A few years back our friend Dave Schroeder of Pilotvibe decided it was time to put the Midwest on the ‘flash’ map, and started Flashbelt.

For those who don’t know - its an incredibly educational and inspirational 3 days of presentations, panel discussions and workshops. Speakers typically have a focus, whether industry (advertising, commerce, education) or specialty (flash audio, as3, animation etc) and often are well-known for their groundbreaking work in a specific area or project. Its a refreshing mix of Adobe Scientists, authors/gurus, well known designers/developers and independent experimental producers. Our own Nick Longtin even presented last year.

Whether you are someone who sells interactive projects, designs for the web, or develops flash interactive or other, I would highly recommend catching at least a couple of presentations. You will learn and walk away inspired. It rivals the feeling of Spring in Minnesota for the interactive industry.

June 8-11th in Minneapolis, MN - See you there

Last week, Adobe officially announced the release of AIR - Adobe Integrated Runtime. My December post on the power and integration of AIR only scratched the surface of what it is capable. In fact, it may have only tilted some heads and failed to communicate the potential of the new technology…

Read the rest of this entry »

The updater calls
Embrace my new version now
My tears flow freely

Flash installation
Causes my soul to cry out
Adobe help me

On virgin install
A catastrophic failure
Flash must despise me

Adobe’s new suite of design tools is fantastic, if you can get it installed. As I discovered today, if you have any CS3 trial software installed prior to doing your real installation there can be a few bumps in the road.

On my first attempt I was offered a rather puzzling reason for the software’s failure to install, as you can see from the picture above. It turns out the transition from trial to licensed software is so arduous Adobe has gone as far as to release tools to aid you in the process.

Perhaps I am too optimistic in thinking Adobe’s latest cutting edge software offerings would come equipped with equally impressive installers.

Oh well, maybe in CS4.