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Author Archive
Adobe’s Flash In The Pan?
Monday, February 15th, 2010 by Nevin McElwrathAdobe’s Flash has had a successful run the past few years. While the latest usage statistics show a slight decline, it still employs an impressive 95.89% browser install base as of Jan, 2010.
Some concerns have been raised lately with Apple’s decision not to include Flash support in it’s newly announced iPad (which runs a modified version of the iPhone OS). It’s been known that Apple’s iPhone does not support Flash. Apple blames Adobe’s buggy implementation of the Flash plugin as one of many reasons, causing poor battery life, security holes, application crashes, etc. While this is nothing new, the spotlight has again been focused on the lack of Flash on the iPhone OS.
Other reasons for Apple skipping Flash support that I think are much more important are HTML5 and the open standard of SVG.
One of the many critiques of Flash is that it is not an open standard. Many, including myself, believe closed platforms tend to stifle innovation and prohibit standard adoption – this, coming from a Flash developer. Also, the Flash plugin has long been sub par in performance on the Macintosh platform – but Adobe is finally taking small steps to remedy these issues. Is it too late?
In order for the web to move forward with a common standard and new innovative tools at hand for developers to use to create the next big thing, we NEED open standards. Period.
Adobe has an opportunity here to develop an HTML5 and SVG authoring tool, waiting to supplant Flash when it does eventually fade away along with proprietary video codecs and browser plugins.
As for myself, I welcome new venues and technologies to learn, as long as they allow for innovation, freedom and creativity in not only the resulted medium, but development as well. The next few years will be the litmus test for Flash in whether it has a place on the web or not. I believe strongly that openness on the web is the future and if a proprietary plugin expects to make the cut, some changes need to be made.
Robert Scoble has a good analogy:
Let’s go back a few years to when Firefox was just coming on the scene. Remember that? I remember that it didn’t work with a ton of websites. Things like banks, e-commerce sites, and others. Why not? Because those sites were coded specifically for the dominant Internet Explorer back then.
Some people thought Firefox was going to fail because of these broken links. Just like Adobe is trying to say that Apple’s iPad is going to fail because of its own set of broken links.
But just a few years later and have you seen a site that doesn’t work on Firefox? I haven’t.
What happened? Firefox FORCED developers to get on board with the standards-based web.
The same thing is happening now, based on my talks with developers: they are not including Flash in their future web plans any longer.
Adobe’s CTO, Kevin Lynch tackles this very topic in his blog post.
Admittedly, I would be sad to see Flash go. I love the control you have over your assets. As of right now, there really is no open alternative to that kind of control. jQuery and other JS libraries are just not there yet – but there is much promise. Combine jQuery with HTML5, SVG and time – you just may have a Flash killer.
Finding Augmented Reality
Thursday, December 10th, 2009 by Nevin McElwrathAugmented reality. It’s a term that has been popping up in the multimedia field a lot lately. Call it the latest internet meme, call it the next generation of marketing, call it a fad. Whatever you call it, you can’t ignore it’s possibilities.
Simply put, Augmented Reality is technology that merges elements with a view of the physical environment, in this case through a webcam or mobile phone. In relation to interactive media, Augmented Reality is a newborn. It was born with the sudden increase in webcam usage and mobile video cameras over the past several years. With the development of FLARtoolkit, a Flash class library that helps your webcam see and recognize visual markers, developers have been using this technology more than ever. How we use this technology is the make or break point.
It has been noted that AR could be so overused and abused to the point where usability has been sacrificed. This initial “Wow” can only go so far. Marketers need to look further down the road with new utility to keep the users from forgetting about you. Some great utility examples are below.
What is in the future for Augmented Reality? I believe it’s future is bright. Given the adoption of a standardized geographical mapping data, mobile phones will be the tool of choice instead of webcams.Imagine this scenario: You are traveling abroad and would like to know what restaurants are in the area. You take out your mobile phone, type in “Restaurants”, you are presented with a list of nearby restaurants, make your selection, you look through the camera and an arrow appears on the road with directions to the nearest restaurant.
Gartner has an interesting hype timeline for Augmented Reality adoption.
Look for Augmented Reality to take off with mobile adoption. There seems to be more room for utility and innovation in that (so far) untapped realm. As usual, Force 5 will keep all eyes open to make sure we don’t miss a thing.
Ride The Google Wave
Thursday, October 1st, 2009 by Nevin McElwrath
Working in a team environment can be an inspiring experience. However, an efficient team workflow doesn’t just form itself. An organized system and rich toolset are often a few ingredients in a well-oiled team workflow machine. One of those ingredients may be named Google Wave.
Google this week is rolling out a developer preview of it’s new product called Google Wave. Google’s Wave is touted as “an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration”.
We are used to using the traditional email method; a one way, non real time, “send and wait” approach to sending electronic messages. This method has been left relatively unchanged for 40 years since its invention. What does this mean for you? Google says it depends on how you use it. Google Wave shines in communication and collaboration – in real time with an audience of your choosing. For instance, say your team needs to come up with a script for a new 30 second spot for a client. One person initiates the document creation and invites team members to add their feedback or changes. The document can be edited by multiple people at the same time and you can watch the changes in real time. You even have the option to see the changes chronologically and play them back in the order they were created.
Another feature worth pointing out is the realtime language translation that is possible in Google Wave. For example, this enables real time communication with a French customer who does not speak English through a chat-like interface.
The extensibility of Google Wave was clearly a priority from the beginning. What this means is developers can write extensions for Google Wave to take advantage of the Wave technology, and use it with your team workflow.
What has me excited about this new technology is the possibilities that are presented for a team to streamline its workflow. With new Wave extensions, open usage for businesses to use in their unique workflow, integration with other technologies, I am very excited for the very near future and can’t wait to find our own usage for Google Wave, right here at Force 5.
From Idea to (re)Invention
Friday, April 10th, 2009 by Nevin McElwrathThere are some exciting things happening here at Force 5 Media. One of which, is exciting for me, since it involves self-discovery and insight for the purpose of solely helping our clients realize their goals. There is an old saying, “In order to see where you are going, you must know where you’ve been.” This goes for not only our clients, but ourselves. We have something in common with our clients; our need and want for success. We are on a journey; the more we realize where we have been, the more focused we can become in realizing our goals.
There’s been some reinventing going on at Force 5 Media. This journey is represented in a new page inviting clients to join us on this new journey we are embarking on. Join us on our journey. This was a fun project to work on due to the wide variety of mediums involved as well as the awesome ideas that were generated by the Force 5 team. Sure, there’s been a fair share of Willie Nelson (On the Road Again), Rascal Flatts (Life is a Highway), and B.B. King (Key to the Highway) parodies. Some humorous, some unfortunate. Over all of the tears, we enjoyed the creative brainstorming and coming up with some amazing ideas. On the “tech/creative” side of this project, we played with Flash, 3D, Photoshop, PHP, and Javascript. What’s even more exciting is the direction this project is headed. Over the next few weeks, our journey page will evolve with different messages, animations and hidden treasures – eventually revealing our new destination.
Stay tuned – it’s a wide open road ahead.