Adobe is also releasing an updated alpha version of the Flex Builder 3 for Linux to include support for AIR applications.

In addition to AIR and Flex releases for Linux, Adobe announced that it had joined the Linux Foundation in an effort to help "accelerate the growth of RIA technologies on the Linux platform."

AIR for Linux has been promised by Adobe "in upcoming releases" for a few months, and though Linux support won't provide AIR with a huge bump in users, it does help Adobe to demonstrate their commitment to the open source community. Google's Gears is probably the chief competitor to AIR -- though it's not a one-to-one comparison since Gears apps still live in the browser -- and already supports Firefox on Linux.

As of this posting, if you head to the FreshAirapps site you'll see a note from James Whittaker noting that Whittaker's usage of the word "AIR" in his domain name poses a problem with Adobe. No matter how obscure this may seem, rules are rules and Adobe explicitly states the following in its list of trademarks:

"Adobe® AIR™" is a trademark of Adobe that may not be used by others except under a written license from Adobe. You may not incorporate the Adobe AIR trademark, or any other Adobe trademark, in whole or in part, in the title of your Developer Application or in your company name, domain name or the name of a service related to Adobe AIR."

Is Adobe Just Being a Bully?

Is Adobe jealous of the publicity and potential that FreshAIRapps has compared to its own directory for AIR apps? It shouldn't be. If you were to do a search on Google for "adobe AIR apps", FreshAIRapps isn't even on the first page. On the other hand, there are several reasons why I'd visit FreshAIRapps over Adobe's AIR showcase. For one, I like FreshAIRapps site design better. It's cleaner and more refreshing for me. Two, there are reviews from both a technical and user perspective about each app. This keeps me from having to download apps just to find out whether or not they'd be worth my time.

Whittaker ends the note with his reasons for starting FreshAIRapps in the first place, while expressing his disappointment in Adobe:

I have been in communication with members of the Adobe evangelist team who truly believe that I am helping the community and promoting the use of the AIR runtime and subsequent applications built on the platform. I started this site because I have a genuine interest in AIR and other Adobe technologies.

I feel that Adobe has let me and the community down by trying to block sites that appear to challenge their marketplace, even though none of the apps featured on this site are hosted by me.

Is Adobe in the Wrong?

In the end, FreshAIRapps is free publicity for Adobe and they're going after the wrong guy. This isn't the first incident where big companies hit the supporters of their products with take-down notices or anything similar. In this case, FreshAIRapps doesn't even host the applications. Whittaker simply reviewed and promoted the apps, something numerous sites already do. Yet, Adobe blames the problem on the "AIR" trademark that's registered in the domain name. This all seems ridiculous at the end of the day. With a new domain name and a sour after-taste, is Adobe in the wrong here?

According to the statement, the partnership stems from the Open Screen Project, Adobe's industry-wide initiative set to address challenges of Web browsing on a broad range of screens.

ARM believes that the resulting technology will run on "billions of devices from our partners, such as pocket-sized mobile devices, mobile computing platforms, set-top boxes, digital TVs and automotive infotainment," said vice president of marketing, Ian Drew in the statement. "The combination of Adobe Flash and ARM's low-power processor IP and Mali GPU will ensure a fantastic Internet experience for consumers on the world's leading 32-bit architecture."

Getting Flash on mobiles in an efficient manner has been a goal of Adobe for some time. The majority of mobile phones that can use Flash at the moment use Flash Lite, the cut down version of the technology, and one that is limited in what it can play.

Although the technology is not expected to be available until the second half of 2009, Adobe will demonstrate Flash Player 10 during the Adobe MAX developer conference this week in San Francisco.

Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen is talking to Tim O'Reilly on stage now. Bruce says that before the Macromedia acquisition, Adobe was a peripheral player on the Web - so the acquisition brought them back into the heart and soul of the Web. He talks about the importance of Flash on mobile (Flash lite), which is key going forward. 

Tim asked him about Ajax and how it is taking over the use of Flash in some things. Bruce replied that they don't view Ajax as a competitor to Flash. He also says they've believed in open standards from day 1.

On the challenge from Microsoft, Bruce said he's pleased Google is "a heat shield". He says "the good news is that Microsoft has lots of enemies". He notes that Microsoft has been competing with Adobe almost as long as they've been in business - e.g. Microsoft's PhotoDrop product in the mid-90's. He says Adobe will focus on what they're really good at - "making things local".

