Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

OK, so I waited a loooooooong time before writing about my thoughts on Adobe's $1.8B acquisition of web analytics vendor, Omniture. I've probably missed the boat on saying anything groundbreaking, but I've wanted to espouse my beliefs ever since it was announced.

I've worked a ton with Omniture over the last 3 plus years and even interviewed with them for some positions recently, so when this showed up over the wire, people were peppering me with questions on what this means. So...I'll try to explore what I think it means and hopefully somewhere in here I have something that somebody else hasn't mentioned before.

Adobe?

This was the hardest piece to figure out at first. It seemed like it came out of left field. I always thought that it might make more sense for a company like SAP, Interwoven/Autonomy, or IBM to be the one to buy Omniture and integrate with their web platforms to create a seamless web ecosystem, where the content and the presentation of that content is based on the data being collected. Think of the Amazon model, where you come to the site and it 'knows' about you and suggests things based on behavior. That isn't done through magic. It's all web analytics and algorithms. Ok, and a little magic thrown in. So for an IBM, you'd throw Omniture on top of Websphere and all of a sudden you have a decision engine integrated with a web platform. Web personalization and delivery become a little easier.

But once I thought about it for a while, Adobe started to make more sense. Adobe wants Omniture so tracking of Flash and rich media becomes common place and tightly integrated. Tracking Flash applications today is not exactly the easiest thing in the world. Once you get the hang of it is not terribly difficult, but imagine if it was already in there out of the box with a few checkboxes to click to turn on. All of a sudden you have can track all the wonderful interactions inside of Flash. Here is something I learned a long time ago, if you can see how things work from a measurement perspective you end up doing more of it and do it smarter/better. The easier it is to track interactive media, the better the end products of marketers and web designers.

I'll give you a simplified view...one of the reasons Google Analytics exists is to drive more Paid Search and Banner ads. Why? Because if you can measure the effectiveness of these tactics you'll end up spending more to drive it. Google gives it away with hopes that it gives you a view into your online campaigns so you do more of them. I am thinking some of the same characteristics exist with this deal. If you can see what is happening with Flash or other Adobe applications, you'll use them more.

Optimization is key

A lot of folks might only use Omniture's SiteCatalyst and not realize that Omniture has bought a ton of technology over the years in the realm of optimization. In fact, over the last year they viewed themselves as an optimization platform, not a web analytics vendor. The notion is that you can leverage the huge amounts of data collected to determine what gets presented to visitors of a site. Behavioral targeting and personalization are possible using some of these tools as they utilize the reams of data to dictate the content, images, messaging, color, whatever you want. A/B and multivariate testing are part of the solution to designing better web sites as well as recommending content or products to visitors who have exhibited certain behaviors either on this visit or on previous encounters. Its pretty awesome stuff and a marketers dream. This is where the web is heading in a big way.

So...take it again into Flash or other rich media applications. All of a sudden you can have Omniture's Test & Target/TouchClarity platform underneath the application to generate different versions of content based on behaviors. This could be used on site as well as in off-site rich media banners for demand generation, especially around retargeting or different messaging based on what site you are on. Imagine if that was all integrated into the tools so you didn't have to think about it, you just come up with the content (no small task mind you). And you track it.

All of a sudden the applications become somewhat self-learning and the content more revelant for the visitors. I am oversimplifying, but I think you get the idea. The Omniture piece creates the feedback mechanism that drives the content through Flash.

Different Businesses

Unlike a lot of mergers where there is often cross-over with businesses and the deal is just to grow market-share, this is a deal that really broadens Adobe's business. Not much overlap with what Omniture does and what Adobe typically does. Theoretically, Omniture will benefit from Adobe's funding and software expertise.

Concerns

My biggest fear is that being owned by a particular web platform will mess up Omniture's agnostic view of web applications. For example, will Omniture devote as much time to figuring out how to track Silverlight applications now that its owned by the guys that create Flash? 

Will all the guys that have built up Omniture over the last decade jump ship and Adobe runs it into the ground? I've seen it all too often where a company buys another and all the talent eventually flees or the integration doesn't really fit because of cultural differences. Time will tell.

Implications

As I mentioned before, in theory this might help bring web analytics more into the mainstream as I would imagine this might get embedded inside of all of Adobe's software so that tracking is common place and not an IT exercise. I got to thinking though, if that happens doesn't that open up the door for some level of free web analytics? If it's in the tools, would you have to pay for an Omniture license or is it out of the box? And in that case, does it create different versions of Omniture SiteCatalyst where you have the free bare-bones one that comes with Flash, Dreamweaver, etc, or a pimped-out enterprise version that does everything and costs you something. Is that the way to compete with Google on this? And by being free with the tools, does that grow the usage of Adobe products? 

