From the monthly archives:

December 2008

Accessibility: It's for Everyone and Everything”-a Shawn Henry session overview

by Fred on December 19, 2008

Seasons Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals Everywhere!

For today?’s podcast, I?’d like to read from the notes that I gleaned from Shawn Henry?’s Web accessibility session that took place at Web Design World last week in Boston, MA. The hour long session entitled, Accessibility: It’s for Everyone and Everything” provided a few interesting walk a ways, and Id?’ like to share with you a few of them.

I’ve known Shawn for a decade or so dating back to the Comdex conference days. She is among handful of strong advocates for accessibility that I?’ve met over the years. She?’s written a book on the topic that?’s available as a download. She?’s also sought after speaker as well. As a result of her efforts in this area, Shawn now works for the W3C where she leads worldwide education and outreach activities promoting Web accessibility for people with disabilities.

For session starters, Shawn reminds the audience that anyone of us could become disabled in one way or another and at anytime. It?’s important to note that when Shawn speaks about accessibility, she?’s not just talking about addressing the needs for those that are blind or deaf. She also points out that that “accessibility is about people. In fact, “It’s about people with disabilities, and older users and people using mobile devices and people using new technologies including people with low bandwidth connections, and people with older technology.” This is a huge issue according to Shawn and if you’ve been following this podcast for awhile then you know we couldn?’t agree more.

If you?’ve been practicing in the Web profession for awhile, then chances are then you also agree that designing with accessibility in mind is a good idea and makes its makes great business sense. All of that said, I?’m surprised when I hear from industry colleagues like Shawn suggesting how many are not implementing even some of the most basic principles into the mix and its cause for concern. The reasons vary of course and will drill into a few of them in future podcast.

For today, I?’d like to share a few bulleted highlights from her session:

•Older people (ok yours truly are among that group) can have issues with color contrast. That?’s an issue because many older cell phone with limited color palettes have issues in bright lights.
•Accessibility is an issue because many people around the world simply don?’t connection. For example, low bandwidth connections is a huge issue in the US
•Also, included in the mix are people with low literacy and people who are not fluent in certain languages grapple with these issues.
•Last but not least, people who are either new and or infrequent users of the Web can experience issues.

One other walk away was Shawn demo using a screen reader. If you?’re not familiar with screen readers, screen readers provide individuals with access to everything on your computer from documents to spreadsheets and of course websites. It?’s worth learning more about this topic and how they work and I?’ve provided a couple of links for you to review.

Check out the three minute podcast on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by the Web Pro Community Challenge.
Sponsored by the WOW and the Adobe corporation, the Web Pro Challenge offers an opportunity to showcase your talent, gain industry recognition, win prizes and benefit the community by designing and developing a site for a non-profit organization.

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Search Engine Marketing: How It Works, How to Do It Well & What It Means for Designers

by Fred on December 16, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere!

I sat in on the workshop entitled, “Search Engine Marketing: How It Works, How to Do It Well & What It Means for Designers” at Web Design World Boston last week. The speakers and producers of the three hour workshop were, Lance Loveday, CEO, Closed Loop Marketing and Amy Konefal, Director of Search Marketing, Closed Loop Marketing.

According to the session description, Pay-per-click search engine marketing now accounts for almost half of all online advertising dollars, equating to over $15.5 billion dollars spent on search engine marketing in 2008. Expectations are that this figure will double within the next four years. The growth in the online marketing arena over the past decade has created a huge demand for people who know how to run Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns and run them well. What does this mean for designers? While the need for people who know SEM is great, the need for people who know SEM and how to design and build web sites is even greater. Attain a strong skill set in both design and SEM, and you’ll find yourself in a highly marketable position as a professional.

For today’s podcast, I asked Lance Loveday, CEO, Closed Loop Marketing to summarize the session and to provide us with additional insights and links for additional resources.

