Mike Downey is the Principal Evangelist for the Platform Business Development team at Adobe Systems focusing on promoting Adobe’s platform technologies including Flash, Flex, and AIR (formerly codenamed “Apollo”). Mike joined the AIR team as Senior Product Manager in December of 2006 before moving to his current role. Prior to joining the AIR team Mike spent four years as Senior Product Manager for Flash. Since joining Macromedia in 2000, which merged with Adobe Systems in December of 2005, Mike has been a prominent figure in the Flash community and has been a featured speaker at conferences throughout the world. With a passion for web technologies, working with customers to understand their technology and business challenges, and building great software, Mike aims to work with his talented team and user community to make software that can change the world.

Presentations and interviews:

• AIR demonstration on DL.TV (video)
• Apollo demonstration at DEMO 07 Conference (video)
• Interview with Robert Scoble of Podtech.net on the Scobleshow (video)
• Interview with Builder.au’s Andrew Muller (video)
• Interview with ZDNet’s Ryan Stewart - 01/2007
• Interview with Flashmagazine.com - 09/2006 (audio)
• Interview with CNET News.com’s Neha Tiwari - 08/2006 (video)
• Interview with Wired magazine - 08/2006
• Interview with Streamingmedia.com’s Geoff Daily - 08/2006
• Interview with Colin Moock at the FiTC conference 2006 (video)
• Interview with Mac Design Pro’s Kevin Schmidt - 07/2006

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www.flickr.com More of Mike_Downey’s photos

About Adobe AIR
Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is a cross-operating system runtime that allows web developers to leverage their existing skills with HTML, JavaScript, Flash, and Flex to deploy Rich Internet Applications to the desktop. It provides advanced APIs not available in a browser-based application for leveraging local file system access, online/offline network detection, system events and notifications, complex local data storage, multi-window support, drag-and-drop, copy-and-paste, and a variety of other capabilities.

Grant Skinner and his company have been working on a really kick-ass Apollo app for tracking time. He has a great write up of why they built it, how they built it, as well as some screenshots of what the app looks like. He’s planning on making it a commercial offering and based on my experience in playing around with it (he gave me a beta build) I think he’s on to something big. In fact, I was meeting with some VC guys a week or two ago and demonstrated the app simply as a great example of what Apollo can do - and they went nuts over it. (Grant - I gave them your contact info…

Go check out Grant’s post on “gTimer” (codename) and visit his placeholder product page regularly to check of updates.

Adobe Photoshop Product Manager John Nack has written a great summary of the great integration points that we all focused on for the new CS3 releases of Flash, Photoshop and Illustrator.

My favorite:

Flash does rich import of PSD files for the first time. I once calculated that getting a 20-layer PSD into Flash intact took 168 steps; now it’s more like two, and the results are far richer. Not only does Flash preserve layers and their names; it also can handle layer nesting, blending modes, layer effects, and more–even preserving live text. Check out the screenshot. If you use Photoshop and Flash, there’s your upgrade right there.

Read the full summary here.

Apollo is a featured sponsor on this week’s episode of Diggnation, the weekly tech/web culture show based on the top digg.com social bookmarking news stories. In the show, hosted by digg.com co-founder Kevin Rose and his former TechTV co-star Alex Albrecht, Kevin explains Apollo and mentions that we are working with them on some cool Apollo projects for Digg.com. At the end of the episode, Kevin interviews Adobe’s Chief Software Architect, Kevin Lynch.

This began with a visit to Digg’s offices, which are walking distance from Adobe’s San Francisco office, a few weeks ago in which Danny Dura, Christian Cantrell and a couple of others from the Apollo team gave Kevin and the Digg team a quick demonstration of Apollo. We were a bit surprised to hear that Kevin had not only heard a lot about Apollo, but he had watched Christian’s Apollo demo on Google video. After spending some time explaining Apollo we started talking about some projects that our two companies can work on together. You’ll be hearing more about that in the coming months.

View this week’s episode here. If you want to see it now you may need to become a Revision3 member. If not, you can wait a couple of days until they release the freely-available version.

It’s here! It’s here! Today Adobe announced Creative Suite 3 which includes a huge new release of Flash, Flash CS3 Professional.

