Mike Chambers

As you can see, my weblog has a new server, url, and most noticeably, a new look. Thanks to Josh Dura who put together this kick ass design for my site.

When linking to the main page of this site, please use this URL:

http://www.macromedia.com/go/blog_mchambers

The domain name will probably change soon, and that URL will always redirect to the current site.
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Thanks to everyone who offered their services as a designer in response to my request. The position has been filled and you should see the results of the work in the coming days (it is pretty sweet).

Also, there will be some changes with my weblog in the coming weeks, possibly including a new URL. If you link to my weblog, please use this URL:

http://www.macromedia.com/go/blog_mchambers

as that will always point to my weblog, even it it moves.

Sorry for the sporadic posts lately, but as I mentioned above, I have been working on some changes to the weblog, and will hopefully get back up to speed soon.

Christian Cantrell, the new Server Community Manager for Macromedia has just launched his weblog.
You can view it here.
The weblog system is a temporary one that he put together (using CFMX) over the past couple of days (although, I think it is pretty impressive). We are working on a more permanent, long term solution.

Jeremy Allaire, Macromedia’s CTO, has started a weblog. Here is what Jeremy has to say about it:
While I’ll sometimes post Macromedia specific content here, the intention is really to explore the broad technologies, ideas and companies that are working on the converence of media, communications and applications.
You can read his weblog here.
[via quasimondo]

Another interesting read on the Macromedia weblogs, and corporate blogging in general. This one focuses on the importance of trustworthiness in marketing on the Internet.
One quick correction to the article, the weblogs were an initiative of the community managers (mostly JD’s idea); we were not asked by Macromedia to create them. Although that may seem like a subtle correction, I wanted to make it clear that we were / are not required to maintain the weblogs. However, at least in the case of this weblog, I enjoy it, and it makes my job much, much easier.

The contest winners for the Macromedia XML Resource feed contest have been announced. And the winners are (drum roll please):

• Most Creative : Phil Chung


• Best Site Integration : Shane Elliot

In case the statement at the top of the site that states that i am the Macromedia Flash Community Manager is not clear.
I am an employee of Macromedia.

I am trying to put together a comprehensive list of all of the Flash related weblog / news sites so I can link to them from here. If you have a Flash related weblog, list it in the comments, and I will update my site with the links.

Wired.com has an article up today discussing the Macromedia weblogs. Myself, Branden Hall, and Dave Winer are all quoted, and over all i think that it covers exactly why we are doing this. It allows us to communicate faster and more efficiently with our community.
It was John Dowdell who really drove the idea internally at Macromedia. Also, David Burrows’ FlashBlog really helped me to realize how useful a tool the weblogs could be.

Check out the new  DWTeam DesDev Dreamweaver MX extension. It makes it ridiculously simple to add information from the Macromedia XML Resource Feed to web pages when creating them with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. Simply open the panel, check the data you want to display, and you are done.
I also wanted to point out the Harnessing XML with Custom Tags or ColdFusion components articles at the ColdFusion MX Developers center. This uses the Macromedia XML Resource feed to show how to manipulate XML in ColdFusion MX.
Btw, there are still over two weeks to submit entries in the Macromedia XML Resource Feed contest. We have gotten some really cool entries thus far, but none that use ColdFusion MX.