The hamlet of Gourdol is probably where my earliest ancestors lived, sometime around the XVI-XVII century. They were protestants living in a catholic nation, which made for accurate record keeping difficult. However, most of my known ancestors can be traced back as having lived in the area, so the name of this hamlet is surely not a coincidence.
My most popular pic on Flickr right now, almost 9,000 views:
The largest living fish species, the whale shark is a filter feeding shark, feeding on plankton, algae and krill. I was therefore in very little danger when I took this shot, although they can grow quite large (this specimen was about 12-14 m (36-40 ft) long) and can bump into you.
They are peaceful and docile and generally ignore people around them, although they can be playful at time.
This fish is a fairly rare and unpredictable encounter. Their population is unknown, as are their mating habits.
An encounter with a whale shark is a rare experience and a very special moment. May you find yourself nose to nose with one some day.
The video of my talk at Flashcamp SF on April 16th is now available. Learn about AIR 2 and AIR on Android.
Source: Adobe TV.
No, not that tablet.
The year was 1992. I was still at school doing some research on user interfaces based on speech and gestures. But I had this problem: I had all these cool ideas but no hardware to try them on.
I was young, naive, and an Apple fanboy before the term was even invented. In May I traveled to San Jose to attend Apple’s WWDC and at one of the sessions Ron Avitzur demoed a software that turned pen scribbles into neatly formatted equations. That was the coolest demo I saw at WWDC that year. I tracked down the Apple guy who was hosting the session, and asked if he was looking for a summer intern. There was only an extremely remote chance he would say yes, but fortune favors the bold. And that day fortune was very, very kind to me. I joined Apple’s Human Interface Team in August for an internship that was only supposed to last a couple of months. I would leave Apple 10 wonderful years later.
I soon found out that Apple was working on a project code-named PenLite. The hardware was based on the Macintosh Powerbook Duo. It shared the same motherboard and greyscale screen, and the same special dock connector for peripherals such as floppy disc drives and Ethernet (well… AppleTalk). It lacked a keyboard, but its display could detect the hovering and taps of a special pen.
Our job was to write PenMac, the system software extensions to Mac OS that would allow existing Mac applications to be used in this environment. It was a very interesting problem. For example, with the menu bar at the top of the screen your hand would hide the menu after you tapped on it. You also quickly realized how you take for granted the shift and commands keys.
I started working on the problem of gesture recognition, figuring that gestures would perhaps be a way of bringing back the convenience of keyboard shortcuts. I came up with a few interesting ways of doing this that ended up as patents for Apple (5,583,946, 5,590,219, 5,594,810 and 5,749,070).
As an aside, in 1993 we were paid a visit by a couple of guys from San Diego who were working on a drawing app they called SmartSketch. You could sketch four lines with a mouse and they would turn into a square. As much as it was fun to use with a mouse, it really shined when using a pen: it’s much easier to sketch with a pen than with a mouse and it made for a much more natural interaction. We gave them much encouragement to build pen-based software. They eventually founded a company and called it FutureWave. In 1995 they added support to create animations and called their new app FutureSplash Animator. Macromedia acquired FutureWave in 1996, and renamed FutureSplash Animator to Flash 1.0. Guess what I am working on these days… Small world.
Apple canceled the PenLite project in August 1993 as it decided to focus on Newton. We were all sad, but that experiment had also showed the limitations of repurposing a traditional desktop user interface. And yet, having a clipboard-sized computing device was deeply compelling. Despite the low resolution of the screen compared to what today’s technology can offer, the form factor of the device, the ability to cradle it in your arms, made for a fundamentally different, more intimate, experience than a laptop.
And yet, the Windows-based tablet computers of today suffer from the same problem: repurposing for a tablet a UI designed for a desktop is like eating pea soup with a fork.
Here’s hoping we will soon see clipboard-sized devices with a custom-designed user interface. I want to eat my ice cream with a spoon.
My team has been working on a couple of cool products that we’re unveiling at the MAX 2009 conference today. We have some related sessions I’m detailing below.
