CEO of Areal-Media Pedro Veloso

The Portuguese startup company AREAL-MEDIA is helping produce more than 1000 books per day with their product AdigitalBook, a digital album creation software for amateur photographers developed on Adobe's Flex.

Located in the city of Braga, Portugal, this startup differences itself by targeting amateur photographers and focusing on usability, simplicity and speed.

We wanted to ask this startup how they are doing and how using Flex affects their business. Areal-Media's CEO Pedro Veloso emphasizes several advantages of using this technology and says that Flex helps increasing both productivity and sales.

Dreaming in Flash (DIF) - Tell us a bit about AREAL-MEDIA, how did the company get started? You have been in operations for 5 years now, did you always plan to use Adobe's Flex or was that something that happened along the way?

Pedro Veloso (PV) - In fact, we have been operating in the market for 6 years now. Areal-Media was founded by two people, my partner and I. Areal-Media has held certification according to the ISO 9001:2000 standard since 2007, and changed for ISO 9001:2008 in 2010. In the beginning, the focus of the company was to develop websites. Quickly we understood that we should choose a specific market to focus on so we chose the photography market. Areal-Media has developed products for several business sectors, with the photography sector as its core focus.

We began using Adobe Flex in 2007 when we started developing the AdigitalBook software. We chose this technology because it works well on all operating systems, and with Flex it is possible to create very attractive software layouts.

DIF - How many people did AREAL-MEDIA start off with? How many of the starting founders are still with the company?

Pedro Veloso (PV) - We started with two and are now ten people (7 Flex developer's). I'm the CEO and my Partner is the CTO, which we have been since we founded Areal-Media in 2004.

DIF - How do you differentiate your product Adigitalbook from the other Flex-based digital album creation software, e.g. Blurb.com?

Pedro Veloso (PV) - Before we started developing Adigitalbook, we tested different pieces of software, and we understood what we should do to innovate and bring something new to this kind of software. At that time and even today there aren´t a lot of great applications in the marketplace, in my opinion there are three or four worldwide. AdigitalBook brings more than new features, it brings a new business model to big Labs. A very lucrative business model for those Labs, and with the big advantage to have the same software in both PC desktop and web based versions, it is something new to this type of Application. Also, AdigitalBook has some attractive features like the possibility that users have to create, store and share their own photobooks for free. Users can share their albums on facebook, by email, or with a simple URL. If other people want a printed copy of their friend’s book, they have the ability to purchase it as well.

DIF - Using this technology, it allows you to distribute the software on different platforms (Windows, Mac, Web). How do you grade the importance of using the same code base while targeting these different platforms? Is it really such a big deal?

Pedro Veloso (PV) - Definitively, this is one of the biggest advantages of FLEX. This technology brings to software development companies, like Areal-Media, the possibility to be more productive, reducing the time for bug tracking, testing, and other various time consuming procedures.

DIF - How much time was necessary before you could release the first beta version of Adigitalbook? When was it?

Pedro Veloso (PV) - The first beta version was shown last Year (March 2009) in Las Vegas at PMA2009. The Exhibition was a success and we gained customers all over the world. This year the show was in Los Angeles – Anaheim, we presented the online version (web based) and the new desktop version. As a result of AdigitalBook’s success, Areal-Media is growing up very fast.

DIF - So far, how was been the adoption of the product and the user feedback?

Pedro Veloso (PV) - The best key performance indicator is the number of Albums produced per day with our software, and at this time I can say that our systems estimate processing more than 1000 books/day. This is a very good feeling.

DIF - The user interface of Adigitalbook looks really user-friendly. One can see a lot of time went into designing the user experience. How do you approach this at AREAL-MEDIA and how important is it to assume the focus on usability?

Pedro Veloso (PV) - This software is going to be used by everybody, not only by the Experts. We think of the mother that wants to create a photobook of her son, the people without vast technology experience that want to order a photobook. The software must be easy to use, and we can only get this objective correct if our concern is the user experience. We have changed the layout many times as we tested it with regular computer users. There are many small things that in this type of software, are very important to help for a more intuitive user experience. The user’s photos and album pages must be always visible. Also, the users are able to create a book in an automatic way without any problems. The workflow of choosing, importing, creating, and purchasing is imperative.

DIF - Do you have plans to add further integration with third party services, e.g. Flickr or others? What else does the future hold for Adigitalbook?

Pedro Veloso (PV) - In fact, Adigitalbook has already integrated the API’s to import pictures from Picasa, Smugmug, Flickr, Facebook and photobucket. Also, the user can share the album on his facebook wall. These integrations are already done and working properly. In the near future we will integrate new products in AdigitalBook, like Photo Gifts in 3D. Also, we want to develop a module to synchronise the Web-based Version with the desktop Version.

