Mike Industries

So word came out today that apparently Adobe Creative Suite 4 is right around the corner. Greeeeeaaaaat.

There are only three things I want from this new release:

1. A new install/update process that doesn’t feel like Adobe is rewriting every line of code on my entire hard drive. This includes the congruent request that Adobe not launch and quit five different “agents” sequentially in order to accomplish the above.

2. A new codebase that doesn’t feel like it’s chewing up every last bit of processing power on my new enough 2.4 GHz iMac with maxxed out RAM. Unless Adobe has signed my machine up as a node in the SETI project without telling me, I don’t understand why something as simple as the Save-To-Web command should invoke ten seconds of beachballs.

3. The long-needed “I-Work-On-The-Web-So-Turn-Off-All-This-Color-Profiling-Crap-Until-I-Say-Otherwise” button.

Chances of any of that being in the next release? I say slim. But I hope I’m wrong. My opinion is that over the last few years, Adobe Creative Suite has become the Microsoft Office for right-brained people. They simply ran out of really useful things that people needed so they just piled on things people didn’t.

Personally, I’m about one more disappointing release away from giving something like Pixelmator a shot.

People often ask what things are like at Newsvine after the MSNBC acquisition. Specifically, has the culture changed at all and does it still feel like a startup? The answer to those questions are, thankfully *no* the culture hasn’t been disrupted a lot and thankfully *yes* it still feels like a startup (minus the working for 1929-level salaries).

One of the many nice things about life post-acquisition is that we’re beginning to work on many projects that touch both Newsvine.com (little ant of 1.5 million users) and MSNBC.com (big elephant of over 35 million users).

As such, we’re expanding a bit…

The Newsvine Team is looking for an experienced, self-motivated, and passionate front-end developer to join us in building products and services for the Newsvine platform. Your primary responsibility will be to design and develop site features and functionality in a multi-tier web environment using PHP, CSS, JavaScript, and the YUI JavaScript library. Additional responsibilities include daily site support and maintenance. The ideal candidate is able to work on small teams under tight deadlines with little supervision. A computer science degree or equivalent is a plus, but experience, skill, and attention to detail are more important.

The ideal candidate will have a strong command of the following knowledge areas:

• X/HTML, CSS, DOM, and JavaScript
• PHP or similar scripting language
• Mastery of web standards and cross-browser compatibility

Preferable Job Qualifications:

• Experience working on large-scale, high-availability web sites
• Successful industry experience using latest DHTML and ajax technologies
• Experience with SQL and relational database implementations serving as the backend to production web applications
• Experience with, or an interest in, working with the YUI JavaScript library
• Familiarity with Subversion a plus

The job will be based out of the lovely Newsvine offices in Seattle, down by the waterfront pictured here. If you’re interested, please send an e-mail and resumé to “newsvinejobs at newsvine.com”.