It's possible that Adobe isn't going to integrate it with their products so maybe the above never becomes an issue, but I sort of think integration makes the most logical sense. 

So...there you have my thoughts on the situation. What are your thoughts? Did I overlook something? Am I crazy/delusional?

It doesn't take much to read between the lines of Adobe's release of Flash player 10.1. Just one word sums it up - mobile. Adobe is working it's tail off to get the newest version of Flash onto devices.

Adobe realizes that if the Flash platform is going to survive, it needs to get off of the desktop and go mobile. Enter Adobe Flash 10.1 with new features to program in the mobile environment. The highlights include support for:

• Multi-touch
• Accelerometers (used to detect motion of the physical device)
• Screen orientation
• and power consumption throttles

The other thing Adobe needs is to get the Flash player onto as many next-gen platforms as possible. So far the list includes Android, MS Mobile, Palm WebOS, and Simbian. Not bad, but the the iPhone and the Blackberry are still holding Flash at arms length. Those manufacturers have cited Flash's power consumption as the reason to not allow Flash. We'll see if Adobe's latest efforts is enough to woo them.

More info at adobe.com.

 Author: John Romano

Adobe's Flash has lost a key battle in the plug-in wars to Microsoft's Silverlight. Netflix has chosen Microsoft's Silverlight, a Flash competitor because it includes DRM software.

Netflix, the mail order movie-rental giant knows that in the future, movies will stream over the internet, right into your home and won't come via US mail on DVD. The problem is that movie companies won't let their movies be streamed unless they are protected. The solution is DRM (digital rights managed) technology - a technique that encrypts the data so it can't be ripped off (well, that's the theory at least).

Adobe's Flash plug-in is the most popular video technology on the Web. YouTube single-handedly vaulted them over Windows Media and Apple Quicktime. So you would think that Netflix would naturally look to Adobe to solve its video needs. But that's not what happened. They went to Microsoft.

I'm still trying to figure out how this happened? Can it be that Microsoft is giving away the software now to gain adoption? Is it possible that Adobe has become difficult to work with since it maintains such plug-in market dominance? Or is it that Adobe is limiting its DRM solutions only to people willing to buy into its more expensive and limited server products? Is it possible that it's easier to use a Microsoft product to release a Web-based service to multiple platforms and browsers?

My guess: Netflix is hoping that Microsoft can help them bridge the chasm between computer and living room. Their survival depends on being where people watch movies, and Netflix thinks that Xbox support (that they are planning) is the easiest way finally get into people's living rooms (internet enabled Silverlight support is planned on the next generation of XBoxes).

Regardless, I think that this loss is more severe that Adobe cares to admit.

More info:
The Netflix Blog

Life Hacker

Adobe Flash 10 hit the streets and it sports a ton of new design tools. But there are two new features that are going to dominate the graphic design of the next 2 years: the new Z property and the new 3-D features.

The addition of the Z (depth) axis in additon to the X (horizontal) and Y (vertical) axis right in the authoring environment is going to spur a use of "depth" as a design element/style. Expect to see designers adopting this new feature and incorporating it into design even more than we have seen.

Combine this new feature with the 3D translation and rotation tools in Flash and we see a rudimentary 3D environment taking shape.

For people wanting greater 3D capabilities (and there will be many), expect Papervision 3D and Away 3D to become more popular as they mature and build upon the new native Flash 10 features.

Since I've made the switch over to Flash CS3, I've noticed a screwy bug in Internet Explorer. I believe it to be nothing more than a production oversight on my part, so let this serve as a warning to others!

My setup is a common one:

• SWFObject 1.5

• Flash CS3, published out to version 8 (or 9, depending on the baseline user of the client)

Here's the problem. I've been publishing out to version 8 for long enough now that it's become habit - and I have starter code that I slap on the page. Enter CS3, with Publish Settings set by default to publish out to version 9. Should you forget to ramp this back down to version 8, or ratchet up the version number in your SWFObject embed code...YOU WILL NEVER SEE A PROBLEM. Unless you view your project in Internet Explorer 7. All other browsers will read the SWFObject code and determine that the user has at least version 8 running, and are therefore good to go. IE7 does not seem to be able to make this leap of intuition. Make sure your publish version and your SWFObject player version match up and IE7 gets a grip.

What's that Theory of troubleshooting again? The one that states that the easiest and most likely solution is generally the best place to start? Case in point.

For nearly as long as I have been a Flash guy, I have longed for a better relationship between myself and the drawing tools available to me in the Flash authoring environment. That's not exactly true. I really just wanted Flash to be more like my beloved Illustrator. Now that Adobe and Macromedia have embarked down their road to application Nirvana, I am suddenly a changed man. I get it now. It's intuitive. Drawing in Flash has come a very long way, and I'm finding myself using Illustrator less and less.

