Breaking news from Flashenabled.com & Phillip Torrone, reporting directly from the Pocket PC Summit:

Folks, here is some exclusive news from the Pocket PC Summit. Macromedia announced that HP will be putting / distributing the Macromedia Flash Player 5 for Pocket PC soon, so that bascially means the millions of people with iPAQ are / will be FlashEnabled! I'll have more details soon, but here it is. The Macromedia folks here said this was okay for me to post.

[PS: Not sure if Phillip was in a hurry here, or if all the HP Pocket PCs have been renamed iPaq's for the HP / Compaq merger]

Its nice to see another line of PDAs get Flash 5 support, and again I hope that Macromedia help push the Flash MX player development for PDAs so that we don't have to wait another two years to get the mobile devices updated with the current technology on other platforms. After all, aren't we all on agreement that mobile devices is the next big thing?

Oh, and since we are on the subject of mobile devices, and I just pulled the whole news bullitin from Phillip's site, here is a plug for the Flash Enabled book:

Flash enabled the book, build stuff for you Pocket PC.

I think Branden's intro is a good enough reference to his Components Rant:

Time to let off some steam here... I keep seeing folks say that the built in Flash MX components are too complex, bloated, and that it's better to just roll your own. I am even seeing some relatively smart folks spouting this kind of ignorant junk! And that's exactly what it is, junk....

Read the rest of the rant at Branden's blog

This is web developer/consultant humor. If you have ever worked in a Dilbert company, you will have discovered that all to often project tend to end up like this:Tire Swing Cartoon

[Via JD on MX]

Since I just got the statistics for search on weblog.bergersen.net, I thought I would share the numbers with you all. Its interesting reading.

Using Atomz Search, the top phrases searched were:

1. - "fireworks mx"
2. - "fireworks mx crack"
3. - "decompiler"
4. - "fireworks crack"
5. - "crack"

Its kind of sad to see what people are looking for. It gets even worse when we look at the searches people used on various search engines to get to my site:

1. - dreamweaver mx crack matt
2. - fireworks mx crack matt
3. - fireworks mx crack
4. - dreamweaver mx crack
5. - how google works
6. - "dreamweaver mx"
7. - "how google works"
8. - "fireworks mx crack"
9. - fireworks mx cracks
10. - playstation 3

The searches are a little better than when the preview releases of the MX products was released, but its still pretty bad.

Warning: If you are looking for cracks, don't send me requests for them - I will forward them to the legal department of the company that produce the product. That goes for requests sent as comments to this posting too. (Yes, I actually get those kind of requests frequently)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation Action Center has chosen to use Flash to make a fun animation about the CBDTPA, but the issue is serious enough.

Big media corporations are trying to take away ownership from the consumers and make you and me pay for every single version of a digital work we consume. Imagine having to pay 4 times to have the same song on a CD, your MP3 player, your own CD-compilation for the car and on your computer. That is what Disney and others in reality is trying to accomplish with the CBDTPA bill.

Senator Ernest Hollings and a powerful group of Hollywood entertainment interests are pushing Congress to pass an anti-consumer bill called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) that may make it impossible to:

-Play your CDs on your desktop computer
-Create legal copies or mp3s of the music that you own to play in your car, or listen to while you exercise
-Create mix-CDs of music you've paid for

This is not the way copyright law is supposed to work. Tell your member of Congress that you value your fair use rights and don't want Hollywood to control technological innovation.

So why am I, a norwegian, even caring about such bills? well, what happens in the USA will also have a strong effect on consumers in Europe and other related markets. We are big consumers of american TV, films, music and general entertainment. In addition, law making in the USA does have a certain degree of influence on law making in Europe.

An amazing package of software was made available on the Macromedia site today (Studio MX press release).

Macromedia Studio MX is a software package that includes includes Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Macromedia Flash MX, Macromedia Fireworks MX, Macromedia FreeHand 10, and a developer edition of Macromedia ColdFusion MX Server. The whole package is selling for US $799, pretty impressive concidering that the Flash 5 authoring tool was sold for $399 when it first shipped, and the price for Macromedia Flash MX is US $499.

The package includes everything you need to design and program web based applications and solutions. The developer edition of ColdFusion also gives you the ability to get started on developing web services and play with Flash remoting.

[Via Ericd.net]

Macromedia - Designer & Developer Center : Featured Community Site

This is the first article in a new series that will periodically highlight Macromedia Flash MX community sites. These sites offer some of the top resources on using Macromedia Flash MX anywhere, and they provide information in the form of tutorials, articles, and forums. Most importantly though, they help define and foster the Macromedia communities - which are the single best and most important resource for information on the Macromedia MX tools.

First time around they are spotlighting Ultrashock.com, with an indept look at the history of the site, what is there when it comes to MX resources - and what is to come.

What does the future hold for Ultrashock? Look for Ultrashock v.2.0 to expand the amount and types of resources that it currently offers, such as a new 3D tutorial section with exclusive content from Swift 3D.

28th of may was/is (depending on where on the globe you are when I am posting this) my birthday. I have turned 29 for the third time. (Ok, so I am 32 ;-)

I hope you don't take offence, but I thought I would be a little weasel and suggest that you could send me a dollar or two as a birthday gift. I'll use the money to buy a book or two, and send some more money to other resource sites I appreciate.

You can send the money by Paypal if you feel like it.

I would love to hear from your all about your feelings regarding asking for donations such as this.