(pardon the random image from the movie)

You can watch the whole thing here. If you do have more questions feel free to leave them in the comments. Thanks to Linebreak for having me.

For me, the conclusion after February was clear. I missed out on a few things that annoyed me intensely. Most of the things I missed out on were videos on websites like TED and the New York Times. I had some catching up to do after February. With the help of ClicktoFlash and Youtube and Vimeo’s HTML5 players I was able to watch most of the video content out there, but there is still a lot that you can’t watch without that little plugin. I also ‘missed out’ on a truckload of so-called ‘rich advertisements’, which I absolutely adored.

But the problem of going through your digital life without Flash it’s not just videos on otherwise accessible websites. Try browsing for motion design agency showreels and websites for new games without Flash. Some industries have a vested interest in Flash because it is a mature platform for graphic websites, despite advances in HTML + CSS + Javascript. And I can imagine; the Flash-less approach doesn’t only break down in some browsers, it’s simply not mature yet. Take a look at the current Macheist page. At the time of this writing, it is using 65 to 70 percent of the processing power in my early 2008 Mac Pro, equipped with eight Xeon cores.

Worse still, people hail these Flash-free websites as progress and the road to the future. With terrible performance and compatibility like that, I prefer Flash, despite its drawbacks and proprietary nature. Actually using these technologies and advacing the state of the art is great, but I hope it doens’t put these upcoming standards in a bad light. It’s worth noting, however, that a lot of these techniques are in their infancy.

I’ll be happy with a more efficient and well-performing Flash plugin for Mac, but what I want above everything is a access to the of data that is used by web plugins. It’d be great if I would’ve been able to at least view the motion agencies’ showreels (which are all in Quicktime) and read a bit about games or view some screenshots without requiring a plugin. If I do want to opt into the so-called ‘rich’ web experience, I’ll use Flash, Silverlight, or Web Plugin #4512 to render blinking text and videos projected onto cubes which fall down the screen and bounce around using realistic physics.

Microsoft Labs is doing great things with Silverlight that aren’t possible with Javascript and modern standard-based technologies (yet?), like Pivot, which was demonstrated at TED this year (Flash video – sigh). Pivot’s data, however, for at least half of the video, is the actual web, built on standards and accessible to any technology. This way, if another superior technology comes by or a plugin is no longer supported, anyone can harness the power of the existing data to replicate or even improve on the functionality that we’re so accustomed to. I like that.

There is nobody stopping you from making an iPad or iPhone application using Core Animation which browses Wikipedia like Pivot does – try doing that with all the video that is on the internet.

In conclusion, I’m actually happy to use Flash again to get at all the content I want. I’m equally happy to have missed out on the drawbacks of Flash. While before February I was convinced Flash had no place in the world, I am now a bit more relaxed about it. Flash has its place – but we shouldn’t lose track of the real goal: making the data we want to interface with accessible regardless of the technology I have on my computer, be it a phone, tablet, or PC.

This shirt will be available soon for a limited time. Drop a comment if you’d also like one. Price will be 22.50 for any size of American Apparel, due to the slightly higher print costs that go with the three-color high-quality printing process.

The music is ‘Nostrand’, by Ratatat, from the album Classics. Hope to see you at one of the many LAN-parties I will be attending in 2010!

Apart from file sharing and playing games, there’s opportunities to compete in the so-called ‘eSports’ ladders, sit in a tank of the Swedish army, try and win laptops, play pre-release games like RUSE, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and Starcraft 2, and much more. In fact, there’s so much to do that you’d probably be fine without a computer, but over tenthousand gamers with their box on one of the tables in Dreamhack’s many halls beg to differ. Read on for a link to the flickr set, my trip here, and impressions of the venue floor.

As I mentioned, Intel and Asus are sponsoring the bus trip, which was quite noticeable to us when we were picked up. The bus took us from the Dutch Utrecht to the Dreamhack venue, a trip totalling about 1100 kilometers (or almost 680 miles). It took us about 22 hours of traveling to arrive here.

The trip here was nice, apart from getting stranded for about three hours in the North of Germany when the bus’ transmission broke down in the middle of the night. We took a ferry from Germany to Denmark and went over one of Europe’s most beautiful bridges.

Once we finally arrived, we took some time to stretch our tired limbs and check in, and in my case pick up a press pass and start exploring the venue. We arrived about three hours after the first check-in started, so there wasn’t a huge queue to hold us up – a relief, to say the least.

A bit about the venue: Dreamhack is separated into a few main areas: the three halls, Hall A, B, and D, are home to the BYOC folk (Bring Your Own Computer). Hall A, where we were all seated in a big Dutch row, is known as the eSport hall, because all the big tournaments are played here, and it’s relatively calm compared to B and D. Hall B is located right next to the expo floor, where companies demo equipment, games, software, or do other promotional things. It’s very similar to your typical expo floor.

Hardware demos, robots, you name it, it’s there. I also got a shot at playing new games there, like Starcraft 2 (which, incidentally, is a great game).

There’s also booths that use the attendees’ exhaustion to lure them in with nice couches, beanbags, and diversions:

And also opportunities to win stuff, like a shiny new laptop. If you can beat these two pro players at their game in an actual boxing ring, MSI will give you and your friend a new laptop. So far there’s been no winners.

If you cross it, however, and descend the stairs into Hall D, you find the largest hall of them all. Hall D has a stage, where fun and crazy little contests are held, music is performed, and the hall itself is full of places to eat and drink. It’s certainly an eventful place to be.

The lights were still on here, but when I went up into the Network Operations Center (hooray for press cards) that overlooks the hall, they were off. And they remained off, for the four days of the event. Here’s a great panorama I made from high up:

Here are some other pictures of cool finds in Hall D:

Well, that’s it for now. View nice high-res versions of the photos and even more pictures at the Flickr set here. I hope to do one last small report before I head out in 24 hours. If you still want to meet up, hit me up soon!