Check out the seven minute interview on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by the Adobe Corporation. Check out a series of complimentary Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 online eSeminar and discover how to redefine the extraordinary in web design and development with Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 Web Premium Software. Check out additional details and dates and times on the WOW Technology Minute Website.

Work more efficiently when you use In Context Editing; a new service in Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 Web Premium
Wednesday, December 17, 2008 10:00 A.M. PT
Learn how to work smarter with one of the new services now available in Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 Web Premium with In Context Editing. This session will highlight how to let content contributors make website edits so you can focus on your web design.
For additional information and reservation visit the Adobe event website.

Introduction to Animation with Adobe® Flash® Professional CS4
Wednesday, January 21, 2009 10:00 A.M. PT
Learn how easy it is to create rich, expressive content in this introductory demonstration of the animation and design features in Flash CS4 Professional. With the dramatically easier animation tools in Flash CS4 Professional, creating animated content is more approachable and faster than ever. Discover new techniques for giving your rich content a new level of impact.
For additional information and reservation visit the Adobe event website.

What’s New in Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 10:00 A.M. PT
Discover how Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium allows you to interact smoothly with your team to produce creative output across disciplines, without having to re-create assets. Learn to effortlessly transition fixed graphics-from print or web design- to interactive movies. Build on wireframes and prototypes in Fireworks® and convert then to standards-compliant HTML and CSS. Create rich application interfaces that developers can turn into functioning applications with the core design intact. Plus find out how to fuel your creativity and optimize collaborations with the new online communication options accessible within Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium.
For additional information and reservation visit the Adobe event website.

Designer/Developer & Improvements in the Cross Discipline Workflow in Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 Web Premium
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 10:00 A.M. PT
Learn how to work smoothly across multiple designer/developer disciplines in your day-to-day activities. This session will offer perspectives on the multiple disciplines that make up design and development and explore how they can work cohesively using Creative Suite 4. It will also entail a discussion about the workflow technologies, best practices, and processes that make it easier to deliver content to Adobe technologies and platforms.
For additional information and reservation visit the Adobe event website.

Designing with Web Standards Using Dreamweaver and Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 10:00 A.M. PT
Using CSS export from Fireworks CS4 and the new CSS editing and Live View features in Dreamweaver CS4, designers and web developers can collaborate in new ways that were not possible before. This session explains how designers and developers can make the most of these new opportunities.
For additional information and reservation visit the Adobe event website.

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Web Design World Boston-A WOW week in review

by Fred on December 11, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals Everywhere!

I spent the last few days this week in Boston, MA participating in Web Design World 2008. Overall, it was an OK conference and I enjoyed making the trek. A few of the highlights from the event included the kick-off of the ExtremeMarkover.org initiative to make over a Boston based non-profit organization supporting missing children. To date, 108 web professionals from around the globe have offered to donate their services to this effort to support the non-profit community.

Another great highlight from the event was sitting in on the Jeffrey Zeldman keynote session. In his session Zeldman talks about “Respect for Designers” including those that develop and Webmasters that make up the Web workforce today. It?’s clear to me why so many people in our profession love Jeffrey Zeldman. He?’s a bright, witty and funny guy. Equally cool, he?’s genuinely a nice guy.

I also enjoyed spending time with many of those attendees participating in the event as well as the speakers covering the sessions. I?’d like to give a special shout out to a few of them for spending time with me and for the interviews regarding what it is they do daily and for their support of the WOW organization and the initiatives announced this week in Boston.

•A special shout out to Leslie-Jenson Inman, Assistant Professor at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for supporting WOW?’s Extreme Markover and the Web Pro Education Summit initiatives
•To the multitude of speakers that participated in the Web Pro Education Summit and for some informative sessions
•To Kris Silva from Bizland for supporting the Extreme Markover effort and for hanging out with the WOW all week
•To Dan Rubin, for shooting back that last shot of Whiskey with me at the speakers party
•Last but least to Debbie Smith, Web design teacher at Virtual School in Florida for her support over the years and for what she does everyday to support Web professional education

For today’s podcast, I?’ve posted a short video of Debbie and why?’s she supporting the ExtremeMarkover.org initiative.

