Expression Blend is Sweet, Adobe Flex Doesn’t Inspire and Web 3.0 is Just on the Horizon, So Get Ready Now!
Aha! Blogolicious! Innovation Media Winner Karen Nielsen’s (Perceptions, the movie) profile/interview will be next week. I’m still waiting for some important info from her.
I’ve typically discussed music, dance or art on this blog with hints at marketing research and customer insights and how to use that in the artist’s search for fame and fortune. I’ve also spoofed technology/media companies more than once on this blog, since they are so much a part of the Internet/Web and Media world and ripe for a little friendly criticism. In their wars of domination for the minds and dollars of New Media citizens, they often forget who made them (i.e. their user base) and who can break them (again, their user base…us!) So I spoof them and we get the next Evil Empire—Google—with their Death Ray (courtesy originally of Dilbert) gone horribly wrong and destroying the Universe (i.e. the Galaxy Gal spoof serial.) We also get Microsoft wanting their Evil Empire dominant s/w power role back, which they had taken over from IBM. We get the 8000 (not 800) pound gorilla of content-power Disney being largely ignored by Internet based (software) media companies as they fight for marketshare with better gadgets and ever higher search term bidding wars.
We get this sort of fighting from them, rather than them remembering that in the world of media, regardless of mechanism of delivery, it’s the CONTENT that counts.
Good content brings in people. And I do mean PEOPLE, not ‘eyeballs,’ not ‘users,’ not ‘consumers,’ not NUMBERS…but actual living, breathing, thinking, feeling, striving and surviving people who have their own hopes and dreams—which do not include being part of some company’s “marketshare” or “revenue stream.” Relevance means be useful to people…don’t use them.
But what is content? Or rather, what is good content, since that is the gold standard for making New Media create a better online & offline experience—and therefore, a better world?
Generally, it’s information that is relevant to the searcher, it’s current, it’s useful, it’s clear but it’s also pleasing to read or view. It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare, nor does it have to be comedy, nor does it have to be the complete technical specifications to product X or service Y. But it does have to be clear, so that the reader/viewer will understand it and know what to do with the information, not to mention trust the information and trust that you will take good care of them if they build a customer-supplier relationship with you. This is usually accomplished through good design.
You could have the most innovative, best, most useful, groundbreaking, moneymaking product in the world—but if you can’t convey that message to those that need to hear and know that they understood the message—then you might as well try to sell snow to polar bears, because you’re gonna be eaten alive anyway.
This applies to musicians, visual artists, dancers, writers, you name it. You are the innovative, best product in that case. Therefore, it’s up to you to get your message out and create that trusted bond with your customers (your fans, your supporters, your agency, you get the idea.) You provide the relevant, interesting, understandable, useful and compelling content—in your art form and in your presentation. Your presentation is often the Web.
But I’ve harped on your need to present yourself (your image) and market yourself before…this time, I’m looking at tools that actually HELP you with that process. Cool tools that you can use yourself and don’t require you to become a techie/programmer in order to use them. (If you already are or have a friend that is, great!, go for it. However, for the rest of you, if the idea of learning yet MORE programming and more computer software stuff fills you with dread, then read on…help is on the way!) Naturally, there will be a learning curve, but you won’t have to learn
But this blog is about MEDIA, and tools and tech are definitely part of creating great content and doing great media things.
Now, I’m not going to go into a detailed heavy technical review…good god, no! You can get that on Technorati, Wired and all the maker’s websites. In fact, you’ll probably get overloaded or underloaded if you go to those sources—lots of tech info but also lots of spin on that info. I’m not going to go that route.
I’m going to take a slightly different perspective—the non-techie one, namely, the “I’m tired of tools that make me spend more time learning how to use to tools to be creative rather than ACTUALLY help me to BE more creative.”
I used to work at Microsoft years and years ago, but that’s not a bias—trust me, it’s definitely NOT a bias. However, it does mean that I know something that a lot of people don’t know about Microsoft. Yes, they have a ton of very smart, hardworking developers (and marketing people and designers and support people.) But I happen to know that they also kick ass on design tools, they just haven’t really been focused on them that much. ( I was part of that push before the project got canceled…the market was changing and so this design tool, which was being made FOR designers, was dropped because what it did wasn’t going to be the wave of the future anymore. The Internet was going to be the wave now, not multimedia titles. And they were right…the Web is the Wave. Or at least part of the whole that is Media.)
