December  1 2007

                        Buying Flash


       Good Morning world, and welcome to my blog. I haven't posted here for a long time, but that's ok. The web is forgiving. Also content has a long tail on the web. It goes on and on...

       Today is a bit of a turning point for me because after years of pushing quicktime, trying to be part of the quicktime way, I am jumping ship for flash. It may not seem like much to you, but to me, it's ending a dream of making the software I write change how things are done. At least in quicktime.

       I mean I think I can hear at least a few people at apple cheering when I say I'm done with quicktime. We have some pretty major disagreements on quality, and what it is.

        You have to understand that one of my favorite art teachers growing up made us do finger painting on the first day of class. Feel the paint, bathe in it, up to our elbows. Splash it around.

        The same has always been my argument for web film making. My approach has always been to put people at ease, by not concerning myself with the quality of their output(or mine) . Get people finger-painting. This approach has worked wonders for flash, as I watch youtube mature from a grainy awful site full of adolescent gland games, towards something more meaningful, qualitative and world  changing.

       The quicktime approach has been too uptight too early on, the art teacher has asked for detailed, self-conscious renderings on the first day, and as such the output has dried up.

       I hate to say it but if apple was a painter, it thinks it would be Jackson Pollack, but really they are more Norman Rockwell. They have been so concerned with the photo realistic rendering of the conversation going on on the web, that they have stopped people from talking. Really users are too much for them. Users lack quality. Better to focus on ipods and iphones, because the computer path leads inevitably towards messy problems like 'do perfectly designed artists shit?' or 'is bleeding allowed while working from behind a mac?'...

       ...and it is a conversation. I think web video should be more like a phone call than a produced T.V. show. But that never happened for quicktime. And I feel like I'm missing the boat with flash going by...

      so all aboard, flash it is.