Archive for October, 2011
Goodbye Steve
Like most of you, I learned about the passing of Steve Jobs as the news broke yesterday. I was in a restaurant when the screen flashed the “breaking news” tag line followed by “Steve Jobs dies at 56 (1955-2011).” In my 35 years on this earth, I have never met Mr. Jobs. I know, it’s incredible to think that somehow I missed the same circles he ran in. The truth is, he ran in circles that just happened to be around most of us. He brought an insight to the technology world that many other tech companies still do not understand. His belief was that you should relentlessly focus on the customer and then all of the other ancillary stuff would fall into place. He had a vision for what products and services should be. He did not need to test them with a focus group, because he knew what people desired. He didn’t try to solve a problem with technology first, instead Steve worked backwards started with the customer first. Most companies fail to do that even today. In fact, I can only think of a few that think of the customer first … Google, Amazon, and my favorite company Zappos.
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Adobe MAX – No Real Server / CF News
Posted by Kevin in ColdFusion on October 7, 2011
Day 2′s keynote which is classically developer centric, had really nothing new in the server world and specifically CF. That is not to say that MAX did not have such news, but the keynote fell silent (and a little bit flat). In the years since Adobe has taken over MAX, Day 2 had little in the way of “news” but was always fun … at least I am told since this was my first MAX.
I have heard from reliable sources that the history of Day 2 keynotes was that pre-Adobe they used to be more serious like they were this year. Now since Adobe is big enough, they wanted to release developer related news on Day 2 as they used to. Indeed they had developer news, just none for the ColdFusion community. In fact, I tweeted what a failure it was to see a myriad of developer product icons on the screen but not one CF product icon. No acknowledgement of CF at a developer keynote, even in a graphic, is a missed opportunity to at least say … “CF Community … stay tuned.”
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Adobe MAX – Introducing the Adobe Creative Cloud
Posted by Kevin in ColdFusion on October 3, 2011
Keynote 1 – Design Centric
First we start with a record scratchin’ DJ as the Adobe team got ready for the big keynote. Then a classical violinist came out with a rock’ ballet. The visual opening was fantastic. Something I’d expect with the largest software company in the world.
With other major company keynotes, you expect the CEO of the company to present info about upcoming product releases. Not so with Adobe. The main keynote was Adobe’s CTO (chief technology officer) Kevin Lynch which is completely appropriate for a software company. Now my discussion of the keynote may not be as verbose as others, because frankly I am not a design guy which is where the focus of these products lie. However, I did find some of this ridiculously cool so I did want to highlight.
The big announcement from Adobe on the first day was Adobe Creative Cloud.
Adobe Creative Cloud
The Creative Cloud is broken down into three areas: Creative Services, Creative Community, and Creative Applications. Each user gets 20GB of storage to use.
Creative Services
This represents a number of services, some existing like Business Catalyst and some new like Typekit which Adobe announced today they acquired. Typekit is an interesting company, as a web service they make tons of fonts available to use on one’s website as a web font. No need to make the font into an image like we had to in the past. Truly a cool service. They have a free option for super small sites, but most will have to pay based on their page views per month. A fun example of the font potential is: http://lostworldsfairs.com/atlantis/
Creative Community
Not much here, other than the cloud allows you to share with other people more easily.
Creative Applications
Other than the traditional desktop apps, now Adobe will focus a lot of attention on touch devices. Some of the cooler apps in include Photoshop Touch and Proto (a wireframe tool).
Photoshop Touch got lots of wows in the audience because of its the 3D layer effect. Very cool.
This new Creative Cloud includes all of the creative desktop apps you’ve come to know and love plus all of these touch apps. Beta coming in November to Android as well as pricing information.