The fault, dear reader, is not in our users, but in ourselves.
This past week, ReadWriteWeb published a post titled "Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login" about Facebook's plans to use Facebook Connect to integrate users' Facebook friends with AOL Instant Messenger. This would have been little more than a minor tidbit of technology news, but something unexpected happened: Hundreds of readers apparently couldn't tell that this blog post about Facebook was not, in fact, Facebook itself.
The post rapidly received well over a thousand comments, a significant number of which were from frustrated and angry Facebook users who were annoyed that they couldn't log in to chat with their friends, play FarmVille, or whatever. Many of these commenters additionally complained that they didn't like this new Facebook interface.
A here are a few representative comments:
The new facebook sucks> NOW LET ME IN.wtf is this bullshttttttttttt all about. can i get n plzzzzzzzzzAll I want to do is log in, this sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
That's right -- hundreds of people who mistakenly arrived at the ReadWriteWeb blog post didn't know that they were not, in fact, at Facebook.com.
How did this happen?
A post by ReadWriteWeb Community Manager Jolie O'Dell confirms that, based on traffic statistics, the confusion arose when people arrived at the ReadWriteWeb article after entering Google searches for "facebook login."
This is apparently how many users routinely access Facebook. Rather than entering a URL into their browser's address field or using a bookmark, they type 'facebook login' into Google or into the address bar of a browser that automatically executes a search when anything but a URL is entered. Previously this took these people to the Facebook login page. But apparently shortly after this article appeared on ReadWriteWeb, it rose to the top of the Google search results for 'facebook login'. (As of this writing, this is no longer the case.)
Many of the subsequent comments from more savvy ReadWriteWeb readers derided the cluelessness of these befuddled users. And many found their bewilderment amusing. "This thread of responses is the single most awesome, tragicomic example of internet stupid I've ever been lucky to witness." wrote one observer .
Reading through the pleas of these perplexed users is, indeed, amusing at first blush. After perusing dozens and dozens of similar complaints from embittered Facebook fans, however, one becomes deeply saddened.
Perhaps my favorite comment on the incident -- because it evokes both the comedy and the tragedy of the situation -- is this:
This thread reminds me of the time my grandfather typed his phone number into the microwave's keypad, then wondered why his kitchen was on fire.(Seriously, that happened.)
A few of the comments step back from deriding the clueless newbies to speculate about what this means for the current state of web literacy. Dana Oshiro posted a thoughtful follow-up article on ReadWriteWeb titled "We're Still Not Facebook: Lessons from Late Adopters" that encourages developers to "step outside of your own world of early adopters and look at your product through the eyes of a n00b."
Focusing on the naivety of these Internet neophytes -- whether with derision or with sympathy -- may blind us to seeing the other ancillary causes that may have contributed to this episode. As others have eloquently demonstrated, large systemic failures are often the result of a concatenation of small, discrete events. Sometimes the "obvious" explanation of an error is only part of the true story.
For example, consider this: How did ReadWriteWeb appear at the top of Google's search results? Google's page ranking algorithm is, of course, frequently tweaked. Many of the latest enhancements have been in response to the rise of the "realtime web." Google's search has lately been giving priority to recent updates from blog posts, Twitter, etc. Combine this with ReadWriteWeb's already hefty quotient of Google juice and you have one of the conditions for this failure.
In addition, as mentioned above, many of the users who went to ReadWriteWeb expecting to access Facebook expressed their displeasure with the new Facebook design. This reveals another dimension of the problem. Facebook has redesigned its interface twice within recent memory, much to the annoyance of many of its users. These changes typically appear without warning for people who don't follow the industry closely. Users go to Facebook.com and suddenly have to contend with a new and unfamiliar interface. While it is difficult to imagine how people, looking at an information site like ReadWriteWeb, would mistake it for Facebook, it speaks to the turmoil that Facebook's continual evolution can generate. Facebook is so confounding that nothing would surprise its change-weary users.
So there you have it. Three elements that, combined together, form the recipe for user confusion and frustration: naive users, an opaque and shifting Google search ranking system, and an unpredictably changing Facebook interface.
Note that two of these are not the fault of the user. It because of us -- those who create the web's user experience. While we certainly need to better educate users on how the web works, we also need to bear in mind that what we build needs to address user expectations. When we're done laughing at the cluelessness of our audience, perhaps we should try to find better ways to communicate with them.
