Skyfire App Brings Flash to iPhone

By: Chloe Albanesius
From: http://www.pcmag.com/

Among the few drawbacks of Apple's iOS is its incompatibility with Adobe Flash. Video sites like YouTube and Hulu have gotten around this by creating standalone apps for the iPhone and iPad, but what if you just want to watch a video in a browser window? Until now you've been out of luck, but an app from Skyfire could change that.

Skyfire has been developing an app that brings Flash to the iPhone for several months now, but the app has reportedly received the seal of approval from Apple, and is set to hit the Apple App Store at 9am on Thursday morning for $2.99, according to CNN Money.

The app transcodes Flash content into HTML5 so it will play on your iPhone. In an October demo video (below), Jason Guesman, Skyfire's senior vice president of sales and marketing, said the app has been designed as a full-fledged Web browser. It includes an address bar, Google search box, and popular trending search terms.

The app embeds the Safari browser; if you click to a site with Flash video, you'll initially encounter a Flash error on the video you want to watch. But the "SkyBar" at the bottom of the screen analyzes the page and pops up a thumbnail of the requested video; click the thumbnail and the video will start to play after it's transcoded to HTML5.

Guesman also promised adaptive streaming, which will provide coverage in areas where the network connection is weak.

"Skyfire for iPhone was built in accordance with Apple guidelines, including the use of a WebKit browser core shared with Safari, and h.264 adaptive streaming," Skyfire said in an October blog post. "Skyfire enables Flash on Apple devices by transcoding video content into HTML5 on the fly from millions of web sites; it supports iOS devices via Apple's HTTP live streaming. Skyfire's famed cloud-computing technology also adapts video content based on connection strength, giving the user the best video experience that will play smoothly given their wireless network conditions at the time."

The SkyBar also includes an explore icon that will recommend other content based on the current Web site, as well as a share icon that lets users share on Facebook, Twitter, or via e-mail.

A Skyfire representative could not immediately confirm the App Store launch time.

The battle between Adobe and Apple over Flash on iOS has not been a private one. In the wake of the iPad announcement in January, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs reportedly told employees at a town hall meeting that Apple avoided Flash on the iPad because it is too buggy and HTML5 is the wave of the future. Adobe naturally disagreed.

Jobs took it one step further in April when he posted a note on the Apple Web site in which he called Flash closed, unstable, and antiquated. Adobe issued a rather subdued response, saying it will instead focus on Android development. Adobe chief technology officer Kevin Lynch later accused Apple of creating a walled garden of content.

Apple further irked Adobe in April when it released an updated version of its iPhone developer program license, which banned private APIs and required apps to be written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine. As a result, Adobe announced that it would no longer invest in iPhone-based Flash development. In September, Apple relaxed those rules and Adobe said it would resume development on Flash for the iPhone.

RIM Demos BlackBerry PlayBook live from Adobe MAX

From: http://hewreck.com/

Why am I excited about this tablet? Not the tablet itself but the transferability of AIR to all platforms. This will expand the market for AIR applications for tablets x-fold meaning that Android tablets will get to piggyback, much like it currently gets to piggyback on iPad enabled websites. Loving the innovation that is coming to the tablet realm right now.

I think this is an excellent demo, but I think that it feels doomed to be outshone by a retooled iPad 2. Especially since I feel pretty strongly that Apple is going to release a 399 ipad. I find it hard to believe some of these other companies are going to be able to undercut them or gain near the same marketshare.

There’s a maturity and solidity to the way this PlayBook is coming together that I find pretty impressive – So Far…

Now it’s all about refinement and developer support, and Adobe’s a very good start.

Run Flash on iPad with Frash

Posted by: Ronald Williams
From: http://hardgeek.org/

Flash on iPad ? Steve Jobs says, “No, it can’t happen because flash is not meant for its touchscreen technology.” But he is proven wrong by a developer with his new program, the Frash. With Frash, he was able to run flash on an iPad.

Frash is originally an adobe flash plug in that was released for the Android phones recently. You can use flash in the mobile Safari browser of iPad with Frash. See below the video of playing some flash games like “Kitten Cannon” on iPad with Frash.

