PixelMEDIA Inc.

Well, for us old-schoolers, long before Flash was anything but an idea, there was Director. Back in the day it was Macromedia Director. And way way back – it was Mac only and you had to use “the Gaffer” to convert Mac files to play on a Windows machine. Way way back… like early 90′s. I think Teece was 10.

I’ve got many thousands of hours into this program; and this company, PixelMEDIA, was largely built on the back of Director.

We started as an interactive media company in 1994 – where our tag was actually ‘interactive multimedia solutions’. Demo diskettes, trade show presentations, interactive CD’s, and eLearning… all was possible. And I even designed at least half of them, and programmed another half (yes, laugh it up, it’s true. I wrote many thousands of lines of Lingo – prepped many thousands of screens of modeling, and animation and interfaces – I did – ask Erik.).

I started using Director in 1992 at Cabletron Systems. Every demo diskette, tradeshow piece and CD was done in Director. There was no Flash; there were no “mature web tools”. And Director ruled the era as Flash has the last several years. But Flash has it’s drawbacks and challenges.

Now I know what your thinking; why? Why unearth what the newer generation of designers and developers consider a relic. I mean – seriously; to some it’s sort of the rotary phone of it’s time. A one time amazing innovation, but may not so much anymore. Or maybe it’s the bag-phone? It depends on your age I guess.

Well, clearly that is no longer the case – as Adobe, in all it’s wisdom has brought it back. They too realized a huge void in the tools space; and have recently launched Adobe Director 11. And who are we to question Adobe? As they have consistently provided the tools we’ve used to build an industry on. Well done Adobe.
Peace. -t

Tags: adobe, Director, elearning, Flash, Gaming, interactive, macromedia, tradeshow