Tim mentions the electronic reading apps that both Microsoft (via NYTimes) and Adobe have come out with recently. Bruce says the NYTimes Reader is similar to what Adobe has been trying to do with PDF. Adobe are extending that themselves with their Digital Reader. He says over the last 7 years they've been talking about ebooks, but he thinks "we're almost there" in regards to ebook devices - he points to Sony Reader as an example.

Finally he talks a little about Apollo, which renders Flex and HTML etc both within and outside the browser - "think iTunes on steriods". Tim asks whether that makes Adobe the "dark horse" of Internet platform players, a question which is left hanging....

This new organization within Adobe will bring together the e-book business groups that worked on the Adobe Reader Mobile SDK, Adobe Content Server, Adobe Digital Editions, as well as the group that worked with the New York Times on the Times Reader 2.0. The new group will focus on developing products and business opportunities for digital publishers. These will include support for business models like subscription, advertising and retail.

Sony, for example, currently uses Adobe's Content Server to power its DRM solution for e-books. While Sony offers its e-books in the ePub format, it also uses Adobe's Content Server to wrap a proprietary DRM solution around the open ePub format.

Bill McCoy is Leaving Adobe

Bill McCoy drove Adobe's push towards making ePub the default format for eBooks. McCoy, however, is leaving Adobe as part of the restructuring. We can only hope that the company will continue to push for open standards in McCoy's absence. More details about McCoy's role at Adobe can be found at TeleRead.

The service is simple to use and offers some nifty features, including a gorgeous online file viewer. To share a document users simply upload or choose from their library, enter email addresses of those they want to share the document with, make any notes, set file permissions (i.e., do you want users to be able to download a document or just view it?) and then share. Before documents are shared, the Share service performs a virus scan and creates a thumbnail in the background.

When a user receives a shared file, he or she will be directed to an online page where the document will be presented in a awesome Flash-based file viewer. The viewer allows users to zoom in on the document and pan around it. It generally preserves the quality of the document as you zoom in and out. Users are then directed to log in or create an account if they want to download the document.

In a move that may signal an eventual intention to compete with online document repositories like Scribd, Adobe Share documents can be embedded on blogs via a Flash widget. The widget is resizable, meaning that it can fit into any web page design. Adobe Share also has a full set of REST APIs that allow outside developers to create applications and services that piggy back on the site. I was shown a demo of an AIR app that allowed users to access their Share files outside of the web browser.

Adobe is targeting small businesses and students with this product, and will release paid upgrades for it in time. The 1GB free version is full featured, however. A preview of Adobe Share will be available today on the Adobe Labs site.

Note: Josh Catone is at the Adobe MAX 2007 conference in Chicago, September 30 - October 3, courtesy of Adobe.

The Open Screen Project "will remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and devices, including phones, mobile Internet devices, and set top boxes," said Adobe in a press release.

In addition to publishing the Flash file format specifications, Adobe will also publish specs for the Adobe Flash Cast protocol and the Action Message Format protocol. They will also publish the device porting layer APIs for the Flash player.

What Adobe is doing with Flash -- making it an open format -- follows in the footsteps of what they did with PDF back in the mid-90s. Adobe saw a lot of innovation happen around PDF after publishing the file spec and is hoping the same thing will happen with Flash. "Only by making the [Flash file format] spec open and available to everyone will we see the universe of the extended web grow," said Dave McAllister, Director of Standards and Open Source at Adobe, who told me that proprietary communications formats "make no sense."

Since releasing the PDF file format in 1993, it has become an open standard for documents and recently took a major step toward becoming the ISO 32000 Standard. Facing increasing pressure from Microsoft's competing Silverlight technology, it seems Adobe is gunning for Flash to become the standard format for delivering rich media to the web and other devices.

With so many to discover, here's a look at why you might want to recommend your favorite Adobe AIR apps at FreshAIRApps.

FreshAIRApps Features

Adobe AIR Showcase
FreshAIRApps provides a great showcase for some of the hottest AIR apps available. Given a brief review, users are welcome to provide their own opinions in the comments section and rate each app on a scale of 1-5. So far only a handful of of AIR apps have been submitted. However, site visitors can easily submit an AIR app for reviewing via the "Suggest an AIR app" button located conveniently on the site's navigation menu.

Adobe AIR News
FreshAIRApps also has a section devoted to Adobe AIR news. What's really unique about this section is the type of news that's featured. Not only will visitors receive updates on the latest news from Adobe, but also news about applications that have been reviewed including upcoming releases and links to interviews of the developers.

Adobe AIR Tutorials and Resources
Due to FreshAIRApps' recent debut there are only two tutorials available. The provided tutorials are aimed at beginning developers of the Adobe AIR platform. The first tutorial features a host of information about the tools and technical skills you'll need to begin developing an application using the Adobe AIR platform. Also provided are links to Adobe AIR development extensions for Dreamweaver CS3 and Flash CS3.

