From the point of view of 3 am, everything seems equalized. The pressure subsides, a new rhythm enters your head, and only tomorrow exists. For the students cranking away at the MLB.com University Challenge, there's no question any more about which way to go. That decision was already made, the booster stage has already blasted off, and from here until the rest of the project, they'll be feeling more and more like passengers.

Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we're re-publishing some of our best posts of 2011. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2012. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

Team "Winston" is now committed to a Flash-based interactive mockup of its "game within a game." They've moved from one of the conference rooms to one of the open iLabs, where each terminal has dual monitors, the air circulates a little more, and there's the sound of other students in the hallways to keep you from feeling you're in a cavern.

Ross is driving "Winston's" vision with his trademark laser-like precision and intensity. You get the feeling that, if he were your younger brother, he'd still be badgering you like your older one.

Elsewhere in the iLabs, the "Web Gems" have hit upon an HTML5 motif. They've seen some impressive demos of layering, where separate elements can scroll at different speeds, creating a Disney-like rotoscoping effect.

Right now, they're scrolling everything they can find, and they're raiding the Web for photos. What they don't have in mind quite yet is an application for their vision, but they know they have a technology and they're storing up the energy to drive it. Which makes "Web Gems" like a great many Silicon Valley startups.

"The Walkoffs" have the most experienced talent in the game: two of them graduate students, one of them a senior majoring in aerospace engineering, one a senior majoring in architecture. And Reynaldo, the only sophomore, is the expert on the Android SDK. Chris, a library science major, is a JavaScript expert. His vision is to create a fully working mockup, not using Flash, but real events captured by the browser, processed, then rendered using jQuery.

Like a battle cry for the ages, Chris has emblazoned along the top of the whiteboard in his cramped lab room, "Flash is dead!" You can see the remnants of impromptu lectures he's been giving on JavaScript events architecture. He's teaching Deven, a computer science major but not yet the jQuery expert, how the jQuery syntax simplifies itself by chaining new methods onto the end of the results of earlier ones. The trick they're working on at the moment, apparently, is knowing the variable type of the returned value before passing it to the next method.

It's not the type of subject matter that keeps Deven's eyes from glazing over at 3:30. He's starting to switch to autopilot mode, as they engage the help of Reynaldo's Droid phone, which is hooked up via USB cable. They're trying to find which events fire at what times, so they can chain the events to one another in jQuery in the right order. This way, if they're successful, they might be the only team to show their real-world mockup not on an SDK, but with an actual, live smartphone demo.

They're not seeing the results they're looking for, and they're starting to blame the Android operating system. There's too many simultaneous versions, Chris notes, so some phones may fire events that are recognized by jQuery 1.7, and some won't. That's a problem in the end, because Chris wants believability. He doesn't want to say his team's demo can do something, if it can't work on a Droid.

"Rubin's Army" is spinning out. They've abandoned their previous ideas, and now they're scanning through the history page of the existing MLB.com in search of clues for where to go now. Their palms are telling them the only place they'd really like to go contains pillows.

"SRFA" is made up of management and entrepreneurship majors, who also happen to be dedicated console gamers. They know the Asian games market as well as, if not better than, the U.S. market. And German (pronounced "H-herr-mann," he tells me, with Ricardo Montalban's accent) has hit upon a market need he'd like to fill: There's no franchise game for smartphones in the U.S. based on Major League Baseball. Ironically, there is one in South Korea, and it's a huge hit.

From German's perspective, it's a no-brainer: Obviously the MLB franchise needs a smartphone game. So instead of writing one, think like a businessman, he proposes. Buy the two existing games that are already written and already supported. Merge the best parts of both into a single unit, and market it as "MLB: Challenge." Launch it online with a downloadable component at a low $5 price point.