In the wake of the death of J. D. Salinger this past Wednesday there was, as one would expect, an outpouring of accolades and reminiscences about his work. Salinger's demise also renewed speculation about what the famously reclusive writer has been doing since his last published work, "Hapworth 16, 1924," appeared in The New Yorker in 1965.
When I first read Salinger in late high school and early college, it was fashionable -- even way back then -- to speculate about what Salinger had been up to in the intervening years. There were plenty of rumors to feed our imagination. We heard that he writes for hours each day in a bunker behind his secluded New Hampshire house, creating reams of pages he never intends to publish. We wondered what these pages might contain -- unseen literary masterpieces or the ramblings of a deranged mind? Perhaps, like Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining, Salinger was madly typing the same sentence over and over again. All work and no play might, indeed, make Jack a dull boy.
With Salinger's passing, conjecture about what he's been doing since the 1960s is once again percolating. The Mirror recounts a report from a neighbor of Salinger's who, in 1999, was allegedly told by Salinger that he had "15 or 16 books finished" that might one day be published. The Mirror then alternately tweaks fans' excitement and fuels their angst by citing speculation that Salinger either "wanted the books to be published after his death" or "may have ordered that they should all be destroyed."
My most vivid memory associated with J. D. Salinger -- aside from reading the published stories themselves -- is from decades ago in New York City, the location of so many of his tales. On a bright, early autumn day I purchased a beat-up old copy of the first edition of Franny and Zooey from a used bookstore in lower Manhattan.
I didn't buy the book for its collectible value. The tattered volume, water-stained and excessively worn, was too beat up to have any significant commercial value.
Rather, I took home the book because of the note from the author included on the front and back inside flaps of the dust jacket. There the hermetic Salinger offered a few tantalizing clues about his recent literary activities, and seemed to indicate -- as the rumors implied -- that he was busy writing. His words fostered the hope that more stories of the Glass family would appear -- if not promptly, at least eventually. But they also hinted at a more dismal possibility: "[T]here is a real-enough danger, I suppose, that sooner or later I'll bog down, perhaps disappear entirely, in my own methods, locutions, and mannerisms."
These jacket notes penned by Salinger seemed uncharacteristically candid and offered a rare glimpse of what might next come forth from the author's typewriter.
We may eventually know whether or not there are volumes of unpublished prose in Salinger's estate. If this material does exist, I hope it comes close to living up to the hype with which it will no doubt be accompanied. Until then, here is the text from the dust jacket that so intrigued me all those years ago:
The author writes: FRANNY came out in The New Yorker in 1955, and was swiftly followed, in 1957, by ZOOEY. Both stories are early, critical entries in a narrative series I'm doing about a family of settlers in twentieth-century New York, the Glasses. It is a long-term project, patently an ambitious one, and there is a real-enough danger, I suppose, that sooner or later I'll bog down, perhaps disappear entirely, in my own methods, locutions, and mannerisms. On the whole, though, I'm very hopeful. I love working on these Glass stories, I've been waiting for them most of my life, and I think I have fairly decent, monomaniacal plans to finish them with due care and all-available skill.A couple of stories in the series besides FRANNY and ZOOEY have already been published in The New Yorker, and some new material is scheduled to appear there soon or Soon. I have a great deal of thoroughly unscheduled material on paper, too, but I expect to be fussing with it, to use a popular trade term, for some time to come. ("Polishing" is another dandy word that comes to mind.) I work like greased lightning, myself, by my alter-ego and collaborator, Buddy Glass, is insufferably slow.
It is my rather subversive opinion that a writer's feeling of anonymity-obscurity are the second-most valuable property on loan to him during his working years. My wife has asked me to add, however, in a single explosion of candor, that I live in Westport with my dog.
Adobe Systems co-founder and co-chairman John Warnock in his home. The stone carving of the Latin alphabet by stone carver and calligrapher Nick Benson was a gift from his wife on his retirement as CEO of Adobe.
Photo: Copyright © 2009, Kendall Whitehouse.
Photo: Copyright © 2009, Kendall Whitehouse.
Knowledge@Wharton published an interview I did with Adobe Systems co-founder and co-chairman John Warnock. Warnock discusses topics ranging from the origins of the company he founded with Chuck Geschke to the reason he doesn't like to use Microsoft software and why he may personally call Steve Jobs to discuss putting Adobe's Flash on Apple's iPhone.
