The Adobe MAX Unaward show: An adventure

I think I may have found a new passion. A passion that will steer my life in a new direction.

A direction that will bring me joy and fulfill all the wishes I desire.

This new passion is called: Acting...

The always lovely Serge Jespers from Adobe called me up one day and asked me to join him on a project he was getting started with. He wanted to create a widget called: 'The Max Unaward show'.

However, he was not looking for some extra horse coding power. No, he needed an actor.... What, wait, me?

But people, when you get a call from Serge, no matter what the question is, your answer is yes! (ok maybe not for every question...)

And so the adventure began... We had a crazy day of doing preparation and shooting the video.

We started out with shopping for the most crazy 'tv host' outfit we could find. Yep it felt like the 'moron' brothers day out :-) and headed out to Amsterdam where Klaas Jan Tukker and Ton Frederiks from Adobe joined us to help with the project. I there realized that Ton really knows a ton (no pun intended haha) about video and video editing.

I wore Serge's shoes, who were like 4 sizes too big for me, for most of the day.

And my daughter loves the shirt so she adopted it with love:

Read all about the project and the making off here:

http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/09/02/give-yourself-a-max-unaward/

http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/09/03/max-unawards-behind-the-scenes-part-1/

http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/09/06/max-unawards-behind-the-scenes-part-2/

http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/09/07/max-unawards-behind-the-scenes-part-3/

http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/09/08/max-unawards-behind-the-scenes-part-4/

http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/09/09/max-unawards-behind-the-scenes-part-5/

Serge did a tremendous amount of work on the widget and writing about it.

Thanks to Serge, Klaas Jan, Ton and the Adobe crew!

Go now and Unaward yourself here:

http://max.adobe.com/widget/

I am out there with the big boys because I already won a MAX Unaward:

With love,

Wim

The guy who will stick to computers instead of acting.

Do you want Steve Jobs to control you porn collection?

I have been following the discussion between Apple and Adobe with increasing amazement. Somehow I still have a problem believing that the Flash ban is a pure technical issue. I think it's about protecting a business model. Which makes sense but...

A little future doom scenario (atmosphere wise, think Bladerunner)

1. Imagine Apple will implement the same business model for your desktop or laptop as they do on the Iphone/Ipad/Ipod. Which essentially boils down to: just use the almighty Appstore.
If you say: "no chanche in hell, that would be commercial suicide". Why is it then, that the iPhone/iPad are what they are now?

2. So if you want to install or download anything on your computer you will have to pass the Appstore. There is no get out of jail free card here. No downloading from the web what YOU choose. No, you can only download from a collection of what Steve and his employees like. (just like on the iPhone).

3. What if, just for the sake of argument, there's no app for it? Let's say a good porn app. I did a test and searched for "porn" in the Appstore. Besides some lame sex jokes, a porn name generator and, you read it well, an app to deal with porn addiction (sic: finally I got help), there is nothing worthy of the name.

4. Porn in this case serves my point because it's a metaphor.
Let's take it a step further: Replace porn by free news gathering for instance.
What if that controversial book or communist newspaper you want to read or a disputed video you want to watch has been banned by Steve on his almighty iPad? Yep, a device optimized for reading books and newspapers... Or maybe you would want to choose for using let's say NeoOffice instead of KeyNote on your new Appstore enabled laptop? Or you would want to play DarkOrbit (www.darkorbit.com) on your new computer that you bought yesterday (time of writing 60.000 people online)... I guess Steve's not gonna want that...

That's not gonna happen you say? We'll see... Steve can do what he wants, it's his business. Great products, great marketing, nice and shiny, working well (most of the time), all very true... But for me personally, I think I'm not gonna wait for the almighty Appstore true censorship to take mine elsewhere...

Let's see, what else is there... There is an operating system that permits me to install whatever is out there. It's called Windows. Wait there's another one... It's called: Linux or wait there's more: it's called Android... and on and on...

I say hooray for 'open' and freedom of choice!