It would solve the problem of having to create a mockup, German reasons, as he begins listing the reasons for doing it on the whiteboard he is now the unchallenged master of. Why mock up something that's already a huge hit? There is the problem of tying it in with the MLB.com Web site, the others point out. Don't focus on it as a problem, German posits like a marketing specialist, but recast it as a solution. MLB.com doesn't have a smartphone game. That's a market void. Here's something to fill it. Bam.

For some reason, it's hard to sit through marketing jargon when the clock on the wall says 4 am. Funny, but at 3 am, the world seemed so effortless. Now all of a sudden, "vertical" is a direction that takes many opposing angles at once. And horizontal is starting to look like the best one of all.

As of now, the Flash Player update will only be available to users with Ice Cream Sandwich devices. Basically, that means anybody with a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which was released through Verizon this week and has already sold out at most stores.

Here is the list:

• Seeking while video is paused will not update the frame on ICS device
• StageVideo using On2 and Sorenson does not work on ICS devices
• PHDS content plays with audio pops
• OS does not prioritize incoming call - audio remains playing before and after call is received
• Enter key does not work on the multi-line input field

Adobe really has no reason to make any major changes to the mobile Flash Player. The updates for what could be the final version of mobile Flash are simple, really just a matter of getting Flash ready to run on Ice Cream Sandwich. There are no fixes to address battery life, the major problem for mobile Flash. Why tackle big problems like these when the entire product is at the end of its life?

Adobe's mobile solutions will now focus on application development with Flex and Air through its acquisition of Nitobi, the makers of PhoneGap. It is concentrating on creating killer apps and helping developers with tools. The company is going to make a big jump into HTML5 development in 2012 and has laid the groundwork with its app-building tools and acquisitions in the latter half of 2011 for it to be a go-to resources for developers.

Adobe's new tract is what is best for everybody. While mobile Flash had the potential to be one of the standards of the next generation, the company ignored the warning signs until it was too late and innovation outpaced it.

"They ignored it until it was too late," Icaza said. "They were not looking out for the best interest of developers." According to Icaza, Adobe chose to focus at the time on apps for feature phones. Adobe's lack of foresight put the company in catch up mode and ultimately headaches and ridicule of the mobile industry leading to the news that Flash for mobile will soon die.

Flash forward more than four years later and Adobe finally has got the message.

"They dragged it on for months and months and three years down the line they finally kill it," Icaza said.

When Adobe finally did figure out that touch screen smartphones were the future and not just a fad, it created a glut of tools (like Adobe AIR and the AIR Marketplace) that tried to do a little bit for everyone. AIR has been built into the toolset for creating BlackBerry apps, especially for the QNX/BBX platform and Flash has been given Android compatibility since the release of Frozen Yogurt. What really makes little sense is how Adobe was not able to develop Flash to actually work well on mobile devices. The focus has long been on making sure that Flash can do more, more, more and be something for everybody. Adobe never took a step back and said that to do more, Flash may have to do less.

"It became too much of a tangle," Icaza said. "At the end of the day the focus on what was important was lost and what is important are the developers."

Icaza said that Adobe wanted to recreate the success of Flash mobile for feature phones in the same way that it succeeded in Japan, where there is a large commuter society that spends a lot of time on their phones while in transit to and from work. Icaza implied that it was this focus on trying to replicate this process was what blinded Adobe from the early stages of the most important evolution in computing since the advent of the World Wide Web.

"Adobe said that smartphones were going to be a niche," Icaza said.

In a blog post earlier this year, Icaza said that Flash ultimately became a second-class citizen within Adobe, taking a backseat to the developer tools that the company makes money from as opposed to the standard that many of them were built on.

"We were the darlings of the company," Icaza said. "And we were ignored."

And now, Adobe is going to focus on HTML5. To a certain extent, the cycle starts all over again. Adobe released EDGE and now FlashPro that will turn Flash into HTML5. Icaza said that Adobe will have a PR nightmare on its hands trying to convince its three million Flash developers to scrap projects in Flash and move to HTML5. If you read the Adobe Twitter account today, that push is well under way.

