FITC Unconference @ MAX 2011

 

Please join FITC on October 1-5 in Los Angeles for Adobe MAX 2011 which will bring together thousands of forward-thinking designers, developers, and business decision makers that are shaping the future of our industry. As part of the agenda at this year's MAX, Adobe has added the MAX Unconference area. The Unconference is a way for attendees to convene in a casual setting to share ideas as well as host their own discussion groups. This year FITC has once again been chosen as one of the organizations to run one of the Unconference areas.

 

September 12, 2011
Adobe AIR gets smart(phone)

Adobe is releasing AIR for smartphone platforms, starting with Blackberry and Android. After announcing that Flash CS5 would allow developer to build iPhone apps, Adobe is now pushing its platform onto other devices. While purists may squirm at the idea of building apps with something like AIR it will allow true multi-platform mobile development by the large and already heavily invested Flash development community. From Gizmodo:

February 15, 2010
Alex Schleifer
Gartner weighs in on the issue of Flash vs. HTML5

Check out this interesting post by Gartner's Ray Valdes, HTML5 and the future of Adobe Flash. Our favorite part:

February 10, 2010
Jonathan Anderson
Adobe promises faster Mac Flash

In the midsts of a debate as to whether HTML5 will make Flash redundant, Adobe is releasing an update to the plug-in on Mac OS X that is expected to "get us to the point where Mac will be faster than Windows for graphics rendering." You can get the beta on the Adobe Labs site.

With major players like YouTube trialing HTML5 versions of their sites Adobe has to keep an eye on Flash's performance which is often blamed for crashing browsers and high CPU loads. While HTML5 video playback definitely has performance benefits Flash still has some advantages over it such as fullscreen playback, but for how long?

February 09, 2010
Alex Schleifer
Augmented reality virtual dressing room

Ordinarily it's a bad idea to allow the Flash Player access to your webcam if you're standing in front of your computer naked or in your underwear, but we may have found an exception to that rule. Zugara and Rich Relevance have teamed up to create an interesting augmented reality app called Fashionista that lets you try on clothing, virtually. From their press release:

December 14, 2009
Jonathan Anderson
Animating paper prototypes using stop motion

Here (video) is a really novel approach to paper prototyping by Chris Neale.

Love the combination of low-fi media with hi-fi communication efficacy. Check out Chris' site for an extended discussion of animating paper prototypes. It's particularly impressive that this type of animation apparently only takes 15 minutes to produce. I've used Flash and OmniGraffle Professional to do the same thing and it took a heck of a lot longer than 15 minutes.

December 10, 2009
Jonathan Anderson
Designing Superior Shopping Experiences

Imagine shopping in a store where the displays never change. Customers select items by browsing through monolithic aisles of products. Store displays are minimal and uninteresting. Items in the displays are hard to find or even unavailable. This doesn't seem like a great shopping experience, does it? Yet this is what online shoppers experience (and accept as standard) on many large e-commerce sites.

November 29, 2009
George Plesko
Failing Fast: Getting Projects Out of the Lab

“Failing fast” means getting putting applications out in the wild as soon as possible to learn whether they will succeed. This gives you access to early user feedback to quickly weed out ideas and methods that don’t work. Failing fast is a good thing—or, at least, it's preferable to failing slowly and spending too much time, effort and money developing a product that should have been put to rest earlier. Money and time you save by cutting off unsuccessful projects quickly will mean you have more money and time for the successful ones. The concept of failing fast can help businesspeople and stakeholders reduce the riskiness of launching products by letting real users and the marketplace dictate their product choices.

November 22, 2009
Tony Hillerson, Alan Lewis, Scott Green, Ryan Stewart, Randy Rieland
The Best of Both Worlds

Rich Internet applications (RIAs) can dramatically enhance UX, increase website conversions, and improve employee productivity. In consumer settings, where companies rely on their websites to generate leads or direct sales, driving qualified traffic from search engines often plays a critical role in their marketing plan.

November 22, 2009
Matt Dombrow
Flash Player 10 is Out

Flash Player 10 is out on all platforms today. A pretty solid list of new features makes this one of the most anticipated versions to date.

October 15, 2008
Alex Schleifer