You Got Your Flash in My Acrobat

My first thought when I heard this morning that Adobe has agreed to buy Macromedia was: poor Freehand, always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Though I long ago stopped using that drawing program in favor of Illustrator, it was nice to know that it was still kicking around. Freehand was my first introduction to the Macintosh, and so I carry a quiet little torch for it. For me, anyway, if Adobe decides to finally kill it, it will be like the end of an era. Of course, there’s the possibility that the program’s owners — who licensed Freehand first to Aldus and, when that company was bought by Adobe many years ago (notice a pattern here?), then to Macromedia — will valiantly try to find yet another new publisher. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

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Design in Flight Four Takes Flight

Design in FlightThe newest issue of Design in Flight is out now, today in fact. This issue looks and feels more like a serious, world-class design publication than ever; editor Andy Arikawa, who apparently has the strength and fortitude of a hundred designers, does an amazing job bringing it all together and I highly recommend you go get yourself a copy (a bargain at US$3.00) and see for yourself. Between its covers, you’ll find some really good articles from Veerle Pieters, Mark Boulton, Molly Holzschlag and many more. As an added bonus, you’ll get my own contribution, “Acing the Interview,” which is a very modest little attempt at helping designers perform better in interviews. It’s rather more low-level an article than I tend to like, but I think it contains some really useful straight dope. If you have an interview coming up, you could do worse than to spend your three dollars here.

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Programming Skills Wanted

Lionel RichieLionel Richie has a jukebox in his head, or so he said many years ago, and new songs pop into it all the time — a principal source of his boundless inspiration, apparently. I’ll never reach the heights of “Say You, Say Me,” but I’m starting to think I have a venture capital fund in my head, because new ideas for Web-based products and businesses keep occurring to me all the time. Over the weekend I had an idea for the funniest and most robust movie plot generator ever — not exactly a powerhouse enterprise, but something that I think a lot of people would find amusing for at least a while.

The problem, really, is my appalling lack of programming talent, a situation that’s becoming more and more acute with each new idea I generate and am unable to act upon, and compounded by the continual emergence of hot new technologies that seem like immense fun to play with.

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