Wired published a great summary about the birth of Adobe Edge, its heritage, its reasoning and the target group of not so high-end coders. It shows the possibilities today and points in the direction Adobe is headed for.
Author Tim Carmody calls Edge Adobe’s very early answer to the Mobile Web. I would call that a rather late answer. But one should be a little forgiving, because HTML5 itself is not a standard yet and standing at the very beginning.
When I started blogging, back in 2001, blogs were unknown to the majority of people. Some of the blogs I read back then were authored by people who didn’t call them blogs. People like Jeffrey Zeldman or Stowe Boyd. They were just using what they had to express themselves, probably not aware that they were the first messengers of a cultural change. We were ahead of our time.
I started out with GreyMatter, switched to Movable Type and now I have two other blogs running, one on Wordpress. I am also considering ExpressionEngine as a third option. But it was never about technology.
Even back in 2001, we started to realize it was all about content. Mind you, it was the era before Facebook and YouTube.
After blogging came micro blogging, with Tumblr, later Soup.io and now Posterous. While Six Apart drifted away with their now defunct VOX, I focussed more and more on status messages, on the Twitter phenomenon and I used every channel I could find to experiment with publishing. It was no longer only about content, at least not long articles. It was about the spark, the immediate thought.
I began to see the relations between all these things, how they function and what makes people use them, without ever thinking how they work. And I realized that success for these tools is strongly dependent on certain patterns.
Publishing is now completely independent of power, money, influence as starting points. Anyone can publish anything. What makes some publishers more successful, what gains them more popularity, are a number of factors.
I might have forgotten something. If that is the case, feel free to comment.
If I had followed these rules, I would have been a much more successful author. I focussed on other things, to make a living, because I couldn’t afford to just exist by writing. I would, if that would be an option.
However, I don’t intend to be defeated. I believe in the relevant thought, ideas and learnings that will bring us forward, that will change things. Change has always been my friend. I saw it coming and going, and I always benefitted from it in terms of learning and realization of the psychology behind it. So I will keep going and pick up my blog where I abandoned it a couple of months ago. It doesn’t matter if this disconnection happens again. If I have to repeat the process, I will.
I am just like my fellow bloggers. We are very human. We strive for success, for improvements, for recognition and for love. That can only be achieved with change and expression of ourselves.
I am personally most driven by the exciting feeling of “getting something”. Be it behavior patterns, social intelligence, networking theory, the rules of publishing… It all comes down to communication, the major change in our evolution. This is where I am coming from and where I will always be heading for.
You may have noticed that there haven’t been so many updates lately. I am so busy, I simply don’t find time anymore to dedicate to Core.
Since March 1, 2010, I am working for TBWA\ZURICH, a Swiss division of TBWA International, which is part of the Omnicom Group. Aside of daily business and client projects, I am in the process of rebuilding the Online team, which all in all is a time consuming process.
Tumblr has been my rescue. Because I simply haven’t got the time to write long articles, I sometimes jot down a few thoughts, bring them in shape and post them. This whole process doesn’t take up more than five to ten minutes. A great side effect is, the shorter format forces me to keep my thoughts concise and crisp.
My thoughts on the state of advertising is a first example of this new style.
You should add it to your news reader.
Honestly, I didn’t think I’d see that day when Apple surpasses Microsoft in market capitalization. Of course, measured by how many operating systems are being sold, Microsoft is still leading. But in terms of market value, Apple has now become the biggest tech company in the world.
A bit scary, so much success. Is there a break? Apple’s success may increase, but alongside I see an image problem arising, with Apple’s attitude and an incapability to grasp people’s interests. Apple has clearly reached that point where it has the power to decide to become the next Microsoft — with all bad karma included — or to clean up its strategic orientation and figure out how to work with people’s interests.
