Adobe Max: Well it’s officially day one. Let’s LiveBlog this bad boy.

Great coffee. I called down to the front desk and had them bring up a couple more of these things.I'm drinking them like they're going out of style.

6:58 AM
Lots going on today. Have I mentioned how much I love this coffee? They have Starbucks “African Kitamu” for the little single-cup coffee maker here in the room. I’m drinking the crap out of this stuff. I’m gonna head downstairs, get some breakfast and walk down to the Convention Center. According to Google Maps, I’m about a mile away from the Convention Center and they say it’ll take about 13 minutes to walk there. I don’t really feel like sitting on a shuttle this morning, and I wanna move my legs, so I’m gonna walk it. It’s a nice walk, actually, I’ve walked it both nights I’ve been here.

By the way, today’s Keynote Address can be viewed online. Visit max.adobe.com/online for more details. I’ll be blogging thoughts as they come to me (if they come to me) so I’ll try to add some editorial commentary to what I see live.

Why anyone would ride a bus/shuttle around here is beyond me. The walk is fantastic. Best mile you've ever walked. Perfect temperature.

9:06 AM
Okay, we’re inside the Nokia Theater. Pretty much a mob scene. The place is completely packed and the whole center-front of the theater is reserved for “Press”. I don’t recall so much space being held for “Press/Analyst” before, so my curiosity is definitely aroused. I don’t know if this is just natural curiosity on the part of the press given recently developments in the “Apple vs. Adobe” skirmish over Flash, or if it’s because of some impending “announcement”. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough though. Lots of talk about Flash, Flash’s future, Android, Apple, iPhone and the Mobile-slash-Tablet space. The ground is definitely shifting beneath a lot of people’s feet, and that’s a pretty uncomfortable place to be for a lot of developers to be.

9:12 AM
Okay, I gotta admit, starting off the Keynote with a DJ playing live dance music while a guy onstage writes code projected onto the main stage screen is… um… interesting. Didn’t ZeFrank do something like this in 2003?

9:22 AM
Oh, I see what you did there. There’s a live DJ creating music using AudioTool, Natzke creating live artwork and Joa Ebert live coding some sort of 3D sound visualization display thingy. Now you’ve hooked all three of them up and there’s this sort of live-3D-Flash-Art-Trance-DJ-German-Bitmap-Visual-Performance-Code thing happening… with a giant multi-touch screen. This is the sort of thing my friend Marty Hardin would mess his pants up seeing… However, it’s the sort of thing that causes me to have a Grand Mal seizure and bleed from the eyes.

9:36 AM
Kevin Lynch onstage now. Processing power is driving the whole revolution. Power per weight and battery power have enabled the mobile revolution. Cool slides. Lots of logarithmic growth charts.

No, no, no... it's not the *Gadget* Lab... it's the *Device* Lab.

1:36 PM
Okay, so the Keynote is over, I’ve gotten my free Motorola Droid 2 phone (CDMA, and I’m on T-Mobile, so it’s basically just a Wi-Fi enabled Development/Testing device) and I’ve spent the last couple of hours in the Max Pavilion. I spent about 45 minutes or so wandering around various booths and checking out the vendors (effectiveUI is top of my list so far. UI testing, User research, Interface research services… I’m all over that one) and about 45 minutes playing in what I’ve been calling “The Gadget Lab”. Apparently it’s “The Device Lab”. You say “tomato”… But seriously. Google TV looks awesome, and I have to admit, Adobe AIR for TV looks, well… it just looks cool. If enough set manufacturers support it (Samsung is first!) then I could see it gaining significant traction. Personally, I’d love to develop apps for HDTVs. That would be cool, daddy-o. SDKs are everywhere. Every group inside Adobe is pimping their SDK and I’ve already got a hella collection of discs. I’m doing the whole “Bring Your Own Laptop” labs this time, and I’m probably going to install the Android 2.2 SDK and Flex for Android SDK tonight after I get back to the hotel.My sessions start in about 15 minutes. First up is “Dreamweaver and HTML5 & Javascript based Widgets”.
Here’s the description:

“Join Scott Richards for a guided tour of the latest features in Dreamweaver that enable you to harness the power of HTML5 and CSS3 in your site. See how you can use the Widget Browser to easily add Javascript based Widgets to your pages. As your web sites rely more and more on CSS and Javascript make sure you are taking advantage of the tools in Dreamweaver to help you quickly navigate to the css controlling your web pages and help you troubleshoot problems.”

