Brian Nakamoto's Macworld Expo Report--Macromedia Keynote [Day 3]
To demonstrate what people are doing with Macromedia products on the Mac, Rob showed off the following websites: harman-multimedia.com (Sound Sticks), bmwusa.com (There's a Steve easter egg in the Z8 section) and tiffany.com
People interested in online training for Macromedia products can go to Macromedia University which Macromedia offers for approximately $10 and hour in partnership with Element K. Over 1,500 people have already taken courses online at the university.
You can extend the capabilities of Dreamweaver and Flash by downloading extensions from the Macromedia Exchange (macromedia.com/exchange). There are over 270 free extensions for Dreamweaver that have been downloaded over 2 million times. There are 67 extensions for Flash that were added in the last 40 days since the Flash Exchange launched. One extremely neat Flash extension lets you recreate the Mac UI in Flash for your website.
Rob then went on to talk about the state of online advertising flanked by a humorous disclaimer on the big screens that mocked how he might be like Steve Jobs. Rob asked Mac users to help improve online advertising by using Flash. Examples of neat Flash ads include IBM's "Magic Box" ad and Macromedia's own ad on WebMonkey.com. Both are interactive and include animation and sound. The Macromedia ad generates over 17% click through rate. (17% CTR is huge compared to the 0.42% industry average for online banners.) Visa, Levis and Absolut Vodka also have Flash ads. [Because Flash is a vector imagining technology, Macromedia was able to present the small ads scaled to full screen without any quality loss.]
In Q3 2000, there were over 237 million downloads of Flash. There's been over 1 billion since Q2 1998. 317 million browsers have Flash and 186 million have Shockwave Player. this makes Flash one of the most widely distributed pieces of software. It's even more ubiquitous than Java!
This lead to Rob's exciting announcement today that Macromedia has formed the Flash Advertising Alliance which is a consortium of the leading Agencies, Ad Serving Networks, Advertisers, Publishers & Interactive Services and Technology Vendors. This alliance will increase the 1% of online Flash ads to a percentage more aligned with Flash's distribution.
A Flash Tracking Kit (I assume for tracking click stream within an interactive Flash ad) that works with DoubleClick's AdServing technology is available today with more to follow.
Rob's mission for Mac users at the keynote is that everyone create something cool with Flash and get it on the Net.
Kevin Lynch, President of Macromedia Products came on stage to talk about Dreamweaver, Fireworks and UltraDev. They showed how these Macromedia products save time which means that there can be more focus on design. However, what everyone was waiting for was Macromedia's plans for Mac OS X.
Freehand was shown on Mac OS X (with a big: "it's a technology demo" disclaimer) and will be the first OS X app from Macromedia. Fireworks, Dreamweaver and Flash Player will also be coming to OS X via carbon but no time frame was mentioned for any of these products. No mention about Ultra Dev Server (currently not on Mac OS), Flash or Director. It was nice to see Macromedia so committed to the Mac and optimizing to take advantages of OS X's new features.
In addition to Mac OS X, Kevin talked about how Macromedia is helping Mac users bring content to other devices. He used Compaq's MS Pocket PC based iPaq to demonstrate Flash playing rich content. The mantra is to use Flash for multidevice authoring and delivery of content.
Finally, Kevin showed a sneak peak at Flash 3D graphics that allow you to create interactive 3D content. I have a big feeling that this technology, when completed is going to be huge.
The keynote ended with a good Mac feeling from Macromedia and the premier of Pink Floyd on Shockwave.com today.
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