Frash is still in its unstable form but it will soon be ready and Apple will have to find some other excuse for not running flash on iPad and iPhone. You have to jailbreak you iPad to use Frash. But if you don’t want to miss all those cool flash games, why not jailbreak you iPad. It may even work the same way on iPhone but only on the 3GS and iPhone4.

The most awesome Mario versions in Flash

Sharenator.org >

I'm not the biggest fan of flash games, but I do love everything about Mario. When a friend sent me a link to Super Mario + Tetris flash game, I was hooked and wanted more. These are the best versions of Mario in Flash I could find. Enjoy! :)

Tuper Tario Tros (Super Mario + Tetris)

Author: Swingswing Submarine

This is what happens when you combine two of the most successful classical games ever. Very original and really difficult game.

PLAY TUPER TARIO TROS - NewGrounds

Bullet Bill

Author: Ian Kelly

Play Super Mario Bros as Bullet Bill. You control a Bullet Bill with the arrow keys through each of the 8 levels, hitting either Mario, Luigi or the flag at the end. If you like this game, check out Bullet Bill 2.

PLAY BULLET BILL
(also available on Sharenator)

The People's Mario (Animation)

Author: Celarent from terminal71.com

Based on rumor saying Mario had subliminal communist propaganda.

VIEW PEOPLE's MARIO - Terminal71.com
(also available on Sharenator)

Super Mario 63

Author: Runouw

Probably the most awesome Flash Super Mario ever created.
"Super Mario 63 is a fan-game inspired by Nintendo's Super Mario 64. Many levels and features are based upon it and other of Nintendo's games, but a variety of them are completely original."
Warning: This game may take some time to load (it's a 14 MB file)

PLAY SUPER MARIO 63


If you rather play something more like original version of Super Mario, check out Super Mario Flash.

No Flash On The iPad? No Problem. Brightcove Turns Videos Into HTML5.

by Erick Schonfeld
from http://techcrunch.com/

The lack of Flash on the iPad is a sore point for many and often listed as one of its greatest potential weaknesses. Not allowing Flash on the iPhone is bad enough, but on the larger iPad with full-screen browsing, its absence will be much more noticeable. Or will it? Already the Web is adapting. Videos powered by Brightcove, for instance, will stream in an HTML5 video player when it detects an iPad. On the iPhone browser, the video thumbnail will open up the Quicktime player. It will also work on Android phones.

Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire is agnostic about the Flash Vs. HTML5 debate. “HTML5 is great,” he says. “It is an open standard, and firmly entrenched in the Apple device platform. Flash can’t reach those platforms for political and business reasons.” But HTML5 simply cannot do everything Flash can, especially when it comes to supporting advertising, audience measurement, customized players, and social sharing. So he decided to bring HTML5 video to parity with Flash for anyone who uses Brightcove. (Note that this is for videos playing in the browser. Brightcove already supports video playback in iPhone apps).

It will take until the end of the year to reach full parity with Flash, but that is his goal. At first, Brightcove videos will play back in a very basic HTML5 player when they detect an iPad. But over the next nine months or so, Brightcove will add the same audience measurement and advertising features available in its regular Flash player. Brightcove will still display the video in Flash when the viewing device supports it, but for the iPad, iPhone, and even Android phones, videos will play in HTML5 and most viewers probably won’t notice the difference.

Already today you can see who these videos work on the iPhone. For example, Brightcove turned on the capability for Techcrunch videos such as this one when viewed in an iPhone browser. When the iPad comes out, you will be able to watch our videos on there as well, along with videos on the sites of the New York Times and Time magazine, who also use Brightcove.

Making HTML5 playback available is just something all video platforms will eventually do. Ooyala is set to offer it for the iPad as well, and YouTube is moving in that direction as well.

get widgetminimize

CrunchBase Information

Brightcove

Website:	brightcove.com
Location:	Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Funding:	$91.1M

Brightcove is an Internet TV platform/network that allows content makers to monetize their content with ad revenues. The site has two different content makers in mind, independents and established media entities. Brightcove provides different… Learn More

iPad

Company:	Apple
Website:	apple.com/ipad
Launch Date:	January 27, 2010

The Apple iPad, formerly referred to as the Apple Tablet, is a touch-pad tablet computer announced in January 2010, to be shipped on… Learn More

Information provided by CrunchBase

NPR, WSJ plan Flash-free Web sites for Apple iPad

By Katie Marsal
From http://www.appleinsider.com/

In addition to new App Store software, National Public Radio and The Wall Street Journal also plan to create specific versions of their Web sites completely devoid of Adobe Flash for iPad users.