At MAX this week we’re showing a preview of AIR 2.0, codenamed Athena. We’ve added tons of cool new features, but first, we’ve worked on reducing the memory and CPU usage for a lot of AIR applications. We’ve also listened to what our developers were asking for and we’re adding some of the most popular features:
You can find out more about AIR 2.0 at the following sessions:
by Oliver Goldman — Monday 10/5, 2pm, #adobemax51, Room 501A
Oliver will talk about how we continue to improve your options to deploy and distribute your AIR applications.
by Christian Cantrell — Monday 10/5, 5pm, #adobemax335, Room 515A
Christian will give an overview of some of the new features in AIR 2.0, including some cool demos using some of the new APIs.
Monday 10/5, 8pm & 9pm, Room 512
Come to this session to ask your questions about AIR, Flash Player and the iPhone support.
by Christian Cantrell — Tuesday 10/6, 4:30pm, #adobemax198, Room 411
Repeat of Christian’s session on Monday.
For the past 6 months we’ve been quietly working on a surprise: Flash Pro CS5 can now build native application for the iPhone and iPod touch. This opens these devices to Flash developers and allows them to use Actionscript and the tools they are already familiar with to build native applications for the iPhone. The applications are compiled to native ARM machine code: there is no interpreter involved. You get access to many of the APIs available in Flash Player and AIR, plus a few extra ones. We have also added support in Actionscript for multi-touch, gestures, accelerometer, geolocation, etc…
We have been working with a few developers and they have built some really cool apps that are now available in the iTunes App Store for you to download and play with.
Those apps are:
Deep thanks to all our pre-release developers for working with us and for their patience as we were working out the kinks.
To find out more: adobe.com/go/iphone or come to one of the sessions below, including my session Tuesday at 3pm.
by Aditya Bansod — Monday 10/5, 2pm, #adobemax315, Room 402A
Aditya will present an overview of the tooling support and explain how you will be able to use Flash Pro CS5 to build applications for the iPhone. This will be a good introduction to how everything works.
Monday 10/5, 8pm & 9pm, Room 512,
Come to this session to ask your questions about AIR, Flash Player and the iPhone support.
by Scott Petersen and Chris Brichford — Tuesday 10/6, 1:30pm, #adobemax402, Room TBD
Scott and Chris will describe in details how building applications for the iPhone using Flash Pro is different, and how you can optimize both your Actionscript to make sure the compiler produces the best possible result, as well as how to take advantage of hardware acceleration to make sure your app flies. This is an advanced session.
by Arno Gourdol — Tuesday 10/6, 3pm, #adobemax351, Room 515B
There’s a lot of things to consider when building apps for the iPhone. Applications on mobile devices are used differently than on a desktop. New modes of interaction and new features are available that open up new possibilities, such as geolocation or accelerometer. I’ll cover these points and give you tips on how you can start developing applications today on the desktop to make them available on the iPhone soon. I will focus mostly on the design aspects, with a few tips on how to optimize for performance.
Wednesday 10/7, 9:30am, #adobemax159, Room 511C
Come join me and members of my team and ask us your questions about how we’re opening the iPhone to Flash developers
by Aditya Bansod — Wednesday 10/7, 11am, #adobemax72, Room 501A
Repeat of Monday’s presentation
by Scott Petersen and Chris Brichford — Wednesday 10/7, 11am, #adobemax402, Room TBD
Repeat of Tuesday’s presentation
We’re very excited to bring you these cool products and we’re looking forward to your feedback.
Arno Gourdol is the director of engineering for Adobe AIR, Adobe's multiscreen runtime for standalone applications. Previously he led various initiatives within Adobe's Creative Suite Business Unit, including XMP, Version Cue and Bridge. Prior to joining Adobe in 2001 he was part of the User Interface team at Apple that conceived, designed and implemented Aqua, the user interface of Mac OS X. Arno is a graduate of the Grenoble University. He lives in San Francisco and enjoys traveling from Abel Tasman to Zanzibar.
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