This is just for fun. I found this on Techcrunch. I went and took the quiz. Here are my results.

Your results:
You are Iron Man
Inventor. Businessman. Genius.

Iron Man: 80%
Green Lantern: 80%
Superman: 65%
Spider-Man: 60%
Hulk: 60%
Catwoman: 55%
The Flash: 55%
Supergirl: 52%
Batman: 45%
Wonder Woman: 37%
Robin: 29%

Click here to take the “Which Superhero am I?” quiz…

I’ve been reading a lot of stories lately about platforms. Microsoft is preparing for its big consumer launch of Vista. Apple is slowly reminding us that Leopard is on it’s way. The operating system wars have continued for years - but, there seems to be something different going on.

I keep hearing about people switching to the Mac. It started with all of my friends and family. Then I started seeing more and more MacBook Pros around the office. When I would go to user conferences I’d see more and more presenters and attendees using Mac laptops. Yet another friend emailed me this morning asking if I thought he should switch to a MacBook. Now I’m seeing a lot of the influential bloggers talking about buying MacBook Pros (Thomas Hawk, Robert Scoble, Om Malik, to name a few).

I’ve been a dual-platform guy for the last seven years that I’ve been at Macromedia/Adobe, but my primary machine was always a PC. I always felt drawn to the Mac but the realities of my work prevented me from doing so full-time. When I was an evangelist I couldn’t use a Mac full-time because it couldn’t run all of the servers that I needed for demo purposes (no longer true). When I moved to product management, I found myself a slave to Outlook and OneNote. Sure, there were Mac alternatives but none that were nearly as good. Being on an Exchange server limits your options - if calendaring is important to you (Entourage sucks!).

The big event that changed it all for me and most of the people I know was the move to the Intel platform and resulting capability to run Windows inside Mac OS X via virtual machines like Parallels. Apple also introduced BootCamp, which allowed users to install Windows on their Macs using a boot manager. I never bothered with that because I only really needed Windows for running Office (mostly Outlook and PowerPoint) and doing an occasional demo of the Windows version of Flash - which Parallels is ideal for.

Once the Intel-based MacBook Pros came out and I was able to get Parallels up and running I placed my Thinkpad T43p in it’s docking station, locked it up, and didn’t touch it for about six months. It wasn’t until two weeks ago that I decided to fire it up and install Windows Vista on it. I figured I should get familiar with Vista and I knew that I’d have to show off our software running (quite nicely) on Vista - and it doesn’t run so well in Parallels, due to the lack of hardware acceleration (meaning I’d miss all of the pretty Aero UI in Vista).

After kicking the tires with Windows Vista for a few weeks I must say that it’s pretty nice. They’ve added a lot of nice features. Of course a lot of stuff doesn’t work yet (like my VPN client) but that was expected. I like the new UI, application switching, and the improvements to the Windows Explorer. However, I’ve gotta say that I haven’t yet found anything that really blew me away. The little dashboard widget thing on the desktop never really did it for me - including Dashboard in Mac OS X.

It will be interesting to see how well Vista does in 2007. It seems to me that a key element will be whether any of the bazillions of PC manufacturers will ever get a clue and build better hardware. The closest thing to PC “sex appeal” has consistently came from Sony. Sure, there’s the Acer Ferrari notebooks and the brightly-colored AlienWare laptops, but they seem kind of gimicky and juvenile to me (though the AlienWare special edition Superman laptop is pretty cool, uh, and juvenile. :-). Not the sophisticated aesthetics that Apple does so well.

The platform wars will continue but I really think Apple’s made a lot of progress in 2006. My hope is that their momentum continues and we’ll all benefit from more diversity and options among PCs. The better Apple does, the harder Microsoft has to work to make Vista even better (and the opposite is true). In the end, we all benefit.

Of course, the more diversity among operating systems, the more important it will be for developers to have access to a cross-platform run-time that allows them to build desktop applications using standard web technologies - while expecting a consistent user experience to all of their users, regardless of the platform that they choose…

(You were waiting for the connection back to Apollo, weren’t you? Hah!)

