Adobe is accepting submissions to the 2006 Adobe Digital Video and Audio Customer Reel. We’re also going to allow Flash users to submit their Flash work for the contest. More below.

Adobe invites you to submit your work for possible inclusion in the 2006 Adobe Digital Video and Audio Customer Reel. This is a chance to showcase the work you produce using Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Encore DVD, Adobe Audition, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and other Adobe products. We want to see your work and show it to others in the industry so they can see how creative you are — and see the possibilities of Adobe’s Digital Video and Audio products.
Get great exposure

Adobe will introduce the reel at SIGGRAPH in Boston this August. Over the next year Adobe will also present the reel at tradeshows (including IBC and NAB), seminars, and industry events worldwide. This reel also proudly plays in the lobby of Adobe’s headquarters — reminding all that some of the coolest products at Adobe are the ones that make images move.

If you are able to grant us the additional right to distribute your materials as part of the Reel for the purpose of promoting Adobe products and services, your work may reach an even wider audience!

More info here:
http://www.adobe.com/motion/customerreel.html

Scott Byer, an engineer on the Photoshop team, has written a nice post on the challenges involved with moving to xcode and the universal binary. He also explains why it wouldn’t make sense for Adobe to spend a tremendous amount of time moving the current CS2 release to universal binary when we really need the time to get the CS3 release right for our customers. The same is true on the Flash team.

Now, I’m an engineer, and I’m all for getting products out in front of customers so they can use their machines to their fullest as soon as possible, but there is just no way putting out a Universal Binary of Photoshop CS2 would make any sort of sense. If you think about switching tool sets, with the resulting huge amount of work for both engineering and quality engineering, if you think about how far past the Photoshop CS2 release we already are, and if you include not having the workstation-class machines ready yet, I think you’d have to agree – far better to focus on making sure Photoshop CS3 is able to absolutely squeeze every ounce of power out of what I’m sure will be pretty spankin’ Intel-based towers by that point than to do tons of work moving an old code base to new tools.

Read Scott’s post here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/scottbyer/2006/03/macintosh_and_t.html

Mike Chambers and I returned last night from Microsoft’s MIX06 conference in Las Vegas. We had a great time hanging out with all of the Flash users that were flown out and put up in order to see what Microsoft has been working on. I also enjoyed learning more about Microsoft’s upcoming creative tools and their Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) platform. Of particular interest to me were the sessions dedicated to explaining WPF/E (E = Everywhere, according to the PMs). WPF/E will be a stripped-down subset of the full WPF which will only be available for Win XP and Win Vista. It will be Microsoft’s browser plugin that will allow Windows developers to move subsets of their WPF apps into the browser and deploy to other platforms (including Mac and Linux via plugins developed by third-parties, according to the product team).

Microsoft had been quiet about the details of their plans for WPF/E until this week so I was very curious to hear what it would include. The Product Managers and Program Managers told the audience that WPF/E would not include hardware acceleration, 3D support, or DRM for video in its first release – for example.

For more details on the conference you can read Robert Reinhardt’s take: http://blogs.flashsupport.com/robert/archive/2006/03/23/595.aspx

You’ll notice Robert’s comment about many of the Flash developers enjoying the Xbox tournament that Mike and I set up. It was a blast. Kudos to Guy Watson who took first place in the Halo 2 tournament followed closely by Grant Skinner! If you were at the conference and didn’t get to attend be sure to come find us next time. We opened it up to anyone who wanted to come have some fun with us.

I just figured out where the IE7 beta site is and noticed that they were using Flash for a simple intro animation to the site. The SWF doesn’t appear to really do much other than zip some text across the screen but it does make for a slightly more engaging experience than a static screen.

In any case, IE7 looks pretty slick. I’ve been an avid Firefox user since it was released but, after playing with IE7 at the Microsoft Mix 06 conference this week, I’m fairly impressed. I may end up switching (on my PC anyways) if it ends up being stable, secure, and fast like Firefox.

Then again, I’m so attached to my Firefox extensions that it would be tough to switch.

Get IE7 beta here.