INTERESTING CONFERENCES: FLASHFORWARD

FLASHFORWARD NY 2005 will be held in New York at the New Yorker Hotel from July 6 to 8.

This conference has a particular importance as it comes after the announced acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe.

Flash has an interesting architecture and structure, combined with a large installed base of players, that makes it a very appealing platform for interactive web applications. It is capable of playing videos with interactivity at every frame, and measuring its own transmission speed, making it possible to do very sophisticated, user-friendly, actor-centered applications.

Up to now, it has had very primitive 3-D capabilities. In a conversation I had several years ago with George Lucas (when he was introducing a 3-D game), he touted the importance of immersive, 3-D technology, over the embedding of videos in gameware. Personally, I believe it is the inclusion of both that is the real goal.

Flash, partly because of its light-weight player, has had success as a platform for interactive applications in mobile devices

It will be very interesting to see what people have to say at the Flashforward conference about these issues -- the merger, improved video performance, 3-D, and mobile tech, each of which seems to be at a critical point.