Yes!! NewTeeVee just posted that the South Park guys are making every single South Park episode available online for free. And it’s all in Flash.
The world of Flash just got a whole lot funnier.
[tags]South Park, Flash[/tags]
TweetAdobe is doing a whole ton of online seminars about a range of technologies this week, our Adobe Developer Week 2008. We did something similar last year but this year there are a lot more technologies to talk about so we’ve got what seem like a lot more sessions. They run all week and if you can’t register for whatever reason, don’t worry, we’ll be posting them within 5 days. Here’s the full list of sessions and times:
Extending Web to the Desktop with AIR
Monday, March 24, 2008
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM US/Pacific
Getting Started with Flash Lite 3 and CS3
Monday, March 24, 2008
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM US/Pacific
What’s New in ColdFusion 8
Monday, March 24, 2008
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM US/Pacific
Building Rich Internet Applications with Flex 3
Monday, March 24, 2008
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM US/Pacific
Introduction to Adobe Blaze DS
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM US/Pacific
Integrating Salesforce.com and Flex
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM US/Pacific
Building AIR Applications with Flash CS3
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM US/Pacific
Dreamweaver: Effective Standards-based Workflows for Ajax
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM US/Pacific
Adobe AIR Local Data Storage Options With Emphasis on Using Embedded SQL Databases
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM US/Pacific
Flash Lite and Flex for Tourism ›
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM US/Pacific
ColdFusion Powered Rich Applications for the Internet and Desktop
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM US/Pacific
Flex and Java – Tying the Knot!
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM US/Pacific
Flex Data Services
Thursday, March 27, 2008
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM US/Pacific
Adding Live Chat with ColdFusion & Adobe Blaze DS
Thursday, March 27, 2008
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM US/Pacific
Blood from a Stone: Flash Game Optimization on Low-end mobile devices
Thursday, March 27, 2008
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM US/Pacific
Flex Visual Data & Charting
Thursday, March 27, 2008
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM US/Pacific
The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP
Friday, March 28, 2008
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM US/Pacific
ILOG Elixir: Your Remedy for Vibrant Data Visualization
Friday, March 28, 2008
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM US/Pacific
AIR Native Drag and Drop
Friday, March 28, 2008
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM US/Pacific
Flex Architecture
Friday, March 28, 2008
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM US/Pacific
[tags]Adobe, Developer Week, Flex, Flash, ColdFusion, AIR[/tags]
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Via Zohar Ganon from Twitter I just noticed that Google’s new Gadgets and Visualization API uses a bit of Flex for their Motion Charts. The SWF is here (but doesn’t do anything) and James Ward’s test confirms it.
I don’t use Google Docs and Spreadsheets so I don’t have a lot of first hand knowledge of how this works. Anyone out there played with it? It’s cool to see the Google folks start integrating Flex into their stuff. They’ve been doing some regular Flash-based charts for a while but I think this is the first time they’ve used the Flex Framework. Anyone know?
[tags]Flex, Google, Gadgets[/tags]
TweetIt’s early in the morning here in Asia and I’m sleepy but I took some time to read Jesse Warden’s post on MIX 08. It’s long, divided into clickable chapters, and may take some time to digest but it’s far and away the best blog post about MIX and Silverlight/Flash you’ll find. Jesse FTW once again.
Also, Jesse, I miss the l33t crazy designed blog. The default WordPress template makes baby blogs cry.
[tags]MIX 08, Flash, Silverlight, Microsoft, Adobe, Jesse Warden[/tags]
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At SXSW I got to talk to the team at MapQuest about their AS3 API. Despite the old-school impression I had of MapQuest they’re doing some cool things and the AS3 API plays a big part. They’ve put a lot of time and energy into making sure that the Flash community can leverage MapQuest maps inside of their RIAs. They’ve even been working with Universal Mind to perfect the API. Today they announced that they’re adding traffic information to the maps. They even have actual constuction/incident reports so you can see exactly where the problem is.
If you’ve used the MapQuest APIs in your Flash application, I’d love to hear what you think. I’m hoping they’ll add a terrain mode so I can use it for my various GPS hack projects in Flex/AIR.
[tags]Mapquest, AS3, Mapping[/tags]
TweetAndy Plesser over at Beet.tv is becoming the multimedia guru when it comes to Flash Lite. He has a couple of interviews that are especially applicable with the announcements earlier this week about there being 500 million Flash Lite-enabled devices and Microsoft licensing the Flash Lite player for Windows Mobile.
The first interview is with Rhett Woods, the director of Mobile Expression here at Adobe. He talks with Andy about all the cool stuff Flash Lite can do and shows some demos of video running on it. The second interview is with Brian Frank working with Mobile Applications and Solutions at Adobe. Brian provides a pretty neat history of Flash Lite and talks about the fact that Japan has been doing rich Mobile applications for 5 years now. Both are worth checking out, especially with the Flash Lite news this week. Thanks for getting this on camera, Andy.
