This is part question and part rant. I’ve been doing a huge number of meetings in SF, NYC, and Boston over the last three weeks and I’ve been stunned by how few people have projectors in their conference rooms. I’ve been to major technology companies, publications, and analyst firms and almost none of them had projectors. Why is this? I’m trying to figure this puzzle out. At Macromedia we have projectors built in to every conference room - complete with touch screen controls and motorized screens. Are we that unique? I can’t remember the last time that I was in a meeting at Macromedia HQ that didn’t require use of the projector.

On a related note, my team purchased the new Infocus LP120 super-light-weight projector for use on this tour. Wow - this thing is amazing! It’s so small yet incredibly powerful. I highly recommend it. And it’s cheap too - I believe it was only around $1500.

In any case, please share your thoughts on the whole projector thing. It really caught me by surprise. I’ve visited with thousands of customers over the years and never noticed this before.

One of my favorite interactive agencies, Fantasy Interactive, the brains behind fordvehicles.com, Road Runner High-Speed Online, and a variety of other big name sites has just announced plans to open their first office in the US. This may be due, in part, to their recent announcement that they are working more closely with AOL Time-Warner.

Press release:

Fantasy Interactive expands to New York

FI opens new office in the Big Apple

Stockholm, Sweden June 13, 2005 - Interactive design and development company, Fantasy Interactive, have now confirmed that they will be unveiling a new office in the U.S. during the summer. This August, 2005, marks the arrival of FI in New York which signifies a great landmark for the company.

With most of the current clients in the U.S. already, the expansion was a long awaited event and Fantasy Interactive looks forward to working closer with their current clients such as Road Runner, Time Warner, Ford/JWT, Microsoft and AOL as well as starting up new exciting projects with a variety of clients on American soil.

As the company is expanding, Fantasy Interactive are now hiring for both the New York and the Stockholm office. They are looking for ambitious, passionate and talented people to strengthen the team in the departments of technology, design and development. For more details check out http://www.fantasy-interactive.com.

JD’s post caught my attention. It led to an article on news.com indicating that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is going to announce plans to transition their hardware to the Intel platform during his keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference this week.

I’m not sure if this is true, but it sure is interesting news. I would LOVE to have a PowerBook that was even half as fast as my Centrino Thinkpad. My 1.6GHz G4 17″ PowerBook doesn’t even compare to my 1.7GHz ThinkPad T42p - and I’ve been spending a lot of time lately comparing the performance of the two machines.

While I’m at it, what is up with Quicktime 7 performance on the Mac? (I know, I know, Flash Player is slow on the Mac too, and we’re working really hard to speed it up for the next release). I have QTPro and downloaded a few 720p HD movie trailers and NONE of them play back at full frame rates! I’ve tried shutting down all apps before launching QTPro 7, but it still plays horribly. To be fair, it could be something wrong with my PowerBook. I have bad Mac kharma… But I still love my PowerBook, slow as it is.

One of the lesser-known new features of Photoshop CS2 is the Flash Web Photo Gallery wizard.

It lets you produce some very nice Flash-based photo galleries using a simple dialog launched from Photoshop. To access it, go to “File > Automate > Web Photo Gallery…” and choose “Flash - Gallery 1″ or “Flash - Gallery 2″ from the “Styles” drop down.

Adobe has now posted the source files for these templates so Flash users can customize them.

Download the source FLAs here:
Mac: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2960
Win: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2961

Macromedia announced that they will be working with Qualcomm to bring Flash support to Qualcomm’s BREW platform
for mobile devices.

According to Macromedia’s EVP and GM of Mobile and Devices, Al Ramadan, “Delivering Flash content and applications on BREW will help us achieve our mission to provide a solution that supports the development of a new generation of creative, innovative and visually stunning content, communications, and applications.”

The popular BREW platform is currently deployed on a wide variety of handsets around the world and is often used for building advanced applications like high-end games.

From the press release:

San Diego and San Francisco - June 3, 2005 - QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM) and Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) today announced an agreement under which Macromedia may distribute Flash-based mobile applications developed using the BREW solution. With more than 98 percent penetration on Internet-connected desktop computers and more than 30 million Flash-enabled devices shipping, Flash enables the delivery of rich content, applications, and communications across all platforms. In addition to the agreement, Macromedia has signed on as an Elite member of the BREW Alliance Program.