My old friend Serge Jespers, a Platform Evangelist at Adobe, maintains this comprehensive list of all of the Adobe staffers who are on Twitter. I thought it would be worthwhile for my Photography friends to know about these accounts:

Lightroom

Andrew Rahn - http://twitter.com/paddlefish

Ben Zibble - http://twitter.com/bzibble

Dan Tull - http://twitter.com/dantull

Dustin Bruzenak - http://twitter.com/bruzenak

Eric Scouten - http://twitter.com/scouten

Jeffrey Tranberry - http://twitter.com/jtranber

Jon Steinmetz - http://twitter.com/jonsteinmetz

Kevin Tieskoetter - http://twitter.com/LR_Kevin

Melissa Gaul - http://twitter.com/LR_Melissa

Phil Clevenger - http://twitter.com/LR_Phil

Tom Hogarty (Product Manager) - http://twitter.com/LR_Tom

Troy Gaul - http://twitter.com/tgaul

Photoshop

John Nack – http://twitter.com/jnack

I’m very excited to announce that, starting this week, I have joined the Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) group at Microsoft as a Principal Evangelist focused on Silverlight and the related components of Microsoft’s RIA platform. Specifically, I will be working on a variety of projects in the media and entertainment space. I will also be spending time working with the product teams to assist them with identifying customers’ problems and incorporating solutions into our products.

How did I end up at Microsoft?

As many of you know, I have spent most of my career working on Flash and AIR at Macromedia/Adobe. After leaving Adobe earlier this year I decided to put together a consulting business focused on helping interactive agencies and large enterprises understand RIA technologies and figure out how to incorporate these technologies into their long-term business plans.

Through this work I found myself spending a great deal of time speaking with design and development teams about the relative strengths and weaknesses of various RIA technologies – primarily the Flash platform, the Microsoft platform, and the leading Ajax frameworks. To my surprise, my views on Microsoft’s technologies became the most popular topic of discussion. As a result I spent a great deal of time diving into the details of Microsoft’s stack, particularly Silverlight, Windows Media Services & IIS, and the Visual Studio/Blend/SketchFlow tooling workflow.

My agency clients’ interest in the Microsoft platform was driven by a sudden surge of inquiries for strategic insight from their customers (some of whom I also ended up working with). The surge seemed to accelerate following the announcement of Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3 (particularly its SketchFlow feature). These agencies, which were primarily Flash/Flex shops, were suddenly very interested in figuring out their strategy for adding Silverlight development to their repertoire and they asked me for help.

Through the process of intensively studying Microsoft’s technologies I started to fully realize the potential of what they were doing and the unique position that they were in. Microsoft has the clients, tools, languages, frameworks, services, servers, developer resources, partnerships, desire, growing expertise, and trajectory to solve major problems that customers are increasingly facing. There are gaps in the platform and many areas to improve – but I really felt that Microsoft was prepared and committed to address those challenges.

As I continued to spend an increasing amount of time talking about Microsoft I focused on developing my relationships within the company so I could get access to the information that I needed to provide to my clients. Doing so allowed me to get a better idea of where things were headed and resulted in me starting to kick around the idea of potentially joining the company and helping them solve some of these challenges.

Over time I started having discussions with old friends who had worked with me at Macromedia and later left for Microsoft. I also spent time talking with several Microsoft evangelists, product managers, and engineering managers who I had gotten to know over the years. The overwhelming vibe was that they loved what they were working on and were very driven to build great software. I decided that I wanted to be a part of that.

It’s not a zero-sum game

The obvious question on the minds of my friends in the Flash community is “why switch teams?”

First of all, I love the Flash community and I’m very proud of the work that my former colleagues and I did over the years. I think Flash is a great piece of software. I also know – first hand – that the existence of Silverlight as a competitive technology has done more for Flash than most people realize. The end result is a huge increase in innovation and solutions development across the industry – and more options for customers.

We all know that web technologies evolve quickly – particularly in the RIA space. I want to continue to be a part of that and I feel that Microsoft is in the best position to take things to the next level. We may not be there yet but we’re working on some amazing things. The latest iteration of the tools and client have gotten Microsoft to the level that made myself and others take them very seriously. If they can accomplish this much since Silverlight’s initial announcement in early 2007 (just two years ago) imagine what they’ll do over the next two years.

