Intrinsitivity

Tonight, I attended FlexCamp at Adobe in San Francisco. The event was sold out, with about 20 on the waiting list. Anyone could watch online via webcast, but attending FlexCamp in person proved to be a great experience that was well worth the trip. What I got most out of FlexCamp was a healthy, regenerative dose of inspiration! For a Flash developer, it is inspiring just to see where the magic happens. This is the home of Photoshop, Illustrator, and now Flash. Adobe has a monopoly on print and Web development tools, and for good reason: They know how to make software that professionals want.

I also enjoyed the numerous freebies given out. I signed a short nondisclosure agreement, but I honestly didn’t read a word of it, being in such a hurry to get inside. So, I’m not sure if freebies are off limits for public discussion, but what I feel fairly safe in disclosing, since it was my idea, is that I had the most wonderful epiphany while in attendance, which is that beer and brainstorming create serious synergy!

Flex is a great rapid application development (RAD) tool for building rich Web-based applications. And it doesn’t hurt that Flex is built on top of the already phenomenal and lightning fast core of Flash Player 9. I see a lot of promise in Flex (and Air) for enabling the creation of original, cross-platform solutions.

Tags: flexcamp, Flex, Flash, Adobe, Air

University of Florida News – The future of medicine: Insert chip, cure disease?

Imagine a chip, strategically placed in the brain, that could prevent epileptic seizures or allow someone who has lost a limb to control an artificial arm just by thinking about it.

It may sound like science fiction, but University of Florida researchers are developing devices that can interpret signals in the brain and stimulate neurons to perform correctly, advances that might someday make it possible for a tiny computer to fix diseases or even allow a paralyzed person to control a prosthetic device with his thoughts.

Social networking comprises the heart of Web 2.0, a phenomenon whose socioeconomic center is something called The Long Tail. For businesses like Amazon and eBay, The Long Tail promises prodigious profits via the sale of products and services that traditional brick-and-mortar stores like Wal-Mart and Target cannot carry due to practical considerations, like shelf space and findability. The Internet makes it possible to instantaneously personalize information to the nth degree.

The Long Tail essentially promises to turn any willing consumer into a sole proprietorship, since any consumer now has the ability to dive deep into a market niche and pull out unique and traditionally low-demand products and services that make money in small batches via broad distribution channels. What interests me about all of this is the long-term effects of this emerging consumer-proprietor duality. To be brief, if anyone can cheaply and easily become a buyer and a seller, does this sort of socioeconomic equalization strengthen or weaken Adam Smith’s invisible hand? Can capitalism survive Web 2.0?