UPDATE: Heh. I just found this “review” of Vista by New York Times writer David Pogue. I hadn’t noticed the things that he points out, but he has a point. Of course, keep in mind that Pogue has been a long-time Macintosh zealot, so his point-of-view is a bit biased.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6YO30GhmQ

We finally got my old position (well, my future old position, as soon as it gets filled) posted on our jobs site. Though we’ve identified several strong candidates internally, we’re very interested in interviewing external candidates as well. This is a very important role so we want to make sure we find the best possible candidate.

Would you like to lead the planning for the next version of Flash? Would you like to help shape the future of the Flash business? Do you think you’d make a great spokesperson for the Flash platform? If so, visit our jobs site and apply online. Also, if you don’t think you meet the requirements outlined in the job posting but you still think you’d make a great product manager, I encourage you to go ahead and send in your resume. I’ve found that the ‘requirements’ in job postings like this are rarely very rigid.

Position Summary:

As a member of the Adobe Dynamic Media product management team, the Senior Product Manager for the Flash business is a key member of the team responsible for the business success of Flash and contributes strongly to the growth for the overall dynamic media business.

As part of the Flash Professional product management team this person’s responsibilities include determining the product roadmap, authoring the market and product requirement documents, managing the product lifecycle, and leading a cross-functional team to bring these features to market. The senior product manager is also responsible for the business success; guiding pricing, distribution, competitive positioning, representing the product to customers and press, and helping Flash drive growth for Production Studio and the broader creative tools business.

As a senior leader in the dynamic media business unit, this person will also be expected to contribute to the broader success of the business unit including playing an active role in strategy and business planning, and using their expertise in motion, interactivity and compositing to help develop new opportunities.

Knowledge & Skills:

The ideal candidate will have five or more years experience in the Flash marketplace and rich media product marketing. They should have an in-depth understanding of the Flash community, and be as comfortable describing ActionScript advantages as discussing designer workflows and approaches. They should understand the broad market opportunities for Flash, and have detailed knowledge of multiple segments that Flash is used in. An overall rich media, motion or video technology background and knowledge of mobile and device markets is a distinct advantage. Business management, pricing sales and marketing knowledge and experience highly valued.

Prior experience in software product management essential. Strong written and verbal communication skills. Must have a strong track record of successfully bringing products to market and working with cross functional teams. A BA/BS degree in a technical field or equivalent experience is required, and an MBA is preferred.

By the way, Adobe has been consistently rated among the top 20 companies (mostly recently number 13) in the country to work for. It’s a great place to work!

Apply now.

Since support for Ajax techniques is a very important component of the Apollo run-time, I’ve been spending a lot of my free time getting more familiar with Ajax. While digging around for good examples of Ajax at work, I found Kayak.com, a very cool “Web 2.0″ site that lets you search for flights, hotels, rental cars, etc. I could imagine a company like Kayak building a desktop app with Apollo that combines much of their existing functionality with tools for frequent travelers, including things that travelers may want access to while offline (on a flight, for example).

Kayak is a travel search engine. We help people like you find travel products from travel suppliers all over the world. This means a better travel search experience, more complete search results and best of all, savings for you every day. If you use Kayak for your travel planning, you are going to save time and money.

Kayak is an excellent example (some would say the poster child) for Web 2.0. We are considered a meta-search engine and that means our website searches hundreds of other websites in real time for the best travel deals available. Kayak lets you look at a full range of airlines, hotels and car rental agencies quickly and efficiently based on the exact criteria you select. We have put a lot of thought into the design of our website, and it has won accolades from consumers and the press alike (2006 Forbes Best of the Web for example) because of its simple, straightforward design and ease of use. Building a better travel search product is what we are about here at Kayak.

TIME.com has posted their list of the top 50 coolest websites.

How do we select our finalists? We evaluate hundreds of candidates—some suggested by readers, colleagues and friends, others discovered during countless hours of surfing. Many of this year’s choices are shining examples of Web 2.0: next-generation sites offering dynamic new ways to inform and entertain, sites with cutting-edge tools to create, consume, share or discuss all manners of media, from blog posts to video clips.

Aral Balkan (and others) pointed out that the Nintendo Wii now supports Flash Player 7 via their release of the Opera browser for Nintendo Wii, currently in beta (trial version) and planned for final release in March of 2007 (press release).