I will soon be launching a new blog focused on the work that I’ll be doing at Microsoft. I’m very excited to be joining the team and given the opportunity to work on such an exciting technology.

Learn more about Silverlight 3 here.

UPDATE: You can reach me at miked –at– microsoft.com

Those close to me know that I am passionate about photography and as a result I often get asked for advice on what cameras to buy. Here’s what I generally tell my friends.

Photography is more about art than it is about science. As a result, the quality and capabilities of your equipment only gets you so far. In the end it’s up to the photographer to make a great photograph. Keeping this in mind I first recommend that people not go overboard when buying equipment (unless you are full of disposable income and a gadget geek – I can truely relate, to the latter point anyway). You should look for certain features that make it easier to make great photographs.

Based on my experience I have determined that the three most important qualities in camera equipment are:

1. Speed
2. Image quality
3. Form factor

After explaining what I look for in these qualities I will give you my recommendations on equipment. I’ll then provide a few links to great resources for learning more.

Also, if you’re interested in what I have to say and recommend please follow my photography profile on twitter (@nikonpro) and/or my personal account (@mdowney).

Speed

I don’t like messing with unnatural lighting like flash units. My style of photography is probably best described as “candid observations of life”. I like to grab my camera and go for a walk – especially when I travel. I look for interesting things and try to create interesting compositions with them. I don’t use tripods very often and I rarely use flash. When  you hand-hold a camera and shoot in low-light without a flash you need speed. You need to let in as much light as possible as quickly as possible in order to avoid blurriness – to get sharper images. To do this you need to make adjustments in your camera that increase shutter speed.

Now, the thing that surprises many of the people I talk with is that speed happens in both the lens and the camera. And when photographers talk about “fast” lenses they’re not talking about how quickly light gets recorded, they’re talking about how much light the lens lets in. This is a reference to a lens feature called Aperture. Aperture is one of the two settings that influences shutter speed. We’ll talk about the other in just a bit.

Aperture refers to the size of the opening in the lens which lets light through to the camera’s sensor. The bigger the opening the faster the sensor can record light. When you’re shooting in low-light situations without a flash you generally want to open up your aperture as wide as possible so you can let more light in more quickly.

The only catch with aperture is that it actually controls two elements of photography – the amount of light exposed to the sensor AND the depth of field. The larger the aperture the less depth-of-field (DoF) you get. More times than not, a narrow DoF is actually preferable to the photographer because it provides that artistic look of the subject being in focus but everything around it being progressively blurred out. The down side of a narrow DoF is that large portions of your photograph will be out-of-focus when you might not want them to be (a group photo, for example).

So to get speed you need to invest in better, more expensive lenses. Aperture is represented in f-stops and the faster, more expensive lenses will have maximum apertures of f/1.2, f/1.4, f/2.0, and most commonly, f/2.8.

One last thing about aperture that throws off everyone who is new to photography. A large aperture (which lets in the most light) is represented by a smaller aperture number. This is because the number, such as f/2.8 is actually the denominator in a fraction. So just remember that 1/2 is bigger than 1/8 and you’ll get it.

Image quality

This is the biggest factor for me when selecting a camera body. To many people’s surprise, this has very little to do with the number of megapixels that the camera sensor supports. Professionals call this “The Megapixel Myth”. Megapixels are about size, not quality. The only reason to opt for more megapixels is if you plan to crop your photo down – which I happen to do very frequently in order to improve the quality of my compositions. Cropping a 4MP image down to 50% of it’s original size will leave a fairly pixelated and low-quality image to print out. Cropping a 13MP image down to 50% of it’s original size is hardly noticeable. For this reason I generally recommend that people buy cameras in the 8-10 MP range.

Far more important is the quality of the image sensor. The biggest factor in sensor quality is noise. The image on the left has more noise than the one on the right.