[tags]Beet.tv, Flash Lite, Adobe, Flash[/tags]
TweetRichard MacManus has a post up about Slideshare and how it could be becoming the “leading pure play online presentation app” out there. And I think he’s right, it’s great. But Adobe has something that sort of resembles Slidshare, called incidentally, Share. There is a ton of interest in companies like Slideshare and Scribd and Flash plays a huge role in both of those companies. Slides have to be rich and Flash makes it easy to show off that richness.
So why does Share never get mentioned in the conversation? Partly I’m not sure Share is meant to compete with Slideshare and Scribd. I haven’t talked extensively to the product team so I’m not sure what their longer term strategy is but right now you can’t search slideshows. Share is meant as more of a direct-sharing tool. We store the documents, you can share them via email or embed them but there is no way to search public documents. In some respects, I think Adobe Share is meant to be more a part of the entire collaboration puzzle. But it’s also a hint into where Adobe is going next. We have a pretty fleshed out API for Share. Developers can build their own user interfaces around what Share offers (storage, document management, and collaboration). Adobe has a TON of knowledge inside the company and we’re starting to look into ways we can use that internal knowledge and expose it to people. One way will be services and I think Share is a step in the right direction…even if I can’t search public documents. 
Oh, and Richard, if you’re looking for pure-play presentation creation apps, it doesn’t get better than this.
[tags]Share, Scribd, Slideshare, Online Presentations, Flash[/tags]
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We’re announcing today that Microsoft (yup, that Microsoft) is licensing the Flash Lite 3 player AND Reader LE for their Windows Mobile devices. The first thing to make sure is that everyone knows this has nothing to do with the Nokia/Microsoft/Silverlight deal, this deal has been in the wings for a long time. I’m really excited for what this means for the Flash ecosystem on mobile devices. Windows Mobile touches a lot of people, especially here in the United States. As a Blackjack/Windows Mobile user it has been almost impossible for me to get Flash content on my phone. Now, with this licensing deal, that all changes. I get Flash Lite 3 which means I get rich audio/video, the Flash programming model and tons of independent applications that I can now use.
What does this mean? Microsoft sold 11 million Windows Mobile licenses last year and plans to sell 20 million licenses this year. Many of those phones are going to ship with the Adobe Platform experience in the form of the Flash Lite player and Reader LE. This is going to be a huge win for developers who want to deliver Flash content because Flash Lite continues to evolve into the de facto standard for creating rich Internet applications on mobile devices. We’ve got Flash Lite support for Symbian, BREW, Windows Mobile and a number of other embedded OSes on OEM platforms. Adobe is very, very committed to cross-platform experiences and that extends deeply into the mobile world.
I think this is also a great example of what happens when two companies work together to add value to a platform. If you provide developers a number of different avenues to create content for your OS or device, then they’re going to flock to your platform. If you keep it closed then over time you’re going to lose out to more open, functional systems. Flash developers all over should be excited that we now have even more devices we can start creating content for. So go out and create some video, build some games or create mobile RIAs. In other words, Flash on.
[tags]Flash Lite 3, Microsoft, Reader LE, Mobile Rich Internet Applications[/tags]
TweetJust a quick note that I’ll be in Asia this week. I’m hitting Seoul on Monday and Tuesday, Taipei on Tuesday and Wednesday, then Hong Kong until Saturday. If you’re around in those places and up for grabbing a drink, drop me a line. My schedule is pretty tight in Seoul and Taipei but I might have some extra time in Hong Kong. This follows what was a really great Flex Camp in Oklahoma City. It’s been a nuts couple of weeks going from MIX to SXSW to Oklahoma City, being home for a day, then heading to Asia for three cities in a week. But it’s great and I’ve been able to talk to a LOT of Flex/AIR developers during the trip. Can’t wait to talk to more in Europe.
And if anyone knows where I can watch NHL hockey games in Asia, let me know.
[tags]Asia, Flex, Personal[/tags]
TweetAccording to Tim Anderson who is at Qcon today, the BBC is standardizing on Flash as the way to deliver web video. There have been a bunch of back and forth about the iPlayer, but that’s not related to this announcement – this is just for video on the website which used to be viewed after a pop-up selection offering a Real version and a Windows Media version.
Tim said that the BBC folks found that embedded video has a much better click through rate than pop-ups which makes sense. In related good news, Tim says the BBC is “getting better at negotiating rights to video content and we can expect lots of video from this year’s Olympics, for example.” Looks like we have a way to watch the Olympics in Flash video after all.
Thanks to JD for the tip.
[tasg]BBC, Flash, rich media[/tags]
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