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

birth of macrodobia

Monday morning brought an awesome Macromedia site of the day, featuring an interactive kitchens site from IKEA with nifty Matrix-like 360-degree freeze-frame images.

Monday also brought some changes to the Macromedia Web site, following the completion of its merger with Adobe on Saturday. Most notable, of course, was the addition of the Adobe logo to the banner, which seemed to happen as I was browsing the site Monday morning. I’m not jazzed by the new light-to-dark background fade on the pages (it used to be the other way around), but otherwise, the site design remains mostly the same. Adobe/Macromedia also has begun offering a new product, the uber-pricey Adobe Web Bundle features Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium and Macromedia Studio MX 8. Notably absent is Macromedia Freehand, Macromedia’s answer to Adobe Illustrator. I’m surprised, however, that Macromedia Fireworks is still on the list, given that Adobe has Photoshop and ImageReady. I wonder if the Web graphics-centric Fireworks will eventually become the new ImageReady (which I’ve never really liked).

(I borrowed “Macrodobia” from Dave Shea’s April 18, 2005 blog post about the Adobe/Macromedia merger.)