Jon On Tech » flash

Microsoft vs Adobe, Ryder Cup Style

Jon Marks — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 20:31:37 +0000

You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning
You got a lotta nerve
To say you gota helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that’s winning
- POSITIVELY 4TH STREET

Let’s set the record straight. I can’t play golf. My course record is 120 odd, which sucks. But I love watching it. Especially the Ryder Cup. I actually can’t think of any sporting event that puts more pressure on the people involved. Let’s argue that one later.

Unfortunately I wasn’t watching the Ryder Cup last night. I was trying not to watching some shitty RomCom that my wife was enjoying. So, in honour of the New York Times’ rumoured (and stock spiking but highly improbable) Microsoft/Adobe merger, I made me this:

All of the scores are completely subjective. It’s worth mentioning that while Captain Shantanu played his strongest possible team (of 14 players), Captain Steve rested some of his powerhouses including Windows itself, SQL Server, Office, Azure, Team XBox and much much more. Steve picked the players that were the best match for Team Adobe’s players.

If anyone wants to argue the scoring, or provide their own, I’d be interested. And if anyone wants to give Apple vs Google a bash, that’ll be cool too. Winner plays Adobe.

The finish of this one wasn’t quite a nailbiting as the 2010 Ryder Cup, so Microsoft Paint’s controversial win over Adobe Photoshop didn’t change the outcome. I do so love golf. Although I love cricket more. And, to end on a random fact, Shantanu loves cricket even more than I do.

A Fine Day For Adobe

Jon Marks — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:56:26 +0000

No, there’s nothin’ you can send me, my own true love,
There’s nothin’ I wish to be ownin’.
Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled,
From across that lonesome ocean.
- BOOTS OF SPANISH LEATHER

Finally, finally, an acquisition I think I understand. Adobe have just announced they’re buying Day Software (press release) for about USD $240 million – just slightly less than OTEX paid for Vignette. Adobe’s re-entry into the CMS game is well overdue. Some might argue that the Creative Suite tools are becoming more CMS like. They dabbled briefly in it when they aquired Macromedia (remember Contribute, anyone?) and the Product Formally Known As Stellent comes from this line.

This aquisition makes sense from both sides. Kudos to the senior Day team (Erik, David, Kevin, Roy and others) for making Day so attractive. And from Adobe’s perspective I think it had to be either Day or Alfresco. There aren’t many independents left, and a Java based technology fits best with them. Many were surprised it wasn’t Alfresco due to the recent love affair between the two of them. The wise ECM Architect, Jeff Potts, says it best so I quote him here:

Honestly, I thought Adobe would acquire Alfresco by the end of last year and I was surprised when it didn’t happen. They had done a big OEM deal making Alfresco part of LiveCycle and they did a gigantic Alfresco implementation as part of standing up Adobe’s acrobat.com site. Heck, Adobe even hosted Alfresco’s community event back in 2008. All small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, I know, but I can’t help but feel like the proud parent who’s daughter brought home a keeper, only to find out the guy’s been dating a hottie from Switzerland the whole time.

I must admit I’m also partly saddened by the news. I rather liked having a few smaller, more nimble independent players. The bigger guys all seem to be getting sidetracked by M&A activity and posturing, and innovation seems to have ground to a halt. I can’t even begin to get my head around the impending clusterfuck that would be an Autonomy Interwoven and Open Text merger. If there is any truth to that rumour, put on a hard hat, run for cover and sell your shares in both as quickly as humanly possible. But more on that later perhaps.

I’m guessing that operationally this merger will affect Day very little, if any, in the short term. Hopefully it just gives them a bit more money and clout. A few big questions spring to mind, and hopefully we will get clarity on them soon:

Day has a good track record contributing to open source projects, particularly the Apache ones. Hopefully this continues.
Will Adobe have any intentions of integrating the Day products with existing Adobe ones, specifically Adobe Content Server and Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite? I hope it is the end of ColdFusion
Will Day integrate even more closely with Adobe’s other big recent purchase – Omniture?
Day’s big event, Ignite, promises iPads to all. I hope the Adobe – Apple squabbles don’t interfere with anything.
I hope Day doesn’t ONLY focus on “technologies that create and deliver rich online and offline experiences leveraging the ubiquity of Flash and PDF”. I wonder what the latest Day employee, @kasthomas, makes of this.
Speaking of which, there is a huge amount going on in the publishing industry at the moment around tablets and magazines and shit. Adobe have been in the thick ofthings with the wildly successful Wired App, and CMS is going to be a big part of this. But I’m not allowed to talk about this right now, am I?