(photo taken from Wikipedia)

Noise is increased when you increase the ISO setting on your camera – the second setting for controlling shutter speed. Photographer and popular book author Bryan Peterson explains ISO really well in his excellent book, Understanding Exposure. He suggests that you imagine the image sensor capturing light using little worker bees holding little light-capturing buckets. When your camera is set to ISO 100 you have 100 little bees capturing light. When you increase it to ISO 200 you have 200 little bees, and so on. The higher the ISO the more light is captured while the shutter is open. The only problem is that more worker bees collecting light means more noise in your image.

This is what separates the good cameras from the great cameras. The great cameras deal with noise at high ISO levels really, really well. In fact, the latest batch of cameras have all taken giant leaps forward in this area. I’ve found that most professionals agree that Nikon is the pack leader in this space. This is why I switched from Canon to Nikon a few years ago. Nikon was the first camera maker to take a huge leap forward in low-noise image quality when shooting at high ISO.

Form Factor

This quality is pretty straight-forward. When I’m shopping for an SLR I look for a camera that feels good in my hands, has the adjustment controls in intuitive places that are easy to reach while I’m shooting, and doesn’t feel too heavy or unbalanced. Now it’s important to consider that the overall weight and balance of your camera is heavily influenced by the lens that you have attached to it. I’ve found that the more expensive the lens, the heavier it is. This is primarily due to pro lenses having using more metals than plastics, heavier glass, and wider-diameter lens elements. If you’re going to be doing mostly “walk-around” photography, particularly when you travel, you’ll want to look for a smaller, lighter camera and lens combo. I also recommend finding a lens with a wide focal range (for example: 18-200mm as opposed to the typical 18-55mm cheap kit lens).

In my experience, Nikon has better ergonomics. I’ve heard so many people say that “Nikon just feels better in my hands.” Many photographers also prefer the clicking sound that Nikon makes when the shutter is actuated – but I have a hard time recommending that as a key factor in picking a camera. I will say that the one ergonomic feature that I preferred on my Canon was the position of the exposure lock button. On my Nikon it is just a little too far to the left for my right thumb to naturally find it while I’m composing a shot. Otherwise, the Nikon excels in every category.

The Brand Wars

The world of professional photography equipment includes a religious war that rivals the Mac vs. PC debate. In the world of pro photography there are two players: Canon and Nikon. Sure Sony, Panasonic, Olympus, Pentax all make great equipment but they are the RC Cola in the Coke vs. Pepsi war. In The 22 Imutable Laws of Marketing (published 1993 and highly recommended) Al Ries and Jack Trout explain this concept:

Law 8: The Law of Duality. In the long run, every market becomes a two-horse race.

Early on, a new category is a ladder of many rungs. Gradually, the ladder becomes a two-rung affair.

In batteries, it’s Eveready and Duracell. In photographic film, it’s Kodak and Fuji. In rent-a-cars, it’s Hertz and Avis. In mouthwash, it’s Listerine and Scope. In hamburgers, it’s McDonald’s and Burger King. In sneakers, it’s Nike and Reebok. In toothpaste, it’s Crest and Colgate.

As a long-time user of both Canon and Nikon equipment I’m confident in saying that Canon is the PC and Nikon the Mac of the photography world. Canon is a much larger company with a much larger product line and until very recently they dominated the pro photography world. They surely still have more users but over the last two or three years Nikon has been eating away marketshare in a very noticeable way. One of the key indicators of which way the wind is blowing in the camera industry is the photographer line-up at major sporting events. Over the last few years you’ve been seeing far fewer light-grey telephoto lenses (Canon gear) and far more black telephoto lenses (Nikon gear). A quick web search will easily uncover examples of this. I believe that the only thing holding back more pro photographers from switching to Nikon is the enormous investment they’ve already made in Canon gear. A pro setup can easily run tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Switching brands for a professional can be far too expensive to justify the increase in quality and capabilities.

Why do I think Nikon is outperforming Canon right now? I’d say it’s two things: customer experience and quality.

Customer Experience

Canon is a much larger company than Nikon. They do much more than just photography. As a behemoth of a company I’ve found that they 1) tend to lack focus when it comes to customer experience and 2) aren’t very agile in responding to market demands. Nikon, on the other hand, is primarily focused on photography (they also have a big optics business for scientific equipment and such – which is closely related) and has demonstrated a particular skill for innovating, adapting to market demands, providing excellent resources and supplemental materials, and telling a better overall story.