This week Peter Kafka with MediaMemo revealed that both NPR and the Journal will convert at least some portions of their Web site to load properly on the iPad. The custom-built sites will feature the same content and run concurrently with the traditional and iPhone/mobile-friendly versions of each Web site.

"Visitors to the newspaper's front page will see an iPad-specific, Flash-free page," Kafka said of the Journal's iPad Web site. "But those who click deeper into the site will eventually find pages that haven’t been converted."

The news comes weeks after Virgin America revealed it dropped Flash content from its new Web site in order to allow users with iPhones to check in for flights.

But the Journal and NPR are both also creating App Store software specifically for the iPad, suggesting that content providers are taking a multi-pronged approach to Apple's forthcoming multimedia device. Kinsey Wilson, head of digital media for NPR, declined to give Kafka an advance look at the organization's forthcoming iPad application or Web site, but did provide a hint as to what the experience could be like.

"Wilson says that while iPhone apps are a 'very intentional experience' --you load the thing up and seek out specific content -- he thinks the iPad will be a 'lean back device,'" Kafka wrote. "That's traditionally the distinction multimedia types use to differentiate between a computer and a TV. Intriguing."

The exclusion of Adobe Flash from the iPad and subsequent comments attributed to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, in which he allegedly called the Web standard a "CPU hog," have led to a considerable amount of debate over its merits and shortcomings.

Contributing to the conversation in January was Google, which added support for rival format HTML5 to the most popular video destination on the Internet, YouTube. The beta opt-in program is available only for browsers that support both HTML5 and H.264 video encoding. Apple, too, has placed its support behind HTML5.

For more on why Apple isn't likely to add support for Flash in the iPhone OS, read AppleInsider's three-part Flash Wars series.

What Steve Jobs Said During His Wall Street Journal iPad Demo

From: http://gawker.com

We know that Apple's CEO is no fan of Flash, the Web animation software. But it sounds like Steve Jobs really unleashed on the Adobe system to try and convince the Wall Street Journal to ditch it for the iPad.

Welcome to the nasty side of Jobs's famous Reality Distortion Field. The fun side had its turn when Jobs unveiled the iPad tablet computer in San Francisco last month. The dark side came several days later, when Jobs sat down with select Journal staff on the third floor of the News Corporation building in New York as part of a broader media tour.

Like other newspapers, the Journal is heavily invested in Flash as a way to deploy not only video but also slide shows and other interactive infographics and news applications. So when Jobs showed off his iPad, editors were sure to ask him about the device's lack of Flash, at least when they weren't pissing him off by posting to Twitter from the device.

Jobs was brazen in his dismissal of Flash, people familiar with the meeting tell us. He repeated what he said at an Apple Town Hall recently, that Flash crashes Macs and is buggy.

But he also called Flash a "CPU hog," a source of "security holes" and, in perhaps the most grievous insult a famous innovator can utter, a dying technology. Jobs said of Flash, "We don't spend a lot of energy on old technology." He then compared Flash to other obsolete systems Apple got people to ditch....

• ... like the floppy drive, famously absent in iMac,
  
• .... old data ports, including even Apple's own FireWire 400, gone from iPods and now all Macbooks,
  
• ....CCFL backlit LCD screens, now entirely replaced in Apple's lineup by LED-powered screens (except for this). (Correction: We originally said Apple replaced LCDs with LEDs; LEDs are a type of LCD backlighting.)
• ...and even the CD, with Jobs apparently crediting Apple's iPod, iTunes Store, CD-ripping software and "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign with doing in the old music medium (sort of: though CD sales are in free fall, around 300 million were sold last year in the U.S. alone, 80 percent of all albums).

