I’m heading out to Barcelona for Adobe Max Europe, for what I hope will be some in-depth presentations on what I guess we should call the Adobe Platform – Flash, Flex, AIR, Livecycle etc.

I wish Adobe would fix its Max Europe web site though. Follow the link, and a Flash movie plays automatically – with sound. I’ve learned to hit the stop button ASAP, but it is truly irritating. Worse, the web page has no memory of your preference, so I have to repeat this exercise every time I visit. This is the kind of thing that earned Flash a bad reputation in its early days. Imagine the embarrassment if you are working in an open plan office and hit this kind of problem. OK, so you have the sound turned down at work. So do I, normally, but I then I have to transcribe an interview or something, turn the sound back on, and get caught out.

Still, the event is apparently sold out so perhaps there are people out there who actually like this kind of thing. Alternatively, they realize that there is good technology underneath that is worth investigating despite this example of how not to do it.

I’ve also got some interviews lined up at MAX, of which more later.