What do you think of the death of mobile Flash? Take our poll on the subject or let us let us know in the comments.

There could be several books written about the battle for Flash against mobile. "Steve Jobs' Last Laugh" could probably be finished in time for the holiday shopping season. "How To Kill Flash For Dummies" would be an enlightening title as well. It is a bittersweet day for many. We want to know: how are you reacting to the passing of Flash for mobile? Take the poll below.

The fall of one platform is often correlated to the rise of another. Look at Android vs. Blackberry or Chrome vs. Firefox, Google vs. Yahoo, Internet Explorer vs. Netscape. The death of mobile Flash is seen as the ultimate validation of HTML5. The evolution of this battle on mobile will take place with native apps vs. Web apps though there is no clear indication yet what will ultimately be the winner in that sweepstakes.

Adobe will now focus on HTML5 development and tools that can be used to help developers. The company's recent acquisition of PhoneGap maker Nitobi will help ease the pain in Adobe's mobile development cycles and should not be overlooked as a major factor in this decision to kill mobile Flash.

The pages of ReadWriteWeb have been filled with Flash news for the last four years. Like so many things in the last decade, the argument was created by our generation's largest tech luminary, Steve Jobs. A lot of pundits and tech insiders took Jobs' words for gospel and that fueled the bashing of Flash that has led to this point. On the other hand, there have been a lot of hardworking people (with a lot of money) that have tried to fix the problems Flash had on mobile devices for the last several years. This cannot be a good day for them as something they have been working on for years has been obsoleted overnight.

Take a look at some of the highlights of our Flash coverage from the last couple of years and take the poll below to let us know how you feel.

ReadWriteWeb's Notable Flash Coverage:

• Steve Jobs Wins: Adobe to Give Up Mobile Flash for HTML5
• Steve Jobs Speaks: Why We Don't Allow Flash on iPhones and iPads
• On Mobile Flash, Apple Stands Alone
• Does HTML5 Really Beat Flash? The Surprising Results of New Tests
• EU May Force Flash Onto Apple Products
• Adobe Releases Flash to HTML5 Conversion Tool
• HTML5 Scores a Point as SlideShare Ditches Flash Entirely
• Adobe: Flash is an Exception to Windows 8's 'Plug-in Free' Rule
• Adobe Flash Player 10.2 Ready For Honeycomb; Honeycomb Not Ready For Anything
• Farewell Flash? Adobe Launches HTML5 Web Animations Tool "Adobe Edge"
• Google Swiffy Converts Flash to HTML5
• B&N's Nook Color Gets Apps, Flash & More in Major Update
• Flash Video Comes to the iPhone, iPad with Skyfire
• How to Install Flash on your iPhone (The Easy Way)
• Apple Approved: iSwifter Lets You Play Popular Flash Games on the iPad
• Worried About Flash on the iPad? Apple Tries to Ease Your Fears
• No Flash? No Worries: Majority of Online Video Now Available in HTML5
• YouTube: Flash Still Beats HTML5
• Flash Now Importable to HTML5 Canvas
• Death to Flash: 3 Great HTML 5 Demos
• Adobe Celebrates, But Will Flash Developers Return to Apple?
• Proof of Concept Brings Flash to the iPhone
• MobiUs Accelerates Mobile HTML5 Development, Aims to Kill Mobile Flash

Sources close to the news have told ZDNet reporter Jason Perlow tonight that Adobe will announce soon that it has given up on the development of mobile flash and will increase its investment in supporting HTML5. The company will say, according to an email published by Perlow, that it will encourage app developers to work with the cross-platform Adobe AIR platform to be distributed across mobile app stores, a caveat that could mean the news is less dramatic than it might seem. Rather than building with AIR for mobile, though, it seems likely that more developers will focus on HTML5 instead.

