Interview: Macromedia CEO discusses upcoming Royale tool

If its recent acquisitions, new products, and sharp rise in share price are any indication, Macromedia, creator of the popular Flash technology, is showing that there's still plenty of money to be made developing software for the Internet. Today, Macromedia's Flash technology is used on more than 95 percent of all computers linked to the Internet.

Over the past few months a flurry of announcements has come from the San Franciscocompany. For instance, Macromedia acquired Presedia, which produces online presentation, and folded these tools into its new Breeze product, allowing users to add narration to a PowerPoint presentation and combine the two in a streaming application based on the Flash format. The company also launched Central, which enables users run applications on their desktops without using browsers.

Rob Burgess, chief executive officer of Macromedia, took a break on Wednesday from his trip around Europe, where he spent a week meeting with customers and partners, to talk with IDG News Service in Düsseldorf, Germany. Burgess, who switched the company's initial focus on CD-ROMs to multimedia software, talked about Macromedia's new products, plans for the future and intention to stay independent.

IDGNS: So why have you guys survived the Internet blowout when so many haven't?

Burgess: Ours isn't so much a successful business story as it is a successful consumer story. Our goal all along has been to make the Web more usable for people. We're now seeing thousands of Web sites based on our technology that are fundamentally better. And this is causing growth in our business.

IDGNS: Could you give me some examples of these "fundamentally better" Web sites?

Burgess: You bet. Just go to the home page of the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. [www.thewatergatehotel.com] and click reservations. What we've done there is to create one page to replace multiple HTML pages, which you had to click through in order to view, reserve, and pay for a room in the past. The site is fast because new pages don't have to be rerendered every time you click a link. Some other good examples are the Austin Mini Web site [www.miniusa.com], which allows you to build your own car online and send your order to a dealer electronically, or the digital camera finder site operated by the Internet startup Iokio in London [www.ikio.com]. The site, which is still under development, helps you select a camera by selecting a number of parameters, such as price, resolution, and memory.

IDGNS: So you're saying speed is a factor to create a better user experience.

Burgess: Definitely. Take the quote widget on the eTrade Web site. Before the company introduced Flash, the entire page was is in HTML and had to be entirely rerendered when you wanted to get just one quote, a process that took up to 20 seconds with a modem connection. With Flash, only the quote data is now supplied, a process that takes one second. Not only do users have to wait considerably less, but eTrade has also been able to reduce its bandwidth requirements by around 98 percent.