Day and Flash have always been close. I remember debating with David whether Flash should be considered a first class citizen of the web. Bigoted me thinks it is a second class citizen. See point 7 in David’s slide deck below:

In closing, I think it’s also really important to note that I’m writing this from a beach in Lanzarote. It hasn’t been easy to divert my attention from the Spanish Sun, Spanish Sea, Spanish Sangria and Spanish Boobies Bouncing Around, but yours truly belives it is crucial to keep you all abreast of the latest in CMS developments so has taken a hit for the team to write this up. Signing out, and see you all back on the soggy island for #LastThursdayCMS tomorrow night …

Why the iPad Makes Murdoch Right

Jon Marks — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:20:11 +0000

Where were you when it started
Do you want it for free
What was it you wanted
Are you talking to me?
- WHAT WAS IT YOU WANTED?

Right. It’s the iPad and, obvious jokes aside, I think the device is going to revolutionise more than just reading on the toilet.

Here’s the thing – the iPad is just too damn beautiful for shit content. I think this is the best thing that has happened to publishing for a long long time. People will pay for content on this baby, and on other devices that follow. Be assured, they will follow, just like they followed the iPhone. I wouldn’t disrespect my iPad (that someone is sure to send me as a gift) by reading machine-generated advertorial crap on it. I want to read good content written by people that are paid to write. And I’d be happy to pay a small fee for this – for books, newspapers, magazines, video and the hybrids of these that are going to emerge.

We recently saw a lot of people paying for the Guardian iPhone App, although I don’t understand how a one-off payment for content is sustainable. We need a way to do in-app recurring payments, which should be relatively easy. Murdoch’s threat to remove News Corp content from Google and start charging for it makes more and more sense. And all you people that scream about content being free – consider the BBC web site for a second. They produce wonderful content, which is paid for by every citizen in the UK as part of our taxes, and I don’t think many people begrudge them this.

There will also be people that scream “Damn You, @McBoof. How could you write about the joys Open Data and Open Standards then embrace a Paywall. Judas!”. To those I say, “Trust Me, Open does not always mean Free”. More on this another time.

A last thought on the iPad. The fact that it doesn’t have a camera doesn’t bother me at all. The lack of Flash is a small issue, but I don’t like Flash much. No USB port sadly – the device is still too closed for me. And it needs to multitask, and I got the impression from what I’ve seen so far that it doesn’t. That sucks a bit. Still, I want one.

Let’s close on a video from 2006 (thanks to @halvorson):

Saving the Planet and Winning Awards

Jon Marks — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 20:52:25 +0000

Come and go with me, my pretty little miss,
Come and go with me, my honey.
Take you where the grass grows green,
You never will want for money
- BLACKJACK DAVEY

It’s good to win something every now and again. We recently walked away with the best B2B Award at the 2009 Revolution Awards for British Gas’ Generation Green site. Now this happens fairly often as there are many digital marketing awards. However, I am really happy about this one because it is a site that has a whole boatload of cool technology behind the scenes.

Generation Green Home Page

For those that what to read about the marketing side of things, read this press release. The general idea is to help schools to be greener by performing various tasks, teaching Green lessons, recycling their mobile phones and more. The numbers behind the site (from the press release):

The campaign has been successful – more than 8000 schools (35%) have registered with Generation Green to date and teachers have downloaded more than 13,000 lesson plans and hosted more than 750 ‘green’ assemblies. This means that 3,168,515 children across the UK were potentially impacted by the programme. The popularity of the Green lesson plans with teachers has resulted in British Gas providing over 303,000 hours of learning in UK schools.

For those that are interested in the technology, this little site contains:

EPiServer 5 CMS with many custom extensions
A 5 level Flash platform game with WebORB framework to allow the Flash to talk to the EPiServer based server side code (for login, leader boards and more).
Integration with britishgas.co.uk to generate secure tokens for leaf donation,
SOAP web services for integrations with order placement at the fulfillment house, the external carbon calculator, and recycool leaf integration to allow schools to earn leaves by recycling their mobile phone and printer cartridges.
Google Map mash-up for school location and postcode search.
SQL Server Integration Services used for placing product orders and updating order status.

So, in summary, I think this is a really good idea which has been beautifully designed, and brought to life using a number of technologies. And the site saves the planet. Which is why I wrote this during #earthhour.

Eco-Rangers Platform Game