Feisty Twitter user Counternotions quotes Adobe's CEO from 2010 "Technology problems [w/ Flash] Mr. Jobs mentions...are 'really a smokescreen.'" Apple's refusal to go with the glitchy, gloppy proprietary protocol that performs poorly on Apple devices had to be a big part of what turned the tide.

Update: Adobe published this statement today.

Apple CEO Jobs explained why he was opposed to the inclusion of support for Flash on Apple mobile devices in the Spring of 2010. Sarah Perez summarized his arguments as follows:

1. It's proprietary.


2. Most Web video plays on the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad


3. Who needs Flash games? We have apps for that.


4. Flash has poor security.


5. Flash doesn't perform well on mobile devices.


6. Flash negatively affects battery life.


7. Flash was designed for PCs, not touchscreens.

Adobe contested those arguments of course, and Google was happy to support Flash on Android. At least one prominent benchmarking test found HTML5's performance to be comparable to Flash's. The European Union went so far as to consider forcing Apple to support Flash on the iPhone.

Adobe began offering an experimental Flash to HTML5 conversion technology this Spring.

Perlow, who broke the story tonight, has been a Senior Technology Editor at CBS's ZDNet since 2008 and was a Senior Editor at Linux Magazine for ten years prior.

The leaked news from Adobe says that the company will "continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates." That doesn't mean much for future configurations of those Operating Systems.

ZDNet's Microsoft specialist Mary Jo Foley reported earlier today that Silverlight may be slated for an imminent demise as well. Open standards FTW.

[Note: This post was written in a hurry but delayed until Flash and AIR apps on my Mac could be force quit. It's running much better now.]

The Internet Archive will be using Kaltura's open source video platform in order to deliver the 500,000 some odd digital video assets housed at the Internet Archive. Kaltura's video player identifies whether a device and browser supports Flash or HTML5 and will deliver the content accordingly.

This also means that the videos will be more accessible to hearing impaired and multilingual users as the Kaltura video tools support the HTML5 standard for timed text - making it easier for video subtitles to be viewed across browser and device tytpes.

"It was clear to us that we must support both Flash and HTML5 in order to deliver content to all devices" says Tracey Jaquith, Digital Archivist and Video Lead at Internet Archive. Indeed, although more and more video content is now in HTML5 format, this large catalog of videos from the Internet Archive is a prime indication of the amount of material that is still available in Flash only.

The app itself is free, and after a 7-day free trial, will require a monthly subscription fee of $4.99.

According to iSwifter founder Rajat Gupta, "We have spent the last year building a cloud-based Flash browser technology that provides low latency interactivity and high frame rate rendering for an optimal user experience." And that user experience will be key, particularly for gameplay.

By creating this app, iSwifter says it will save game developers the time of having to port their Flash games to iPad. But it will also open up the wealth of Flash-based games to iPad users. Mobile gaming is skyrocketing in popularity, and as we wrote last month, iOS users are particularly voracious when it comes to their gaming habits, downloading some 5 million games per day.

"Our goal is to build the ultimate game creation experience, one that democratizes the game creation process by eliminating all technical barriers, leaving one's imagination as the limiting factor," says Stencyl co-founder Jonathan Chung.

And like Scratch, this means that Stencyl could be a great tool for placing game creation in the hands of some of gaming's biggest fans: kids. "Teaching kids how to code is a hard problem because the rules of syntax and other similar intricacies get in the way of learning the core concepts of learning how to think logically," says Chung. "I believe that kids, even younger ones, have the ability to think logically. As we've seen in our beta program, using a visual programming environment like Stencyl or MIT Scratch, breaks down barriers and allows kids to grasp those fundamentals and build sophisticated games on their own."

The success of Scratch doesn't just come from that visual programming element or from having an easy-to-use toolset. Rather it's a result of a great community around the project as well. Stencyl has also modeled itself on Scratch in this way with its "StencylForce," its own game development community. This will allow users to get support and ideas from one another, as well as share and download openly-licensed resources.

