But they can't all be bad... can they? Has anybody seen a Flash intro that doesn't have you scanning the screen desperately for the "skip intro" link?

A substantial portion of the web's creativity can be found in the Flash developer community.

Too much Flash can be very annoying, but offering Google Maps in Flash only makes sense. We're excited to see what developers do with it, and we're far from alone in that excitement.

Greg Sadetsky, CEO of map savvy open source R&D lab Poly9, wrote this morning that "This is great news. There has been a long wait for Google to release an official Flash API for their popular Maps product." ZDNet's Google-watching Garett Rogers appeared to have unearthed the API hours before it was presented at the conference, that's how we knew to start looking around.

Mapping is Hot

The mapping world is exploding right now; from the release of the giant Yahoo! Geo-location database API this week, to the release of control over KML mapping markup by Google last month and the groundswell of developer interest in location-aware applications and frameworks.

Throw some Flash Google Maps into the mix and things are liable to really get interesting. Check out this adorable little Flash Map below.

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.

Also let's not forget that Adobe has been in this game for far longer than Microsoft, so it seems odd that Silverlight is being pumped up as a Flash killer. Don't get me wrong, Silverlight is very promising. From a technical standpoint, it would be difficult to argue against Nik Cubrilovic's detailed review. But let's not call it a Flash-killer just yet, until we see some actual web app evidence that it's better than Flash. Will designers take to Silverlight like they adopted Flash on masse? That is probably the key question.

In any case, our poll suggests that most people are indeed impressed by Silverlight. 23% rated it "awesome" and 32% "promising". So over half give it the thumbs up. 25% of respondants rated it "meh", but only 9% said it's terrible. Also there's a little confusion out there about what Silverlight is and does, with 11% not sure what it is. We'll look to address that this week with an explanatory post about Silverlight.

Full results:

Question: Microsoft announced on Monday a raft of new features for Silverlight, its web development platform. What do you think of it?

It's awesome! 23% (116 votes)
It looks promising, but need to test it out more 32% (163 votes)
Meh 25% (124 votes)
It's terrible! 9% (44 votes)
I don't get what it is... 11% (55 votes)
Total Votes: 502

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.

According to Betlem, Adobe is working on the iPhone Flash Player, but the iPhone is a closed platform. In other words, it's entirely up to Apple as to if and when they will allow the player onto the iPhone.

You may remember it was only earlier this spring that Apple CEO Steve Jobs deemed the current version of Flash Lite, the scaled-down version of Flash for mobile phones, as not being good enough for the iPhone. According to Jobs, Flash Lite would spoil the iPhone experience. He also noted that the desktop version wouldn't work either as it would run too slowly on the iPhone. What he called for was the creation of a "missing product in the middle."

Apparently, Adobe has heeded that call and has been busy building that middle-of-the-road version. The only question now is whether or not it will be good enough. At this point, Apple may be feeling the pressure to make Flash work considering Microsoft's recent licensing of Flash and Reader LE on Windows Mobile.

When Will It Arrive?

As to when we will see Flash on iPhone, it's anybody's guess. However, according to AppleInsider, the iPhone/iPod Touch software will be updated next month to v2.2 beta 1. Included in the update will be a newer version of Safari, which has been redesigned to relocate the Google Search bar to the right of the Address Bar. Also in the update will be a new App Store which will feature a new categories page with large category icons and more spacing between each listing.

We suppose it's too much to hope for that the new version of Flash would be pushed down with this upcoming update as well, but Apple has been known to surprise us before.

POLL: What Do You Think About Flash On iPhone?

We're looking forward to having Flash on the iPhone, but we're curious what you think. Has it been difficult for you to use your iPhone/iPod Touch without it? Or do you think "good riddance!" having never liked Flash in the first place? Please take our poll and let us know your thoughts.

]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/adobe_confirms_flash_for_iphon.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/adobe_confirms_flash_for_iphon.php News Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:39:18 -0800 Sarah Perez 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.

Windows Mobile is the second most popular mobile operating system worldwide. Flash, meanwhile, is arguably the most popular rich media platform on the web reaching almost 99% of Internet users, according to Adobe.

For Microsoft, even though they're still banking on Silverlight, licensing Flash Lite now is a smart move. It gives their mobile OS a tangible advantage over the surging iPhone, and as as Larry Dignan points out, it gives them an opportunity to learn how to roll out a rich media platform on the mobile. Flash Lite now means access to a ton of already made rich media content, video, and applications that users of some rival platforms don't have access to.

Even though Silverlight has signed some high profile partnerships to deliver web video, including with Major League Baseball and NBC for the Beijing Olympics, it is still largely not used by developers. Further, a mobile version of Silverlight won't ship for a few months. If Microsoft can expand the reach of Silverlight on the web via more partnerships like the ones it has been signing, then it can worry about pushing Silverlight to mobile platforms. We agree with Dignan at ZDNet: in a couple of years, this partnership will probably be irrelevant, but in the short term, it's a great move for both companies.