No doubt, Flash is a known CPU hog and security problem on Macs, a major source of system headaches that, infuriatingly for Apple, it can't control. Even factoring in the fact that Flash can't leverage graphics processors built into many Apple devices, it's a pig.

But let's compare apples to appples. At the Journal, Jobs claimed the iPad's battery performance would be degraded from 10 hours to 1.5 hours if it had to spend its CPU cycles decoding Flash, we're told. That sounds like an unfair comparison; the iPad would unlikely achieve its advertised 10 hours of maximum battery life while continuously playing video of any sort, iPad optimized or not.

But Jobs offered more than a thorough evisceration of Flash; he also used his Reality Distortion Field to sell the Journal on alternatives to the technology.

Ditching Flash would be "trivial," he suggested.

For one, he suggested the newspaper use the H.264 video compression system ("codec" in geek), which is compatible with both the iPad and the Flash Player installed on most Web browsers.

Jobs reportedly said the Journal would find "It's trivial to create video in H.264" instead of Flash. Depending on how the Journal handled the video conversion, that could be true, and for the moment H. 264 is a cheap and effective way to distribute Web video. But we assume Jobs didn't mention that H. 264 is patented, privately licensed and could get expensive fast.

Even setting that aside, H. 264 does not fully replace Flash. While it can handle video, it does not comprise a system for the rapid development of interactive graphics, as Flash does. Yet Jobs also reportedly said Flash would be "trivial" in this sense, as well — that it would be "trivial" to make an entire copy of the Journal website with the non-video Flash content also redone.

That's just not right; even assuming the Journal could duplicate its Flash slideshows, infographics and other news apps using iPad-friendly technologies like Javascript, it would take a decidedly nontrivial amount of time and effort to create or acquire such a system, hire staff who understand it as well as Flash, train staff on how to use it, and integrate it into the Journal's editorial workflow. It might be a great way to advance web standards like HTML5, and a great way to get the Journal on more devices, but it would hardly be "trivial."

It's not clear to us how assembled Journal honchos collectively reacted to these statements, but its worth noting that shortly after the meeting, on Feb. 10, editorial board member Holman Jenkins issued a WSJ op-ed comparing Apple to Microsoft and saying the company "is in danger of becoming preoccupied with zero-sum maneuvering versus hated rivals." His primary and lead example of this sort of "maneuvering" was Jobs' decision to keep Flash off the iPad.

Jobs' Reality Distortion Field may need a bit of fine tuning, then. But we have a feeling the Journal will swallow its objections and hop on the iPad gravy train. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has had its impressive moments of influence in the history of American conservatism, but these days that's little match for the power of Steve Jobs when he puts on a black turtleneck and strides onto a stage.

(Power aside, if you've got any informed opinions on how difficult it would be to replace Flash in the editorial workflow of a large newspaper or magazine, we'd love to hear them.)

(Update: Added some context on Flash's objectively sucky performance.)

(Top pic: Jobs speaking at Yerba Buna Center in San Francisco, Jan. 27. Getty Images.)

Send an email to Ryan Tate, the author of this post, at ryan@gawker.com.

World's first 3D office photocopier launches

Photosimile: the world’s first “office photography machine”

By Alan Brandon

From: http://www.gizmag.com/

The Ortery Photosimile 5000 desktop photography studio

Image Gallery (6 images)

Imagine if you could take professional-looking photos and create 3D product animations as easily as using the office copier. Ortery’s Photosimile 5000 system aims to bring that capability to the office by enabling even non-photographers to create high-quality images just by pressing a few buttons. The Photosimile 5000 is a PC-controlled desktop photography studio that integrates a light box, a DSLR camera, automated camera positioning, and specialized workflow software to simplify and automate business photography.

High-quality images are a powerful part of a company’s web presence and marketing collateral. Ortery's desktop studios are designed to make it easy to create professional-looking product photos for use on web sites, in print, and in email for daily business communications. Crisp, well lit images are essential for ecommerce websites, and the Photosimile 5000 adds the ability to produce 3D, 360-degree product animations as well.