Currently, the game creation tool lets users build Flash games for Mac and PC, but the company plans to roll out support for iOS over the summer. It has a much larger roadmap as well, with plans for an iTunes-like marketplace - for games and for the games' building blocks - as well.

Stencyl's game creation software is currently free and works on Mac, Windows, and Ubuntu.

Instead, with the SublimeVideo service, a plugin-free Web player is provided that uses HTML5 to display the embedded videos Web publishers want to host online. When a user visits a site using an older browser, a "fall back to Flash" mode switches the player to use Adobe Flash technology for more universal compatibility.

But as of today, SublimeVideo is available to all, no invite required.

Pricing Plans

The company struggled with the pricing plans, it admits, saying that figuring out the right model was "more difficult than we initially expected." Jilion surveyed some 2,000 users about their expectations and based much of its decision surrounding pricing on the feedback it received.

"We decided that all plans will only be differentiated by their volume levels," notes the company, "and not their feature sets." That means you don't have to buy a bigger plan to get the features you need - everyone has access to the same options.

Another nice addition to the service is something called Peak Insurance. This flexible feature lets a publisher temporarily exceed their video pageview limit (as is the case when a video goes viral), without having to upgrade their plan.

Early users of the service include LittleBigPlanet.com, a game website owned by Sony Computer Entertainment, design-focused site MethodandCraft.com and Campl.us, home to the popular Camera+ mobile application.

All plans are available now. Interested publishers can choose theirs here.

The animated ad banners and boxes that pepper much of the modern Web are, more often than not, created with Adobe Flash technology, a multimedia platform that allows developers to add video, animation and interactivity to webpages. The technology is used in everything from online video to games, and yes, those ever-present online ads.

With today's launch of Wallaby, Adobe's focus is on converting that last item - the ads - to HTML5, but not the more advanced content.

What's Wallaby?

Adobe developers got a sneak peek at Wallaby at Adobe's MAX 2010 conference last year, and there was a lot of interest from the community, says Adobe. Now, this new software is available for anyone to download.

Through a simple interface, you can drag and drop a Flash (.fla) file right into Wallaby's interface, and the program automatically converts it to HTML5.

The new program is not meant to take away from Flash's importance, however. Explains Senior Product Manager for Flash Professional Tom Barclay, both HTML5 and Flash "will be imperative for the long term to create really engaging content that will work across any device."

Notice though, that Adobe isn't talking about Wallaby on its blog today, but is instead describing how there are several opportunities for the Flash platform that aren't fully enabled by standards and other formats currently available.

But at least those poor souls without access to these many advancements can at least see Flash ads, re-coded with HTML5, right?

Flash to HTML5: Beginning of the End?

That said, Adobe isn't wrong when it claims that Web standards haven't quite caught up to Flash capabilities. And the company still has a large developer of over 3 million who use Adobe's tools. Plus, thanks to a partnership with Google, Flash is baked into the Google Chrome Web browser, and is supported on handsets built with Google's Android mobile operating system. Flash, in other words, won't be disappearing from the Web anytime soon.

Nor will it be disappearing from tablets, either. The Motorola Xoom, for example, will soon offer a downloadable version of the Flash software, a feature that is considered one of the tablet's key differentiators from the Apple iPad.

But the launch of Wallaby, a tool that takes Adobe's Flash files and converts them into Web standards, seems sort of like the beginning of the end for the dominance of the Flash on the modern Web. It's an acknowledgement that when Apple, boldly, perhaps even somewhat arrogantly, banned Flash from its mobile devices, it mattered. Would such a tool like Wallaby exist had Apple not made that move? Maybe...maybe not.

In Technical Terms

As for Wallaby itself, the tool is an Adobe AIR application that works on both Mac and Windows computers. After you drag and drop (or browse for) a FLA-formatted file, Wallaby spits back output containing HTML, SVG, CSS and other files. This file is meant to be a starting point that can then be edited with other Web development software programs.