This past weekend a friend asked me to clean up an image he found, so that he could have some vinyl wall art printed up for his kid's bedroom renovation. I agreed to help sight unseen, but experience made me reasonably certain of two things immediately:

1) He found a crappy web graphic online of what he wanted, which would never, ever work

2) I would need to re-draw this art from scratch

I was not disappointed. Here's the original image he provided:



As a reflex, I fired up Illustrator and placed the image, then broke out my bezier and went to work. After setting about 10 anchor points, and staring at all the repeated simple shapes, I was possessed by an overwhelming urge to run to Flash. I knocked out the drawing in no time at all, but found myself oddly melancholy after. At some point, after struggling for so long against the but-it's-not-Illustrator effect of learning to draw in Flash, I think I got good at it. And now I enjoy the heck out of it.

Both Illustrator and Flash are powerful, effective and robust tools of our trade, and both have their place in my heart. I officially withdraw my longstanding request to have their toolsets merged. Flash has grown up on its own, and the unique drawing tools it offers have grown on me. Here's the final product. Kid's got good taste in music for a 12-year-old...

First discovered during our early forays into transparent Flash video, it's safe to say that the fading and washing out of transparent PNG images has plagued our creatives for years.

A successful transparent video project requires developers, designers and dynamic media guys to work in concert. Even more so, it requires the tools of our trade to work together seamlessly. AfterEffects, Flash and Photoshop are born of the same Adobe gene pool, which is great - but 24-bit PNGs with alpha information are an especially stubborn lot. After exhaustive searching online for an orthodox, documented solution for this color shift, I decided to simply make myself a corrective Photoshop action. 

There are a million ways to do everything in Photoshop - this is the method I used. It is by no means an end-all, be-all solution for every transparent PNG you'll ever create - skin tones are especially fickle - but it is a solid benchmark from which to tweak to your needs. Apply the action and you'll be left with adjustment layers, making it incredibly easy to tweak, without compromising you're original pixel data. I'm going to use the talented Lindsey Bennett, Capstrat Vice President and Associate Creative Director, as my reference. There are four steps to my action, each adding a different adjustment layer to your file:

1) Hue/Saturation - Under master only, set hue to -1 and saturation to +24. No change to lightness

2) Color Balance - For both Shadows and Midtones, set red +6 and blue -6. No change to green

3) Brightness/Contrast - Set brightness +9, contrast +2

4) Selective Color - This is the step with the most malleability. I've found that I can adjust only these values for most any situation. It involves only the black slider. Under the Colors drop-down, start with Red and drag the black slider to +20. Then go through and slide black to +40 for the Yellow, Green and finally Black groups. This is my benchmark; for Lindsey's particular skin tones, I adjusted these values ever so slightly.

The final image, in Photoshop and when viewed in a browser, will look blown out. Here's a before and after shot, outside of Flash. Optimized for this article, the effect is diminished, but still very apparent:

When brought into and subsequently published from Flash, your blown out image will calm down. The end product is a true-to-life approximation that will make your project pop:

Download the action. Simply drag to:

Applications Folder -> Photoshop -> Presets -> Actions

Just a few minutes ago I received an email from Lynda, informing me that she would be handing over the reins of ownership of this year's Flash Forward conference. Handing them over to Beau Ambur, veteran rich media developer and CEO of Metaliq, a San Francisco-based solutions firm.

Why does this merit your attention?

I find it interesting - neutrally, journalistically interesting - that 4 of the 8 projects currently  featured on Metaliq.com are of Microsoft origin. Ambur himself has been working with SilverLight nearly since its inception. If this sounds catty to you, it is just that perception that brings me to my point.

It is my goal as a developer - as a professional - to learn as much as humanly possible about my craft and the media in which that craft is practiced. The end to those means is, ideally, to create experiences for my users so fully abstracted from the nuts and bolts as to eliminate those nuts and bolts from the conversation entirely. The notion that flash developers are flash-centric is outdated and incorrect. Users have control, and we use whatever works best for the job. 

Kudos to Lynda in her selection.

Co-authored by Todd Coats and Will Langley.

We’re honored to be part of PRWeek’s 2007 Book of Lists. They recognized capstrat.com as one of 5 agency sites that awed. PR Week writes, “Many agencies have tried to show its ‘people.’ Capstrat's ingenious panoramic view of the office succeeds where everyone else failed. Every single employee appears to have a bio, declarative proof that it's an agency that cares about all of its employees.”

Well, we believe they’re right. We do care about our employees. We also care about collaboration and innovation. I asked Will Langley, one of Capstrat’s programming ninjas to revisit our collaborative process that led to this unique approach. We decided to write our individual points of view since we approached the problem from two directions (me coming from the conceptual trying to understand the technical, Will from the technical trying to interpret the conceptual). Our mission was the same though—challenge through collaboration.