Stay tuned for more detailed coverage of the event later in the week and into the next.

Happy Holidays!

Transcript of Web Design World Boston-A WOW week in review
Length – 3:16

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals Everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. I spent the last few days in Boston, Massachusetts participating in Web Design World 2008. Overall, it was an OK conference and I enjoyed making the trek. A few of the highlights from the event include the kick-off of the ExtremeMarkover.org initiative to make over a Boston based non-profit organization’s website supporting missing children. To date, 108 web professionals from around the globe have offered to donate their services to support this effort to promote the community.

Another great highlight from the event was sitting on the Jeffrey Zeldman’s session talking about “Respect for Designers” including those of course that develop and webmasters of all shapes and sizes. It?’s clear to me why so many people in our profession love Jeffrey. He?’s bright, witty and funny. Equally cool, he?’s genuinely a nice guy. I also enjoyed spending time with many of those participating in the event including attendees as well as the speakers.

For today?’s podcast, I?’d like to give a special shout out to a few of them for spending the time with me and for the interviews regarding what it is they do daily and for their support of the WOW organization. A special shout out to Leslie-Jenson Inman, Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for supporting WOW?’s Extreme Markover and the Web Pro Education Summit as well as sitting at the WOW tabletop. Also, to a multitude of speakers that participated in the Web Pro Education Summit as well. To Kris Silva from Bizland for supporting the Extreme Markover and for just hanging out with the WOW organization. To Dan Rubin, for shooting back the last shot of whiskey with me at the speakers party. Last but not least to Debbie Smith, Web design teacher at Virtual School in Florida for her support and for what she does everyday to support Web professional education.

Here?’s a short video of Debbie and why?’s she supporting the ExtremeMarkover.org initiative. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the ExtremeMarkover.org initiative. I have the pleasure to be here at Web Design World with Debbie Smith. Debbie is a teacher from Florida Virtual School, and also a WOW member, has been a member for a number of years. Debbie, good afternoon, and thanks for agreeing to this interview.

DEBBIE SMITH: Hi Bill.

BILL: Debbie, you offered to participate and help out with the ExtremeMarkover, which we very much appreciated. For the viewers of this podcast, those that might have an interest in participating in this Markover for a non-profit, can you share why you offered to help and why is this important to you?

DEBBIE: Well, it?’s a couple of things. One, it?’s important to be active. Besides teaching the students, essentially that real experience. Often times you get stuck in the classroom and you don?’t get to get out and get to do things. As a teacher you don?’t have time to have a business of your own so being involved with this gives me the experience. It also lets the student see that I?’m a real person with real skills too. It gives credibility to the students.

BILL: Very well said. Well, we certainly appreciate your support. Lots more information to come on the Extreme Markover. Thanks so much Debbie.

DEBBIE: Thanks Bill. Have a great day.

ANNOUNCER: Today?’s minute is sponsored by the Webmaster Survival Guide. When you need professional resources, be sure to check out the WebmasterSurvivalGuide.com. There?’s something there for all skill levels and disciplines. Be sure to ask about advertising opportunities with this PR6 website from the World Organization of Webmasters.

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Adobe Max Milan 2008-Interview with Riku Salminen, Nokia

by Fred on December 9, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere!

Mobile Web is red hot and getting hotter every day. For today’s podcast, I?’m featuring Riku Salminen, Senior Technical Consultant at Nokia. Riku presented last week at Adobe Max 2008 Milan regarding programming with Adobe Flash Lite for the Nokia mobile phone. I sat down with Riku for a summary of his session and the benefits for Web professionals.

Check it out on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by Web Directions North taking place in Denver Colorado February 2-5, 2009 Web Directions North is one of the world’s leading conferences for web professionals, bringing together the leading experts from around the nation and around the world to educate, entertain and inspire our attendees.