So I was happy to discover that Microsoft had been working recently (i.e. years, not weeks) on some kick ass design tools—and ones focused on helping designers, not programmers, do cool design work without having to become mini-programmers in order to do that work.
The Microsoft Expressions line is very cool and it begins with the interface itself. Blend and Design (two of the suite) are dark and edgy in appearance, and definitely not klunky and Window-ie and shall I say it? NOT Programmer/Techie tool looking. Hurrah!
Now it may not seem like that much…but if you want to stay in a creative-mode, then nothing kills that buzz like being faced with an ugly, confusing, tech-IDE-oriented application that assumes you want to look at data and code, rather than think ‘design.’ So a visual interface that helps keep you in a creative spirit is a welcome first step to using the software itself. Photoshop, the king of 2D graphics packages, even has problems with this—nice initial visual but very complicated learning curve in order to learn to use it. Flash with its filmatic theme has problems as well, with complexity, with ‘techie’ terms, and with its general visual theme.
You would think with Flex (the new Flash so to speak, since it’s about using Flash and javascript/XML to create websites), they’d do better than they do. But the interface seems to be a step backward rather than forward in design and intuitive use. When Adobe and Macromedia merged, I had great hopes—two design/media juggernauts becoming one. The competitors were likely shaking in their Berks. But beyond the impressive array of Adobe products that were there already (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premier, InDesign…) …nada on the merge and conquer front that much. I have no doubts about the power involved, but I’m not inspired to jump in—I’m nervous about learning yet another tool.
I’ll take the old Flash IDE interface any day.
So I was really, really surprised to see the Expressions line—big chunks of it still in beta. They really thought about DESIGN when they actually put it together, not just about tools that designers need to be creative, but the actual FEEL of the software—its emotional appeal. THAT IS GREAT DESIGN AND CONTENT! Expression Blend makes you WANT to learn how to use it. I can’t say that about Photoshop (and I spend a lot of time with Photoshop but still don’t consider myself anything more than intermediate on my best days.)
Expression’s Design I have a harder time with—still a beautiful, enticing interface but the fact that it keeps freezing on my machine every time I run it (it’s still beta) makes it difficult to really get into it. It doesn’t appear to be as powerful or as robust as Photoshop (at first glance, that is… before it goes into the bambi-in-headlights pose and I have to shut it down again.) Photoshop is definitely its competitor here. However, it also is a version 1.0 and a really good ver 1 at that. It could just be that I haven’t had time (between freezes) to play with it enough. Besides, the point being, Photoshop is uber powerful, but hard to learn. If Design does less, but makes it easier to learn and implement, then it already fills a much needed niche!
And the examples/samples they include with these products are way cool as well—not the usual ‘hello world’ or stupid little pet tricks that you get with most other applications. The samples aren’t that powerful but they are mini-apps. I like the Animation sample application. Its interface is cool and the sample actually works. I found myself treating it like a full app (not a sample) and getting irritated that I couldn’t do standard drawing functions or some other flash IDE like animation stuff. Then, I would remember that it was just a sample app—now that is impressive to me. The Grand Piano sample was fun, too. The keys worked. Piano tunes came out—it was great. Yet, more importantly, beyond it being fun to play with the samples, it did more—it made me think about stuff I wanted to DO. In other words, even the samples were igniting my imagination and getting me excited about creating something new.
They were encouraging creativity.
Did I mention that the first thing that Adobe sent me, to encourage me to use my Flex 2 trial and get ‘more’ out of it, was a code snippet for “Hello World.” Uh, yeah…like that is going to inspire me.
I may know some javascript, actionscript, Lingo, HTML, CSS and so on, but throwing stuff like
Microsoft Expression Web (one of the suite and already released) wasn’t as exciting. It stands up well to Dreamweaver and I suspect it’s just an updated, slightly sleeker FrontPage with new gadgets. The interface looks like a Windows app—so not cool, but functional, just like Dreamweaver. In other words, it’s for techies, not designers. Or for those that just want to put up a normal Windows looking website quickly and add in design elements later.
