Taxis deliver grand prix updates via Flash

There was a session at MXDU on ambient or out-of-home advertising and the adoption of Flash as an interface development platform for these new brands of marketing. One example was Touch-Taxi in Melbourne, who deliver targeted advertising to displays in the back of passenger seats in 50 taxis. Well it seems they've picked some more coverage along with a pretty good deal with BMW for the upcoming Melbourne Grand Prix. Rock on Flash enabled taxi seats :) Read more.

Sony to drop PDAs

A really interesting situation where a major technology hardware manufacturer is identifying the growith of the mobile market into areas beyond communication. Won't be too long before we see a convergence of all mobile devices into one hybrid that does the lot (and then some ...). And then of course comes the improvement in performace of traditional phones to support the cool apps we're wanting making because they'll be more like PDAs than phones. Ah the cycle of life ... Read more.

Train travel via mobile in Japan (AustralianIT)

A recent report on Australian IT shows that the world of practical mobile applications is picking up pace in commercial settings, and not just in the making and distribution of animated wallpaper ... how long before Australians are working with this kind of technology do you think?
Read more.

The CFMX7 Roadshow is coming to town

OK, these sales launches aren't for everyone - so rate your need to go aganist these criteria:

• Have you recently been to the MXDU conference?
• Have you recently, or will you shortly, be attending a CFUG meeting?
• Do you even know what I'm talking about?

If you answered NO to all these questions, then it's probably a good idea for you to get along to a launch happening in your local town. Brisbane's turn is tomorrow, and even though I've seen Tim Buntel at MXDU and have a good idea as to what to expect from the new release of Cold Fusion, I'm hoping to hang out with Mark Blair a bit and catch up on some other Macromedia Server related stuff. Oh, there's the free coffee of course ... who can pass that up at 9am!

Seriously though, if you want to get a good idea about the new release of Cold Fusion (CFMX7) and all the cool things it does, then get along - check out here to register.

Mobile virus turns up in US

Here we go, just when we start talking about how cool the mobile platform revolution is going to be, someone goes and makes a mess of it ... Australian IT - Mobile virus turns up in US (Spencer Swartz in San Francisco, FEBRUARY 21, 2005)

Images of MXDU 2005

I've got some pics from my camera from MXDU to share with you all:



Proof that I was indeed in Sydney!


My hotel room at Star City ... didn't get to stay in many rooms like this even when I was touring with the band, but the conference WAS billed as a "rock concert for geeks" ...


My mate Ramon, who I stayed with for a night while I was in Sydney. He and his wife Sarah are the bees knees :)


The MXDU Banquet - loads of fun, great food and entertainment. Picture right is "Rowdy" - the comedian who passed himself off as the Quasimodo of Star City for most of the night before revealing his true identity with a comedy routine. Can you spot the spoon?

A good night's sleep

You wouldn't believe (or maybe you would) how good it is to sleep in your own bed again. I have to be honest and say that despite being exhausted while on my recent trip to Sydney, I just couldn't sleep - too much going on in my brain, and I wasn't in familiar surroundings. Even the room at Star City, which was very nice, didn't give me a great rest.

So it was with great joy that I woke up this morning and realised my wife had let me sleep in and had taken the kids downstairs for breakfast. What a woman! It was so nice to be home after what was a hectic few days. But I'm doing it all again in a few weeks when we go down to be part of the launch of the St George Bank project. But until then, let's enjoy sleeping in familiar surroundings :)

On my way home

I'm sitting in Sydney airport waiting for my flight, and thought I'd take this opportunity to put down a few thoughts on what was MXDU 2005:

• Never go into anything called a Room of Death when it involves XBox, Jesse Warden, Guy Watson, Chafic and others
• Never assume your session will go smoothly (I don't even know if Geoff realised that his audio was coming through my AV in the room next door :)
• Be wary of Craig Hardcombe (AusTiger) and an offer to "go out on the town" afterwards
• Only take half the luggage you need so that you can bring home everything they give you in your conference pack.
• Expect to meet some great people from all over who somehow may have heard of you before (so also be careful what you blog before you go to conference)
• Be careful of what can happen when you give a bunch of developers a Polaroid camera, a map of Darling Harbour and a super hero theme (the undies are supposed to be on the outside right?)

More thoughts once I get home ... thanks MXDU, you were fantatsic

MXDU going off ... dude!