WOW will be participating in a session entitled Educating the Next Generation of Web Professionals For more information about the conference visit the Web Directions North website.

Transcript of Adobe Max Milan 2008-Interview with Riku Salminen, Nokia

BILL CULLIFER: Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute here at Max Milan at the Web Pro Community Challenge booth, in the community lounge I have the pleasure to be interviewing Riku Salminen with Nokia. He?’s the senior technical consultant from Nokia here presenting on the topic of designing with Flash Lite for Nokia phones?

RIKU SALMINEN: Yeah, actually we call it Flash Lite Programming.

BILL: Programming, OK, excellent. Can you summarize that session for us Riku, and also can you provide me with a better understanding of how web professionals can benefit?

RIKU: Yeah, sure. So, basically the whole session was about how to develop applications for mobile phones, for Nokia devices with web designer skills. So that?’s the message that I?’m kind of giving as an evangelist you would say, on web technologies for Nokia. So what we want to tell people, and especially web designers, is that you don?’t have to know Symbian C++. You don?’t need to be a hard-nosed coder so to speak, but if you know how to create a web page, if you know how to make Flash, you can create real applications for Nokia devices.

So all of the latest S60 and serious [indecipherable] devices for Nokia they support one version of Flash Lite or another, starting from Flash Lite 1.1 going all the way up to the latest releases where we have Flash Lite 3.0. And now that, for the fifth edition which I have the device here it?’s the all new touch screen device, you can also develop, this is actually an application I made with web run-time for my son so that I can go and get him. So with one button it reads the GPS. With another button it sends the GPS as a landmark attached to an MMS message to me so I can go and get my son. So the platform services in the fifth edition of S60 allow the web developers to use…well obviously you don?’t have to be a web developer but you can use those from S60 run time widgets and Flash Lite and services included are sensors, GPS landmarks, VIM which is visual information management, where you have calendar contacts and a media gallery. And there is also an application manager which means that you can launch different applications. And more to come, there is messaging, so you can send and receive text messages, emails and multimedia messages from Flash Lite or web runtime widgets.

Basically web runtime widgets are a HTML, JavaScript, CSS, basic web technologies using AJAX or just basically being a standalone web page without the browser UI. It?’s all packaged in a nice little zipped package and you put an item in there as well and then it installs in your phone just like any application.

BILL: Excellent, and so I’m watching this podcast, I’m a designer and I’m listening, net it out for me. How am I going to benefit? Am I going to improve the functionality of my customers?’ websites through these applications?

RIKU: Well I think the most, the biggest thing is the time to market. So if you develop in Java or Symbian C++ what it means is you need to test, you need to go through different cycles of software development. With Flash Lite and with S60 web runtime your UI is developed right under your eyes with normal IDEs that you have. Flash professional, you can have DreamWeaver, there?’s Aptana studio which is a free version. You don?’t have to have an SDK to build your application and install it somewhere and emulate you can use your web browser to test that the UI is functioning. Instead of developing a software for two months you can launch it in two weeks.

BILL: Excellent, well thank you for your time today Riku. Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by Web Directions North. Web Directions North is taking place in Denver, Colorado February 2009 and is one of the world?’s leading conferences for web professionals bringing together the leading experts from around the nation and around the world to educate, entertain, and inspire. WOW will be participating at Web Directions North with a special session entitled “Educating the Next Generation of Web Professionals.” Check out all the details and the great links on the WOW technology minute.com website.

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Adobe Max 2008 Milan-Interview with Giorgio Natili, developer from Rome, Italy.

by Fred on December 8, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere!

For today’s podcast, I sat down to interview Giorgio Natili, developer from Rome, Italy. Giorgio presented this week at Adobe Max 2008 Milan on a variety of topics including “Getting started with ActionScript” and “Flex and Open Source”.