Here’s a summary of the new release:

Adobe Flash CS3 Professional software is the most advanced authoring environment for creating rich, interactive content for digital, web, and mobile platforms. Create interactive websites, rich media advertisements, instructional media, engaging presentations, games, and more. Designers and developers working on both Macintosh and Windows systems depend on Flash and the ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player software to ensure their content reaches the widest possible audience.

Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator import

Import Adobe Photoshop (PSD) and Adobe Illustrator (AI) files, while preserving layers and structure, and then edit them in Adobe Flash CS3 Professional. Optimize and customize the files during import with advanced options.

Convert animation to ActionScript

Instantly convert timeline animations into ActionScript 3.0 code that can be easily edited, reused, and leveraged by developers. Copy animations from one object to another.

Adobe interface

Enjoy a new, streamlined interface that emphasizes consistency with other Adobe Creative Suite 3 applications and can be customized to improve workflow and maximize stage space.

ActionScript 3.0 development

Save time with the new ActionScript 3.0 language, featuring improved performance, increased flexibility, and more intuitive and structured development.

Advanced debugger

Test content with a powerful, new ActionScript debugger that offers greater flexibility and user feedback, as well as consistency with Adobe Flex Builder 2 debugging.

Adobe Device Central

Design, preview, and test mobile device content using Adobe Device Central CS3, now integrated throughout Adobe Creative Suite 3. Create and test interactive applications and interfaces viewable with Flash Lite software.

Rich drawing capabilities

Visually adjust shape properties on the stage with smart shape drawing tools, create precise vector illustrations with the new Pen tool inspired by Adobe Illustrator, paste illustrations from Illustrator CS3 into Flash CS3 Professional, and more.

User interface components

Create interactive content with new, lightweight, easily skinnable interface components for ActionScript 3.0. Visually modify components’ look and feel with the drawing tools — no coding required.

Advanced QuickTime export

Render content published in a SWF file as a QuickTime video using the advanced QuickTime exporter. Export content that includes nested MovieClips, content generated with ActionScript language, and runtime effects such as drop shadow and blur.

Sophisticated video tools

Create, edit, and deploy streaming and progressive-download FLV content with comprehensive video support. Ensure the best video experience with a standalone video encoder, alpha channel support, a high-quality video codec, embedded cue points, video import support, QuickTime import, closed captioning, and much more.

Timesaving coding tools

Save coding time with new code editor enhancements. Focus on relevant code with code collapse and commenting, and jump to code errors with the error navigation feature.

View the full feature tour here.

As you’ve probably heard, we’ve released the first public alpha of the Apollo runtime. Woo-hoo!

If you’re not familiar, Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system runtime being developed by Adobe that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop. I joined the Apollo team in mid-December of 2006 after working as the Sr. Product Manager for Flash for the last three years.

The resulting coverage of our first public release of Apollo has been overwhelming. I thought I would take a minute to list some links to interesting resources, interviews, demos, and press coverage.

Learning more about Apollo

First of all, if you’d like to know what Apollo is, start by watching the video of Adobe’s Chief Software Architect Kevin Lynch giving his Apollo overview at our Apollo Camp event last week.

• http://video.onflex.org/2007/03/19/apollo-camp-keynote-from-kevin-lynch/

Read Mike Chambers’ LoggedIn article on the Adobe Developer Center

• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/mchambers_apollo.html

Read Kevin Lynch’s thoughts on the Apollo alpha

• http://www.klynch.com/archives/000086.html

Read Kevin Lynch’s article about Apollo in the Adobe Edge newsletter

• http://www.adobe.com/newsletters/edge/march2007/articles/article1/index.html

Check out the “Apollo for Flex Developers” Pocket Guide by O’Reilly in PDF form on the Adobe Developer Center

• http://www.adobe.com/go/apolloflexpocketguide

Apollo Demos

Watch the video of my 6-minute Apollo demo at the DEMO 07 conference in Palm Springs

• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/videos/apollo_demo07/index.html

Watch Mike Chambers and Christian Cantrell demonstrate two Apollo apps that Christian built in the Edge newsletter

