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I caught this job posting over at the Adobe jobs site. The Kiwi team is looking for a Computer Scientist and here’s the job description:

Adobe is seeking a Computer Scientist to join the Kiwi Project, to be responsible for Flex application development on projects related to emerging web 2.0 publishing standards designed to showcase the new Apollo runtime still under development. The role includes work related to emerging standards in blogging, RSS and Atom. The Kiwi Project maintains a public blog at: http://blogs.adobe.com/kiwi/

It sounds like this position is specifically for building Flex applications on the Apollo runtime. If you are a Flex developer and want to build some cutting edge applications, this would be a great way to go.

Jeff Jarvis is reporting that tomorrow Ad Age will release (link should work tomorrow) some numbers for the ABC streaming video. The skinny is that research showed an 87% recall by users of the advertiser compared with the typical 24% on TV. That’s a big jump, and good news for anyone looking at the online video world.

Flash Video makes it so easy to view content that I can see how 87% of people would remember the advertisers. Instead of messing with a complicated plugin, users with Flash can just focus on watching the video (and the advertising).

I don’t usually repost, but I posted an article with the same title over on ZDNet at 11:30 Friday night, so just wanted to hit the aggregators again as everyone comes into work today. The post follows up some of what I mentioned in my post about The Most Important Person at Adobe and some of my commenters on ZDNet brought up the issue of a 64 bit player.

I really like the fact that Adobe has the Penguin.swf blog which tracks Linux Flash Player development. I think that level of transparency is awesome. It’s clear from the amount of comments that there is a lot of energy in the Linux community. I think Adobe could make a big splash with Linux, and not by open sourcing the player, but by talking to the community and working with them. I don’t use Linux, but the people who do are smart, geeky, and good evangelists. Adobe could use that.

If you haven’t seen the news, last night Gotuit Media announced Gotuit.com, an on-demand, broadband video portal that is probably one of the coolest Flash RIAs that I’ve seen. Instead of sites like YouTube and MySpace that use Flash to show videos, Gotuit has built an entire application in Flash around viewing the clips.

What makes Gotuit interesting is that it isn’t user-driven, they have actually gone out and gotten content. You can see the news, listen to music videos, check out sports clips. As Michael Arrington says, this application furthers television’s demise. It is a great example of how Flash can be used not only to deliver multimedia, but deliver an entire experience around that multimedia. It is one of the selling points of the platform, and Gotuit does it very well. Richard McManus has some great info on the launch.

There are a lot of people to choose from, whether you’re a Kevin Lynch fan, or you like how David Mendels is constantly tracking the scene. Maybe you’re a big boss fan and you like Bruce Chizen. Or you could even like guys like Mike Chambers, John Dowdell or Matt Chotin, three examples of people who are really involved in talking to developers and making products better. Another choice might be the Ben Fortas and Ted Patricks of the world, evangelizing the products we all know and love. But you’d be wrong, the most important person at Adobe is
Mike Melanson, a Flash Player Engineer working on the Linux version of Flash Player 9.

I’m planning on writing a couple of posts over on ZDNet about this, but as I see it there are two sides to cross-platform, the economics of a cross platform solution, and the potential impact. In many ways, they go hand in hand, and the importance varies depending on whether or not you are looking at the short term or long term value. Mike, and the rest of the team working on the Linux version of the Flash Player are the people that Adobe will depend on to truly be as disruptive it can be.

You may not agree that Adobe should be disruptive, or you may think they won’t be - those things are up for debate, but what is crystal clear to me, is that Linux is the key. I’ll try to quantify that more on ZDNet later this weekend. Mike, if you read this, drop me an email. For that matter, anyone from the Linux Flash Player team should drop me an email.

So if you haven’t heard the worlds (disputed) number one site is now requiring all of its users to upgrade to Flash Player 9. The downside is that the reason for this is a MySpace hack that exploited features in Flash Player 8 and have been fixed in the newest version of the player. Because it was security related, it’s probably not in Adobe’s best interests to be too vocal, but if I were them, I would declaring today Beer Friday and there would be much dancing on the desks.

Seriously, how huge is this? MySpace accounts for 4.5% of ALL website visits and has about 95 million members. 95 million people having to upgrade to Flash Player 9 all at once? Are you kidding me? The Flash Player penetration stats are going to be insane, and everyone who has been busy developing Flex 2 applications and worrying about the new version of the player can relax. What a break for Adobe.

When Adobe and Macromedia first announced the acquisition, I instantly started looking into LiveCycle. As Adobe’s only major server product, I wanted to see how they used it. At the time, I thought it might make a good roll in for ColdFusion, but it appears lately that I was looking at the wrong product.

I’m starting to see an awful lot of LiveCycle/Flex resources. First it was Mike Potter introducing the intern, Zee, now I see that we have Formnation a blog dedicated to developing “rich applications using Adobe LiveCycle Forms and Flex”. There are also a couple of sessions at Max under the Vertical Market Solutions category.

I think this is the start of something very big. I’ve heard rumors of what LiveCycle is capable of, and the kinds of things that may be possible, and Flex fits into those very well. Keep an eye on these blogs, because this very well could be the next big step for Flex 2.