For the technically minded, Wallaby translates the following:

• Vector graphics to SVG
• Bitmaps to <img> elements and JPEG files
• Text to <p> elements or SVG text
• Flash timeline to a group of CSS animations
• ActionScript, Sound, Video and other assets are discarded.

Wallaby is available from Adobe Labs here.

Another reason for the emergence of HTML5 is the Mobile Web. Using HTML5, mobile developers can create browser-based mobile sites that have a similar sophistication to native mobile apps. Let's look back at the past year of HTML5 innovation...

Probably the biggest champion for HTML5 is Google, which has a huge financial incentive to ensure that HTML web pages continue to be the dominant way to access the Web (some argue that apps will soon rule the Web, instead of the browser). Google's search and Adsense businesses rely a huge amount on HTML sticking around - and by extension, HTML5.

At the beginning of the year, Google showed off some impressive demos utilizing HTML 5.

Also in January, Google-owned YouTube began to support HTML5. This allowed videos to be viewed without Adobe's Flash player plug-in, which YouTube claimed would make videos load faster and enable developers to build new types of features. In July, YouTube launched a beta HTML5 embeddable player.

It's worth noting that despite these moves to support HTML5, YouTube still views Flash as a superior technology for its video service.

Google also highlighted HTML5 on the mobile phone, with the January launch of an HTML5 version of its telephony service Google Voice on the iPhone. This was prompted by Apple's refusal to approve a Google Voice app on the iPhone. As we noted in January, if it's a web site then there's nothing Apple can do about it. (Apple did eventually allow a Google Voice iPhone app into the App Store, in November)

Startups Using HTML5

2010 saw a number of startups try to differentiate their products using HTML5. Among the examples we reviewed were SublimeVideo (HTML5-based video player), Bitspace (online music player and backup service for your music files), Clicker (Internet TV guide), Handroll.tv (online video) and Vimeo (online video).

Most of the HTML5-enabled startups listed above are online video services. Indeed, a report in October by MeFeedia stated that about 54% of online video is now available in HTML5.

Even museums got into the act in 2010. In November, the National Museums of Scotland became the first major museum organization in the world to fully implement HTML5.

Next Page: Steve Jobs tears Flash a new one; and when will browsers fully support HTML5?

Apple vs. Adobe

One of the biggest controversies of the year was Apple's very public refusal to allow Flash technology on the iPhone and then iPad. Apple CEO Steve Jobs penned an open letter in April, explaining that Flash is a battery drainer and is otherwise unsuitable for mobile devices. "New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too)," concluded Jobs. He followed up in June with another withering attack on Flash, at the D8 conference.

To be fair to Adobe, it has put support behind HTML5 too. During its annual developer conference, MAX, in October, Adobe announced a new product for building HTML5 content and highlighted some of the advantages of developing in HTML5. Adobe Edge, as the new tool is called, will allow developers to easily create interactive HTML5 experiences.

There has been a lot of heated discussion this year about which technology is better: Flash or HTML5. The consensus among most people (other than Steve Jobs) is that HTML5 is the future, but Flash is still the default for interactivity in the browser.

Full Browser Support Not There Yet

With a new version of HTML on the way, browsers of course will need to support it. However that process has been surprisingly slow. The Web's governing body, W3C, has even admitted that HTML5 is not ready to replace Flash just yet.

According to Phillippe Le Hegaret, an official with W3C responsible for SVG and HTML specifications, the issue is getting HTML5 to operate the same in different browsers and using different video devices. He noted that HTML5 currently lacks a video codec and digital rights management capabilities. However, he expects the HTML5 specification to be "feature-complete by mid-2011."

In a browser test conducted by the W3C recently, Microsoft's IE9 browser performed very well - although there was some disagreement about the results.