Throughout the conversation, Warnock's passion for both technology and design is evident. He possesses deeply held believes about a what is technologically "right" and aesthetically pleasing -- and has little tolerance for things that are neither. For example, he avoids using Microsoft software because the company "has never had good taste" and their products aren't "cool."
Over the years that passion for excellence has been one of Adobe's greatest assets. Yet, at times, it has also been a liability. This sense of perfection drove many of the company's innovations -- including PostScript, high-quality (Type 1) computer fonts, and Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). It also caused Adobe to often dismiss the web because of its perceived lack of aesthetics. As Warnock put it:
The early versions of HTML -- from a design point of view -- were awful. There was nothing beautiful about it.... We were always searching for: How can we do this right?
While Adobe strives to make many of its file formats de facto standards, Warnock expresses disdain for official standards bodies, saying:
Standards bodies are horrible, horrible, horrible things. They design by committee. The things that come out of them are a hodgepodge of stuff.
Adobe prefers to go it alone. As Warnock states, "The only way to make standards is to get them out and just compete." In doing so, Adobe has sought to strike a balance between providing public standards and marketing proprietary software. Adobe's approach has been to openly publish the specifications of the company's key file formats -- in some sense, the "crown jewels" of their technology -- while trusting they can make enough profit from selling the software to create and manipulate those formats.
In several instances this has worked well, such as with PostScript and PDF. The adoption of these formats paved way for two of the major shifts in computing -- the desktop publishing revolution of the mid-1980s and the creation of cross-platform electronic documents in the mid-1990s. It has also helped to make Adobe Systems a very profitable company.
Getting your company's file format adopted as a universal standard can be challenging, however. While Adobe has been successful in doing this with PostScript and PDF, Adobe's Type 1 font format ran into problems. Adobe initially failed to strike that delicate balance between being open and being closed, keeping key elements of the font format a secret. The resulting competitive pressures split the industry into two competing formats -- Type 1 from Adobe and TrueType supported by Apple and Microsoft. Although the OpenType format now largely reconciles these two approaches, Warnock believes that the Type 1 format has, in his view, "always been ... a better solution than TrueType."
And now Adobe's Flash platform for rich Internet applications -- which long ago achieved ubiquity on desktop computers -- faces an uphill battle to achieve a similar dominance on smartphones. Adobe's inability convince Apple to support Flash on the iPhone has been a particularly irksome problem for the company.
Having great technology doesn't always tip the market in your favor. It's also about relationships and lining up industry partners. Apple was a key early adopter of Adobe's PostScript technology; PostScript's inclusion in Apple's LaserWriter helped to make it the standard output format for desktop publishing. Now, as the locus of computing moves from the desktop to mobile platforms, Apple presents a barrier to Flash becoming ubiquitous across all devices. Given the longstanding relationship between the two men, I asked Warnock whether he has reached out to Jobs personally:
Knowledge@Wharton: Have you talked to Steve Jobs about [getting Flash on the iPhone]?
Warnock: No, I haven't.
Knowledge@Wharton: Have you thought about calling him?
Warnock: I've thought about calling him and saying, "Steve, you know, at this point you want might to engage the partnership again." Because I think otherwise he is going to get some competitive pressures from outside that he is not going to
He has never been great at hitting that middle ground [between] openness and proprietary [products]. He has always seemed to lean to the proprietary side, to want to own everything. I think this is one case where he probably would do better if he didn't do that.
To read the full interview with Warnock, see:
Knowledge@Wharton: "Adobe Systems Co-founder John Warnock on the Competitive Advantages of Aesthetics and the ‘Right’ Technology "
Steve Ditko was one of the greatest artists from the "Silver Age" of comic books in the 1960s. After illustrating the horror and suspense comics that were prevalent in the 1950s, Ditko, along with Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Stan Lee, created two of the most iconic characters of the Silver Age: Spider-Man and Dr. Strange.
Blake Bell's Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko is a fascinating history of Ditko's art and how it was shaped by his philosophy of life and his frequent artistic differences with his editors. These "stories behind the stories" provide intriguing insights into the narratives and images of a career that stretched from the 1950s through the Silver Age until sputtering out in late 1990s.
Shy, quirky, and deeply principled, Ditko was heavily influenced by the "Objectivist" philosophy of Ayn Rand, which views man as a heroic being whose aim is to seek his own happiness through productive achievement and rational thinking. Ditko's Randian beliefs are reflected in many of this works, forming the moral underpinnings of his costumed superheroes in the early years and later driving his work toward more explicit political tracts.
