Not too long ago I thought very seriously about posting a rant on the downside of having knowledgeable staff at retail electronics stores. My specific case-in-point was my 30 min wait in line at an Apple store while watching a short line of people have 5 - 10 min tech support conversations with the cashiers instead of just handing over their credit card and getting the heck out of my way.

I got over it.

Today I ventured out to my favorite Apple Store with the goal of acquiring a gift for a family member. I was pleasantly shocked to find an army of Apple Store employees walking around with wireless PDAs from Symbol complete with credit card readers. As I dodged through crowds of wandering people I was stopped by an employee in a red Apple shirt who asked if I were looking to purchase anything with a credit card and, if so, whether I would be willing to receive my receipt via email.

That sounded pretty good to me, considering the line for the cashiers wrapped around the store. I told her exactly what I wanted, she went and grabbed it, swiped my credit card, and 5 mins later I received my receipt via email on my Treo.

Now that’s digital progress!

I was so happy with my retail shopping experience at the Apple Store that I’ll resist ranting on the fact that I really wanted to try out Aperture running on a Dual Dual-core G5 but couldn’t because every damn demo machine in the store was occupied by an 18-year-old kid checking his/her personal webmail. So much for the “come in and experience a Mac for yourself” theory. It’s more of a “come in and mooch off of our free internet access while pissing off the people who came in wanting to try out the products before buying them.”

I’ll also resist a rant that came to mind after a recent trip to the Apple London retail store where I tried to find a seat in the audience of the Apple demo theater but couldn’t because every seat was filled with a wireless moocher checking their webmail and surfing on their own personal PC laptops!!! That’s right, PC users walked right into the store, went up the pretty glass stairway, grabbed a comfortable seat in the Theater while some poor shmo tried to give a demo of Final Cut Pro to 50 people who weren’t paying a single moment of attention to him.

Yeah, I’ll avoid those rants… for now…
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

This is a really cool site. The guys and gals at Big Spaceship have been doing a fantastic job of putting some of the new features of Flash Player 8 to work to build a very engaging experience for Sony Pictures upcoming flick Underworld Evolution.

I believe the only remaining component to the site that hasn’t been launched yet is the game. I just received an invite to the beta so I’ll have to check it out and let you know what I think.

It looks like they have also recently released their second Flash Player 8-based site for the upcoming movie Wolf Creek. It’s a great use of video. Check it out.

It started as a, “I think I’ll change the background color of my blog while I’m in here posting something…” and ended up filling up a good portion of my Sunday afternoon.

Using Dreamweaver 8 I clumsily figured out these whacky CSS rules and made my site look more “Flash-like”. Fireworks also came in handy as I tried to tie in the sexy new red box design that you see in the banner.

I also revived the cool Flash cartoon that the guys and gals at Nectarine made for all of us who spoke at MXDU 2004.

I’m sure it could use some more tweaking but I have spent enough time on this for one day.

I was just browsing through the portfolio of the interactive agency Zugara and found a long list of great Flash sites that they’ve built for Reebok. After exploring RBK.com I found this cool build-your-own shoe site called rbkcustom.com. I’m not sure if it was also built by Zugara.

UPDATE: The rbkcustom.com site was built by the masterful designers and developers at FLUID. Thanks, Daniel.

This is a well designed site. I had a great time designing my own shoe (shown above) - inspired by my favorite sports team, the “struggling” San Francisco 49ers. The best part was that it only cost me $85 (plus shipping and tax) for a totally custom shoe.

Approachable, fun, and intuitive customization is the ultimate consumer experience. I love it. I’d even pay more for it…

From the Studio team:

For those who may have missed this information due to the acquisition completion, we wanted to make sure our customers know about some changes in the upgrade pricing and policies for Studio 8.

Effective December 31, 2005, there will be pricing increases and policy changes for certain customers regarding Studio 8 upgrades. We encourage anyone thinking of purchasing Studio 8 upgrade to review the information below and take advantage of the existing pricing before December 31, 2005. After this date, adjusted pricing for upgrading to Studio 8 will be as follows:

- Any past commercial Studio customer can upgrade to Studio 8 for $399.

- Any past commercial customer who own both Dreamweaver (any version) and Flash (any version excluding Flash Basic) can upgrade to Studio 8 for $399.

- Any past commercial Dreamweaver customer can purchase the Studio 8 upgrade for $799.

- Any past commercial Flash customer (excluding Flash Basic) can purchase the Studio 8 upgrade for $599.

- Any past commercial Fireworks or FreeHand customer wishing purchase Studio 8 upgrade cannot do so, and must purchase a full new Studio 8 license at $999.

Pricing for brand new product licenses or point product upgrades will not be changing. Full details can be found at http://www.macromedia.com/software/studio/special/intropricing/policy.html.

If you haven’t upgraded to Studio 8 yet, now is a great time to take advantage of the current pricing before it ends December 31, 2005. Buy the upgrade at www.macromedia.com/go/upgradetostudio) or at your preferred reseller (http://www.macromedia.com/buy/).

I’ve had several people ask me if there were any changes to the Flash team since our merge with Adobe completed and I’m happy to say that everything is pretty much business as usual in our group. I turned in my paperwork yesterday so I’m an official Adobe employee now. I must admit that it still feels a little weird to say that but at least more people will recognize my employer when they ask me who I work for (you know, the Photoshop/PDF/Acrobat/Flash company!).
I’ve also found that my new colleagues are really great, passionate people who have a lot of the same great characteristics of the former Macromedians. I think this is all going to work out really nicely.

We’re working hard on Blaze so keep that feedback coming.

Thanks everyone!

Mike Downey
Product Manager, Flash | Adobe Systems

It’s nice to see my favorite news destination, CNN, using Flash on their home page now. It’s a well-designed Flash “widget” that allows users to browse through a dynamic playlist of video content.

I can only give it a score of 7 out of 10 because, after clicking a link, it pops up a window and shows me this:

This is telling me that I need to upgrade to Windows Media 9 in order to watch video. I have two problems with this: the video is in Windows Media format and not Flash :-), and I already have Windows Media 10 installed.

Simple fix? Switch to Flash video and integrate the video playback into the playlist widget. This way nobody has to leave the home page, no windows need to pop up, and no 13.3MB video players need to be downloaded. Oh, and then you get a 10 out of 10.

Adobe released the new Motion Design Center today. There’s already some fantastic content posted up there including an article called the “Animator’s Tookit” written by Chris Georgenes. His article talks about animation using Flash and After Effects together.

I also enjoyed the article written by Garrett Nantz from Big Spaceship focusing on “How Interactivity and Storytelling Sell a Movie.” Big Spaceship designs interactive websites for some of the biggest movie releases in Hollywood and Garrett describes how they approach each project and how they maximize the content for the audience.

The Motion Design Center features the following sections:

Gallery

More than ever, motion matters — especially for capturing and communicating ideas with simplicity and power. What moves you? For the artists featured on these pages, the answers are just a click away.

Think Tank

More than ever, motion matters — especially for capturing and communicating ideas with simplicity and power. What moves you? For the artists featured on these pages, the answers are just a click away.

Dialog Box

Discover, discuss, and share new ideas in design with experts from the community. In addition, be sure to check out the Resource Center and the Macromedia.com Developer Center for even more great ideas.