ReadWriteWeb

Microsoft and Adobe today announced that Adobe Flash Player Lite and Reader LE software would be shipping on Windows Mobile (neither company has indicated when). This is somewhat surprising given Microsoft's desire to see their Flash competitor Silverlight succeed, but it is also a good move for both companies.

Adobe today announced the latest version of its near ubiquitous Web video software, Adobe Flash Player 9. It's codenamed Moviestar, because it includes H.264 standard video support – the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD high definition video players. In other words, the quality of video has been substantially improved from the previous version of Flash Player 9. Also added to the mix is High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support and "hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced full screen video playback".

Adobe claims that these advancements will extend their leadership position in web video "by enabling the delivery of HD television quality and premium audio content".

The new Flash Player will be available later today as a beta at Adobe Labs - and the final release is slated to be available in the fall (September - November). The last big update to Flash Player was the launch of Flash 9 in June 2006.

Following hot on the heels of the Microsoft-powered NY Times Reader, Adobe has released Adobe Digital Editions Beta - a Rich Internet Application (RIA) for digital publishing and reading. The product enables users to acquire, read, and manage content such as eBooks and other digital publications. This market is ramping up quickly in late 2006, as the Sony Reader is also in beta form currently.

Last week I spoke to Bill McCoy, General Manager of the ePublishing Business Unit at Adobe, to talk about the new product.

Adobe Digital Editions is designed to be a lightweight, standards supporting digital reader - and is focused on the consumer market. Bill said electronic reading "is reaching a tipping point" in the market right now.

As with the NY Times Reader, the Adobe product reflows content and makes readibility of e-content easier. The product is also cross-platform - working on PCs, mobiles, PDAs and dedicated ebook devices. Also the Digital Editions beta includes integration with Adobe Acrobat 8 and Reader 8, which can install and launch Digital Editions from within their user interface.

This post was written by Ryan Stewart, a Read/WriteWeb guest blogger. Note that Adobe's use of the terms 'Read/Write Web' and 'kiwi' is not associated with this blog.

There is an interesting project going on over at Adobe that aims to combine the power of Flex 2 with the potential of the Read/Write Web. The project is codenamed Kiwi and they have already started showing how Flex 2 and the concept of a Read/Write Web can be combined to create a fantastic experience and bring about innovative ideas for interacting with data.

The Kiwi project was born out of Macromedia's Contribute, which put the web into the hands of normal people. You didn't have to be a techie to publish on the web - Contribute made it easy to manipulate a website and add your own content to it. The idea was that website management could be done by anyone. When the Contribute team saw the potential of Flex 2, they started thinking about ways to apply their knowledge of interacting with content on the web to the world of Rich Internet Applications - and the Kiwi project was born.

NoteTag - RSS + Flex 2

Their first major release is NoteTag, which was built as a proof-of-concept to show the potential of RSS, Flex 2 and the Read/Write Web. Currently, the application requires installation on a server - but the team assures me that a public working version is on the way (they have a demo of the application in action here). NoteTag allows users in a meeting to extract notes from the meeting and assign tasks from those notes to individuals. NoteTag actually stores the notes as blog entries and the task data as microformats, using del.icio.us and Blogger/Typepad. It uses RSS data and the open web services from del.icio.us to link tasks to specific notes. The NoteTag team built an Atom Protocol library, a Tag Server Protocol library and what they call an extended RSSRW (RSS Read/Write) library, which is what builds the RSS feed from the note/task data.

More about Flex 2 and the Read/Write Web

The idea of combining Flex 2 and the Read/Write Web is one that has a lot of potential. Because Flash is cross-platform and can run on a variety of devices, it isn't hard to imagine a Read/Write Web application being written for the web and then being easily ported to mobile devices - so that you can interact and manipulate your data from anywhere.

The Read/Write Web is powerful precisely because it takes the web and puts it into manageable bits. If you think of the web as a river of data, then the ideal should be to allow users to take parts of data from that river, interact with it, and then put them back for others to see. Flex 2 provides the engine with which to deliver a rich user experience, while manipulating that data. The data is the most important part, but if the user experience is perfected then more and more people will be drawn into the mix and we will all be better off. The river will get a lot bigger!

Conclusion: adding the Write component to RIAs

Putting a great experience on top of the Read/Write Web also opens up other verticals. Imagine companies being able to actually engage with their customers instead of just pushing ideas at them. With experience at the forefront, companies can be encouraged to share more and their customers will be inclined to participate - eventually becoming stakeholders in the brand and products. RIAs allow for an incredible level of branding, that when combined with content, makes for an enticing place for customers to share ideas. Currently you see high-experience flash websites for things like movies and cars, but there is no "write" component to them. Take that branding, add the write component and you will be able to engage with customers in revolutionary ways.

The Kiwi project aims to harness all of the potential of the Flex 2 experience and show how beneficial incorporating the Read/Write Web can be. Taking the vast amounts of data that exists on the web and providing a rich, cross-platform way to interact with it could be a gigantic step towards bringing more people on board. Experience and engagement can be an immense draw for the regular user.

Spotted on the blogosphere (via Ryan Stewart): Macromedia's The Kiwi Project, which is about creating read/write web components for Flex.

From the intro post:

"With the rising interest in AJAX and RIAs, it became important for us to understand how to empower our Flex environment to create read/write web applications. This means developing Flex components that understand specific Web 2.0 technologies such as RSS, blogging, tagging, and microformats. [...] Thus the Kiwi Project was born. The team is comprised of engineers who have been involved with the development of both Dreamweaver and Contribute, who are intimitely familiar with the challenges of read/write web applications."

Curious about the use of the terms "kiwi" and "Read/Write Web", I emailed Deeje Cooley from Macromedia to enquire as to the origins of the project name. I was somewhat crestfallen by the reply:

"The name is a play on the letters "wiki"... sorry, no national connection"

Hmmm, I think I'll still claim myself as the inspiration :-) It's not every day you get a project named after you (even if it's not). Incidentally, Fred Oliveira once called me a wiki...