Flash vs Silverlight and the DNA of the giants behind

Couple of months ago Grand Skinner started a discussion about Flash vs Silverlight. Well maybe not so much about those two technologies them selfs but more about the companies and their approach behind creating an eco system around those technologies.
And indeed MS and Adobe have completely different approach. Someone said that design as a discipline is in the DNA of Adobe as a company and although they are a huge company they somehow manage to keep that DNA chain persistent in everyone of their new products coming up. On the other hand MS managed to evict some of its most important designer as of lately. You can check it out here

But let's focus on my first impressions of Silverlight Design IDE
Forcing the design community to use a tool that its not suited for their job, and here I refer to my early review of the Expression Suite , is a HUGE mistake.
Flash is what it is today only because of the design community not because of the huge developer base.
The result of software companies producing consumer products,that neglect user interface and interaction design in their work flow is self evident, and unfortunately currently prevalent.

Let's face it, most of the consumer software today is windows based and its plain ugly and not usable. I'm not saying the MAC based software is better by design, and the reason is for that is I do not work on a MAC and I have first hand impressions on that topic.
But what I think is that the devastating current result in the windows world is a direct result of MS policy.

How so?
They have a great developer tool set and not one decent design tool.
They also do not have a single mention of how to integrate designers in their work flow for software engineering.

I think its hilarious, to introduce a huge development product like the new Team Studio and to not have a single role in that work flow for a designer. What does that speak to you as an "enterprise" developer. You are to produce fantastic, ground breaking products and you are about to do that without a team of designers?

If that was acceptable for standalone apps because you can find workarounds to patch that nonsense, now with Silverlight unless Adobe products start directly exporting XAML I don't see how the designers will do their job. And their job is not to change their work flow around a new tool that seams more suited for front end developers.

I can see MS shops that produce ready component sets to make a lot of money in the short term but the faith of Silverlight success lies in the hands of the User Interface Designers and Interaction Designers. I have no doubts that if MS succeeds in pushing Silverlight to the users computers via updates or other distribution model it will outperform Flash but consumers do not care about stats and unless the design community embrace this technology as a new ground to be explored I think its going to end up being the next windows update in patch Tuesday.

How can a Social Netwok fit into your Universe

I have been keeping my eye for a while now (the last 2 year) on the increasing popularity of social networks. Most notably there business application and significance. The every increasing speed of life and the ever growing number of tasks we have to undertake compress the time that we have so much that it literally leaves no room to establish new contacts unless off course you make this a big priority which means you have to sacrifice something else. Off course you don't really have a choice you need to work your way through and create new business so that means you have to be smart about it and make this process as efficient as possible.

Let's say you have the chance and meet a new client how do you stay in touch to keep the contact alive. It has become very hard to stay in touch with business contacts and try to keep the spark or even grow that relationship into a more informal one. How about you meet 10 interesting people on a conference and you want to stay in touch with them purely professionally.
To be honest I have not yet created an account with any of the existing social networks but I have stumbled upon a very interesting article from one of the blogs I read about Facebook that could turn the tide for me.
article link

Now Scobelizer brigs up a very interesting point which pretty much sums up everything about Facebook, social networks and their application as a business tool.
He says Facebook is a multilevel marketing platform. He then goes one and one proving that point but if you stop and think about it for a second it really is quintessential. The only open questions is how many business people from the old generation are open enough to actually use such service and how much of them prefer everything to happened behind the scenes and prefer to not share who they know and who doesn't.

Creating Marketing web sites with Flex and Flash

This is the question that have bothered me for the past 6 months ever since we have successfully created and launched the first Flex application in Gugga, the Content Management System for the new Dewars Platform and seeing how powerful Flex is.
Is it crazy to think that Flex can be used for creating highly engaging and interactive marketing web sites. On one side Flex has been marketed as Rich Internet Application technology on the other every time someone mentions engaging animations and custom interactions everyone from Adobe backs off and says Flex is not about that.
Adobe also introduced a very important concept,use Flex as the application engine and plug custom components into it made in Flash CS3.
We are in the process of migrating the Gugga Flash Framework to Actions Script 3 and we are going to experiment with this approach. Let's all hope it will turn to be a win win situation by using the best of both worlds Flex and Flash. If the result is what we expect it to be it could turn the tide and change the whole process and way of thinking about approaching such projects

Why did I started this blog ...

I felt obligated to start with this commentary so there are no misunderstandings. I finally feel like I need a personal space where I can share my professional and personal inclinations with the rest of the world and to search for some fellow thinkers.
I have been touched in a lot of ways by technology. I would like to be regarded as a technologist and an enabler, a person helping others to do things better using technology. Or rather using technology to change people's minds about how they interact with it. Or be a part of architechting things that people actually use and admire for their simplicity and ease of use.
Some more things I would like to start with...I am one of the founders of Gugga. One of the most promising technology companies I have been dealing with. That may sound a bit premature but mark my words we will be :)
I needed a space where I can post my thoughts from a different angle... a bit more informal and less corporate. Yes this is an experiment ...will see how it goes. It might as well fly