Todd starts: “Repeal the laws of physics. That’s what I want, Will!” We challenge ourselves to surprise and delight clients at every turn. Visitors to our office always talk about its openness and energy. So I had a crazy idea to create a panoramic view of our office as the stage to show our unpredictable energy and randomness. Strictly speaking, the content could be anything. Since I decided to use the office funkiness as a stage, it was easy to decide that our people and practice areas would be the stars. The challenge was how do they interact? How do we make this useable? How do we keep it interesting for repeat visitors? What is this crazy world we’re making?

I pitched the concept to Will as a place where randomness reigns. We didn’t want to give the impression people were on treadmills as they moved, though. They had to obey (some of) the laws of physics for believability. Otherwise the result would be too designy. It would just be moving pictures, no magic.

Having seen a few sites with Action Scripted parallax, I figured we could do that. When Will’s head didn’t explode I figured we could make it a panoramic illusion, too. Heck, while we’re at it let’s make it animated navigation. Will did a lot of experimenting with the black arts of scripting until we agreed the multiple layers behaved correctly. The design team experimented with backgrounds and people to present them at the right scale. That was harder than we thought. Again, to sell the illusion we wanted one foot in reality and one foot in this anything-can-happen world.

I wonder if Will thought I had a foot in Bonkerworld.

Will says: I did not think Todd was bonkers. A little eccentric? Maybe. Twitchy creative? Certainly. After much arm-waving and wild scribbling, we finally found ourselves on a common plane of understanding. Thus began a period of tense negotiation with the Flash authoring environment to bring Todd’s vision to life. Creating a believable parallax was relatively painless – but as Todd mentioned, randomness was mission critical. I’ve visited so many rich media sites and been wowed by the action—riiiight up to the point where my brain recognized the loop. Once that happens the knee-jerk response is to browse on, having seen all there is to see. By randomly shuffling our arrays of people and objects, we were able to break the “loop.” This created a more engaging experience for visitors to our site and enticed them to hang around and explore.

The panoramic backdrop of our office brilliantly highlighted all the pockets of individual funk and flare that make working at Capstrat such a rewarding experience. We share and evolve ideas and solutions with impunity around here, and the quality of our work shows it. The final panoramic is rich and seamless – you feel as though you could crawl into any corner of it and live the Capstrat experience. When we decided to follow up with a second banner for our Culture page, Todd accepted my offer to create a similar panorama. A print designer before taking up the dark arts of web development, this was thrilling! I was able to push and develop my Photoshop skills to new heights.

Our initial foray into the world of transparent video in Flash, design translation for this project uncovered other unforeseen hurdles. With all of our detailed image assets needing to be transparent, the use of the PNG-24 image format was a necessity. Running Photoshop assets through both After Effects and Flash, and meeting in the middle without color shifts, proved to be a major undertaking. Tears were shed. Hearts were broken. And ultimately, Photoshop actions were created to put us back on our way.

Use of the transparent PNG format presented us with our final major obstacle – file size. This beautiful piece of collaborative effort would be for naught if our baseline user had to wait an eternity for the experience. It’s common knowledge that, as developers, we have only a few seconds to engage our users before we risk losing them. The need to overcome our loading issues led us to rethink our loading and preloading schema. We decided to keep everything compartmentalized, remanding our preloaders to each individual asset. This allowed us to eliminate the use of a clunky and frustratingly slow global preloader. The result of this approach is a [relatively] large file efficiently removing itself from the experience, offering the user tasty morsels to distract from the heavy lifting taking place behind the curtain. The user gets to browse our office panorama almost instantly, with each piece of the parallax puzzle sliding into place seamlessly and quietly around them.

With all of our problems solved, we began the final Q/A process. We noticed right away that we had a little user-experience glitch, resulting in a slight case of “chasing the rabbit”, wherein the user finds themselves unable to keep their mouse on the clickable regions without interference. To eliminate this, we made our randomness conditional, so that each object weighed its randomly-selected starting position against all of its peers. When unacceptable overlap occurs, the position is tossed out and another selected. The process continues until an acceptable condition is reached. While the user is none-the-wiser, this little tidbit is perhaps my most triumphant of the entire project.

This project exemplifies what we’re about at Capstrat. Sure, we all come from different backgrounds and speak different languages. But, whether you say the sky is robin’s egg blue or hexadecimal 6FD3FF, we all agree that innovation is a full contact sport. Our management team understands, encourages and lives the spirit of collaboration. The result is personal and professional growth as well as development on a macro scale. Not to mention note-worthy work that we can all be proud of. Visit the PR Week posting.