Eighteen months, seemingly like clockwork. A mere year-and-a-half after CS4 was released (which itself was a mere year-and-a-half after the release of CS3), Adobe has unveiled the CS5 lineup. Having had a chance to see and try the new versions for myself over the past several weeks, here are some general observations about the latest versions of Adobe's software überbundles.

In this candid and eye-opening interview, Philip Hutchison, a household name in SCORM and the man behind Pipwerks, gives his thoughts about the current state of SCORM and e-learning in general, touching on subjects such as how he became one of the go-to SCORM resources, why the authors of SCORM were trying to do too much, and how the PowerPoint-ization of training isn't a good development for e-learning.

It's been a while, but Adobe's announcement of Flash Platform Services for Distribution (which we'll shorten to AFPSD for the duration) begs for the not-quite-famous "fake FAQ" treatment, where your humble host asks made-up questions of, well, himself in an attempt to make further sense of the official AFPSD press release. With that as the setup, let's get to those "frequently asked questions."

Last summer I got curious. With the advent of Intel Macs, Boot Camp, and Universal builds of After Effects, for the first time it was possible to forget about all the Intel vs. PowerPC benchmarks that had been run to that point and effectively remove hardware from the equation, focusing solely on the OS and how well AE was tuned to it. XP took the prize back then, but I'm curious again, and with Mac OS X Leopard, 64-bit Vista, and After Effects CS4 at my disposal, it's time to find out where things stand today.

Such is the nature of the upgrade cycle: just as creative types were getting used to the CS3 line, Adobe goes and announces CS4. And while you've likely seen myriad press releases and first looks and other introductory stuff by now, here are a few "below the fold" observations based on the the experiences I've had with the CS4 betas over the last several weeks.

Naturally, questions are going to be raised when any software product takes a four-year hiatus, especially when the program in question happens to be a stalwart multimedia veteran like Director, the eleventh version of which was finally released several months back. Enter Adobe's Director Evangelist, Allen Partridge. Allen started out in design, but eventually dove headfirst into Director programming, giving him a unique perspective of the product from several different angles. Allen was kind enough to sit down recently for a candid discussion on where Director has been, is now, and where it may be going.

It seems that every time Adobe announces anything having to do with the Flash Platform, there is always an accompanying opportunity to talk to a representative from EffectiveUI, a Denver-based Rich Internet Application (RIA) provider which boasts a current staff of 79 and also has offices in Rochester, NY and Vancouver. As EffectiveUI is in the enviable position of getting to develop new and cool interfaces against very early versions of Adobe technology, a chance to speak with Anthony Franco, EffectiveUI's president, about Flash Player 10 and where the platform is going was too good to pass up.

The 2007 college football season is winding down, and while the last of the autumn leaves falls lazily from the trees in Charlottesville, VA, there's no slowdown for Erik Elvgren, senior producer and animator at the University of Virginia's Athletics Video Services Department (AVS). The last home UVA football game is only days away, and while Elvgren's animated CavMan adventures make their final 2007 showing at Scott Stadium, basketball season is already heating up, and CavMan is expected to pull duty for the Cavalier basketball team as well.

There are many, many reasons to love Intel Macs, but the one I'm going to focus on today is Boot Camp. Being able to run a full copy of Windows natively on the exact same hardware as Mac OS X not only represents a 2-for-1 bang for your buck when it comes to buying a production rig, but also gives average Joes such as yours truly the opportunity to compare apples to apples (so to speak) when running cross-platform software. And with After Effects CS3 finally out in the wild (and in Intel Mac-native form, no less), it's time to see how well the Mac and Windows versions of AE do on identical hardware.

Like the weekly serials of old, we left off last time with a cliffhanger. What treats were there to be found in the rest of the CS3 Production Premium bundle? Which goodies in After Effects, Encore, Photoshop Extended, and even OnLocation and Ultra would appeal to motion graphics and interactive folk? Well, you didn't have to wait too long to find out, so let's get this sucka done.