After that one, I’ve got “From Design to CSS and HTML with Fireworks and Dreamweaver”:

“Learn how to take a finished web design and turn it into CSS and HTML using Adobe Fireworks to optimize the images and generate the initial CSS and HTML pages, and then use Adobe Dreamweaver to refine and optimize the code. We’ll cover essential techniques to control the page layout in the CSS, as well as hints and tips such as how to save time by generating CSS styles directly from the design and how to use placeholders for interactive elements and dynamic content.”

Then I finish the day with, “Creating Interactive Rich Media Advertising Campaigns with Video”:

“In this session you’ll learn how video can be one of the most engaging components in Rich Media Advertising. We’ll discuss how: use multiple videos in standard or HD format leveraging Dynamic Streaming; record your own video with a webcam and send it to email or a smartphone; post videos on Facebook; play a 3D multiplayer game using Papervision and Flash Media Interactive Server; and go mobile with your campaigns. We’ll show examples of real rich media campaigns from top advertisers, discuss the technologies powering the creative, and try to dispel all the myths around the limitations of video ads.”

So the next three hours or so should be really really fun. On to the first session!

7:30 PM
So, as you can see… long day. Exhausted. Drained. Stuffed with horrible food (not badly prepared, or bad tasting. Actually really, really, really delicious food… just bad for you) and getting ready to buy Adobe Creative Suite CS5 Web Premium. Again, I don’t really know what to think about all the Flash stuff. With everything going on between Apple, Android, Adobe and Flash, it’s tough to make a call right now. AIR for TV looks really cool, and there are arguably a LOT of devices out there besides the iPad and the iPhone. I know because I actually spent a great deal of time today touching a lot of them. Then there’s blackberry. Say what you want about RIM, there are a TON of people using Blackberries, and the audience is out there. The Playbook looks really good. I can’t speak for the UI or touchscreen, because the single Playbook they had on display was behind glass, but the damn thing sure as hell exists, and it looks nice.

So while I can’t speak for the rest of the world, I do know that for a long time people lived and did business without Apple hardware, and there’s an entrenched community that simply isn’t going to vanish overnight. The Samsung people seem committed to Android and Flash/AIR, and I personally talked with representatives from a lot of companies, from TV to print manufacturers (have you seen the Lexmark printers with built in apps and CCD scanner/printers? They’re hot… seriously cool) and they’re sinking millions of dollars into products that integrate with Flash and Adobe AIR. There are literally hundreds of screens out there beyond the iOS world, and honestly, Flash is viable on pretty much all of them. That’s my take-away today. All I know is, the next time someone says, “Flash is dead”, I’m not going to be so quick to agree with them… that’s all.

The other thing that I took away today was this: I’m a died in the wool Dreamweaver user. You’re going to have to pry my Dreamweaver from my cold, dead fingers. The things I saw today with HTML5/CSS3 integrating Fireworks and Dreamweaver and Photoshop for a robust development and design workflow leave me absolutely convinced that if you’re a creative professional, and you’re creating online interactive solutions for your clients, you owe it to both yourself and your clients to check out the production workflow that these products represent.

Okay. That’s all for today. I’m exhausted. I’m going to go use my Max discount and grab my copy of CS5. I’m hopeful that the bandwidth here at the hotel will accommodate me. I’ve got some “Bring your own laptop” (BYOL) sessions tomorrow, and the requirement for a couple of them are several of the CS5 Web Premium products (Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder) as well as the Android 2.2 SDK, and I’ve got to take some time tonight and make sure they’re all installed before I go back tomorrow.

More liveblogging tomorrow. Another Keynote, probably more big news (if the rumors I’m hearing are true, it’s going to be another big day), and I’ll have plenty more to write about.

See you tomorrow!