"Spider-Man" may have been the first comic I collected with a passion. Not content to wait for the next issue to arrive at the local five-and-dime, I sought out friends who had previous issues stashed away that they were willing to trade or sell. The tales in the first two issues of "The Amazing Spider-Man" always seemed slightly anomalous compared to the later stories I had read. In the first issue, Spider-Man saves an astronaut, the son of newspaper publisher (and Spider-Man nemesis) J. Jonah Jameson. The scenes with Spider-Man out in space, trapping the astronaut's capsule with his web, always seemed rather odd. In one of the two stories in the second issue, Spider-Man confronts evil space aliens. Although as a youth I never questioned the plots, these tales seemed out of sync with the world portrayed later stories, which is firmly based in the real world in and near New York City.
Bell recounts how these plot elements reflected the influence writer/editor Stan Lee, who preferred these fantastical motifs. Ditko wanted stories more grounded in reality. Bell quotes Ditko as saying "I preferred that we have Peter Parker/Spider-Man ideas grounded more in a teenager's credible world." Ditko derided Lee's ideas as being "like having a high-school football player in the Super Bowl."
Ditko went on the have greater control over his major series at Marvel -- Spider-Man and Dr. Strange -- becoming, according to Bell, "the first work-for-hire artist of his generation to create and control the narrative arc of his series." Nevertheless, struggles with his writers and editors continued throughout his career. In the later years of the Ditko/Lee relationship at Marvel, the two rarely spoke. Ditko would plot and illustrate the stories and then send the pages to Marvel's offices where Lee would add the dialog.
After parting ways with Marvel, Ditko worked for a number comic book publishers. He did some of his most highly praised work for Warren Publication's "Creepy" and "Eerie" which, as magazines (rather than comic books) sidestepped the constraints of the Comics Code Authority that limited the material that the comics could portray. As Ditko later bounced around among a number of publishers -- Charleton, DC, and even briefly returning to Marvel -- the same story frequently played out: Ditko would be at odds with his editors over their approach to the stories and would refuse to compromise his position. In his later years, in an attempt to tell his stories unfettered by editors, he created tales for self-published "fanzines" which had minimal circulation and low production values.
Although Ditko's audience was shrinking, his later work would have an impact on a new generation of artists. The strident sense of moral justice -- often verging of callousness -- of Ditko's later characters like the Question and Mr. A would influence writers like Alan Moore and Frank Miller whose work in the mid-1980s would soon eclipse that of Ditko and usher in a new age of comic book anti-heroes.
Like the history of many comic book illustrators who rose to prominence in the Silver Age, Ditko's story does not end happily. He was unable to find steady work in later years, in part because his artistic style then seemed dated, but more often because he would refuse jobs that were not in accord with his Objectivist views.
After fighting with his former employer Marvel over the ownership of the original art he had created for the company, Marvel capitulated and returned his drawings, which were by then recognized as extremely valuable. Despite his faltering economic circumstances, however, Ditko has refused to sell any of this artwork. A cache of illustrations estimated to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars is reported to be lying in a pile in the corner of his studio.
Ditko reportedly continues to work in his Times Square studio, but has published no new work since 2000.
While Bell is clearly a fan who admires Ditko's work, his reviews of Ditko's art avoid the typical fanboy "everything is awesome" approach. Bell takes a critical eye to Ditko's work, praising the composition and rendering in Ditko's greatest illustrations (typically from the Sliver Age Marvel comics or Warren Publications' "Creepy" and "Eerie" horror magazines), while criticizing some of his later work which tended to fall back on stock characterizations and panels heavy with preachy text crowding out the artwork.
Lavishly illustrated, the artwork throughout Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko is more than just eye-candy. The images are well chosen to illuminate Bell's points in the text about Ditko's artistic style or narrative message.
For those who grew up reading the comic books Ditko illustrated, The World of Steve Ditko is a valuable contribution to the history of the medium. By revealing how the stories that many of us read in our youth were shaped by the personal and political struggles of their creators, Bell's work allows these classic tales to be seen from anew from a deeper historical perspective.
The copyright for the images from the comic book "The Amazing Spider-Man" and the book Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko are most likely owned by either the publisher of these books or the writers and/or artists who produced them. It is believed that the use of low-resolution images for identification and critical commentary of these works qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.
