When Mark Drew and I were getting live updates this week from Macworld and the iPhone came in at number #2 of 4 items Steve Jobs had on his list, we knew 2007 Macworld was going to be tough to top. My late Christmas present from Uncle Steve was going to be much later, especially since the major tectonic event was going to be movie rentals for download. With all the major movie studios involved in rental downloads ... there was no way Apple was to steal any thunder from that.

Here's how I was hoping the Macworld keynote went on Tuesday ... Steve Jobs at #4, "I would like to invite Kevin Lynch and Ted Patrick to announce Flash Player 9 for the iPhone. This will allow you to build RIA Web 2.0 apps for the iPhone. Adobe has a been good friend over the years to Apple and we can't be happier to partner with them on bringing a superior web experiences to the iPhone. Kevin and Ted why don't you demonstrate all the cool apps that have been built for the iPhone from companies like Ebay, Oracle, Salesforce.com, SlideRocket, Universal Mind, Effective UI, and Google. (They demo the apps and finish) It is great to see apps flowing beautifully across the iPhone, browser, and desktop. Congratulations to Adobe and Apple customers for this long overdue announcement. This is a really special day for Apple, even more amazing than Complete U2 for the iPod." We are also announcing 3G, multiple carriers, 16GB and 32GB hard drives, GPS, and voice recognition. The analysts go crazy and Apple and Adobe hit all time highs by Friday. I then wake up from my puddle of drool hearing that the major upgrades for the iPhone was bigger fonts and new backgrounds. :)

BTW, Apple's stock dropped 15% to 20% this week, apparently the market wasn't as impressed as some of the Mac Kool-aid drinkers. Let's hope by summer iPhone 2.0 becomes a reality and please remember your dear friends at Adobe by bringing the Flash Player 9 to the iPhone.

My son was born on December 2nd 2006 (my Christmas present came early). He is in excellent health and likes listening to his mom play the piano. Being a dad is really amazing and a huge blessing. Props to Matt Chotin's slide show application that I was able to use for the baby pictures with a few modifications. Here is picture of my boy:

The most amazing things come up on those darn ultrasound machines! The baby was already thinking of getting started with Flex and dreaming of code. He recommends that you learn Flex and is already half way through the 3,274 pages of Flex documentation.

Okay, maybe the dad has really bad Photoshop skills. Hey, it's a boy and yes he will choice when he decides to learn Flex. :)

I attended the MAX 2005 today and Macromedia publicly released the information regarding the Flex Builder 2. I don't think people have fully grasped what a monumental day and counterattack Macromedia has launched against Microsoft's Sparkle. (It is certainly nice to have Mark Anders, one of the founders of ASP.NET leading the charge for Flex.) Macromedia has provided the MXML language and Flex 2 framework to the masses by providing an IDE for less than $1,000 to create Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). It was really smart to use the Eclipse IDE for the foundation of the Flex Builder.

I have waited 3 or 4 years for this moment to arrive and think this announcement is as big as the invention of HTML for application developers. I have been at times negative with Macromedia about really opening up RIAs to the masses, but today they have clearly succeeded. A huge line has been drawn in the sand and there is big set of Flex footprints on the other side. You will not be reading emotional blogs from me usually, but I have to give big time praise to the Flex team (Lucian, Phil, Mark, Gary, Sho and others). They have really nailed it and listened to their customers.

If you build web applications, you owe it to yourself to download the Flex Builder 2 , and let the renaissance begin.

My advice is to become a rockstar at MXML, AS3, and ColdFusion. It will time well spent. You will be able to build the next generation of web applications.