DIF - How do you market Adigitalbook and how difficult is it to market Flex-based products?

Pedro Veloso (PV) - In fact, the Flex technology helps us to increase our sales of the software. We do not sell this software to small companies. Our target is big labs, and so far the labs that we have sold our software to, have already know about the Flex technology. The attractive layouts, the same software working on different Operating Systems, the same software working in desktop and web based version, are all benefits that we couldn’t do without Flex. AdigitalBook has for nine months now, been a featured offering in the Adobe AIR Marketplace under the Photo and Video Category. Some Labs found our software from the Adobe Marketplace, others found us through the exhibitions that we participate in, with the rest being from our website.

DIF - Would you like to say something to entrepreneurs that are planning to launch Flex-based products and services?

Pedro Veloso (PV) - Well what I can say, is to test AdigitalBook http://demo.adigitalbook.com and ask them if they can do the same using another technology. This technology allows my company to save time and money.

Thanks for the interview!

AREAL-MEDIA

Website: http://www.arealmedia.com

AdigitalBook demo: http://demo.adigitalbook.com

Dreaming in Flash: Can you tell us a little more about yourself and your role on the team?

Alex Karpovich: I'm director of Alternativa company, and that means I'm basically responsible for everything here. I'm 29 years old, male, if you need that =)

Dreaming in Flash: What's the history behind Alternativa3D, how did it come to happen?

Alex Karpovich: We transformed from a very good web-studio. Main team just tired of making websites, it's getting boring after second hundred =)
We already had an experienced crew and big ambitions, then we united them with good idea and friendly venture capital. Flash was always our passion, but now it's combined with powerful server-side technologies here.

Dreaming in Flash: The web is thriving with 3D content these days, how do you see this evolving?

Alex Karpovich: Well, every technology is good in certain way, so I don't really think that all the web will go into 3D. But many many many projects will be able to create additional value by using 3D technologies in their websites. We'll also see 3D coming to mobile browsers, for sure.

Dreaming in Flash: What distinguishes Alternativa3D from the pack?

Alex Karpovich: We're commercially oriented, not-opensource-company (shoot me).
We have our own vision on creating better technology, and we're working full-time at our own office, which lets to really focus on our tasks.

Dreaming in Flash: What is your vision for 3D and the web?

Alex Karpovich: 3D is good for visualizating things, but not as good for delivering textual information, so we'll probably see browsers' rich media using 3D, but not that hackers-movie-like interfaces =)
Everyone seems exited, feeling that "we're almost there"... competitors know what I mean.

Dreaming in Flash: How will Flash Player 10, and Pixel Bender, affect Alternativa3D?

Alex Karpovich: It's getting faster with supported typed arrays and built-in perspective correction. We also like PixelBender, because it will let to create various FX and filters, as long as creating procedural textures may seriously redoce traffic, where it is important.
Still, there's a lot of desired features that are not implemented yet. We'll pray for Adobe to make them soon.

Dreaming in Flash: What are Alternativa3D plans for the future?

Alex Karpovich: We'll continue with 3D engine development (we have some serious features upcoming), along with AlternativaPlatform launch. We're starting our sells and dealing with a huge amount of enthusiastic people from many parts of the globe, and that is a very hard and interesting job.

Dreaming in Flash: I've recently read that you have partner studios, how does one become a partner?

Alex Karpovich: Well, you have to be experienced AS3 team to work with 3D engine, right? If so, drop us a letter with short self-description, and we'll see what we can do for you, that's it. A lot of people are looking for professional that can use Alternativa3D at their websites, so we're ready to share them. This process will get more standartized as long as we're getting more experience with partners.

Dreaming in Flash: Will it ever be opensource? Why?

Alex Karpovich: Not now. May be later, if we'll see that we really need that (read: if we'll understand that it's better for the project). Opensource is really good for some reasons, but we'd like to have full process control for now - we have some long-term plans on this software =)

Dreaming in Flash: And to end, what's your secret to achieve such speed and quality in your demos?

Alex Karpovich: Magic, definitely. Think of hardcore gurus with red eyes, scientists in glasses conducting strange experiments at night, colored smoke around the lab, and silent men in black suits with silver suitcases in hands =)

Dreaming in Flash interviewed Rob Bateman, The Chief architect and co-founder of the Away3D engine, on his views about the upcoming release of Flash Player 10 and how it will affect Away3D.

Dreaming in Flash: Can you tell us a little bit on your role on Away3d team?

Rob Bateman: I'm Chief architect and co-founder of the framework. Around March last year, myself and Alexander Zadorozhny created a branch of Papervision that fulfilled some specific needs of 3d projects we were both working on at the time (the needs were perspective correction and corrective z-sorting. Lighting also came soon after). To accomplish these extensions we ended up re-writing a lot of the core classes of the papervision engine, however the outward facing structure appears very similar - the reason why a lot of people still refer to Away3d as a "papervision branch".