Knowledge@Wharton, the newsletter of the Wharton School has two great articles that are worth reading for anyone interested in the future of software. The first is a good summary of a panel at Supernova which discussed specifically how desktop software will look in the future. The panel got into some of the most important issues that need to be worked out, privacy being first and foremost. It’s an excellent summary and rounds out the issues nicely.

The second is more fun because it is an interview with Kevin Lynch (where’s the podcast?!). It is always interesting to hear Kevin’s take on things as he’s ‘behind the lines’ and one of the major factors directing the vision at Adobe. In the interview he talks about Microsoft, WPF, Apollo, and where Adobe is headed with the Engagement Platform.

Okay, I said it. Adobe should buy Jumpcut (obligatory TechCrunch profile here. I had taken a quick peek at Jumpcut when they arrived on the scene, but I didn’t really dig in until I got an email from an old colleague at Wharton the other day. It’s an impressive application both for its target audience as well as its technical merit. As far as RIAs go this is the real deal - something that could just as easily be an intro-level video editing application for the desktop.

Which is why Adobe should buy them. Jumpcut would make a perfect compliment to their video suite, and with Adobe’s inside video knowledge could become a very powerful tool for the white-hot online video market. Buying Jumpcut would give Adobe a complimentary product to Pemiere and would target a less professional market - the kind with low costs and high margins. Combine that with the fact that it’s running Flash and outputting Flash video and this has Adobe written all over it.

Jumpcut could gain a lot from Adobe’s technical video talents and Adobe would gain a lot from Jumpcut’s head start. Besides, all of the other kids in the Valley are buying Web 2.0 start ups, why not Adobe?

I owe Jeff Whatcott lunch the next time I’m in San Francisco (or he’s here in Seattle) because after criticizing the Flex 2 ad campaign in one of my blog posts yesterday, he responded big time. He took time to explain the ad and how it came about, he said he appreciated the involvement of the community and he offered a big opportunity.

He wants us to help brainstorm ideas for the Flex 2 ad campaign:

So here’s the invitation: please jump on this thread with your specific suggestions for what the Flex online advertising should say and what is should look like. What should the tone be (sophisticated, edgy, friendly, in your face, or what have you)? What should the catchy tag line be? What should the short product description be? What benefits, if any, should we mention right in the ad and what should be on the jump page? Should we bang directly on the competition (think Oracle ads) or should we focus on our own strengths? What creative concepts should we consider (code puzzles that convey a message, movies of Flex coding/results, what else)?

So head on over to the original thread, and let Jeff have your ideas. I’m going to be thinking tonight and tomorrow about ways to make it better. As you can imagine, I’ve got a few. And even though it’s 2:00 in the morning here in the States, I’ve already seen a good idea from Matt Voerman of Schematic (I’m posting it here because my comment system wouldn’t accept it) :

Hi Jeff,

A couple of things, IMHO there are only really 2 x main target audiences who are likely to act on a call to action from a banner promo;

- Hardcore coders (read Java, C++, etc)
- Flash designers/developers looking to migrate to Flex

The first group, i’m presuming, were the ones you were attempting to connect with in your latest (pulled) campaign.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to realise that these 2 x markets are pretty far apart in terms of ‘what floats their boat’.

Coders for example are impressed by…well…code. That’s what they do, and what they aspire to be great at. Who can write the tightest and ‘leanest’ code. So a comparison of an ‘old’, ‘long’ way of coding something, compared to the ‘new’, ‘rapid’, Flex way might be an idea. Coders (as well as the rest of us) get great pleasure from seeing the end fruits of their labours. So another idea off the top of my head would be to show examples of how small snippets of code can produce great end results. A final example would be to turn the geek scale all the way up to 10 and make an ad that only true code geeks would understand (eg: “rm -rf /bin/laden” ) Translated (rm = remove), (’-’ is a switch( , (’r’ means recursive) , ( ‘f’ means forcibly) and (/bin is a typical UNIX directory where executables are kept). So “rm -rf /bin/laden” reads as - forcibly and recursively (ie any”one” underneath) remove all starting from /bin/laden) - if you understand that you’ve done well, but that’s kind of secret humour appeals to code geeks.

On the other hand you have the Flash developers/designers. Traditionally, this sector is more visual. Generally speaking, it’s the Eye Candy that turns them on. Like coders, they too like to see the fruits of their labours (ie: the end result), but from a more visual sense (eg: and you thought Flash was only for skip intro animations - well it also does rich internet applications). In addition to that developing rich internet applications in Flash is great, but in Flex it’s great AND superfast!

While i’m thinking about it, i’ve thought of another angle - essentially you have to find each market’s pain and promote how Flex solves that pain. One instant pain that springs to mind as a developer is the issue of cross platform compatibility. Any developer who has ever had to write an application (or web page) to display exactly the same on Mac or PC, Internet Explorer or Mozilla will know how painful it can be to get all of the ‘ducks lined up’. The Flash Platform (and by proxy Flex) solves this pain. Flex content displays the same on either Mac or PC, IE, Mozilla or even Safari!

Please stop me

I have a stack of ideas and would be more than happy bounce them off you. If you’re interested drop me a line.

Cheers, Matt Voerman