A week is a long time in politics," they always say; but a week in the world of technology is - on occasion - longer than anyone ever imagined. This week's MAX, for example, where many of you will have picked up this month's issue, may seem to rush by - with its sure-to-be-packed sessions by MXDJ and ColdFusion Developer's Journal regulars like Ray Camden, Alexandru Costin, Ben Forta, Simon Horwith, and Stephanie Sullivan, in addition to a whole host of other MX stars.

However, most weeks in the Web world recently don't seem to fly by at all as there's just so incredibly much to digest.

In the week before this editorial went to press, for example, we had a welter of big announcements, from the possible assault on Microsoft's desktop monopoly by Google and Sun (yay!) to the release of the game-changing Flex 2 product line from Macromedia (double yay!). We had Weblogs, Inc., the blog company founded by Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey, being scooped up by AOL for $25 million, and before that News Corp. completing its $580 million purchase of Intermix Media Inc., operator of the social network site MySpace.com.

The Weblogs acquisition, in particular, suggests that the big players are realizing what the rest of us have understood now for a while: the "long tail" of the Internet - i.e., the specialty sites that attract small but devoted followings - is going to be an ever-increasing part of all our futures, Web-wide.

In addition to bringing you the inside skinny on Flex 2, direct from David Wadhwani, who tells us how Flex Builder 2 and Flex Framework 2 builds on the foundation provided by Flash Player 8.5 and ActionScript 3.0 and encourages MXDJ readers to download the public alpha and get involved - we are following up last month's well-received "Voices of the Community" feature by bringing you a selection of some of the best-received articles in 2005.

We're also delighted to be showcasing Guy Watson's "Need for Speed" feature article, in which he shows how to increase the frame rates of your Flash movies. As befits his moniker ("FlashGuru"), Guy is one of the high-energy new members of the expanded, widened, and deepened team behind MXDJ as we move toward the first "post-acquisition" issue next month, assuming everything closes this month as expected. Which it will.

As Scott Barnes, another new member of our expanded editorial board, reminds us, there is a new breed of developers who, so long as they are ready to learn the new world of ActionScript 3.0, will surely in future be given the title "User Experience Developer." Because Rich Internet Applications moved this month unmistakably from 1.0 toward 2.0, this October issue of MXDJ is dedicated to those hundreds and thousands of intrepid co-travelers in the great technology journey that Macromedia and Adobe tools between them make possible.

With the merger, a renewed wave of products and innovations will sweep over the world in 2006. We shall as always be there to showcase and analyze them. As Winston Churchill once so memorably expressed it: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

See you in November!