As an example of how focused the two companies are on customer experience, take a look at their respective websites. Even better, visit usa.canon.com and nikonusa.com and just try to find their SLR product pages. Good luck with the Canon site…

In my opinion (I’ve been working on software for web development for the last nine years) Canon has one of the absolute worst product sites from a large company that I’ve ever seen. Not only does it look like a site designed in 1997 but it has horrible usability. Trying to find the product you’re looking for is ridiculously difficult and their navigation system is overly crowded and poorly organized.

Nikon’s site, on the other hand, is easy to navigate and provides well-organized information beyond simply product summaries but high-resolution image samples, tips, tutorials, etc.

I’ve always felt that a company’s website is a key indicator of how focused they are on customer experience – particularly when it’s a technology company.

Examples like this trickle through to product development, support, marketing, sales, etc. Over the last few years Nikon has continued to surpass Canon in their marketing efforts, customer resources, and innovative new product features (they were the first to add HD video recording to an SLR, for example). As a former customer of Canon’s and a current customer of Nikon, I can confidently say that Nikon provides a much better customer experience.

Quality

Both companies make great products. When it comes to quality and features both Canon and Nikon share a lot of similarities and you really can’t go wrong with either brand.

Recommended Equipment

I’ll break this into three categories: 1) Beginner kit 2) Enthusiast kit 3) Money doesn’t matter kit

Beginner kit

• Nikon D5000 with 18-55mm lens (approx $750) – Nikon’s latest camera with it’s latest-generation image sensor technology. This camera includes the capability to record HD video and has an innovative new LCD that flips down and allows you to shoot in unusual poses like holding the camera above your head or at your feet. The big selling point, however, is the image quality. It is fantastic.
• Nikon D60 with 18-55mm lens (approx $550) – only get this if you can’t afford the extra $200 for the D5000. The D60 is a great camera but it’s last-gen sensor technology and doesn’t perform as well as the D5000, particularly in low-light

Enthusiast kit

• Nikon D90 with the 18-200mm lens (approx $1000 + $700) – The D90 is a fantastic camera. It shoots HD video, has a fantastic image sensor that performs beautifully in low-light, feels great in your hands, and has a beautiful LCD viewfinder. The 18-200mm lens in fantastic. It offers a very wide focal range which is perfect for the traveler. I can literally carry this kit anywhere and get just about any shot I’m looking for.

Money doesn’t matter kit

• Nikon D700 with the 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, and 70-200mm f/2.8 lens ($$$) – The D700 is one of the best SLR cameras on the market. It is a full frame camera (no image crop from the 35mm size) and has the same image quality as Nikon’s flagship D3 – in a smaller and more easily-carried package. I have this camera and swear by it. The three lenses in this kit are about the best that you can get. They’re extremely sharp and have a constant f/2.8 aperture – which means they are FAST. This kit weighs a lot though so be prepared to carry a backpack with you.

Well, there you have it. Leave any questions or advice in the comments and I will try to respond ASAP.

I was just digging through presentations on SlideShare.net and found this presentation by Tony Hillerson, Software Architect at EffectiveUI Brightkite. I’ve been starting to dig into Android development lately as I plan to port an app that I’m building for the iPhone at some point in the future. I found Tony’s presentation to be a good, quick overview. Now I know what to expect.

Check it out…

Disclaimer: I spent nine years (2000 – 2009) working on Flash and AIR at Macromedia/Adobe and I am no longer an employee. I like to say I bleed Flash red. I strongly believe in the Flash Platform and what Adobe has done and continues to do with it. I was given a free conference pass by some old friends at Microsoft so I could go enjoy the conference and learn more about what they have been doing. I feel obligated to blog about my experience. As you’ll see below, I think Microsoft is doing some really interesting things that will grow this industry. I also think they are making some mistakes (just like everyone else). I do not work for Microsoft nor have I been paid to say anything nice about them.