The second tutorial provides developers with backgrounds in programming languages such as Flex, Flash, HTML, and AJAX with a great list of documentation resources to get started. Along with book recommendations, more resources can be found in the 'Resources' section of the site.

Supporting the Adobe AIR Community

Somewhat similar to the Veoh player, AMP is an AIR application that will allow users to watch Flash video content from the web online or offline. Unlike Veoh, however, AMP does not scrape content from the web, but instead is seeded by content publishers. Adobe will even offer co-branded versions of the player to publishers who can use it to monetize their content via advertising.

"Adobe Media Player enables us to work with content publishers and offer them innovative ways to create, deliver, and monetize high-quality video experiences that are supported both by streaming and download. By collaborating with these media and entertainment industry giants, we will be able to provide viewers an extensive catalog of their favorite shows for viewing at their convenience," promised Jim Guerard, vice president for Dynamic Media at Adobe in a press release.

AMP allows users to subscribe to online video content via RSS, so that your favorite videos are delivered to you and easier to find. For publishers, Adobe provides sophisticated analytics, monetization and branding options, and content protection. The cross-platform AMP player is free, and will be focused on free, ad-supported content for this beta release.

Note: Josh Catone is at the Adobe MAX 2007 conference in Chicago, September 30 - October 3, courtesy of Adobe.

For those who may not know, Adobe Apollo was the code name for the cross-operating runtime developed by Adobe that allows developers to create Rich Internet Applications for the desktop. There's a myriad of possible use cases for this technology, from productivity applications that work both online and offline, to music players such as Finetune that can be accessed via the desktop.

Adobe is attempting to streamline the process of building Apollo applications, in the hope it increases adoption rates. The challenge in introducing a web development platform is making it simple enough for developers to test drive, yet valuable enough for the end user. Adobe competitor Dekoh (see our profile here), is using an open-source model and community to increase adoption. In many ways, the Adobe strategy is similar to that of Facebook, which recently opened up the Facebook platform. Most web teams can easily develop a Facebook app in a weekend, as it is simple for the development team to create apps for that platform. In turn, the Facebook team hopes that it's valuable enough to the end user, which then encourages more application building and innovation from developers at other websites.

Although not exactly identical situations, Adobe is making it easier for all the developers out there to play around with the platform - and opening it up to HTML developers seems like a smart move. Backed by a $100 million venture fund and tons of corporate investment, Adobe needs to also do a better job of showcasing successful implementations of Apollo; and convince end users why they need to have online and offline support. That is probably the major goal behind the Adobe Bus Tour, also announced today, in which Adobe is traveling to 18 cities to perform demos and spread the word on the platform.

Despite the bus tour, my mother and father (average Internet users) need to be convinced that there are many instances in their lives where they need a desktop application of some of their favorite Internet sites/applications. It's still early in the process but, coupled with the open sourced Flex 3, Adobe is taking a very active approach to being more nimble and inclusive about engaging early adopters.

Sharing Flash Apps on Mobile Devices

On the mobile side, Adobe and Gigya will give users the ability to share content on a wide variety of phones, including Windows Mobile and Symbian phones. Users who want to install a sharable application on their mobile phones will simply receive an SMS message with a link to the application. The service will automatically detect the type of device and deliver the right version to the user. Developers can also give their users the ability to share iPhone versions of their applications - though obviously those have to be native iPhone applications, as the iPhone doesn't support Flash.

Developers will be able to track the success of their applications through and Adobe AIR app that will allow them to measure distribution and customer usage. In partnership with Gigya, Adobe will also give developers the ability to assure installs through paid promotions and to monetize apps through cross-promotions.

Coming Soon: Easier Integration with Social Networks

Adobe also announced that it will launch another Flash Platform Service later this year that will allow developers to easily connect Flash applications written on top of Adobe's platforms with a number of social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. Developers won't have to worry about the idiosyncrasies of a service's API, but will be able to write their applications on top of Adobe's social platform instead.

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.

I spoke to Mark Randall, Chief Strategist for Dynamic Media at Adobe, about the news. He told me there were three main points to the Moviestar release:

1) The H.264 support means superior video quality; it is also an open standard.

2) High Efficiency Advanced Audio is, says Mark Randall, a "successor to MP3". He said it is a higher quality audio, but at a lower bit rate.

3) It means "hardware acceleration" for Web video.

Randall also said that this represents a tipping point for the H.264 standard, because now Flash Player is supporting it as well Blu-Ray - two big industry players.