Photos from the eighth annual Supernova conference in San Francisco are available in my Flickr photostream:Organized by Wharton professor Kevin Werbach and co-sponsored by the Wharton School, the event included an eclectic assemblage of thought leaders from business, government, and academia, with great conversations during the sessions and in the hallways throughout the event.
For additional information and updates on Supernova 2009 visit the Supernova:Hub.
The announcements at Adobe's MAX 2009 conference earlier this month have reignited the conversation about Flash on the iPhone -- whether it will ever happen and, if not, why not.
At the conference, Adobe announced plans to bring Flash 10 to all the major mobile platforms -- except the iPhone. In order to have some story regarding Flash and the iPhone, Adobe also announced that a forthcoming version of Flash Professional will allow developers to create iPhone applications. As many commentators have pointed out, however, these programs will compile to native iPhone apps in order to run on the device. Adobe still has no solution for enabling the iPhone to render Flash content delivered over the web.
In an article on InsideRIA titled "Could Adobe Potentially Harm the iPhone AppStore" Scott Barnes outlines the hurdles Adobe faces in attempting to get Flash on Apple's iPhone, and points out that "[To] Apple [the] iPhone is the same as Windows is to Microsoft."
As odd as it may seem to compare Apple's vaunted iPhone with Microsoft's oft-pilloried operating system, the point is that the iPhone (along with iTunes and Apple's App Store) is at the center of Apple's product integration strategy. It is the thin end of the wedge Apple plans to use to expand into new markets and to move its customers onto a broader collection of Apple products. As Barnes states, "All gravity orbits around the iPhone now for Apple."
At a press event at Adobe's MAX conference, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch offered a very different metaphor for the iPhone. Lynch compared the current competition in the mobile space to that of the early days of the personal computer, stating that the "[companies] that are playing well with others will get the largest market share." Although he didn't mention any firms by name, the implication is that the iPhone will follow the trajectory of Apple's Macintosh computer to become a product that, while beloved by many, occupies a relatively small market niche.
To some extent, this is another example of Adobe's public confrontation of Apple regarding their refusal to help to implement Flash on the iPhone (see "Adobe's New 'In Your Face' Attitude"). But it is also a statement of Adobe's philosophy for success. By partnering with multiple companies, Adobe hopes to establish a cross-platform solution for application development, much as they have done with PostScript, PDF, and Flash on the PC. In the mobile space, Adobe believes that by supporting products like Flash and Adobe's AIR, mobile devices can spawn a rich ecosystem for both developers and consumers.
The IBM/Intel/Microsoft architecture did, indeed, succeed in large part because of the ecosystem it fostered. The relatively open hardware and software platform attracted the largest contingent of developers, which provided the largest selection of software, which appealed to a widest swath of customers, which attracted more developers. And, thus, this virtuous cycle fueled its own growth.
In the mobile space, however, it is the iPhone that is benefiting from this beneficial feedback loop. Although Apple's device does not hold the greatest market share of smartphones globally -- that honor goes to Nokia's Symbian operating, followed by RIM's BlackBerry -- Apple does have the largest selection of software. According to a recent tally by the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, there are 85,000 applications for the iPhone while there are only 10,000 for Google's Android, 3,000 for the newer models of the RIM BlackBerry, only "a few hundred modern apps" for Windows Mobile, and even fewer for the Palm Pre.
Apple has managed to become the "Windows of mobile" without offering an open architecture, and has fostered the largest ecosystem of developers while retaining tight vertical integration of its products.
Apple has cleverly straddled the fence between an open and a closed strategy by providing a smattering of cross-platform support while assuring the best experience on Apple's own products. Sure, you can install iTunes on a PC -- but it's smoother experience on a Mac. And it only syncs with Apple's iPod and iPhone devices.
To date, this hybrid "slightly open but vertically integrated" strategy has worked well for Apple. Will it continue to do so? Adobe's Lynch thinks not, believing a more open (or, at least, cross-vendor) approach will eventually succeed. What do you think? Have we reached a tipping point that assures Apple's continued success, or are we are still in the early stages of the evolution of smartphone platforms? Is the iPhone destined to become the next Windows or the next Mac?
The keynote addresses at Adobe Systems' MAX developer's conference this past week in Los Angeles contained the usual spate of product intros and partner announcements, including Adobe's plans to bring the Flash Player to most of the major smartphone platforms -- RIM, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Google's Android, and Palm's webOS. Apple's iPhone was, of course, conspicuously absent from the list of mobile partners.
