I’m back working on several very cool Internet/Web projects now. 
It’s fun to get back deep into the Internet, and catch up on what is
going on with the bleeding edge.  There are several areas that I’m
now really digging in … video on the net, and the whole SEO, web
marketing, web advertising, and affiliate marketing.

One thing that has now become evident to me, is that the acquistion of Macromedia by Adobe
was brilliant.  Adobe/Macromedia is now making huge inroads in web
properties, and seems to be linked to a lot of the best things going in
Web 2.0.

First lets look at YouTube … all based on the Adobe/Macromedia
Flash player.  So distribution of video on the Internet quickly
becomes ubiquitous and platform independent! 
Google Video?  Same thing … Adobe/Macromedia Flash player. 
There are now a half dozen video related sites … all using the
Adobe/Macromedia Flash player.

Besides the fact that the player is everwhere, and it’s on all the top
operating system platforms, by using the Macromedia player, the videos
can quickly be embedded anywhere in any web property.  This is one
of the core value propositions that we are leveraging in one of my new start-ups.

So then we get to Flex. 
Amazing stuff.  Again, Adobe/Macromedia now has a platform for
creating advanced applications, providing rich UI, and the player is
everywhere!  And the one key feature is that they can escape much
of the “sand box” surrounding current AJAX applications!  Writing
applications in MXML is now easier … they have adopted the Eclipse
development environment … and their plug-in can escape issues like
cross-domain access.  In one of my other start-ups, we’re looking
at embracing the Flex technology for all of it’s benefits.  We
immediately get a ubiquitous, cross-platform solution that produces
user content that can be embedded in any of the top web properties on
the planet.  Nice.

Oh yeah … and Adobe also got Cold Fusion in the acquisition.

I started to think about new metrics for measuring the success of companies in the Internet.  One possible metric is user viewable pixels … or even a percentage of user viewable pixels.  For example if you went to CNN.com
and looked at the page.  Out of all of the viewable pixels, who’s
technology “owns” what percentage of those pixels?  In the case of
CNN, there are all sorts of Adobe/Macromedia ads running, and even if
they are 10% of the viewable pixels … that is a lot of web real
estate.  Some sites are more.  Again … think of Google
Video … there Adobe/Macromedia has a huge
percentage of viewable pixels.  If you add in the number of Cold
Fusion sites on the net?  Adobe has a lot of the “web-top” now in
their pocket.

I think that people so quickly forget about the battles for the
desktop, and the complaints about Microsoft “controlling” the
desktop.  What is amazing to me is the penetration that Adobe now
has with the Acrobat reader, and Flash player … and the tools for the
creation of powerful content.

A few weeks back I made an on-line purchase – for the first time – with Tiger Direct.
When completing the purchase – a $3000+ Plasma Display for a client – I
was really surprised when I was presented with a notification that I
was going ot have to answer some questions to verify my identity!

Ok . .. so I was thinking some steps … but never would have imagined
what I was going to see. I was presented with a page that
appeared to contain an iFrame, and it suddenly filled with a set of
three multiple-choice questions. As I read the questions … I
was shocked.

• The first question had my city name – Heber City, Utah – and it
  asked me to pick which street address was in that city. It listed
  four street addresses … and sure enough one was for another property
  that I own. Uh … ok … kinda’ weird.
• The second question? This is the one that got me. It
  asked me to identify the name of someone that I know … and listed
  four names. The second name … was the married name of my
  younger sister. No way.
• The third question showed a street address … and asked me to
  identify the city that the street was in. I immediately
  recognized the street address … but could not identify which of the
  four listed cities it was in … funny … must have been an old rental
  or something.

It really was a weird experience to see that type of personal detail
… being asked on a web page. Overall, I like it … it was a
cool system and I can see where it would be very tough for someone to
gather those pieces of information. At the same time, it was
strange to see personal information gathered in such a way.

What made me think about this tonight was when a friend indicated that
he requested his annual free credit reports today. He said that
the same system was used to verify his identity to request the reports
… wild.