Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

ff2003: keynote

Current session: Macromedia Keynote, by Kevin Lynch of Macromedia.

Join Macromedia visionary Kevin Lynch as he discusses the future of Flash MX and give a sneak peak at new technology and trends hot off the drawing boards from Macromedia.

The big product announcement this morning was for Macromedia Central, an application that allows developers to create Flash applications that run outside the browser. In this age where wi-fi has caught on so quickly, one focus of the venture is to develop applications that are aware of a network connection, but, having cached the relevant data, can work without them.

Among the examples Lynch (and the people he called in to promote it) cited were a Macromedia building/office map application that interacts with a staff directory, and a “Hotspot finder” that allows users to look up wireless access points.

Other features: Can pull data from mulitple domains from within the Central interface; an “App finder” (similar to Macromedia Exchange) with a searchable list of Central applications; the ability to offer applications for trial and sale; scheduling of automatic updates.

Macromedia Central is in a “pre beta” stage now, and is scheduled for release this summer. One of the reasons they’re promoting this now is (in addition to building buzz) to get the developer community to come up with new ways to use it.

At the end of his presentation on Macromedia Central, Lynch asked the Central development team — all sitting on one side of the auditorium and dressed in identical black “Macromedia Central” t-shirts — to stand and take a bow. Then he took photos of the team and of the audience for his weblog.