Surrender (to Guitar Hero)

My question today is how off topic can a post be and still be on topic. I ask this because my son brought home Guitar Hero (for the Playstation ) yesterday and despite being very bad at it I'm totally addicted. It's terrible to discover that much cherished favorites like Cheap Trick's Surrender are a walk in the park. While a deceptively casual sounding Nirvana track is almost impossible to master (for me at least). What I really love about Guitar Hero (and no doubt a reason for it's success) is that it is so far removed from all the battle/adventure games that have been dominating the market. Gaming was sadly in need of some diversity and Guitar Hero is evidence that new ideas can succeed. So now for all the air guitar wannabees out there ; all together 1..2..3...

Movable Life : Second Life for everyone enjoying their First Life.

Just discovered a neat application called Movable Life. Movable Life allows access to Second Life through a web browser. It offers very basic functionality. Providing a Google maps style view of Second Life. While allowing access to your inventory and a way to chat to friends. Which may be fine if you see Second Life as an over hyped chat application. If your interested in finding out more about Second Life but don't want to bother with the elaborate install and signup process then Movable Life may be for you. But don't expect it to offer much insight into what all the hype is about.

MAX : Sneak Peak Videos

A lot of very interesting videos are emerging from MAX 2007. But they are published all over the shop. So it seemed like a good idea to collect the links here for easy access. Let me know if you see any I've missed:

• Thermo : Flex for Designers
• Photoshop Express
  
• Flash Player 10 (Astro)
• Collection of Sneak Peaks (Peter Elst)
• Flash "Next"
• Flash on C/C++
• Flash Applications on Linux
• Seam Carving
• Photoshop Express
• Flash Home on Mobile
• PDF Packaging

MAX for Melbourne (& Sydney) : Refresh

Adobe Refresh is kind of like a MAX debrief for us poor suckers who couldn't go. The Melbourne Refresh event will take place at Telstra Dome on 31 October, 1.30 - 5 PM. The Sydney event will be on 30th October at the Sydney Convention Centre, 1.30 - 5 PM.

Over the course of an afternoon, you will hear from the local Adobe team as they present on what’s new and what’s happening in AIR, Flash Professional, Flex, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and ColdFusion.

Register

Adobe Share Beta available

Adobe have just released a beta version of a useful new web service. Adobe Share allows users to upload and share up to 1 Gb of files. The service uses an Adobe Id to manage logins. Which is handy for anyone who regularly downloads from labs. The interface for share uses Flex to manage the user interface. It's certainly clear and simple to use. The use of Flex also allows some interested extra features. For example, I uploaded a pdf of a recent presentation. Share provides a url or embed code for sharing this file. The url opens a Share interface with my pdf presented as a book with an additional link to download the document. The book uses the Flash book classes that you are hopefully already familiar with. Consequently there is a very user friendly turn paging experience (not that I'm claiming my presentation is a page turner).

A nice feature is that the files can be shared with anyone or you can select who you want to share the file with. One feature that some systems offer that would be a nice addition is some statistics on the number of views and downloads. But the service is a beta so it will be interesting to see where it goes from here.

I guess it's no coincidence that Adobe announced the purchase of Buzzword on the very same day. Buzzword is a Flex based word processor. Let me see I can edit word documents and save them online for sharing. Do I see a pattern here?