Red Sox win the 2007 World Series, powered by rookies and pitching
After the win, we called our 80+ year old grandfather back in Boston (Revere). After saying hello, he replied… “We’ve got a problem… Chase (my son, his great grandson) only had to wait 8 months… I had to wait 80 years!”.
The Sox are once again World Series Champions and, after sweeping the Colorado Rockies, it couldn’t be any sweeter. Congrautlations to Sox fans everywhere and to my true home town, Boston!
Big Birthday, Big Present, courtesy of Big Papi and The Red Sox!
**** UPDATE ****
Game 1: Boston 13, Colorado 1
Game 2: Boston 2, Colorado 1
Game 3: Boston 10, Colorado 5
Game 3 got a little close there, but the Sox rookies took care of it.
The Red Sox now just need one more win to take home their 2nd championship in four years.
**** END UPDATE ****
For a Red Sox fan, what a week to have a birthday, and a pretty big one at that!
I’ve been a die-hard fan all my life and season ticket holder since I graduated from Boston University.
For the second time in four years, the Red Sox are going to the World Series.
What a great way for me to enter into a new decade, a ticket holder to all 4 World Series games.
I’m not sure which games I’m going back to Boston for… but I couldn’t be more excited.
Earlier today, I celebrated with close friends and family.
But the party will continue this week and likely into next week, hopefully ending in another Ring!
Go Sox!
Ribbit Shout is voice-to-text to email, for Flex and AIR
I just announced the Beta1.1 release of Ribbit Developer Component and we’ve added a huge new feature. Ribbit Shout services in the Flex/AIR component let you create, record and send a voice message to ANY email address. The recipient of the message receives the voice message attached as an mp3, along with an optional voice-to-text transcription of the message.
This was an exciting and unique feature to add. I mean, once you release a component that allows Flex developers the ability to make phone calls for their apps, it’s hard to think you’ll ever top or match that excitement.
I think Ribbit Shout adds a new dimension of communication to/through the component and could be a much more tangible feature for developers to build on. The adoption of adding the unprecedented voice and phone ability to an app is nothing short of amazing. I’ve approved hundreds of developers into our community and the activity level on our support forums has been much higher than I expected.
With this new feature, Ribbit developers now have functionalities that are much smaller and portable by nature to build around. I think we’ll see much more widget-like apps that take advantage of Ribbit Shout’s voice to text to email features.
Plus we’ve got some very big announcements still to come for the developer platform. Exciting times and even more exciting technology to play with.
Can Flash become the best defense to a Visually Impaired Website Access Law?
Techcrunch reported today on a potential ruling in the state of California that all web sites need to be accessible to the visually impaired. The article singles out AJAX sites (and other script-based sites) as potentially coming up very short of standards that may come from such a ruling. Flash-based sites and apps could be hit the hardest.
The case stems from a lawsuit against Target and argues that a site’s inability to cater to visually impaired users limits their right to enjoy its goods and services. I don’t disagree that there are measures that can be taken universally to make sites friendlier to users with certain disabilities. I wonder if we can place some responsibility for a solution here on the browser. If browser’s today are smart enough to filter out RSS and various tags, perhaps they can enhance the site experience for certain users. Still, that wouldn’t solve the problem for most RIA’s today.
A long time ago when I was pushing Flash to execs at Fidelity, one of my arguments was Flash’s accessibility features, which could become very advantageous to the aging/retiring customers, the target market of their retirement income business strategy. I wonder if it’s time we bring such abilities of Flash to the forefront again.
With all the buzz about new features in Flash, we seldom discuss enhancements to accessibility features. Is this a lost feature set, I wonder? This potential ruling by the state of California (and beyond) could make us take a more accessible application development approach much more seriously… and fast!
I’m curious… do any of you have experience with coding accessibility features? It would be nice to see some examples.
Apple and NBC no longer dating, but clearly still friends
It wasn’t too long ago when NBC announced they would no longer be selling their content through Apple’s iTunes. I’m not an iTunes (or Apple) customer yet, but I am still so fascinated by the company, their technology and the loyal grip they have on their customers. I also am a big fan of NBC shows and rank 30 Rock, The Office, SNL and Conan as some of the funniest shows on television. So, needless to say, I was intrigued by this announcement.