Last week I attended Microsoft’s third annual MIX conference in Las Vegas, NV. The event kicked off with a keynote by Microft Research’s Principal Researcher, Bill Buxton, and Scott Guthrie, GM of Microsoft’s .NET Developer Division. Buxton’s presentation on the importance design was interesting (he gives off a crazy-genius-in-a-good-way vibe) but I couldn’t help but feel that it was a little out-of-place. In fact, Buxton seemed out-of-place. I could picture his talk fitting in nicely at FiTC or SxSW but it seemed forced into the MIX schedule. Watch the video and tell me if you agree (though you kind of had to be there). I’ll admit that it might just be me – since I’ve always thought of Microsoft in a “Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers…” sort of way.

I thought Guthrie’s (or “The Gu” as the Microsofties seem to take every opportunity to call him – I mean, man, that guy is worshipped like a nerd God up in Redmond) keynote was very well-executed. He seems to be getting much more comfortable with being on stage. His tone seemed less, “here’s what we want to do to take over this space” and more “we’re here, we’re confident, and here’s what we’re doing”. The main focus was on the upcoming release of Silverlight 3 and the tools supporting it.

Silverlight 3

The key takeaway for me was that Silverlight 3 is catching up to Flash Player 10’s most shiny features like support for pixel shaders, h.264 and 2.5D. The one feature that did stand out as innovative was an API that gives access to the audio and video data on the client. I’ve advocated for such a feature to be added to Flash Player since version 8 but the business team chose not to for reasons that I probably shouldn’t disclose publicly. Now that Silverlight has this feature I won’t be surprised if it shows up in a future version of the Flash Player. Microsoft also added a “Silverlight Out-of-Browser” feature that will allow a user to right-click on any Silverlight content and choose to make it a standalone app that runs in a sandbox. The gut reaction of many in the audience was likely that this new feature will compete directly with Adobe AIR. The fact, however, that these Silverlight apps will run in a sandbox with limited OS-level integration and access to the filesystem, as well as a lack of custom chrome and other AIR features, means that this makes Silverlight more competitive with products like Google Gears and Chrome.

A Microsoft developer relations rep, Scott Barnes, appeared to disagree via his twitter feed:

@mossyblog: heh just heard a funny remark – Adobe just lot its AIR when it comes to Out of Browser – #mix09 (sorry it was funny)

@mossyblog: smiling at @ryanstewart from Adobe’s Silverlight vs Adobe AIR post.. he has more to learn me thinks #mix09

Others on twitter had similar impressions:

@dboynton: Watching Silverlight 3 running outside the browser. Will this kill Adobe AIR? It’s looking pretty damn good. #mix09

@imhassan: It’s on! Siliverlight vs. Adobe ‘Memory Hog’ Air!! #MIX09

@jorden112: Silverlight 3 running out of browser. Big announcement! Been waiting a while for that. Adobe AIR who? #mix09

I think this is a big part of Microsoft’s strategy. It works to their benefit when developers, designers, press, pundits, analysts, etc, mistakenly compare Silverlight to Adobe AIR. Why? Because it takes the attention off of the fact that Silverlight is fighting an up hill battle against the most-distributed piece of software in the history of the Web, the Flash Player, which has 98% penetration. Instead of people talking about how Silverlight compares to Flash Player, they’re talking about how it compares to Adobe’s new and much less dominant rich client. It’s a smart move if you ask me.

Overall, I think Silverlight 3 looks pretty good. I’m most impressed by how much Microsoft seems to have accomplished in such a short time. However, as my former Adobe colleagues pointed out, they had a pretty good blueprint to follow. :)

For a very good overview of all of the new Silverlight details, check out Microsoft Evangelist Tim Heuer’s blog.

Web Platform Installer 2

One of the most interesting announcements in the keynote was the Web Platform Installer 2. I think this is freakin’ brilliant. I mean this single offering probably best-illustrates Microsoft’s biggest advantage in waging it’s war on it’s competition in the rich media space.

In one click you can have Visual Studio and Silverlight Tools installed, IIS7 configured, Smooth Streaming enabled, etc. That’s right – a single installer gives you everything from clients to tools to servers – including the configuration of all three. I don’t think I need to say much more. This is huge. Adobe, take note.

Microsoft’s Tim Heuer has a good overview of Web Platform Installer 2 as well.

