MAX 2005 Day Two

Well I'm knee deep in MAX today. Yesterday was a very exciting day. At the keynote we got a glimpse of the future of Macromedia's next-generation products and features. Many of these were very exciting and look to be extremely useful. A major focus for the company is on Mobile devices as many of these items are now starting to surface in US (the Japanese market is already using this technology.) They announced Flash Lite 2.0 for mobile and other non-pc/phone devices. Things like UI created and implemented in Flash for digital cameras! Another surprise was the announcement of Actionscript 3.0 and Flash Player 8.5. Not that we did not see this coming but considering Studio 8/Flash 8 just came out a month ago still supporting Actionscript 2.0 & FP 8, it does seem a little odd at first. Though Flash Lite 2.0 will be shipping soon, Actionscript 3.0 and Flash Player 8.5 will not be ready until next spring.

A lot of talk at the conference has been what will happen to certain Macromedia programs with Adobe buying them. They have several programs that overlap and it would not make a whole lot of sense to carry competeing programs under the same company banner. That has also been debated, will the overall company name change? AdobeMedia or MacroAdobe? Who knows. Since the deal has to still be cleared in several European regions, both companies have not been able to say much. But they have given us several hints and the deal is supposed to be cleared before the end of the year if not as soon as the end of the month.

Time to go absorb more informtion and hope my brain does not explode from overload.