Richer Platform for Online Video Producers

As well as the consumer benefits, this also gives online video companies a platform to deliver richer Flash experiences on the desktop, Web and H.264 ready consumer devices. As well as the new Flash Player, H.264 playback will be supported by the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR - a platform to create rich Internet applications to the desktop) and applications developed with Adobe AIR software, including Adobe Media Player in late April.

Currently Adobe Flash Player is said to have 98.7% penetration in the Web, making it the most used media player:

Source: Adobe; Millward Brown survey, conducted March 2007

Conclusion

Higher quality online video is great news for consumers and producers alike - especially in a near ubiquitous media player like Flash Player, which is used on YouTube, MySpace and other major platforms. What do you think of this news?

Adobe has launched stripped down online versions of some of its apps, already. Premiere Express, which powers the video mashups at sites like Photobucket and YouTube, is one of the nicer online video editors, but still falls well short of Adobe's software offering. Two week's ago at the Adobe Max event, Adobe showed off the latest version of their Photoshop Express web app -- again, it appeared to be one of the nicer online offerings, but still well short of their traditional software package.

Adobe did recently show off their new image processing programming language, Hydra, which will be integrated into the next version of Flash. Though early in development, the Hydra demos are impressive and its addition to Flash may eventually make Photoshop-like filter effects more plausible in web apps, but achieving the sort of speed and complexity of Photoshop online -- even in 10 years -- still seems implausible to me.

Certainly, we will see more web applications from Adobe, and more complex applications that will closely mimic their offline brethren. It is very plausible that Adobe can have (less powerful) online versions of its most popular software aimed at the consumer market within 10 years, but I think it will be a long time before professional users are comfortable using completely online applications for critical graphic, video, animation, and programming work. Matching the speed and complexity of Adobe's offline applications online is more than 10 years away, in my opinion.

What do you think? Is it feasible for Adobe to have its entire catalog of software online in 10 years?

Hydra is now known as Pixel Blender and it is indeed in Flash Player 10. Pixel Blender can be used by developers to create small functions that can be applied to vector images, video, and bitmaps in real time -- think things like morphing transformations or transitions. One thing that struck me about Hydra when I saw the demos at Max was its speed, and the same can be said of Pixel Blender, in part because Flash Player 10 is taking more advantage of the GPU.

Adobe has set up a Pixel Blender Exchange where developers can swap Pixel Blender effects the way Photoshop users swap plugins and filters.

Also new in Flash 10 is a new text rendering engine that will allow developers to create their own text controls. The new engine "provides interactive designers and developers creative control over device font attributes, such as anti-alias, rotation, and style as well as support for ligatures," according to an Adobe press release, as well as "more text layout options, such as vertical, bi-directional and right-to-left." The latter is important because it will make supporting non-Latin alphabets, such as Japanese, more easy.

One of the most immediately accessible and compelling new features in Flash Player 10 is the native support for 3D. Developers will now have the option of performing 3D effects on 2D objects with just a few lines of code. The screenshot below, for example, is made up of 2D images of cell phones that were laid out in a circle, then tilted up into 3D space and told to rotate.

Adobe expects to ship a final version of Flash Player 10 later this year, and also plans for the new features to find their way into AIR in a future release.

Analytics

Adobe gives content owners advanced tools to learn more about the ways that end users consume their media. It is all permission based via cookies, but I think Adobe is counting on a majority of the people enabling this feature. Most probably won’t be aware of the implications of enabling the cookies. The key innovation here is that it will track the media consumption both online and offline.

Content protection

Adobe offers streaming encryption, content integrity and identity based protection. This will make content publishers happy, because they'll have innovative tools that will allow them to build a legitimate business and not feel that their content is stolen. This is great for the small video producers of the world, who don't want to spend a lot of money protecting their content.

More enhanced montetization

Adobe gives content owners more flexible options over advertising and monetizing the media. Adobe Media Player heavily leverages RSS - content owners can feed ads via RSS and overlay ads or branding in many different ways. In seeing a demo, I saw a couple of ads that appeared. I was surprised at how non-intrusive they were and how it didn’t disturb the flow of my video experience.

Customization

One of the cool things I was able to see was a great deal of skins and customization that gave publishers an opportunity to really enhance their brand equity. Going from channel to channel, the level of detail and difference between the channels was impressive.

Conclusion

Adobe is getting into the Desktop Media Player business, which means they are competing with Microsoft's Windows Media Player directly. It is also a major opportunity for Adobe to feed the Apollo ecosystem and show people the limitations of traditional desktop software.