I still just want a website builder that doesn’t believe in right angles. I want to create a template that creates a circle of buttons, and buttons and dropdowns and so forth without hard angles or edges—and I don’t want to have to design custom transparent fake circular controls to put there. Just give me a button that is naturally circular, or a triangle or a freeform polygon. And a circle instead of list or a table that doesn’t look like a table, but a wheel of fortune. Sigh…and of course, CSS or other settings that make my browser window turn into a freeform image rather than a rectangle—with video oozing everywhere, of course. Then again, I haven’t delved too deep into Blend yet—maybe it does allow for that and make it easy. Luckily, the idea of getting deeper into that tool doesn’t appall me—it’s fun instead, especially the animation stuff.
The last element of the suite, but not really since it installs separate from the others and is called iView MediaPro3, is also another Windows app with a black background. It’s a cataloging system. Content Management is a huge drag on doing good production work. I definitely remember the days of juggling all kinds of files, image and writing files, and doing it by keeping them in file folders with an Excel sheet to try to keep track of what was where and who was doing what (or had done what already) so you could track it. Yes, CMS systems are needed and so at least Microsoft is including one, so to speak, but it’s not tightly integrated and it doesn’t even have offline help available. You have to be logged in to the Net in order to access help files. Bummer, since I spent a lot of time working offline, especially when I’m traveling.
At least, Microsoft offers trial versions of all four of the apps. Six months for Blend and Design, 2 months for Web and 1 month for MediaPro3. Fully functional trial versions of software are critical these days. No one in their right mind is going to spend that kind of money for something they can’t test drive first—or should. Adobe thinks you should in most cases, but does let you have a trial period for Flex 2. Maybe they’ll start being more trial friendly now that Expression is here.
So yes, tools do matter. But they are TOOLS. Creativity comes from you and always will. Therefore, any toolset that helps you stay creative, focused on creating rather than a steep, scary learning curve and a toolset that doesn’t try to turn you into a programmer is a blessing…and there aren’t that many of them out there.
Imagine what you could do with something that actually encourages you to “imagine.” I’m not just talking improving your website, but that of course is naturally the first place to start. I’m talking about your website, your mobile site, your music, your vids, your production skills, your multi-media merging/creating skills, everything!
That’s what Web 3.0 is going to be about—getting creative, innovative content out there regardless of medium. Imagine people finding your MySpace or your Blog or your YouTube site—and finding it from their phone or their PC or their TV.
And imagine them finding it on any of those media without any loss of quality—you don’t need to cut down and create an ugly, gimpy cut down version for the
Your music or your video or your images are there—in full—without compromising on anything. You and your friends and your fans (or your customers for the marketing minded) are connected, connected socially and emotionally, regardless of the gadget used.
That’s Web 3.0 and that’s why it’s important to have tools that encourage you to be creative without bogging you down with having to become someone else in order to use the new tech. The tech becomes transparent and seamless—a tool to be used, not a technology to be worshiped.
Transparent tech…leaving only the content…YOU.
That’s why I’m so jazzed about Expressions. I knew Microsoft could do kick ass design tools, really truly innovative, intuitive design tools for designers—and now they are back in the game! It’s makes me excited about the future and want to be a part of it.
So Hurrah for Microsoft! (Maybe it was a good thing that they lost their Evil Empire title to Google?)
Link to Microsoft Expression pageLink to Adobe Flex page
CG Anderson
Little Dogs Media
Aha! Blogolicious!
This article may be copied in whole or in part, as long as fair use rules are observed, no parts are modified from the original and credit is given when quoted or reposted.
CG Anderson is a 10 plus year new media provocateur involved in media, art, technology and the online world. Also a writer, blogger and novelist. CG's comments are personal and opinionated and solely the responsibility of the author, so there. Don't like the opinions, disagree, agree, don't know? Great, make a comment—clean ones will be allowed, netiquette-challenged ones will be ignored!
MySpace site: http://www.myspace.com/ahablogolicious Help me reach 1 million friends. Add yourself as my friend today and get your friends to do the same! Thank you so much! Together we can bring great artists to a wider audience!
Blog site: http://ahablogolicious.blogspot.com/
URL: http://home.myuw.net/cganders/
No comments:
Post a Comment