Giorgio is Adobe community expert, a W3C member and the owner of his own company GNStudio, which has been operating in the web development filed for the past 6 years. His field of expertise focus on Adobe Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Coldfusion Flash Media Server, Flex and their integration, as well as accessibility both HTMLand Flash. More recently his interests have broadened to include developing mobile applications and e-learning tools. He also works on various education initiatives to spread awareness on accessibility issues, especially to flash developers.

In this interview, Giorgio talks in some depth about Flex and Open Source with a link to additional resources that he’s developed.

Check out the three minute podcast on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by the Web Pro Community Challenge

Sponsored by the WOW and the Adobe corporation, the Web Pro Challenge offers an opportunity to showcase your talent, gain industry recognition, win prizes and benefit the community by designing and developing a site for a non-profit organization. For more information and all of the challenge details check out WebProChallenge.org website.

Transcript of Adobe Max 2008 Milan-Interview with Giorgio Natili, developer from Rome, Italy.
Length -

BILL CULLIFER: OK, Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and The WOW Technology Minute here at the Adobe Community Lounge at Adobe Max in Milan, Italy. I have the pleasure to be introducing Giorgio Natili. He is the developer from GNStudios here in Italy, an Adobe expert and a judge for the Web Pro Community Challenge. I want to thank you Giorgio for stopping by the booth and for giving us a summary of your session today. You presented this morning?

GIORGIO: Yeah, exactly.

BILL: How did that go and can you give us a summary of that session? And could you give me the benefits for a Web Professional?

GIORGIO: OK, great, sure. The session was good because there were more or less one hundred guys around so it was a pleasure for me to speak with all these guys. We talked about Flex and the consumer. We focused our attention on the development process with Flex and other Open Source technologies like Radfight, like Jabber, like Blades DS, so the different blocks of the sessions were quite easy. We started explaining to them that these articles about the environment and start easy with these tools because you know, Open Source is not well documented like official products and sometimes it’s difficult to have an easy quick start guide.

So we have done a quick start on these three technologies: Blades, Radfight, and Jabber. Jabber is a protocol and the web user at Open Fire is the server. And we had three basic examples that are simple to work and then three more complex. One is a shot and another one is a streaming media player and another one is a complex connection to a remote object Java service. We have downloaded the connection to these services and getting results, updating the view of the application, etc.

BILL: Excellent. I’m in the audience and I’m listening to or watching this Podcast on designing and developing. How do I benefit?

GIORGIO: They can benefit because now they can start without any problem with this technology. It’s free, it has a step by step configuration, but with the developer in mind. It’s not only doc word that says to you: open that close that. We are a process to be ready in 10 minutes to work with the technologies that you don’t know.

BILL: Yeah, excellent and you have some resources available that these Web Pro’s might go? Can you site those for us?

GIORGIO: Yeah, I have some light and some simple and it would be a pleasure for me to send it to you so you can publish it for free for everybody.

BILL: I appreciate that. Do you happen to have a blog or a Website now that currently has some information about it?

GIORGIO: Yeah.

BILL: What’s the address?

GIORGIO: The address is: www.mxml.it. It’s my personal blog. On this blog there are not too much hard posts.

BILL: OK, we’ll make those resources available.

GIORGIO: The resources will be available also on this blog in the next ten days.

BILL: Excellent. We thank you so much for your time today.

GIORGIO: You’re welcome. It’s been a pleasure.

ANNOUNCER: Today’s minute is sponsored by the Webmaster Survival Guide. When you need professional resources, be sure to check out webmastersurvivalguide.com. There is something there for all skill levels and disciplines and be sure to ask about advertising opportunities with this PR6 website from the World Organization of Webmasters.

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Adobe MAX Milan-Interview with Tim Buntel, Sr Product Manager Adobe Systems Inc.

by Fred on December 6, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals Everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the WOW organization and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of the Adobe Max 2008 conference Milan Italy. To get a perspective from of the event from Adobe point of view, I sat down with Tim Buntel, Sr Product Manager Adobe Systems Inc. In this interview, Tim expands on the coverage of the shifts that are happening between cloud computing, hosted services, services that might be both data center as well as hosted, building those applications so you can leverage those and the utility in applications and software with the experience.