The Firefox 3/Flash Bug

If you don't have any idea what we're talking about here, consider yourself lucky. The Flash/Firefox bug has been a major source of aggravation for many users running Firefox 3 on Windows XP or Vista. When viewing an embedded video on a web site like YouTube, the videos would start playing, but they would stop after only a couple of seconds. There was nothing you could do to fix it except to close the browser and re-open it (which only sometimes worked) or load up an alternate browser like IE or Chrome.

People's experiences with this bug weren't consistent - some people were affected, some not at all, and for some it was intermittent. To make matters worse, the only solution at the time was to install the Flash 10 player which was then still in beta and therefore unsupported by many large web sites, like CNN, for example. That site would prompt you to upgrade to Flash 9 as it thought you must be running an older version of Flash. 

Both Mozilla and Adobe were aware of the issue, but neither company seemed to really know what the problem was. At one time, Adobe suspected that it was another Firefox plugin that was affecting Flash. The Mozilla developers also did their best to determine the cause on their end, too, but because Adobe was a closed-source company, their efforts could only go so far.

This fix came just in time. Because the issue had been going on for so long, people were getting comfortable running two browsers - Firefox (as usual) and one that played Flash, like Chrome. That opened the door for another big browser switch - this time away from Firefox instead of towards it. What a shame that would have been because otherwise, Firefox 3 is a great browser. We're happy to see that Adobe finally figured out the issue and has made Flash usable again.

Other New Features

As far as the other upgrades go, developers will be happy to learn that the new Flash Player supports the following:

• 3D transformations and animations that take advantage of GPU hardware acceleration
• New text rendering engine that lets developers create their own text layout components
• Pixel Blender integration which lets developers create custom filters and effects which can be applied at runtime to videos, images, and bitmaps

For more details on the technical aspects of these features, Josh Catone has a good write-up over on SitePoint.

You can download the new version of Flash from here: http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer

With Ichabod, Adobe is hoping to fix that problem for Flash. Update: According to a comment from Adobe's John Dowdell, Ichabod only works on Flash, not AJAX as previously reported. Nonetheless, it's still a very important step forward.

Now, just in time for Halloween, Adobe has unveiled more information about the technology that may resolve the search-engine woes. Code-named Ichabod, it's an early prototype of a "headless Flash player."

The player - which has no user interface - is designed to help search engines index the content held within the confines of Flash by playing the content in a way that allows the search bots to index it.

According to InfoWorld, Ichabod might walk through an interaction so that a search engine bot could index the results:

"The search engine, for example, might find a button in an application; Ichabod will try to push the button and generate an event, which then might lead to an indexing of that content."

Only time will tell if Ichabod's headless Flash player can bring indexing to the sleepy hollows of Flash. But one thing is for sure: With the wealth of content contained within Flash movies throughout the Web it's in everyone's best interests to solve this issue.

For Adobe, it means eliminating one of the last barriers to the continued acceptance of its core Web technology. For Google, Yahoo!, and other search engines, the ability to effectively index Flash content means more relevant search results to which they can affix advertising.

Hopefully, tackling the search engine problem has Adobe's Ichabod meeting with results far more rewarding than those which befell its namesake.

High-traffic Flash-based gaming communities like Lumosity, Newgrounds and PopCap Games will be some of the first groups to utilize Flash's Low Level Virtual Machine compiler infrastructure. If these groups really do find the Flash customization as easy as it sounds, Adobe will be opening the floodgates to casual gaming. PopCap's titles alone have been downloaded more than 1 billion times by consumers worldwide. With reduced development time, it will be interesting to see the fortunes amassed by gaming houses. Some of the light games that have already been created using CS5 include Chroma Circuit, Fickleblox and Just Letters.

Adobe claims that it will provide more relevant search results and rankings for RIA content. In a separate blog post, Google announced that it has launched a "Flash indexing algorithm", which will result in better search results.

Adobe admitted in its statement that up till now RIAs have been "generally difficult to fully expose to search engines because of their changing states". In other words, up till now Flash has been mostly invisible to search engines. So this news today will truly be welcomed by web developers and designers. It may even get the approval of ornery old anti-web 2.0 guru Jakob Nielsen!

There's much to admire about Adobe's web technology initiatives over the past year or so. Recent highlights include Adobe AIR (allowing developers to take web applications to the desktop and store data offline), a host of excellent third party AIR apps, an online Office Suite and new Flash-enabled Acrobat 9, a Flash API for Google Maps, publishing the Flash File Format Specs, releasing Flash 10 Beta. And now making Flash searchable.