Expression Tools

Microsoft also announced (and former Macromedia Evangelist turned Microsoft Evangelist Jon Harris demoed in the keynote) new versions of their Expression Blend and Expression Web aimed at designers. Harris showed Expression Blend 3 (formerly known as Sparkle, Expression Interactive Designer, and probably a few other names) and a new feature called SketchFlow which allows designers to rapidly sketch out application prototypes. The demo was very impressive but I have to say that I was confused by the presentation and thought SketchFlow was a seperate product. I later clarified with a Microsoft rep that it is actually a feature of Blend. A trojan horse, if you will. What do I mean? Well, if Microsoft wants to get more designers to give Blend a try (something I doubt they’re having much luck with already) why not build in a feature that makes UX designers drool? Very smart. Very smart indeed.

They showed some other features of Blend 3, none of which come to memory. Here is a summary done by InformationWeek that might fill in the gaps.

The other Expression tool on display was Expression Web – which is their HTML WYSIWYG authoring tool. It had a few cool features, all but one of which I have forgotten. They showed a feature they call “SuperPreview” which lets you easily overlay the same HTML page as viewed in multiple browsers (versions, platforms, etc) on top of one another so you can easily identify inconsistencies between renderings – and fix them. This was a cool feature that commanded “oohs” and “ahhhs” from the audience. It stuck out in my mind because I remember the Adobe Dreamweaver team showing off something just like this in the “Sneaks” session at the Adobe MAX conference last year. I’m not sure if it was the same feature, but it sure reminded me of it.

Which leads to my concluding remarks about the conference as a whole.

Take-aways

I couldn’t help but recall a particular episode of South Park several times throughout the conference: episode 7 from season 6, “The Simpsons Already Did It”. In the episode the supporting character “Butters” decides to rebel against the social group that ostracized him by plotting evil deeds. The only problem was that The Simpsons had already done all of these deeds in previous episodes. While watching the features of Silverlight 3, Blend 3, and Web 3, I couldn’t help but focus on the fact that most of them had already been done in the Flash world. Sure, there were several things shown that were new, innovative, and promising. But as a guy who has been laser-focused on Flash for nine years, the “catch up” features stood out to me.

But here’s the thing – who cares? Does it matter that most of the new Silverlight features have already been done in Flash Player? Only if you’re religious about either technology (which I am). If you’re someone who is looking to deliver a great rich media experience you now have more than one option. Silverlight doesn’t really need to be that much better than Flash Player. Microsoft won’t win this war by out innovating the Flash Player team. They’ll win it through developer tools, integration with servers and services, and most of all through their exceptional ability to partner with their customers. I have heard so many customers tell me how great it is to partner with Microsoft.

Now, is it working for Microsoft? Well, I eagerly awaited the Silverlight success stories to be marched out on stage one after the other. They’ve been at it for a few years after all. And it’s no secret that Microsoft has dumped a lot of money into getting some high profile Silverlight projects out on the market (as has Adobe done with AIR, although I’m pretty confident that it had nowhere near the budget). When it came time to bring out the big customers who did I see? Netflix. Again.

“Isn’t their CEO on the Microsoft Board of Directors?” said a friend of mine sitting next to me during the keynote. Yes, Microsoft trotted out the Netflix CEO again to remind us, again, that Netflix uses Silverlight. Only this time he said something that I don’t recall hearing him say in previous MIX keynotes. He told the audience that Netflix chose Silverlight because it was the only solution for securely streaming video to the Mac. That was true at the time that the deployed it. Flash Player has since implemented similar features in conjunction with the Flash Media Server. So, ok, that’s a good justification. Last year MLB.com took the stage at MIX and said something similar. Of course, since then they have switched back to Flash.

Ok, Netflix is a success story. Who else? I’m sitting there thinking to myself, “it can’t be the Olympics again…” And yes, it was.

And that was it.

Now, these are both very compelling use cases for Silverlight. Great success stories. But why weren’t there any new ones? I spent my last six months at Adobe doing nothing but finding great success stories for AIR and Flash Player 10 as part of the Lighthouse team. As a result we showcased applications from DirecTV, Fox News, eBay, FedEx, Mini, Mercedes, Atlantic Records, AOL, Nasdaq, Nick.com, NY Times (ShifD), SlideRocket, and many more. Where are the Silverlight success stories? Microsoft needs to get on top of this – and quick. That was a big let down for me.