Most of this wasn't news. As we reported at the time, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen announced that Adobe had successfully ported Flash Player 10 to four of these mobile platforms in an Adobe Systems earnings call back in June. The addition of RIM is the only real news in the announcement.
What is new, however, is Adobe's public stance regarding Apple and the iPhone. Frustrated by its inability to deliver Flash to the iPhone, Adobe has apparently decided to stop being coy and lay the problem squarely on Apple's doorstep in a very public way.
Evidence of Adobe's more aggressive attitude was apparent throughout the conference.
In Monday's keynote Adobe debuted a video titled "MythHackers," a parody of the MythBusters television show with Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch and Creative Solutions senior vice president Johnny Loiacono in the roles of the intrepid myth busters.
Lynch and Loiacono read a letter from "Steve from Cupertino" who says he has heard that "it's not possible to run Flash on the iPhone." The myth hackers exclaim, "There's got to be an app for that!" and set out to "hack" the myth.
At the end of the clip, Adobe reveals what was perhaps the keynote's biggest surprise: an upcoming version of Flash Professional will allow developers to use Flash and ActionScript to build native iPhone applications.
In the video, the myth hackers triumphantly declare the myth about Flash on the iPhone "hacked." But it's not. Adobe didn't announce that Flash will run on the iPhone. The applications created using Flash Pro are native iPhone apps, not SWF files interpreted by the Flash runtime. While this may be a boon to Flash developers who want to code iPhone applications, it doesn't resolve the issue of enabling the iPhone to access Flash web content.
To a large extent the announcement was a political move to do something -- anything -- to have a story about Flash on the iPhone (even if it doesn't actually involve Flash on the iPhone).
Adobe's tweaking of Apple didn't stop there. Adobe recently changed the message iPhone users receive when they go to Adobe's web page to install Flash. The text states: Flash Player not available for your device
Apple restricts use of technologies required by products like Flash Player. Until Apple eliminates these restrictions, Adobe cannot provide Flash Player for the iPhone or iPod Touch.
That's certainly unambiguous.
This "in your face" attitude wouldn't be surprising coming from most technology companies. An aggressive stance vis-à-vis competitors is common among high tech companies from Oracle and SalesForce.com to Microsoft, Google, and, yes, Apple as well.
But this type of direct challenge is a change of tone for Adobe. While the company competes with companies both big and small, it typically strives to fly under the radar of its major competitors and to make friends with everyone else. As then CEO Bruce Chizen explained to Knowledge@Wharton back in 2004 regarding the company's relationship with its biggest competitor, Microsoft, "We get to partner with all of Microsoft's enemies, because we're a great alternative, and we don't really compete head-on with any of their big competitors."
Adobe's new tone regarding Apple -- a partner of the company throughout many of its early years -- underscores how critical the issue is for the company. In a conversation with the press during the MAX conference, CTO Kevin Lynch was asked about Flash on the iPhone yet again and stated "Flash needs to get there to remain relevant on the web."
The key question about Adobe's new tact is: Will it work? Does this approach make it more or less likely we'll see Flash on the iPhone anytime soon?
One can appreciate Adobe's desire to clarify to its customers and developers what it sees as the source of the problem. Its bolder statements on the matter will help to achieve that goal.
But it will also raise the ire of Apple and Steve Jobs. The word on the street is that Jobs holds a grudge for a long time. In this regard, Adobe's approach may make a bad situation worse. The fact that the company has taken these steps -- despite their political cost -- indicates the depth of its frustration over this issue.
Ultimately, Adobe's strongest tactic is its mobile partnerships with everyone except Apple. Once the full version of Flash is available for RIM, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android, and Palm's webOS, it will leave Apple as the singular outlier. For Adobe and its partners, implementation is the best revenge.
Screenshot of iPhone message courtesy of Tim Heuer. Used with permission.
For those who couldn't attend Adobe Systems' MAX 2009 conference -- or for those who were there and want to relive some of the moments -- photos from MAX 2009 in Los Angeles are in my Flickr photostream:
Soprano Mary Thorne as Alberto Gonzales.
This past Sunday the Philadelphia Fringe Festival featured the final of three performances of the Gonzales Cantata, a choral rendition of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. (For pictures of the final performance see my earlier post.)
