Macromedia put on an interesting Briefing with Forrester Research last week here in Toronto. Summary information is available on the Macromedia site.

This was the first time I heard (or at least absorbed) the real concept behind Forrester’s “X Internet” concept. Their idea of downloadable applications replacing web pages still sounds silly to me. They are missing the fact that the Internet does many things and deseminating flat, factual data and opinion is one of those things and HTML does it very well. Still, many things we do on the Net are computer assisted tasks that HTML is NOT that good at. Macromedia presented some interesting applications such as a hotel room reservation system that reduced a many stepped HTML process with one dynamic Flash application. This was very compelling and is a good example of where Forrester thinks we’re headed.

I’d also point out a great use of multimedia in online presentations which Macromedia provided as part of the post-briefing link package. Click on the “Pass along this summary video presentation to your colleagues” link to view.