Doc Searls and John Dowdell is two of many that have picked up on the interesting linking policy over at NPR.org

What are organizations thinking when they start to tell people to ask for permission before linking? And what are they doing about various search engines, such as Google? Not to mention, what legal options do they have to enforce their prohibition to link to npr.org?

[Update]
Wired have an article about NPR.org and their deep linking policy as well as the response from the weblog community.

[Update II]
A lot of people have been writing to npr.org to protest their stupid linking policy, their response is possibly even more mind boggeling than the policy.

In a press release today, June 19th - Macromedia writes:

To demonstrate the powerful new features in Macromedia Flash MX, Macromedia executives Kevin Lynch and Jeremy Allaire will provide the keynote address at Flashforward 2002 New York (www.macromedia.com/go/ffny/). The keynote will showcase new technologies for the Macromedia Flash development community as well as some of the amazing customer examples already being created with Macromedia Flash MX, including Eric Dolecki's Flashforward event guide for devices at www.ericd.net/guide/.

I am willing to bet that they will be releasing information and release dates for the Flash Communication Technology they have been talking about so long. This technology will make some of the options in the Flash 6 player make sense :-)

Something else they might announce in NYC is another product that is waiting to be let into the MX family - Macromedia Director..

Oh, I almost forgot. The press release was really about the Flash 6 player that has been downloaded 200 million times already, "making it the fastest adoption of any new version of Macromedia Flash Player." - to quote Macromedia.

Thanks to JD on MX for the link.

This is interesting, Macromedia has put together an online pet store based on Flash MX and ColdFusion MX. And its all documented on all levels. Including preperation, coding and usability. The project has its own "homepage":

Pet Market Blueprint Application Center

The details:

Designing Application Interfaces with Flash MX
Smoothing Web Interaction
Testing the Blueprint application for usability

And then they got some of the industries best Usability experts to look it over and give their opinion:

Chris MacGregor, Flazoom.com Reviews Pet Market
Jacob Nielsen Reviews Pet Market

Then they take the time to compare the performance of the Pet Market against Java Pet Store and .Net Pet Shop:

Petmarket Performance Benchmarks

Mike Chambers has the full rundown of the links to the various parts of the project. Yes, they have really poured work into this one).

Great work Macromedia!

Mike keeps up the good work with another overview of all the great new stuff that you can read at Macromedia.com about Flash MX. Not to mention, a lot of people are putting great effort into trying to make us smarter, those darn fools ;-)

Macromedia is obviously digging into their pockets and using their money to make something REALLY useful. Yes, thats right - I am highly sceptical of marketing talk - I am more interested in "the real deal" - good information, and so far one just have to commend Macromedia for the amount of work they are putting into making good and useful information about their products readily available without charging an arm and a leg for it.

Here's the new stuff this week:

Flash Extreme : Locking Down Flash MX : Branden Hall
Extending components in Macromedia Flash MX : Greg Burch

The O'Reilly Network and Richard Koman writes about Coolin Moock and Flash MX in an article called Colin Moock on Flash MX

Nothing new, but its a good article to get some insight into what Flash MX can do and lots of good information from a great Flash developer.

[Via SwfNews]