Here's a great example of a site that allows the user to create a custom composition by using a butt load of animated bitmap assets. I'm quite impressed, one of the most solid executions of this technique I've seen in a while. Not to mention Harry is a great little character to have as a host.

My opinion on this matter is a bit mixed. Part of me is looking at this type of idea with great skepticism, another is looking at it with a little jealousy, and a small part is looking at it with some hope. I'm more curious what other peoples' opinions are on this subject.

Arnold is an interesting entity here in town (I live in Boston), they're one of a couple monolithic agencies that have the reputation, at least in the small agencies world, of being a great place to go before you retire. Now this is only a reputation. I know plenty of people who work at Arnold and they're all great, talented people. They're also all on the account side of things. And I'm not going to lie, I've interviewed with Arnold back in 2006 when I was leaving BEAM.

One reason why I didn't want to take a job with them, although offered, was because their interactive shop seemed small, uncommunicative, closed in, and lacked talent on both the production and direction level. Next to that, their client list wasn't as pleasing as I might think a large agency could be capable of winning. I think back then, their big client was Caribbean or Radio Shack. I'm sure they have won some bigger clients since then. Really, it's a moot point anyway, most of their interesting interactive work is farmed out to smaller chop-shops around town.

Now this leads me to the jealousy side. How did two guys land a job with a large agency and basically get to create a role where they'll get to play all day, but never actually have to make anything that would make Arnold money. I would love a job like that, although I'd probably get bored without any financially driven direction.

I possibly lack the understanding of what Arnold's capabilities are. At least in order to put together how a group like this can exist inside the walls of a company that does PR, print, broadcast, and low-level interactive work. You mean to tell me that they're going to bust out a new creative campaign that works in RFID tags, or motion-capturing computers, similar to something that a group of MIT grads at Small Design would do? And for what client? Tag? Jack Daniels? or truth? (these were the three mentioned in the article, and probably their most interesting)

This skepticism comes from a bigger opinion that larger companies are looking for the new "what's next" to get them on some list of companies who are innovative and thinking differently. They mention Apple as motivation. Really? Apple? Last I checked, Apple wasn't in the market to try to sell body spray to a target demographic of 18 to 22 year old apes. Apple has an R&D department because they make technology and products that people invest time and money in. Such as the iPhone, iMac, iBook, etc...

As I write this, the skepticism is maxing out. Realistically, agency work only resides on a wall, in a magazine, on TV, and on the web for a couple months (tops). I say this because I'm consistently frustrated with the fact that work I do is only live for a short time, after spending so much time and effort building it. This idea is only amplified when you put the words like "non-traditional" or "non-billable" behind it. In my opinion, it's a lot of time and money put in to a hobby that most people of that caliper would do at home on a Sunday and not eight hours a day for five days a week. Or would go work for Apple on products and not spin wheels trying to "think creatively" about alternative ways to advertise body spray.

In all fairness, there is some optimism in my mind for something like this. This is a bold move for Arnold. It takes bold moves to make change. I can even see some similarities to the point in time when a large agency decides that it needs to start hiring nerds to do interactive, but have no idea what it takes. In either situation, the move has been made and people learn what their roles are, or how to deal with the new. Hopefully, at least in Boston, this move leads to results that prove financially worthy of having a group like this in the agency's arsenal, and other companies start to follow. Such interactive groups could lead to more creative and interesting work that we all can imagine designing and building.

Or it could lead to another motion wall that comes, goes, and people only remember it because their friends were dancing like idiots while making fun of it.

Right now Adobe is obviously focusing on improving the Flex framework and buttoning up the upcoming release of AIR. This is on the tail end of the big release of ActionScript 3. My recent observations lead me to believe that, within the community, AS3, Flex, and AIR have been received with huge praise and equally extreme reluctance. The praise seems to be coming from developers who finally see AS3 as a decent language and Flex as a viable RIA/RIE (I don't have an opinion yet) platform. On the other side you've got the more creative types who are, not surprisingly, all weirded out by all this hardcore programming and development speak. If you sit in the middle, then you're either not concerned or happier than a pig in shit.

Flash is a funny thing because there are always a hundred and one ways to accomplish something. If you started using Flash with no prior programming experience you probably came up with ways of making rich content by using a funny system of frame labels, gotoAndPlay() calls, and a good old on(release) methods. If you stuck with it, and over the course of repeating things, you probably improved your programming skills and started using good fundamental programming techniques such as functions, for loops, conditionals, etc. You probably came up with your own unique little system for getting stuff done. And it worked! It worked well. Then classes came along . Here you either picked up how to use them (properly or not) or continued using your tried and true methods. If you started discovering the advantages of classes you probably started hearing people talk about OOP (yikes!). And again, you either embraced it and ventured into the world of "hardcore" programming or left it for the "smart" people to deal with.

And now you've got Adobe making all these great improvements to the Flash Player, the AS3 API, and supporting Flex. Awesome right? For some yes, but anyone of the old guard (take no offense) its of course a pain in the ass to get up to speed, especially to anyone that's never used an event listener. We've even heard about this supposedly awesome new application code named Thermo which seems to have a few developers nervous for some reason. Thermo kind of reminds me of when Dreamweaver came out, lots of promise of non-programmers being able to make stuff happen, but in the end it took years to mature into a product that was respected.

So now we have this disparate array of creators that have completely different approaches, skills, and reasons for using Flash. Everyone is crying and moaning about the next feature they want next. Designers want a new timeline and animation tools. Developers want added functionality and an improved Flex framework. Two totally different mindsets are barking in Adobe's ears every single day about what to do with Flash. It makes me wonder how difficult it must be to please everyone in our community now, and will Adobe continue to do it?

I sure hope so. And I don't see why they wouldn't to continue in years to come either. Lee Brimelow felt the need to announce somethings publicly due to some of this chatter on MXNA. I was rather surprised he felt the need to do this, but alas its nice to hear whats in store. He's evening taking comments on bugs, quirks, and suggested new features for the Flash IDE code editor. Can't say that I care too much to comment since I'm an avid FlashDevelop user, but its nice to see something happening there.

At any rate, I gotta say though, Adobe (R.I.P. Macromedia) has done a pretty damn good job at pleasing both the creatives and the developers over the years. The future looks bright. And I don't normally feel any sympathy for large corporations, but today I made an exception. You've got one hell of a task on your hands now Adobe. But I must say, you're my #1. I hope you never die until I decide to just start making beer for the rest of my life. You have consistently given me amazing tools to make really cool shit with. I started small and the community inspired me to make bigger and bigger things. Hell, I've even built a successful career around one of your products. So thanks.

I can't help but wonder what Adobe is thinking today. Will this help the Flash Player or AIR get on mobile phones? Will Adobe take interest at all? I sure hope so. I'm getting rather excited over the possibilities.