Chrome Experiment Showcases HTML5

Perhaps the most impressive HTML5 demo we saw during 2010 was Google's partnership with indie music band Arcade Fire, in late August. Showing off HTML5 support in its browser Chrome, Google's "Chrome Experiment" showcased a number of HTML5 features - such as the ability to choreograph windows and synchronize music and video between them, use HTML5 for 3D rendering, rotating and zooming of Google Maps satellite imagery, and inserting animated sprites directly over satellite imagery.

In summary, it's been a big year for HTML5. In 2011, this technology will probably go mainstream as full browser support becomes available in about the middle of the year. Let us know in the comments your thoughts on HTML5 and its future!

Image credit: Justin Watt (via A List Apart)

When the company submitted the app in early September, they called it a "test of whether Jobs' 'thoughts on Flash' ban is actually political rather than technical". Today, it looks like the ban has fallen on the side of reason.

According to an article on CNNMoney.com, Skyfire "isn't a standalone application, but rather a tool that works on top of Apple's Safari Web browser. As a result, the company said the app was given a rather rigorous review from Apple."

The app will only work for Flash video and not games, as it works by downloading Flash content to a server and translating it to HTML5, before sending it to the user.

The percentage of online video available in HTML5 format has grown 5X since January and more than 2X in the past 5 months, according to a report by web video cataloging service MeFeedia today. An estimated 54% of online video is now available in HTML5, generally in addition to availability in Adobe Flash.

What does that mean? It means iOS devices can play a whole lot of video without concern for Flash, it means that Flash's (alleged) memory problems can be minimized by deferring to HTML5 players and it may mean less industry dependence on Adobe's Flash publishing technologies.

The MeFeedia survey incorporated analysis of video from more than 33,000 publishers, including Hulu, CBS & ABC, YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion. Adult video sites were not included, but given that the porn industry's technology tends to be as advanced as its politics tend to be retrograde - the percentage is probably even higher there.

The HTML5 video landscape is set to change even more, with startups like Sublime Video (our review) and Handroll.tv (our review) making bold new entries into the field. Handroll, which is positioning itself as the WordPress of HTML5 video, recently built a simple Twitter client into its video player, for example.

For an in-depth technical comparison of Flash and HTML5 video performance, see Sarah Perez's article Does HTML5 Really Beat Flash? The Surprising Results of New Tests.

For end users, the availability of AIR means, simply put, new apps to try. Searching for "Adobe AIR" in the Market will now reveal a selection of apps that are built with AIR.

If you're one of the fortunate Froyo recipients, then you can download AIR apps now. Adobe's Serge Jespers recommends Qrossfire, Gridshock and Chroma Circuit from Bowlerhat Games. You can find others by searching on Cyrket for "Adobe AIR." A couple of non-game apps which caught our attention are Flickoid, a Flickr slideshow app and Queue Manager, an Android app for managing your Netflix Queue. Let us know if you've found others you like.

Developers, Want In?

According to Adobe, to get your AIR apps into the Android Market, you should do the following:

1. Get the SDK from the prerelease program.
2. Build the app using your preferred tool (see list above).
3. Package the app with the AIR SDK as an APK file (an update for the Package Assistant Pro is arriving today)
4. Publish the app to the Android Market

Adobe's Ryan Stewart notes that any user who installs an AIR app without AIR installed will be shown a screen like this which directs them to download the AIR runtime.

HTML5 is all the rage. Everyone from mobile developers to Apple CEO Steve Jobs to Google CEO Eric Schmidt have backed the standard as the future. Everyone, that is, except for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the official standards organization of the Web.

An official for the W3C is calling for developers to hold off on all the HTML5, saying it's a bit too early for the Flash-killer to be let loose on the general public.

According to Le Hegaret, the basic issue is getting HTML5 to operate the same in different browsers and using different video devices. He also noted that HTML5 currently lacks a video codec and digital rights management capabilities, which he said he does not expect to have in the upcoming specification.

The HTML5 specification should be "feature-complete by mid-2011," he told InfoWorld, noting that we shouldn't expect the death of Flash "anytime soon."