A little while ago I would've said that browser-based web apps had a big user experience advantage over Rich Internet Apps. But now that they've achieved an (almost) holy grail in searchable Flash, that gap has lessened some more.

"It's a hard technical challenge and that's part of the reason Apple and Adobe are cooperating to try and get it done as soon as possible," Narayen said in an interview with Bloomberg.

Flash now may be good enough for Apple

The debate has been long and tough. In March last year Narayen said that with or without Apple's blessing, Adobe planned to develop a Flash player for the iPhone/iPod touch platform. Unfortunately Apple CEO Steve Jobs had already made it clear the current Adobe offerings were not acceptable. Flash Lite, the version designed specifically for mobile devices, just wasn't good enough and Adobe's desktop product was just too slow on the iPhone. According to Jobs, what was needed was a "missing product in the middle."

Has Adobe been working on that product in the middle? In October 2008 Adobe Senior Director of Engineering Paul Betlem confirmed that a Flash player was in development for the iPhone, but pointed out that Adobe would still need approval from Apple to get it onto their products. Clearly, approval has now been granted.

During the Bloomberg interview, Narayen said that Adobe plans to have over a million devices shipped by the end of the year that have Flash and he's not just talking iPhone; the company is working on the Android platform, the Windows mobile and the Symbian platform.

As to when we'll see Flash on the iPhone, your guess is as good as ours. No time frame has been offered but given Narayen's comments last week, we hope to see it this year.

Watch the five minute interview below.

RIM, the company behind BlackBerry's wireless platform, including email and touchscreen technologies, is joining Adobe's Open Screen Project, a 50-organization-members-strong organization that aims to promote better apps for richer mobile, television, and desktop browsing experiences for users.

Also at MAX, Adobe and Nokia are jointly announcing the funding of more than 35 multi-screen applications as part of the Open Screen Project Fund. Several apps will be demonstrated at the show, including Twitter client Twittle, interactive map MyFestivalGuide, entertainment app SmartGrooves, frequent flyer app MileBlaster, real-time audience feedback app Live TalkBack, and many more.

Adobe is also announcing support for HTTP streaming and several new mobile-ready features, including multi-touch, gestures, accelerometer, and screen orientation.

Flash Player 10.1 is the first consistent browser-based runtime from the Open Screen Project that offers browsing of Flash-based web apps, HD video, and other content on smartphones, netbooks, other Internet-enabled devices.

Flash support is also expected for several other mobile platforms, including Google Android, Symbian, Palm webOS, and Windows Mobile. A public developer beta will be available for Windows Mobile, webOS, and desktop operating systems before the end of the year. A public developer beta for Android and Symbian should be announces early in 2010, with general availability and publicly available devices coming in the first half of 2010.

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?

Because in the past Flash Media Server has cost so much (upwards of $45,000 per license), streaming flash media has long been a very cost-prohibitive endeavor. The high price, commonly referred to as the "Flash tax," led many to seek out alternative media servers like the open source Red 5. The latest version of Flash Media Sever, which will ship in January 2008, will be come in three versions, ranging from free to $4,500 -- a price drop of 90%.

Other important developments in Flash Media Server 3: the debut of streaming HD video. FMS3 will offer H.264 video streaming, as well as support for High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio that can be streamed to Flash player, AIR applications, or Adobe's Media Player app. The new version of the software also includes support for advanced seeking, meaning you can skip to any part of a streamed video and start streaming again almost instantly. FMS3 also includes significant performance increases over the previous version. Internal Adobe benchmarks show that at 20% CPU usage, Flash Media Server 3 can support more than double the number of streams as version 2.0.4. At 95% CPU usage, the performance gains become even more pronounced.

Image via Adobe.

Flash Media Server 3 also brings improved content encryption in the form of an enhanced Real Time Messaging Protocol and SWF verification. One final addition of note: FMS3 will offer streaming of Flash video content to Flash Lite 3 enabled mobile phones. As we reported earlier today, over a third of the world's population is now connected using some sort of mobile device. 2008 could end up being a huge year for the expansion of the mobile web and the delivery of high quality media over mobile networks. Flash Media Server 3 supports both prerecorded and live streaming to mobile devices and comes with features that help overcome the specific constraints of streaming to mobile platforms, such as limited memory and bandwidth.

As we said earlier, probably the most significant thing Adobe has done with Flash Media Sever 3 is make it more cost effective for small media producers to stream Flash video content. "By offering the Flash Media Server 3 product line coupled with new pricing options, Adobe is reducing the barrier to entry for content owners who want to deliver streaming video or real-time communications online," said John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe in a press release.

More information on the additions to Flash Media Server 3 can be found at Adobe's FMS3 FAQ.