WiiNintendo.net offers web design guidelines for the Wii browser

So, to summarize the Flash presence on modern gaming systems:
- Nintendo Wii [check]
- Playstation 3 [check]
- Playstation Portable (PSP) [check]
- Xbox 360 (special embedded version developed by MSFT) [check]

I don’t think the Nintendo DS Lite has Flash, though it does have an Opera Browser.

Pretty cool, eh?

The Flash Media Server team is looking for a Technical Product Manager to be based in our San Francisco office.

Adobe is seeking a Technical Product Manager to be responsible for defining, delivering, supporting and evangelizing Adobe streaming video products and services. The Technical Product Manager will collaborate with the core product team, partners, professional services, business development and sales groups to define product releases and deliver solutions to the market through complete product development lifecycles.

Learn more here.

The Spiridellis brothers of JibJab Media are at it again. These guys are brilliant. I was fortunate to take the rest of my Flash management team down to their LA studios earlier this year to learn how they use Flash and other Adobe tools to produce their popular shorts. We had a blast. These guys are so funny. We were surprised by how much they do with just a small crew of people (around 6 people at the time of our visit). Check out their latest video built with Flash, After Effects and Photoshop.

A friend just forwarded a link to this post by Andy Budd, Managing Director for User Experience Consultancy Clearleft. They sent their partner Jeremy Keith, a renowned expert on AJAX techniques, to deliver a session at the Flash on the Beach conference called, “AJAX: Flash killer?” (I wish I had seen it - but I had to head into London for the day to do some customer visits). Apparently the session was very popular and, as Andy says in his blog:

Jeremy was initially nervous at the thought of addressing a conference full of die hard Flashers. He needn’t have worried though, as true to form, he gave an excellent presentation to a packed audience. The crux of his talk was that Ajax is the perfect technology for small UX enhancements. For more complicated apps, the benefits start to dwindle to a point beyond which it makes more sense to build the app using Flash. Jeremy hypothesized that the tipping point was the point at which it becomes too complicated or time consuming to make the app degrade nicely. At this point, you lose one of the major benefits of the standards based approach, so if it’s easier to build the app in Flash, then why not use the best technology for the job?

Andy later wrote:

The Flash community has matured massively over the years, and so has the technology. While I’m sure a lot of the audience were still programming in the timeline, FLEX 2.0 has opened up a new world of possibilities. The thing that excites me the most about FLEX 2.0 is how similar it is to standards based development. You have an declarative XML-based mark-up language to build the UI. You can then add style in the form of CSS and behaviour using the ECMAScript based Actionscript language. Cool huh?

I recommend checking out Andy’s post. I found refreshing to hear a web standards/AJAX advocate being open to adopting Flash for the right job. I’ve always reminded people that, while it’s a great technology, Flash isn’t the solution to every problem on the web and people should choose the best technology for the job when they’re trying to solve problems on the web.

Check out the rest of Andy’s post here.

The blogosphere is full of commentary on Time magazine’s latest person of the year. The person of the year for 2006? That’s right, it’s you.

The reference is, of course, talking about the user-generated “Web 2.0″ content revolution on the web over the last year. The year 2006 saw the explosion of sites like MySpace, YouTube, digg, Flickr, del.icio.us, and hundreds of startups that have, or are about to, been swallowed up by the big guns like Google and Yahoo.

I find this interesting because so many of these sites have featured Flash technology. Most of the big video sites (YouTube, Revver, Google video, Metacafe, MySpace, etc) have standardized on Flash as their video format. Many of the photo sharing sites like Flickr use Flash for creating compelling slideshows. Other Web 2.0 startups from 2006 used Flash to offer compelling new applications that take advantage of the social content explosion, such as JumpCut (recently acquired by Yahoo).

I think 2007 will see an explosion in light-weight applications built on web technologies (yes, I know you’d expect me to say that, considering my new position :-). I think you’ll see many more innovative browser-based applications leveraging technologies like Flex and AJAX, and the traditional software business will start to change as operating systems become less important. And I’m not just talking about the desktop, I think you’ll also see more well-built mobile applications hitting the market as mobile and desktop platforms continue to converge.

I think 2007 will be a fun year!