15 years. Yep, that’s a long time. In fact, it’s so long that it’s hard to remember “not” working for Adobe. But as of May 4th, I will be leaving the “big red A” to set off on a new adventure. I’ve accepted an offer to join Stremor, a start-up here in Phoenix as their VP of User Experience Engineering. In addition to making coffee, putting Ikea furniture together, and other typical start-up jobs, I will be putting my HTML5/CSS3/JS chops on the line building a real product! Sadly, I can’t tell you “what” it is yet – that’s all still hush, hush – but I can tell you that it’s so amazing, we’ve already got patents pending! Oh, and we’re also looking for great developers!

As I began debating whether to make the move, I got pretty sentimental about the last 15 years – so much so, that I almost chose not to go. Thanks to GoLive/Macromedia/Adobe, I’ve gotten to help build tools that literally have changed the (web) world. I’ve also had the good fortune to travel around the world more times than I can count and accumulated frequent flyer miles and hotel points that will take years to use up. And along the way, I also got to meet and work with some truly amazing people, including my incredible wife, Stephanie Rewis. I want to thank you all – my colleagues, friends, travel buddies, conference attendees, et. al. – for so many great memories. Chili crab in Singapore, tuk-tuk rides in Dehli, climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge, dinner at Carnivores in Johannesburg, standing naked in a hotel hallway in Seoul (don’t ask), horizontal rain/ice in Helsinki in February(buuurrrr!), far too many beers at the Oktoberfest, sitting in the MacWorld green room with Steve Jobs, getting to fly with Paul McCartney – and so many, many more!

It’s been an amazing ride and I would be lying if I said that I won’t miss parts of it (expense reports excluded). I hope to still be asked to speak at conferences (hint, hint), and I will definitely be writing here and twittering there – it’ll just be less Dreamweaver and Adobe stuff, and more HTML5/CSS3/JS – and you’re all still invited to come hang out on Geeks4Sail. But, I’m also excitedly looking forward to the new challenges that come with change – and even better, I get to carpool to work with Stef (our offices are literally one mile apart)!

So, to my soon-to-be former colleagues at Adobe, I wish you all the best! Keep making great products! And to the rest of my readers, I’m not leaving you, so… um… carry on with what you were doing!

*Hat-tip to Leslie Jensen-Inman for the title of this post

If you are as big a geek as I am, then you probably find yourself consumed by gadget envy at least 2-3 times a year — usually around a certain “fruit” company’s announcements, or, as was the case last week, the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. This year’s CES could easily have been dubbed the “Android Electronics Show”, as Google’s operating system was literally everywhere. Almost every major, and minor, hardware manufacturer had some new piece of electronics sporting the Android OS. It’s no secret that I am very excited by the Android platform, and personally have 4 Android-powered phones, as well as 2 Samsung Galaxy Tabs and a Google TV around the house. So, all of the excitement of CES was even more exaggerated for me — to the point where Stephanie was quickly annoyed with my constant “ooooh, look at that!” proclamations at each live-streamed press conference.

I love my Galaxy Tab, but I am also eagerly awaiting some of the other new tablets. This is going to be a slugfest for sure. (more…)

As most of the SxSW junkies know, voting opened yesterday on the SxSW site. Of course, as a sponsor of SxSW Interactive, I’ve had the pleasure of attending the conference for the last several years. This year, not only will Adobe be there in our sponsor role, we’ve also submitted a number of individual panels. I, in particular, have two panels in the running: (more…)