Check out the three minute podcast on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Check it out on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by WebProtraining.org, offering a complete solution for all your Web professional training needs including WOW certification options. Check it out at Web Professional Training website.

A transcript of this podcast will be available in twenty four hours.

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Adobe Max Milan 2008-Interview with Mark Niemann-Ross regarding Flex and Air

by Fred on December 4, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals Everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the WOW organization and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of the Adobe Max 2008 conference in Milan Italy. I had the pleasure of spending a few minutes with Mark Niemann-Ross, Developer Evangelist for Adobe Systems Inc. Mark?’s had a number of sessions covering a wide variety of topics including “using Adobe Flex and Air to Automate Creative Suite 4 Workflow and Use XMP Metadata to Label, Track and Manage Assets within Creative Suite.

Mark provides an excellent summary of his sessions and an overview on the products and how they enhance workflow and integration. Mark also provides additional detail and links.

Check out the three minute podcast on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by the Web Pro Community Challenge

Sponsored by the WOW and the Adobe corporation, the Web Pro Challenge offers an opportunity to showcase your talent, gain industry recognition, win prizes and benefit the community by designing and developing a site for a non-profit organization. For more information and all of the challenge details check out WebProChallenge.org website.

Transcript of Adobe Max 2008 Milan, Italy-Interview with Mark Niemann-Ross
Length – 5:03

BILL CULLIFER: Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute at Adobe MAX Milan at the Web Pro Community Challenge Table Top. I have the pleasure to be interviewing Mark Niemann-Ross, Developer Evangelist from Adobe. Thank you for agreeing to this interview Mark. I appreciate you taking the time.

You?’ve presented a couple of times, multiple times, both in San Francisco and now today in Milan. I?’m curious to know, the session had an element of Flex and Air, correct?

MARK NIEMANN-ROSS: Yes.

BILL: Could you for the subscribers of this podcast, give us a better understanding of Flex and Air and then maybe talk specifically about the elements of Flex and Air, summarize the session and a couple of walk-aways in terms of developers, designers, Web Professionals. What would you want us to know about your session on Flex and Air?

MARK: Absolutely. To back way up, the concept behind Flex and Air are really the ability to use all your Flash XML skills and transfer that into more of a front-end type of product, more of a [indecipherable] sort of thing. Up until now a lot of action script has been done in Flash, which is very time-line based. Flex is based around developing an application that allows you to talk to a database service. Air is very much like Flex except that instead of running inside of a browser, Air runs on your desktop. You don?’t need a browser. You can take it and run it somewhere and not even be connected to the Internet and still be used for work. It?’s something that you?’d want to take a look at, especially if you?’re doing Web work. It?’s not an answer to every solution but it?’s really exciting. For us in the Creative Suite it?’s particularly exciting as we start to look at Flex as a programming model. Up until this point if you wanted to automate or integrate Creative Suite what you had to do was either go with some of the C++ interfaces or some of the scripting interfaces, alpha scripts [?], beta scripts [?], the Basic scripts, things like that.

Unfortunately what this means is that everybody out there who?’s been using Flex and Air had to learn an entirely new set of languages in order to satisfy automation-type things. This wasn?’t a problem because it used to be the Creative Suite community over here and the Web community over here. Well, now you can use and design and export to Flash and you can bring movies into Illustrator and Photoshop. It becomes very, very blurry as to what?’s in the Creative Suite and what?’s in the Web.

Along with that blurriness what we?’ve found is that many, many who were being asked to do Flash or Flex projects before are now also being asked to do integrations with the Creative Suite. So how do we bridge those two worlds? The exciting thing that we?’re introducing here is something called Switchboard Patch Panel. These are technologies that are available up on labs at adobe.com. It?’s free. You can download it. You put them into a Flex project. If you?’ve done any Flex program at all this is very simple for you to do. You link it into your project and then suddenly now you can use all of your Flex programming skills and control and automate Creative Suite.