• http://www.adobe.com/newsletters/edge/march2007/video/index.html

Get Started with Apollo

Download Apollo and the SDK

• http://www.adobe.com/go/getapollo

Build your first Apollo app by watching this free training video from Lynda.com, presented by Mike Chambers

• http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?id=378

Read the Apollo Alpha release notes

• http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/apollo/releasenotes.html

Read the Apollo Developer FAQ

• http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo:DeveloperFAQ

Review the Apollo documentation

• http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo:Documentation

Watch Mike Chambers “Introduction to Apollo” presentation on Apollo at Apollo Camp

• http://video.onflex.org/2007/03/19/apollo-camp-introduction-to-apollo-mike-chambers/

Join the Community

Join the Apollo Coders mailing list to ask questions and learn from others in the community - we participate in this as well

• http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/apollocoders/

Monitor the Apollo support forum on adobe.com

• http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/categories.cfm?forumid=72&catid=641

Track what the community is saying on MXNA using the Apollo smart category

Also track community discussion around Apollo on Technorati

• http://www.technorati.com/search/adobe+apollo|Adobe

Apollo Examples

Apollo sample applications on Adobe Labs

• http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo:Applications

FineTune Desktop - Teknision

• http://blog.teknision.com/?p=8

FotoBooth example - EverythingFlex.com

• http://blog.everythingflex.com/2007/03/19/fotobooth-apollo-edition/

Grabit HTML example - EverythingFlex.com

• http://blog.everythingflex.com/2007/03/19/grabit-html-within-apollo/

Fullscreen Papervision with Transparency example - theflexblog.com, Lee Brimelow

• http://theflexblog.com/?p=18

3D Web Apollo Application - theflexblog.com, Lee Brimelow

• http://theflexblog.com/?p=15

Press coverage

Anil Dash of MovableType goes first because he gave Mike Chambers and I a shout-out

• http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/news/2007/03/adobe-apollo.html
• Ryan Stewart on ZDNet
• Michael Arrington on Techcrunch
• Robert Scoble on scobleizer.com
• Ajaxian >> Adobe Apollo Alpha release
• Readwriteweb >> Adobe launches Apollo, alpha version
• CNET News.com >> Test flight for Adobe’s Apollo
• blogs.wired.com MonkeyBites >> Adobe Launches Apollo
• GigaOM >> The Coming Apollo vs. Firefox Battle
• SiliconValley.com >> Adobe introduces Apollo
• Adobe targets developers with Apollo | Channel Register
• Apollo Alpha to be released to the public | 901am.com
• StartupSquad >> Adobe launches Apollo alpha
• Apollo Lands | Mashable.com
• MacNN >> Adobe releases Apollo Alpha
• ITWorld.com >> Adobe releases first Apollo code to developers
• SYS-CON >> Adobe Announces Apollo at AJAXWORLD
• Plenty of haters on Slashdot

You can also track press via Google News or Techmeme

And I’ve also been tagging press coverage via del.icio.us with “apollopress” - follow it here.

Kevin Rose interviewing Kevin Lynch at Apollo Camp

Several people have uploaded a bunch of photos to Flickr taken at Apollo Camp last Friday. Check them out here.

I’ll be arriving in Sydney, AU on Monday 3/19 for the WebDU conference. I plan to spend most of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday walking around and taking pictures. I have a few business-related things that I have to do along the way, but if anyone is in town and loves photography, feel free to join me. I’d especially love to have a local help show me around. This will be my 5th trip to Sydney so I’m starting to get familiar, but I know there are a lot of great places to photograph that I haven’t found yet.

If you want to join me just send me an email - mdowney -at- adobe.com.

I just had a strangely long conversation with some of my friends about what crap stuff we carry in our laptop bags when we travel. I found the conversation to be fun and interesting because I was able to pick up on some tips from my fellow road-warriors. So I thought I would share my kit with you and give you the chance to share your kit as well.

Continue Reading »

This Papervision3D stuff is just too cool. After reading my post from last week, Lee Brimelow of Frog Design decided to build a version of the North Face Kiosk Demo (originally done in WPF) in Flash Player 9 using Papervision3D. Very cool - and works on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows Server 2003, Mac OS X (10.1 and up, PowerPC and Intel), and Linux.

Nice work, Lee!