Macromedia Central: A Closer Connection Between the Web and your Desktop

 
Feb 24, 2003
At Flashforward (March 27, 2003), Macromedia fired a salvo across the bough of every desktop application company that exists. Kevin Lynch, Chief Software Architect of Macromedia, announced the development of Macromedia Central, a front-end application that leverages Flash to distribute data and services to a ?Central? environment residing on your desktop. One can think of Central as desktop-distributed Flash applications. Macromedia Central will be released this summer, but the Developer?s SDK for Central should be available some time in April.

Here?s basically how Central works: The user downloads a free copy of Central that sits on his or her machine. Macromedia promises a very easy download and install process for the application. When the user is in the Central environment, he can find various applications written in Flash that can be ?imported? into Central. These applications may be free or have a charge associated with either the application or the application data. For most applications, there will be a temporary grace period where people can try them out before paying and Macromedia will be handling the processing of all payments through secure back-end. Application data will be provided through web services, as well as other communication protocols, and the applications themselves can be almost anything written in Flash, which means they can range from simple games to complex business applications. The examples shown for Central include such live data feeds as stock and weather services, as well as live lookups to secure company data.

A major advantage of Central is that is designed for both desktop applications and communication with the Net. Because the Net is so central to its operation, steps have been taken to make sure that when Central does not have access to the Internet, the data inside it is cached in an intelligent way so that it can be accessed offline. The default is 2 megabytes of information per application, but the user can change this if they?ve got more space on their drive. In his presentation to Fusion Authority, Mr. Lynch called this a ?persistent desktop presence.?

On the business side, Macromedia will be taking a percentage of every sale that is made for applications and services through Central, generating a continuous cash flow, which will look good on the corporate spreadsheet. The fact that Central is in many ways almost a replacement for the desktop, and as it?s a Flash application (hopefully meaning that it can be moved to any platform that supports Flash) means that Macromedia is walking into territory owned by Microsoft and doing so with a strong product. The ubiquitousness of Flash, as well as the ability in the latest versions to build complex applications, means that Central has the potential to be a strong player in future markets. (With the scheduled release of various additions to Flash that make the programming of it faster and easier, this raises the bar even more so.)

Michael and I are very excited about what Central can do for information and code sharing. We feel that Central has a lot of potential, especially with all of the tools that Macromedia is providing. We plan to make all House of Fusion resources available through Central. In addition, the Best of Talk compiled digests of CF-Talk will be available as a subscription service through Central.

Macromedia is already working with some highly visible companies, such as PriceGrabber.com, to develop Central applications. Look out for the announcement of the Central beta if you?d also like to experiment with this new technology. You can find out more about Macromedia Central by visiting the following links:

http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2003/central_announce.html

http://www.macromedia.com/software/central/


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