So for example, if you had a situation where you wanted to pull up a set of pictures from Flickr, rotate those 90 or 75 degrees and do an image correction because they?’re all photographed under fluorescent light for example. Well, you could do that by hand. Download the image, bring it into Photoshop, do the correction, do the rotation and send it back out again. Or you go do it, if you chose to, in one of the scripting languages, assuming that you know how to Apple script in Visual Basic. But if you know Flex or Air, you already know how to go and get images from Flickr, Air allows you to download those to a local partner and now using Switchboard you could then pass those individual images on to Photoshop, ask it to do the manipulation and then come back. Again, that?’s a way of leveraging all of that information you have about programming Air and even Flex and integrating it in Creative Suite. Again, that?’s done by a technology called Switchboard. It?’s available on labs.adobe.com. It?’s free and it includes complete documentation.

BILL: Excellent summary. I certainly appreciate your perspective and your time today Mark.

MARK: Sure. I?’m glad to have you around and folks, if you get to MAX, we look forward to seeing you.

BILL: Thank you.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by Web Pro Community Challenge. Sponsored by WOW and the Adobe Corporation the Web Pro Community Challenge offers an opportunity to showcase your talent, gain industry recognition, win prizes and benefit the community by designing and developing a site for a non-profit organization. For more information check out the WebProChallenge.org.

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Adobe Max 2008 Milan, Italy-Keynote with Adobe's Michelle Turner, VP Flash Platform

by Fred on December 3, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals Everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the WOW organization and the WOW Technology Minute.

I?’m in Milan, Italy this week participating in Adobe Max. WOW’s participating in the event this week to announce the Web Pro Challenge to the European Web professional community and those attending the event from around the globe.

Our setup in Max Milan is similar to the tabletop arrangement within the Community Lounge that we had at the Adobe MAX San Francisco event last month. I?’ve made numerous contacts within the community here including a number of incredibly passionate Adobe User Group Managers that have expressed interest in supporting the challenge.

Over the course of the next few days, I?’ll cover this event from the perspective of summarizing what?’s going on with Adobe including interviews from those serving the Adobe user community. For today?’s podcast, I sat in on and recorded the opening keynote remarks by Adobe?’s Michelle Turner, VP Flash Platform.

Check it out on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by Web Directions North taking place in Denver Colorado February 2-5, 2009 Web Directions North is one of the world’s leading conferences for web professionals, bringing together the leading experts from around the nation and around the world to educate, entertain and inspire our attendees.

WOW will be participating in a session entitled Educating the Next Generation of Web Professionals For more information about the conference visit the Web Directions North website.

Transcript of Adobe Max 2008 Milan, IT
Length – 5:45

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW members and Web Professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. I?’m in Milan, Italy this week, participating in Adobe MAX 2008. I?’m here to announce the Web Pro Challenge to the European Web Professional market and those that attend the event from around the globe. Our set-up in MAX Milan is similar to the Table Top arrangement within the community lounge that we had at Adobe MAX San Francisco. As a result of my trip I made numerous contacts within the Adobe community, including a number of incredibly passionate Adobe group managers that have expressed an interest in supporting the Web Pro Community Challenge. Over the course of the next few days I?’ll cover the event of what?’s going on with Adobe from a perspective of an attendee as well as those that are presenting. I?’ll also provide some interviews with those serving the user community. For today?’s podcast I sat in on the opening keynote remarks by Adobe?’s Michelle Turner, VP of Flash Platform.

[applause]

MICHELLE TURNER: Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining us today at MAX Milan 2008. We?’re so glad you?’re all here. This is the largest MAX event we?’ve had in Europe. There?’s over 1300 of you joining us today. You?’re in for a really exciting week of creativity, inspiration, discovery and getting to connect with your peers. We?’re very excited you can all be here today. I?’d also like to say a quick thank you to our sponsors. This event would not be possible without them, so thank you for helping us get MAX going and off the ground. And in particular, thanks to all of you for attending today, especially getting here through this rainy weather. It?’s wet and cold outside. It really is the combination of your skills and your creativity with the raw technology that Adobe brings to the table creates incredible and limitless possibilities on the Internet today.