So, in short, I think Microsoft has made a lot of progress. I think their developer story is awesome. I think their platform integration story is unmatched. I think their efforts to attract designers to their platform are failing. None of the sessions I attended gave me any inclination that Microsoft had made much progress on this front. The Bill Buxton keynote presentation came off to me like, “Hey! Hey designers! Microsoft gets you! We employ cool designers just like you! Look! We’ve hired like 700 of them over the last few years! We get you!” without much in the way of readily available solutions to make designers any more productive in the RIA production workflow than they are today – with the exception of SketchFlow.

I also walked away with a strong impression that Microsoft is definitely in it to win it. I was skeptical considering the lack of Silverlight adoption and my assumption that the Expression tools were not doing so well either. I’m still not sure if either of these two points has changed much but the tone of MIX was loud and clear – they are dedicated to providing a better solution for building rich media solutions. In the end, I think the entire industry will benefit from the “battle” between Microsoft, Adobe, Google, and everyone else. If Microsoft out-does Adobe, Adobe will work harder and build better software. The opposite is also true. We all win.

Learn more

• Watch the Day 1 keynote here and Day 2 keynote here (Requires Silverlight 2).
• Watch the humorous opening video introducing Scott Guthrie (Note the jab at Flash when “The Gu’s” handler yells “No Flash!” at the paparrazi)

OK, ok, that new year’s resolution didn’t last long, did it? Well, the truth is, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to move this blog to my new hosting provider, Squarespace. I decided to delay blogging until I got everything moved over so I didn’t have to deal with changes in the interim data following my original import of this blogs history into their system. Unfortunately this has been taking me WAY longer than I expected because I’ve been heavily distracted by dusting off my C programming skills (circa 1996) to learn iPhone development.

Long story short, the dailies will be back and better than ever. I promise. I have about ten posts in mind that I can’t wait to write. But I want to give them the amount of attention they deserve. Please stay tuned.

*Note: I’ve decided to stop using the “DAILY:” prefix on my daily posts because using the category “DAILY” seems a lot smarter.

While spending hours going through her MP3 collection and consolidating all of her music from various external hard drives onto her laptop, my lovely fiancée Liana realized that she was quickly running out of space on the 160GB hard drive on her MacBook. When I started digging around for an upgrade I found that NewEgg (a great place to get low-price computer equipment) was offering a Seagate Momentus 320GB, 7,200rpm, 2.5″ hard drive for US$99. This is an outstanding price for an outstanding hard drive. I spoke with my close friend and Mac guru Brian (twitter.com/btn) and he said it was the same drive that he put in his brand new MacBook Pro. 

Installing the upgrade was MUCH easier than the brain surgery I had to perform on my old 12″ PowerBook G4 several years ago (I had to remove almost every single screw in that %$#&’ing computer!). I followed the directions on Macinstruct which started with a full backup using “SuperDuper!” (which was free). The only catch was that I had gone to the hardware store and purchased a T6 Torx Screwdriver when I really needed a T8 Torx Screwdriver. So that was a bit annoying.

After the install I fired her up, installed Leopard, and transferred her data back over. The speed difference between the two hard drives is noticeable and I highly recommend the upgrade. Having all that extra space is pretty nice as well.

I spent a few hours with Liana, Brian, and Kyle today wondering around the show floor of the Moscone Center at Macworld Expo 2009 (which will probably be the last Macworld). There weren’t a whole lot of interesting new things but I was able to compile a list of a few products that I thought were pretty cool.