Truth be told, and I’ve said this before, I don’t totally agree with high quality, HD content being watched on a 2.5 inch screen like the iPod’s. Maybe it’s the cinefile in me, but I have such an appreciation for what goes into filming/taping this content that I think it gets spoiled quite a bit when shrunken down to such a small viewing space.
So, the NBC dumping iTunes announcement didn’t surprise me so much. NBC wants to distribute their own content and that should be the norm. The combined NBC Universal powerhouse should give them all the reach they need to get their content out there and sold.
Now, how do I know that Apple and NBC are still friends? Watching 30 Rock this past evening you may have noticed that after the ‘cold opening’ (SNL term that’s carried over to this show), the very first commercial to air (this is usually the most expensive slot of the entire show) was a new Apple iPhone commercial.
Clearly, Apple and NBC don’t hate each other. Or maybe the advertising was sold in advance of the iTunes break up between the two. I counted another 2 or 3 iPhone commercials between 30 Rock and The Office. While NBC no longer saw enough value in selling their content through Apple, apparently Apple still sees value in NBC content, choosing to advertise it’s product to their audience.
The Red Sox TV
I discovered this today while helping a co-worker decide on a new TV.
Hannspree’s MLB Redsox Sandlot 15″ LCD Television
Perfect for your home office, cubical, kitchen, man room or bathroom (one in the same, for some).
Matching Designer Remote Control, 4-in-1 connection, Headphone Jack and Stereo Speakers.
Apparently, Yankees TV production came up short and cost much more to make.
Order it today and you should have it in time for the ALCS!
Go SOX!
MAX and the baseball post-season curse
I know what you’re gonna say: ”Leave it to Chuck to find some correlation between baseball and Flash”, but check this out…
Each time MAX is held in baseball city, that team gets eliminated early in the post-season.
Two years ago, MAX was in Anaheim. The Angels lost to the Chicago White Sox during MAX in the ALCS. The White Sox went on to win the World Series.
This year, MAX was in Chicago. The Cubs were just eliminated in the first round (NLDS) of the playoffs.
Watch out Giants, if you make the playoffs next season, because MAX is in San Francisco next year.
The Ribbit Developer Platform is now open to all developers
I am happy to let you know that as of this week, the Ribbit voice component for Flex and AIR has gone public beta and the developer platform is now open for all developers to join.
Join Now & Download the Component:
- To join, go to: http://developer.ribbitphone.com/signUp.php
- You will be approved and able to code within 24 hours.
- You will receive a login username and password, as well as a dedicated purpose number to develop with.
- You will receive 3 simple code samples to get you up and running, building your first Ribbit-voice enabled Flex and AIR apps.
- You will be given access to our powerful and informative developer forums.
Since joining Ribbit just over 5 months ago, I knew one of the most exciting things was going to be able to share this technology with talented Flex and AIR developers world-wide. Our developer community is growing and I am thrilled to invite everyone to join.
This is just one of many exciting announcements we’ve made at MAX! It’s been a great event for Ribbit and we look forward to engaging with the Adobe community even more as we turn new and existing Flex developers on to building apps with our innovative and unique technology.
MAX 2007, so far sooooooooo good
Highlights for me so far after Day 1 of Adobe MAX 2007 have been:
good food at the Speaker Dinner,
the welcome night Ignite sessions,
Kevin Lynch’s Microsoft jokes during the keynote,
getting a free massage at the community pavilion,
seeing many friends (and myslef) in the pre-keynote montage,
being able to find the room my INSPIRE session was held in on day 1,
bumping into all the great talent of the Adobe developer community world roaming the halls,
seeing that an audience of folks interested in Ribbit also found the room my INSPIRE session was held in,
watching many of the AIR tour evangelist file into the AIR bus as if they no longer knew of any other place to go
… just to name a few.
MAX is off to a good start. I think it will even get better.
Day 2 awaits and an omnimous fog has settled in on Chicago.
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