Once you get beyond the bizarre concept (an operatic work with a libretto taken from Senate hearings) and the media hype (with coverage from Fox News to the Rachel Maddow Show) and the quirky advertising (with posters of Senator Arlen Spector wearing earrings and Alberto Gonzales in a tiara) -- once you get past all that, it turns out the Gonzales Cantata is a powerful and moving work. Written by Melissa Dunphy while she was an undergraduate student at West Chester University, the piece is a surprisingly nuanced exploration of personal tragedy and ethical lapses in American politics.
The work switches the genders of the performers and the characters they portray (hence the earrings and tiara in the posters of the male protagonists). This was done, we are told, "in protest of the continued male domination of American politics." Political motivations aside, the gender reversals work well musically, with the central roles of Alberto Gonzales played by soprano Mary Thorne and Senator Patrick Leahy sung by coloratura soprano Jessica Lennick.
The multifaceted tone of the afternoon's performance was established at the outset. Before beginning the cantata, it was announced that we would first hear a performance of "three patriotic songs." Knowing that Dunphy had previously attempted to do an arrangement of former Attorney General John Ashcroft's "Let the Eagle Soar" -- Ashcroft declined Dunphy's request -- I was primed for ironic parodies of American tunes. When countertenor Nicholas Tamagna opened with a tender and beautiful rendition of "America the Beautiful," it was clear the afternoon's entertainment would include unexpected moments. The rousing rendition of Souza's "Stars and Stripes Forever" that followed seemed well suited to the arrangement for countertenor, harpsichord, and piccolo . (For my money, the piccolo part in Souza's classic arrangement has always been the highlight of this song). For the third song, a performance of the unctuously patriotic "God Bless the USA" let us know that irony would not be entirely absent from the afternoon's festivities.
The cantata itself similarly moved between broad humor and poignant reflection. Much of the tone is, indeed, satirical. At times the work is laugh-out-loud funny, such as when soprano Mary Thorne as Gonzales sings "I don't recall" 72 times (as the real Gonzales declared in one session before Congress) while a projector displays the current tally of the denials.
Ultimately, however, the cantata evokes a sense of sadness. Taken in its entirety, Dunphy's work is more tragedy than comedy, as it seeks to uncover a sense of meaning and humanity within this dark moment in American politics.
The overall tone of the piece brings to mind Sam Mendes' 1999 film "America Beauty" based on the screenplay by Alan Ball. While both works are rife with satire, they are also meditations on the emptiness and cynicism of contemporary America.
The venue -- the Rotunda at the edge of the University of Pennsylvania campus in West Philadelphia -- was a great surprise. I had passed by his old and disheveled building countless times, but had never given it much thought. Inside, its classical architecture (with a dome that vaguely resembles Rome's Pantheon) befits the Senatorial proceedings. The peeling paint and decaying ceiling provide the requisite "crumbling empire" feel. And the fallen chandelier in the middle of the floor (which I don't believe was placed there for effect) adds a certain sense of Phantom-of-the-Opera-esque Grand Guignol to the setting.Given the rundown appearance of the hall, its acoustics were surprisingly good. The vocals were clear with just a touch of reverb to expand the operatic sound. The performances by vocalists and instrumentalists alike were all first rate (and generally an improvement -- particularly instrumentally -- over those on the recording available on CD and from Dunphy's web site).
The Gonzales Cantata is an eloquent and powerful work. I entered the auditorium expecting a cynical farce. I left with the realization that Dunphy has created a thoughtful and moving musical reflection on recent American history.
For those who missed the three performances this past weekend, an earlier recording of the work is available on Dunphy's Bandcamp page and linked from the Gonzales Cantata web site: http://www.gonzalescantata.com/
This fall Ms. Dunphy begins work on her doctorate in musical composition at the University of Pennsylvania. I can't wait to hear what she does next.
Photos from yesterday's performance of the Gonzales Cantata at the University of Pennsylvania's Rotunda are in my Flickr photostream. For my review, see: "Watching the Gonzales Cantata."
Composed and conducted by Melissa Dunphy, the piece is a musical rendition of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. By turns both satirically funny and poignantly moving, the operatic work ran for three performances as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.While the photos may capture some of the excitement of the live performance, the work was meant to be heard. You can play or download the Gonzales Cantata on Bandcamp.
For more information on the Gonzales Cantata, see the project's web site:
http://www.gonzalescantata.com/. For news and updates, follow the Gonzales Cantata on Facebook or Twitter.
Updated 2010-01-23 to reflect the addition of the Rotunda performance to Bandcamp and add the link to my review.