• Sling Media, makers of the SlingBox, was showing off an upcoming SlingPlayer Mobile client for the iPhone. The SlingBox allows users to stream video from their DVR/Cable/Satellite boxes at home. 
• Apple announced the new 17″ MacBook Pro with an integrated (non-removable) super-battery that gets up to 8 hrs of run time!
• Apple also announced iPhoto ‘09 as part of the new iLife ‘09 suite with support for face recognition, geo-tagging, Flickr and Facebook integration, enhanced editing and a few other cool new features.
• Ambrosia Soft was demonstrating iToner, an application that allows you to easily make your own custom ringtones for you iPhone using regular audio files. 
• Booq bags, one of my favorite bag/laptop case makers, was showing one of their recent releases, the Python Pack, which comes with an integrated carrying case for a full-size dSLR and lens as well as a bunch of extra space and room for a 13-15″ laptop. This would be a fantastic bag for the road warrior who has to carry a lot of equipment and enjoys lugging his bulky dSLR around the world.
• Picked up an awesome, ultra, ultra-slim “feather” case for my iPhone 3G from INCIPIO. They also had the nicest iPhone/iPod accessories booth at the show with the most friendly, helpful staff (in my opinion). 
• Topaz Labs was showing a very cool Photoshop plugin called Topaz Adjust that does a brilliant job of expanding the dynamic range of a photo without the need for multiple shots at different exposures. Basically, it’s like doing HDR imaging with a single exposure. The demo was freakin’ cool!
• I can’t find their website, which is weird, but a company called Grandmax was showing off some really cool, tiny, portable speakers for your laptop, MP3 player, phone, or other audio device called Grandmax Tweakers Miniboom Speakers. I came very close to buying these but they had no show special price so I decided to wait. 
• Shure audio had one of the most impressive booths at the show with very helpful booth staff who were letting people try out their product line of premium earbud headphones. I’ve been using their products for years and am convinced that they are the best. At the show they were promoting an upcoming release due in March called the SE 115 (which is their entry-level buds). They sounded great compared to other buds in the $99 range. I’m still very happy with my Shure E550 PTH phones.
• Checked out a desktop utility called TuneUp which cleans up your iTunes library by fixing song titles that are misspelled or have weird characters in them, adds missing track details, etc. The one thing it doesn’t yet do, which is the one thing that I’m looking for, is remove duplicates from your library. According to the company spokesperson, this is very difficult because many people have multiple versions of the same tracks (live performances, remixes, special versions, etc) and their software will have to be smart enough to figure out the differences. He did say they plan to release the functionality some time this year though.
• Finally, Joby, the makers of the Gorillapod camera tripod have ventured into a completely new neighborhood and released a Bluetooth headset called the Zivio Boom. I was skeptical of a company venturing into a completely new area like this but the spokesperson assured me that their founder is a brilliant mad scientist and he just builds stuff that he wants. So, we checked it out and it actually seemed like a really nicely made headset. 

I highly recommend all of these books.

Essential ActionScript 3.0 – Colin Moock

Learning ActionScript 3.0: A beginner’s guide – Rich Shupe and Zevan Rosser

Head First PHP & MySQL - Lynn Beighley and Michael Morrison

Programming Flex 3 – Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott

Adobe Flex 3 Training from the Source - Jeff Tapper, Michael Labriola, Matthew Boles, James Talbot

PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide - Larry Ullman

Scott Kelby’s 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3

The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Book for Digital Photographers – Scott Kelby

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery – Garr Reynolds

UPDATE:

I have to add another book to the list. This one was written by two very good friends of mine: Greg Rewis and Stephanie Sullivan. Though I haven’t read it yet because they haven’t sent me a copy (*ahem*) I know it has to be an excellent resource for anyone working with CSS. Greg taught me almost everything I know about Evangelism as he and I have traveled all over the world together since 2000 talking about Dreamweaver, Flash, AIR, and other Macromedia/Adobe tools. He knows more about Dreamweaver than anybody I know. Stef is an expert in all things CSS, HTML, web standards, etc.

I was reading Kevin Rose’s blog and learned about Squarespace, the web hosting company that hosts his blog and sponsors the popular weekly video podcast Diggnation. Upon checking out their offering I was quite blown away by the content management system, blogging platform, and in-browser WYSIWYG design tools. This is a hosting provider unlike anything I’ve seen. I signed up for a free 14-day trial and spent hours playing around with the admin tools. Simply awesome.

I’m probably going to be signing up for service this week and moving this domain over there. I’ve already pre-paid for my current hosting service with Dreamhost (which isn’t bad, but just doesn’t offer the premium services that Squaresoft does). 

If you’re using one of the popular blogging platforms you might want to take a look at Squarespace. You can sign up for a free 14-day trial and play around. I was able to import my WordPress blog really quickly and easily.