Today has been a great time of meeting people. The sessions have been good too, but things like MXDU are mainly about meeting people. The cool thing is that this year, because of the Flash mobile app we've built, we already seem to be known by a few people. It's been nice to meet guys like Jesse Warden, Mike Chambers and Mike Downey (Jesse actually kicked my butt in the XBox Room of Death :)

It's not TOO nerdy at this stage ... but it's early days ;)

It has begun

Well here I am in Sydney, and so far it's been great. Spent today up to my eyeballs in meetings - Rocketboots, Macromedia, St George and InfoComp. Everyone was very nice and it gave me a good feeling about the rest of my time here this week. I'm with my good friends Ramon and Sarah tonight (although not having a lot of luck getting my laptop on Mono's network :( so it's been really nice to catch up with them. Plus I got to ride the Manly ferry back to their place which was a nice little piece of Sydney to include (and get some happy snaps on the phone to take home to the kids :) and had the best pasta meal and red wine on offer in Manly on a Wednesday night!

Tomorrow is when the real work starts though with the beginning of the conference. More blog posts during the day (that is if I have better luck getting my laptop on the wirless LAN at Star City!), and then after the banquet which should provide some real insight into the true nature of Macromedia developers :)

Sleep now, for tomorrow we get nerdy!

Nokia signs licensing agreement with Macromedia

Great news for those of us hoping Flash mobile actually goes somwhere ...

I'm gonna be tired come Friday!

I think this must be the biggest week of the DRD calendar. And a deafening roar comes back from the inumerable collective of DRDblog readers, ".....WHY?!?!?!"

Well, the MXDU conference is finally upon us. In what has become the mecca-week for Macromedia-aligned developers, designers and business people, I find myself flat to the boards with stuff to do this week. Not only am I attempting to actually keep my little ol' business afloat during this crazy period, I'm also meeting with close to a million people while in Sydney (no really, it would be close I'm sure) as well as preparing for, engaging with and speaking at the conference.

I'm actually looking forward to the banquet on the Thursday night. I realised that since my session on Flash for mobile phones is on the Friday, the majority of people who have been out partying at the banquet the night before are going to be a lot easier to speak to than people who are wide awake and taking notes :)

More from me soon during this week-of-weeks!

Victory is Mine!

At last, months of training, sweat and ice packs have paid off - I have finally beaten Jamesy at squash! It was a long night, with new member Adrian joining us for hit out, but I got my revenge for months of punishment in the last games of the evening. He had already beaten me earlier on, but I had good games with Matt and Adrian and felt pretty good towards the end. So I thought, "What the hell, may as well give it a shot", and challenged him to one more set. I have to say that he did have a sore wrist from a previous encounter, but he plays like a wounded Viv Richards (master batsmen from the West Indies in the 80's) - stops trying to run and just hits winners to conserve energy :)

I even sustained what could have been the injury of the night - a squash ball to the head from point blank range - but by that stage I was up 8-1 in the last game and wasn't going to let that beat me. So you may well ask me what victory over my on-court nemesis is like ... well when the headache dies down I'll tell you!

Hopeless Blogging in the countdown to MXDU

I have just come to accept that I am a hopeless blogger. Obviously the success of the medium is the routine of updating content, leading to a blog full of at least current (if not interesting) content. I knew this from the start, and was determined to make the routine part of my day. However, as you can see plainly from the lack of writing on this blog, that hasn't quite happened :)

I decided to come clean tonight as to my true inabilities in this area, as soonI'll be heading to the biggest gathering of IT and web nerds in the southern hemisphere (and I say that with love in my heart for my fellow caffine addicts and Strongbad devotees) - and I know that there'll be a lot of blogging going on, I saw Mike Chambers at last year's conference blog from just about every session - up the back on his Mac writing furiously with Branden what's-his-name. So if anyone happened to go to our site after my session on Flash mobile, get curious and click the link to DRDblog, and... be thouroughly disappointed - I just wanted to make it known that I an fully aware of how crap a blog this really is :)

But hey, it's something to try - in fact I encourage everyone to have a go at keeping a weblog at least for a while and see what happens. You may love it, you may wonder how you ever got by without writing one ... or else you might be like me and realise that you just don't have the energy :)

Onwards and upwards to MXDU 2005 - where I may even surprise you all and make a post from the conference (maybe I'll even sit up the back with Mike :)