We?’re in a time of great change all around the world. The economy and issues like healthcare and education, climate change, are on the minds of all of us. The demographics of the world are changing as well. In general the population is aging and in the developing markets we?’re seeing incredible population boons and the growth of the economies of those nations.

Right along with that we?’re all seeing a great change in our technology and the way people are communicating and interacting with computers and technology today. Consumers are demanding a consistent experience across multiple devices. When they?’re interacting the Internet, when they?’re interacting with their friends, they?’re interacting with social networks, they?’re interacting with video, they don?’t want or understand the difference between what makes it possible on a phone, what makes it possible on a television or what makes it possible on the computer. They just want it to work and they want to be able to take advantage of the unique strengths of each of those mediums.

As we see more Internet coming into our living rooms we have the experience on a big screen, that experience is significantly different and in some ways better, but used differently than the experience we have on our phone. The phone and mobile devices take advantage of different functionalities, such as location-based services and give it a particular benefit over say what you would have if those services were on your PC.

Finally, we?’re seeing that enterprise IT demands are changing rapidly as well as knowledge workers come to work and they?’re expecting to work with their applications that they use every day in the office but they want the functionality and ease of use that they experience daily when they?’re communicating with their friends on the Internet.

As we move from a single-screen world to multiple experiences across screens, we need to be able to have those experiences both inside and outside traditional browsers. What really matters is that we create engaging experiences that people can use wherever they are, whether it?’s on a PC, a mobile device or a television.

Adobe?’s vision is to enable the most engaging applications, content and video across operating systems, across screens, on the desktop or in a browser. All of you that are here today are utilizing the Flash Platform to develop innovative solutions that we believe can have a real impact on the changing landscape. The Adobe Flash Platform is a complete system to create and deliver expressive applications, content and video that run consistently across operating systems and devices. Flash has been around for over 13 years and we continue to push the innovation that we deliver with the Flash Platform. And the best is yet to come.

BILL: Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by Web Directions North. Web Directions North is taking place in Denver, Colorado February 2009 and is one of the world?’s leading conferences for Web Professionals, bringing together the leading experts from around the nation and around the world to educate, entertain and inspire. WOW will be participating at Web Directions North with a special session entitled “Educating the Next Generation of Web Professionals.” Check out all the details and the great links on the WOW Technology Minute.com website.

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Adobe Max-"Tools of Mass Engagement" General Session

by Fred on December 1, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals Everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the WOW organization and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of the Adobe Max Conference that took place in San Francisco, CA earlier in the month.

WOW had a table top in the Community Lounge at MAX 2008 to promote the second annual Web Pro Challenge . This year?’s contest provides Web support a internationally recognized non-profit organization providing much needed medical support to developing countries. We hope that you will consider participating as a competing team, contest judge or team lead and mentor.

The contest is free to participate and is open to all Web professionals including students at all levels. This initiative also supports those that teach Web topics worldwide since I?’ll be podcasting the challenge process over the course of the contest period that ends in March 2009.

For today?’s podcast, I?’d like to review a few session highlights that I gleaned from Mark DuBois, WOW?’s Education Director and Professor at Illinois Central College based in Peoria, IL. Mark was in San Francisco participating in MAX as an attendee and as a valued contributor to WOW?’s annual Education Advisory Board meeting that we scheduled for the same week. As a veteran Web professional and educator Mark provides key insights. As a result of his educational interest, Mark divided his participation at Max into two camps: (either education specific topics or using the new Adobe tools – CS4 and others).

Check it out on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by WebProtraining.org, offering a complete solution for all your Web professional training needs including WOW certification options. Check it out at Web Professional Training website.

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