I was somewhat skeptical about what the forthcoming Adobe CS3 Production Premium bundle would offer outside of Flash and After Effects; after all, I have precisely zero skills when it comes to the "front end" of production (shooting, capture, editing, etc.). My interests lie squarely down the line (motion graphics, interactivity, Web distribution), so my initial thought was that the entire bundle might be of limited total value to someone like me. However, after seeing and using a pre-release version of the suite for myself, it turns out that there are a lot of hidden gems in surprising places.

Adobe today used the occasion of the annual NAB conference to announce the Adobe Media Player, a desktop-based application built on the Apollo framework which will contain features targeting media producers and consumers alike. It's not due until later this year, so there's a lot that can change, but having recently had the chance to be briefed on an early version of the product, I thought it would be a good idea to do a completely made-up question-and-answer session to better address some of the information not readily apparent in the official press release.

Unless you've been living under a rock (or perhaps in a spacious yet private cave), you very likely have heard the news by now that Adobe has announced approximately 4,927 new versions of the Creative Suite 3 line of products. For our purposes here today, however, I want to focus on two things: the word "Web" and the number 13. That is, we're gunning for the CS3 Web Premium bundle and 13 of the things I keep coming back to as neat-o new features.

With the release of the Adobe CS3 line, many questions have been answered with respect to which former Macromedia products would stay and which would go. As it turns out, the big M lives on in a big way in the various CS3 releases, and the focus of our first look piece today effectively sounded the death knell for ImageReady. Fireworks CS3 is the replacement, and with the new name and new version come few new features but an entirely new focus. Let's take a sneak peek at what's new and notable in Fireworks CS3.

With the announcement of the brand spankin' new CS3 line, we now know that Dreamweaver has replaced GoLive as the visual Web editor of record for Adobe's bundled products. So what can long time and first time users alike expect from Dreamweaver CS3? Let's peel back the curtain and take a gander at some of the new and notable items in Dreamweaver CS3.

Flash is one of those rare programs that doesn't really have any equivalent, so there was very little doubt as to what would happen to Flash once Adobe swallowed up Macromedia (read: it was sticking around). What was in question, however, is just what the newly-christened Adobe Flash would look and feel like, and with the announcement of Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, we finally have some answers. Let's take a trip around the block to see what Flash CS3 has in store.

Until today, Adobe Apollo was kind of like (the American TV series) Lost: an intriguing thing that many people watched, yet no solid conclusions could be drawn about what the heck was going on. But that's all changed now. Not only has a public developer Alpha of the Apollo Framework been freshly posted, but Adobe is also spilling the beans on just about everything Apollo has in store. Mike Downey, Adobe's Product Manager for Apollo, was kind enough to join me for a wide-ranging chat on what Apollo is and why you should care.

Allow me to begin with a rhetorical, albeit serious, question: if they held a Macworld and there were no Macs, wouldn't it just be called "World?" As much as I would love to smugly sit back while you ponder that enormously profound query, instead let us endeavor to break through the enormous hype bubble generated by the introduction of the iPhone to get at a select handful of some of the more interesting items unveiled at or around this year's Macworld. Well, interesting to me, anyway.

2007 is finally upon us, and with the dawn of a new year comes a merciful end to the scourge of top ten lists that anyone with access to any sort of media outlet seems to spew forth. So, in the same hypocritical breath, allow me to present the fourth installment of our occasionally continuing series of not-quite-new but nonetheless battle-tested (and don't forget inexpensive!) Mac programs that I, your host for and author of this wildly self-important exercise, currently can't live without.

While the public beta of Photoshop CS3 has been getting all the headlines of late, Adobe hasn't stopped there. By the time you read this, Adobe will have officially announced preview versions of CSS Advisor and Spry, two Web development tools focused on making certain Web design and development tasks easier. The former is a community-driven Web site, while the latter is a framework designed to simplify the creation of AJAX (or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)-driven sites. Let's take a brief look at what's in store.