video which would obviously mean a lot of attention to Flash (and now probably WPF/E) sadly, it isn’t really. It seems more like Perez Hilton for the online video world with posts about webiziens like Praying Mantis Girl and the Numa Numa guy.

Not that I don’t love me some Numa Numa, but the technology side of online video doesn’t get a lot of love. Russell Shaw, who blogs with me over on ZDNet is involved so I have high hopes. They do have a post about Azureus’ new service.

[tags]Online Video, Flash, Om Malik[/tags]

In addition to the product rollouts today, Microsoft took the curtains off of the Microsoft Design Center. It looks pretty cool, even if it’s a bit “markety”. I think it is a good sign that Microsoft is rolling out an entire microsite to focus on design. As a company they see the value that a good user experience brings. With both Microsoft and Adobe focusing on the desginer-developer (devigner) workflow and building software that people enjoy using. As people turn to software (be it web or desktop) as a part of their daily lives the “devigner” will become a more important asset.

[tags]Microsoft, Design, User Experience[/tags]

I posted a majority of my feelings about WPF/E over on ZDNet but I wanted to also follow up with some stray ones here. I thought Mary Jo Foley took a good angle and she hones in on the Expression Studio, which is the biggest question mark for Microsoft.

First off, let me make sure everyone is clear – WPF/E is not a Flash killer. Flash isn’t going away, and value-adds like Flex and VoIP down the road make Flash a formidable foe for anyone getting into the cross-platform runtime business. But WPF/E isn’t trying to take Flash head on, but it does provide a needed jolt to the web video market. Flash was able to blow everyone else out of the water because a) it was everywhere and b) it was easy. WPF/E is easy to use and they’re working on the “everywhere” part. In addition, it will have some DRM functionality. Now I hate DRM as much as the next person, but with DRM sites like YouTube have a way to monetize more of their content and the big guys may be more likely to offer full shows and/or movies. WPF/E enables this and that’s a pretty powerful business use.

But another thing they did well was lowering the barrier to entry. With all of the interactions done via Javascript, developers can jump right in. Is Actionscript more powerful? Sure, and it does a lot more, but again, it isn’t meant to be a Flash killer, so it’s a good move for them.

Expression Studio is a harder sell. From what they were able to show me, I think it’s a solid product, and they’re working with the right people. But Dreamweaver and CS2 (though they dislike that comparison) are going to be very tough nuts to crack. And the fact that it only runs on Windows means they won’t be able to make inroads into the lucrative Mac market. So then what is the endgame for Expression? To help build XAML apps? To gain some “street cred” in the design community, to take on Adobe’s tools? I’m not sure, but how that plays out over the next year is going to be very interesting.

[tags]WPF, WPF/E, Microsoft, Adobe, Expression Studio[/tags]

When a big news story hits MXNA I read a lot of posts that apologize because “I know this has already hit MXNA”. But I like those posts because they all add to the conversation around the news. Unfortunately, with MXNA there isn’t a way to track the relationships between those conversations. That’s a big reason I like Techmeme – it shows the big conversations going on and maps out what is related.

I’ve been using Megite a while, and I like it. One of the great features is that you can have them import an OPML file for you and they’ll create a custom meme. Well, I emailed Matthew Chen today and had him set one up for MXNA. You can go to http://www.megite.com/index.php?section=mxna and check it out. It’s drawing the OPML feed directly from MXNA so that when new blogs are added, they’ll show up here on Megite.

I think it’s really awesome and I can’t wait until next week when traffic picks up. It provides a good snapshot of the MXNA world and makes it easy to see who is commenting on what. I’m not sure how it decides what goes on top or what is grouped together. I think it uses links and related words. The Technorati rank may factor in to the rankings.

Huge thanks to Matthew for putting this together. Because it’s Friday, I’ll probably post a followup to this so it gets more exposure.

[tags]MXNA, Megite, Adobe, News, Blogging[/tags]

Also, Ted Patrick can speak braille and when the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Ted Patrick.

I’ve joked about Ted before, and all Chuck Norris jokes aside, it should be noted that he’s on a tear recently.

He was at Mashup University talking about Flex and Apollo. He even got a mention/mugshot on ZDNet (which really, does it get better than that? ).

Then he’s been doing a lot with Flex resource search. He’s been thinking about this for a long time, and he released Flex Search Alpha 1 earlier this month. Being able easily find Flex content that will help developers is something we’ve been lacking. I think this is a place that Microsoft does a very good job, and I’m glad Ted is following that lead. I really encourage you to join the Flex Search group so that you can help shape how we all find developer resources.

[tags]Flex, Flex Search[/tags]

Wow. I posted earlier today about a Flex job with Virtual Ubiquity and got comments about jobs from San Diego to Scotland. I’d say it’s a pretty good time to be a Flex developer. For those looking for Flex work, Tariq has a pretty good list over on CFlex.net. Here are the jobs that people left comments about:

• Brightcove is hiring a Software Engineer and a Senior QA Software Engineer
• Adobe Consulting Europe is hiring Technical and User Experience Consultants
• Business Objects is hiring a Software Developer to work on the Xcelsius team

And these are just the people who took the time to comment on my blog. A search for “Adobe Flex” on Indeed results in 299 jobs.

[tags]Flex, Jobs[/tags]