Peter Elst

First and foremost, Creative Suite 3 is shipping today (the Design and Web editions that is)! Its latest suite of products looks really tasty and the focus on integration will make peoples lives a lot easier. Can’t wait to start using it for production work.

Then another interesting announcement at NAB, the Adobe Media Player (which you might have heard about as a project with codename Philo) brings FLV to the desktop with optional DRM. Stefan over at Flashcomguru.com has a good writeup on what it does.

If you’re a regular listener of the podcast you’re probably familiar with my views on DRM, I think its inherently flawed and not sure how long it will survive in its current form. Its probably not a surprise that Adobe announced a DRM solution on the same day as it ships Creative Suite 3 — nonetheless appreciate that its almost impossible for Adobe to ignore this market and hope they’ve implemented a good solution for it.

What I am more troubled about is the name, why would you call it Adobe Media Player — you can rest assured that people will start calling it Media Player creating nothing but confusion with Microsoft’s Windows Media Player. Its a bit of a kick below the belt in my opinion, wonder how they could trademark that.

Not to be too negative about the initiative, I’d love to get my hands on it and see just what is is all about.