Since then our development team has increased to 8, with a core group of 4 who commit code regularly. I write a lot of code but also help steer our development schedule in directions we feel will most benefit the engine and the community. For example, we are currently on the verge of releasing a new update that contains a lot more documentation and source code demos - something that has been requested by the community on our site and mailing list.

DIF: Did Adobe approach you for the 3D features, and if so what features did you ask for, and which ones made it?

Rob: Adobe have really been very distant from us and our needs. I think Papervision had more of a dialogue with them over the last few months, and some of the new features in the player clearly are included with 3d in mind, so we're not really complaining! I would have liked to have seen a pixel z-buffer in there along with the perspective bitmap transformations (which whould have completely banished any z-sorting problems of the past) but i guess you can't have everything. What's there is still very useful, and will certainly be put to good use in upcoming releases of Away3d.

DIF: What is for you personally the coolest new feature?

Rob: Pixel bender is by far the coolest feature, not only in the creation of custom filters for 3d shader objects, but also in terms of the hacking potential! We'll certainly be exploring a few avenues of possible uses over the next month or so...

DIF: What's the most relevant feature for Away3D

Rob:drawTriangles is going to help with render speed no end, because the drawing operations of flash were always the bottleneck in the past. The drawTriangles extension to the graphics api allows you to push a single array of drawing commands to the rasteriser, rather than having to call thousands of drawing methods. So your draw loop is reduced to simply manipulating an array of vector data, which is infinitely more preferable.

DIF: What can we expect,in terms of performance and improvements, of the next Away3D version?

Rob: Well, the next version of Away3d (2.1.0) be realeased by the end of this week. This will have fully documented classes, more demos, better management of primitives, better management of events, and a few other useful enhancements. It's a dot release in the truest sense because there are few new features, but a recent poll on our website showed that "new features" is currently at the bottom of what people actually want! Demos, tutorials and docs were all at the top, so that's what we'll be delivering this time round. We'll also be looking for a lot more user involvement over the next month or so in the development of the flash 10 version of Away3d (3.0), which will be developed in a public branch that anyone can hack and provide patches for as the upgrade develops.

Preliminary tests for speed improvements are good, but i wouldn't like to put a figure on what they will be exactly at this point as it's still early days. It's fairly clear that the biggest savings will be in the area of shading though - pixel bender does give phenomenal power to the graphics of the flash player and we expect to be taking full advantage of that new feature.

DIF: Do you have a planned schedule for start working on Away3d 3.0 as soon as FP10 releases?

Rob: Our schedules can be a bit haphazard, as a lot depends on what time we have available each month for work on the engine. As a rule of thumb, we try to release a new version on a monthly / month and a half basis, so after our 2.1 release well be expecting to have something ready for our 2.2 release at the end of June. Away3d 3.0 will be a parallel development that will release incremental update to the current codebase in it's own svn branch. While Away3d has no problems with running in Flash 10, obviuosly there are a great deal of new features in the player to be utilised, so i see this as an ongoing conversion rather than a completely new codebase. The framework of Away3d is built to be very adaptable, so there will be little need to change much of the outside appearance of the engine - obviously we want to keep the amount of new user learning to a minimum.

DIF: How will the new features affect the interactivity in Away3D?

Rob: The interactivity of the new 3d api in Flash 10 is great news for designers but slightly less fantastic for us. Essentially the ability extends to flat planes rotated with the rotationX Y and Z of the displayobject, something that we do not use because Away3d (and all the 3 engines for that matter) are based on drawing triangles. Aside from some special case 3d objects where we can taken advantage of these new features (such as flat 2d sprite objects), well be sticking to the current interactivity method on a 3d mesh unless we discover some as yet undisclosed features about interactivity in that area.

DIF: What do you make of the new Pixel Bender, and what will it bring to Away3d?

Rob: Pixel bender will be most useful for creating shaded triangles with phong, normal maps, environmental shading etc. because it removes the need for multiple triangle layering. Previously the only way to get a shaded effect was to render a shader triangle directly over a texture triangle with a blendmode. With this barrier removed, shaded materials become a lot less processor intensive and a lot more useable, so i would say that this is the biggest contribution pixel bender will make!

DIF: Will Away3D support vector based 3d?

Rob: Away3d already supports line based vectors with it's wire primitive objects and the linesegment class. We are aware there are a few developers out there who would like to see more vector classes in the framework, so we are definitely considering the extension of this side of the engine in future to allow for curves (and possibly surface-based rendering) as well as lines.

We'd like to thank Rob for the time he took for this, and we wish him the utmost success with Away3D, we'll be sure to pitch in with some demos.
Reference links:
http://infiniteturtles.co.uk/
http://away3d.com/