So what’s with this new fad of talking into cell phones like it’s a walkie-talkie? I’m not sure if it’s a socio-economic thing, but I’m noticing people who seem to be upset with whomever they’re talking to on the phone doing this: when the person is speaking, s/he holds the mic end right up to the mouth and practically yells into the mic, and then when s/he cares to listen to whomever s/he’s yelling at, s/he holds the phone back up to the ear. What up with this? Seems to be a pretty disturbing trend indeed. On a related note, a co-worker at Schematic showed me this page:

http://www.coudal.com/shhh.php

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Peldi, one of the lead engineers for FlashCom at Adobemedia, just conducted a MacroChat (AdobeChat?), and the recording can be viewed here:

http://mmchats.breezecentral.com/p69336136/

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Wow. If you haven’t heard, look at http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html or http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2005/adobe_macromedia.html. There’s already a ton of speculation by users about what this means for the different (competing) product lines of the two companies. Some people are saying FlashPaper will die. I don’t think FlashPaper will die. If anything, Adobe will likely make it an option for Acrobat to export to. However, if Adobe taps into Flash Player’s ability to install extra plug-ins (like Central, Breeze, etc) in the background, they could set something up where PDF integration with the Flash Player could be a real possibility. The current drivers for FlashPaper are perfectly acceptable to move into any future release of Flash Player–by Flash’s nature, it’s been compatible with all versions of SWF files (i.e., you can load Flash Player 4 swf’s into FP7, and so on). I think Adobe will also embrace the SWF format and extend it in the directions that will come to include PDF as a supported runtime media file (i.e., like JPEG and MP3 are now). Of course, only time will tell. It’s likely that Adobe will be looking to leaders in the community for suggestions on integration of the products, as Microsoft is doing now with Flash designers and developers with the upcoming Sparkle/Avalon releases. Microsoft is trying to make a lot of noise with the new tools they’re developing, so in many ways, Adobe and Macromedia are looking out for their own interests as they face more competition from Microsoft.

You can also read more about the acquisition here:

http://www.markme.com/mesh/archives/007504.cfm

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Last week, at the FlashForward 2005 conference in San Francisco, Kevin Lynch showed more sneek peeks of the next version of Flash. You can read more about it here:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5659052.html?tag=st.num

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