Pete's Eats

As part of my ‘role’ in life these days, I get invited to a lot of conferences around the world, both as a speaker and as an attendee. It’s a charmed life, I’ll admit.

The vast majority of these events are wholly technology based in one form or another and yet, the one thing missing from most of them is one of the most essential things to me and most of the people I speak to… An Internet connection (preferably wireless, but RJ45′d would do). It’s 2004! How can you even think of having a technology conference without an available connection!?

Some of the most beneficial and successful events I’ve been to have all had connections and it’s enhanced the event in so many ways. Firstly, a back-channel can become a focus for the entire audience – discussing the topics being spoken about on stage in real-time has to be experienced to understand the immense value it delivers. Sharing documents using applications such as SubEthaEdit and communally editing them, thus creating a common area for notes that everyone can take away with them is simply fantastic.

Being able to check your email or get some work done are also vital these days (who can afford to be out of contact for more than a day or so!?)

And lastly, but by no means least, blogging. Not everyone can get to certain events, but people who are there and are blogging gives everyone a way of seeing what’s happening in ‘real-time’ and a way of commenting on the subjects being written about. Conference organizers might not be able to maintain a ‘daily happenings’ site, but bloggers can. Reading a cross-section of blogs from people who’re at the event gives you an excellent view of what’s going down.

So, I sincerely request, that if you are an organizer of a technology conference please, please take the time and trouble to set up a connection (wireless or otherwise) so that your delegates aren’t ‘muffled’. They’ll also thank you for it a great deal I suspect…

Seen on Flickr

I’m on the first Mipcom DVD Jury this year and I’ve just finished reviewing the 21 titles that the pre-jury had selected as finalists. That’s 3 titles in 7 categories.

Phew.

Kid’s titles, (as yet unreleased) major Hollywood blockbusters, documentaries, animation and various foreign language releases made up the pile and the quality varied greatly to be honest. The good stuff was excellent and the not-so-good stuff was adequate. But, one thing that is apparent is the obvious need for some top quality DVD designers to emerge in the near future. I’m sure everyone has seen a DVD at some point and thought, “I could do better than that”, and I think now might be the time to prove it… Get some kind of DVD showreel together and send it out to the majors – you might be pleasantly surprised…

I had to judge based on the interactivity, features, design, navigation and other various categories. I can tell you it was hard work! Some of the titles had over 8 discs with various bits of interactivity and extras distributed across them all… Still, done now

I’ll be in Cannes for Mipcom (4.10 to 8.10) so give me a shout if you’ll be around and want to hook up…

Arseholes. (if you have to shut a town down to hold a conference? don’t have the damn conference)

I got a rather nice package from Macromedia today. As a thank-you for the work done on the Ellipsis Beta (the Flash update) they sent out a bunch of stuff – and very nice it is too!

Inside the box was a Flash T-Shirt, some ‘Flash’ Cards, a couple of documents and a Timbuk2 laptop messenger bag (in silver and red) with the Flash MX 2004 logo stitched into it. I’ve been using Timbuk2 bags for about 15 years now so you can imagine how chuffed I was!

So, I’m pretty ‘Macromedia’d’ up right now. Having met with Mike Downey last week and now this, I can see that they’re making real efforts to engage the community again. This is the old Macromedia that I know and care about…

(I’ve got some kind of virus at the moment and feel like crap – sorry this post isn’t more elaborative – maybe I’ll revisit it when I feel a little better…)

I just saw this post over on Ado’s blog (he of Ecto fame) about the new BBEdit 8.0 icon being crap. I have to agree – totally! When I upgraded a few weeks ago, I created my own aquafied icon to replace it. I didn’t realise others felt so strongly too! So, I’ve put the icon file up here for you to take a look at and download if you like it. As Ado points out in his orginal entry, there are others out there too (check out IconFactory to start with).

To install it, open up the unstuffed file’s info box and click once on the icon top-left of the resulting window. Choose ‘copy’. Then follow the same procedure for the BBEdit application only paste the icon into the app’s info box instead.

Download file

I’m aware that there are some CSS design issues with various browsers and platforms (unsurprisingly it’s mainly PC & IE issues) with the new design. I’m really sorry if you’re coming to the site using one of those platforms but rest assured it’s being worked on as I write this.

Also, I’ve re-added the blogroll and a new events banner to the right. The event badges are all from events that I’m either involved with or actually going to.

To come: New moblog; move the DB to MYSQL from Berkeley; various MT plugins… All after the CSS issues of course…

I don’t normally post about studio work here, but I just realised that a project we finished ages ago now has the online section up and I thought some people might want to see it…

(warning: clicking link will go to huge clickable version – dialup will be very slooow)

Basically, we wrote an app, last year, so that people who went to Robbie Williams‘ live dates could upload photographs of their day. These in turn would be made into a mosaic poster that would be for sale on the Robbie site, with donations going to his charity, ‘Give It Sum’. So, anyway, check out the poster in the ‘buy’ section of the site, and then check out the online clickable version here. (slight variations due to hand editing after the render was done)

So, one of the exciting things coming out of Macromedia I mentioned before has actually gone live already…

Central 1.5 – Gemini

Macromedia Central is a a desktop app (mac or pc) that “extends the reach of Flash rich Internet applications and content beyond the browser and into the desktop, making true cross-platform applications a reality. This new offering builds on the strength of the Macromedia Flash development community, the AOL AIM and ICQ services for messaging and presence, and existing web standards.”

Through the lines? It makes powerful desktop applications out of media-rich Flash apps that allow all sorts of interaction with a client than stand-alone or browser based Flash does. It takes a lot for me to get excited by Flash stuff these days, but this is good.

I made a Flash Forward Central app earlier on this year – I’ll dig out the files and up them here later on today.

Check it out – Central rocks…

So, now Boris is my official blogmaster you can expect a few things to happen around here…

1) Cross platform/browser compatibility
2) Blogroll integration (without screwing the entire thing up)
3) Events badges from things that I’m attending or part of
4) New Moblog
5) Loads of backend stuff to make life better/more secure
6) MT Plugin-fest (I’m only runnin blacklist at the moment which is awesome btw)

Can’t wait for it all to start… In the meantime, I’m moving to a new server at Mediatemple so it should all run smoothly and quickly too – yay!