B. Mann Consulting

On Thursday night I was invited to the Microsoft Expression launch event. I was soubly glad to attend because David Crow, who is now with Microsoft Canada, came through town for the event (a post from David about the upcoming BarCamp Vancouver ... which looks to be at capacity already!).

I've been spending a lot of time lately looking at video online. Part of it has been technical, and part of it has been thinking about what is needed and where it is headed. I was involved with IPTV / video over IP back at Nortel, and a lot of things actually haven't changed.

As if video on the Internet wasn't hot enough already, the whole Google buys YouTube has upped the fever pitch to...well, something hotter than fever :P

So, for starters, go and read (and link to!) Kevin Marks' five point plan to save use from Flash video. He included "crappy" in the title, and he's right, but...well, it's what works today.

And that's what will stop us from getting any further. Getting stuck in the "works today" mindset is a bad thing. When you sit down to build something new, you're really never building it for today...you're building it for today AND for the next little while. Somebody has to take a chance on figuring out the future. 

In any case, I very much agree with all of Kevin's points. The phrase "detection script" makes me shiver a bit, and Flash is still the only platform solution if you want one integrated application that has interactivity built into it as well, but for straight up video, we can do better, and should be trying to.

From comments by Sherif on Todd Dominey's post about Flash Player and Adobe Reader being combined:

Hmm, I wonder if Adobe just shot themselves in the foot with this announcement vis-a-vis Microsoft Sparkle (aka Expressions), which I realize isn't currently meant to be a Flash competitor. I see two possibilities:

1) Adobe tries to integrate PDF into Flash, the plugin becomes enormous, people balk at downloading it, Adobe backtracks, and keeps the two apps separate (I don't see the PDF plugin becoming smaller, at least based on past experience).

2) Microsoft sees an opportunity to win over the Flash market, after several failed versions (typically true with MS), develops an excellent, fairly small plugin (2-3MB) that does what Flash can do and more, and splits the market, forcing designers like us to buy two apps - Flash and Sparkle, giving us more headaches to deal with.

This at the same time that Dave Shea tells us that Macromedia is no more, but notes that "it has always seemed that Macromedia was fundamentally more in tune with the technology and the community."