Ok so you may have seen the recent posts on Web 2 point whatever. Macromedia vs Microsoft etc. I thought I would post my take. And really it is just my take. So im not going to mention blogs or names because its to easy to piss people off. Is it just me or have thing really livened up in the last six months on MXNA and fullasagoog? Any way onto my take.

First point to make for me is "Content is King". Yep, whats the internet without its webpages, whats a printer without something to print on it, whats a pub without beer? Just dumb. So really were are talking about here is delivery methods for this content.

Second point which alot of people are missing now. Macromedia is now Adobe!

So what we have now is a bit of a face off. Microsoft controls the office world with word (and that damn pain in the ass powerpoint. If I get another client supplying images in powerpoint files ill go postal). And of course with a click of a button your word document  becomes a PDF and you can sleep well at night knowing your pdf file can be on the web safe from tampering etc. Most of this stuff is relevant to the business world, which is co-incidently is where these companies make most their money.

Now with word docs, sparkle, .NET and this thing called Microsoft Live, your starting to see the delivery method. Then we look at Adobes content creation tools, Pdfs from word, Adobes life Cycle server, you can see the hole that the aquisition of Macromedia filled. BOOM! the two come head to head. (Incidently this is why I think we may be witnessing the last few years of flash paper. Pity I loved how small and quick it was. And it didnt crash firefox like acrobat reader does).

 Ok so where am I heading with this? The next version of Acrobat will have 3d capabilities. They are targeting this at Cad related industries. This is huge in itself. Imagine pretty much everything we touch today has had CAD involved along the line, so this is a great market to get document workflow going in offices and organisations. Use this to set standards and break it into a market that is booming. Throw in Life cycle server and you have versioning security ………….. Pdfs are the standard distributing method for many documents and soon many more. The reader is on millions of machines now. Flash is becoming that for the web where the content is slightly more interactive. Throw in flex2 and it opens up further.

Theres your delivery method for Adobe. This means Microsoft has has to do some work.

What does Microsoft do. It includes Native PDF in its OS, it releases Sparkle which is still an unknown, and to combat the flash/flex area it seems to be betting its money on AJAX and .NET. but its behind the 8Ball (hehehe pun) because the competition is already in the market and being used.

So what Web 2point ohhhhhhh nooo means for me is the big boys are facing off over delivery methods that they are working on for the future of Content. One might suit a particular content I might be working on better than the other. So be it. I personally like working with flash and more recently Flex (pitty im stuck with .NET at work).

Now who do you think would be the next to jump into this bit of Biffo. Google lifts the ropes checks its gloves and enters the ring. All the talk of Google office has me thinking. Will Google pull a "Google" and announce an office system online next week. what ever happens there, I think its safe to say it will be interesting.

Finally I would like to quote a blog entry (no names remember):

"I feel like I’ve been unplugged from the matrix, and you’re all fighting over which Agent Smith is real and which is CG, while I’m too busy focusing on the fact that if I could some how combine Laura Croft, General Ledger and Martial arts API together, I’d have one bad ass hotty who can count and run on all of the above?"

Thats right I want to plug this Mr Anderson back in and just keep on playing while waiting on things to unfold.  In the "Real World" I work for a resonably large company. I do what Im told ( hey you have to do your time ), I code the features they want in the technology Im told to, when I come home I play with other technologies, jump back into the Matrix and try and find a way to code the Hot blonde in the Red dress. I jump on whatever will make my CONTENT look or be cool.

 So really get over it and start making some of this cool (and well delivered) content so I can saying to the young developers when I was young it took five weeks coding to do that, in the snow, while whistling into a modem because modems were all dailup.

Yep flash snow only sticks to beards not Mo’s. LOL

Yep after 10 days competing in Movember with my flaties I thought it must be time to post an update. What better way to do it than using flash. This image is from one of Grant Skinners little flash 8 experiments where snow falls inside a webcam video and settles on things. Notice it settle on beards not Mo’s. Any way things are going well now with the Mo/beard. I am past the one week of itchyness and into the annoying soup strainer days. I think ill have to do some crazy styling next….

Gant also has a crazy flaming webcam flash thingee which is also pretty darn cool!

Check it out HERE.  (you need a web cam)

Now this is one for the cool books. Kinda start to wonder why no one thought of it already.

Ok as you can see by the screen shot above you get the two screens one for firefox and on for  ie. Now this isnt any great feat, but what is cool is that you click the edit button and it automatically loads the linked CSS file and you can start editing it live in the side bar. While your typing the pages to the side update to reflect the changes. I tried to fix a problem I had with my header graphic with Ie being one pixel out of place. And I could see the effects of what I was doing instantly. It was great. There was a noticeable flicker when firefox refreshed its display while the IE window dealt with it alot better. But thats what you would expect in a Micro$oft environment.

Two things I would like to see in this software.

1. Ftp connections which automatically save/upload the CSS file to the right directory (based off the link tag).
2. Dual scrolling. Ie when you scroll the top window the bottom window follows suit. so matching the views can be easy.
3. Changeable layouts. This might (hoping) become available as docking is pretty well supported in .NET. So that you could have a verticle layout for "skinny sites" and horozontal for ….well "fat" sites. 

Now this does require the .NET 2 framework which if you havent already installed it, its a 20MBish download then another 6MB for the app itself. But seriously its worth it. I cant wait to see what further development on this application will yeild.

So big ups to the guys at www.sitevista.com  (theres the free plug). This could be one of those tools I have in the quicklaunch. lol for me thats when an app is really usefull . Go try it out for a bit of a play.

A while ago I found a web server which I tried to put onto a USB key. It worked great and took minutes to setup. The real use I can see for this is cd roms of portfolios.

Check out the article on the MBEDTHIS.COM site (me blowing my own horn here).

Basically its a small executable software that doesnt require install and has a really small footprint on the system. This means it can be on an auto run cd with php pages and SQLite databases. 

On the same note I also recently saw on the chattyfig mailing list someone linking to some examples about comunication with flash. the articles were specifically about using a small pc board that has a full webserver funning on it under linux. The coolest thing was the fact that they have a set (and a guide how to achieve it) with wireless network. Imagine sticking this board onto an RC car with a webcamera and using the flash player 8.5 you could stream in the webcamera data and control the RC car. pretty cool with alot of potential uses. Just need the $200US to buy the thing.

Check it out HERE or the article about the wireless network version HERE.  If you got really serious some one there has an example of using GPRS.

Anyways enough geeking out over cool little technologies   I am just looking for a nice problem that I think the flash player 8.5 will solve!