The camera and light box connect to a PC using USB. The Photosimile 5000 software controls the studio, camera location, turntable movement, camera settings, picture taking, and post processing. Simply place an item inside the light box then compose your image using the preview, zoom, and crop commands in the software. With one click, the picture automatically downloads to the PC.

Often the difference between professional photography and amateur work is the lighting. The Photosimile 5000 starts by providing consistent, even lighting for shadow-free images and accurate color. The system uses four daylight bulbs providing 6500K illumination. The Photosimile 5000 also includes a Canon DSLR mounted on a mechanical track. You control the position, tilt, and zoom from the PC. The subject of your photo sits on an Ortery turntable, which the company also offers separately. For 360-degree imaging, the camera position is controlled automatically. The Photosimile can accommodate objects up to roughly 22in. (56cm) on each side. For 3D images the maximum size is somewhat smaller.

The Photosimile 5000 synchronizes the position of the turntable and camera to photograph objects from multiple angles in one or more planes. The combination of the turntable and the mechanical track allow the Photosimile 5000 to shoot up to 72 pictures per 360-degree rotation, at nine unique angles from 0 to 90 degrees. The resulting images can be automatically stitched together to create 360-degree product animations. These 3D views can be saved as GIF or Flash files, or exported to Ortery’s Real3D format. Real3D allows you to compose 3D Silverlight animations with mouse control and zoom capabilities. Ortery says the software can combine images to create 360-degree spherical or hemispherical or animations.

The Photosimile 5000 software controls every aspect of the studio including the camera settings, the camera positioning, turntable movement, picture taking, and image post-processing. The software displays a real-time live preview while you compose your picture with the preview, zoom, and crop controls. The software also provides a complete workflow for annotating, masking, and batch processing files including naming, resizing, watermarking, and saving.

Although the system was unveiled in 2008, Ortery recently announced that the Photosimile 5000 is now shipping. Ortery doesn't list pricing, but at least one dealer on the Internet lists the Photosimile at around US$17000.

For more information and some cool 3D samples, visit Ortery technologies at ortery.com.

Flash Player 10.1 on Google’s Nexus One

By: Stan Schroeder

From: http://mashable.com/

If you’re an iPhone owner, you probably don’t want to hear about Flash. Full support for Adobe’s rich media technology has been promised for the iPhone many times, but it’s still not there yet.
However, if you plan on getting the Nexus One, you’ll be one of the first users to be able try out Flash Player 10.1, currently in beta.
Adobe posted a video showing the latest Flash Player happily working on the Nexus One. It can be used to browse Flash-heavy sites and play online games, but it can also be used to deliver Flash-based ads. From what we can see in the video, Nexus One’s powerful Snapdragon CPU handles Flash with ease. Check out the video below.

Adobe To Demo Flash On Mobile (But Only Windows). Still “Working” On The iPhone.

by Erick Schonfeld on November 16, 2008

Adobe’s Flash Player is on 98 percent of all desktop computers, but it is still struggling to make the jump to mobile phones. If you want Flash on a mobile device, right now you have to settle for a compromised version: Flash Lite. But Adobe is committed to bring the full Flash Player experience to mobile phones, as evidenced by its Open Screen Project. On Monday, at its Adobe MAX developer conference, it will demonstrate Flash Player 10 running on a Windows Mobile phone. (However, Flash won’t actually ship on Windows Mobile until late next year). Product manager Michele Turner tells me:

We will be showing the first delivery of Flash on mobile phones, on other platforms. You will see it on Windows Mobile.

Microsoft, if you recall, was also early to adopt Flash Lite for Windows Mobile, despite its parallel development of Flash-competitor Silverlight. So it’s not too surprising that it would be the first to run Flash 10 on Windows Mobile. Turner also indicates that an “Android port” is coming. (Update: In fact, it looks like the Android port is well underway. During today’s announcement, a demo of Flash running on the G1 was shown.)

But what about the iPhone, which famously doesn’t use Flash? (Although there’s been some talk of that happening). Turner will only say:

We are working on Flash on the iPhone, but it is really up to Apple

One of Apple’s objections to Flash is that it is a CPU hog and is not optimized for the ARM11 processors that power the iPhone. In what seems to be an effort to address that concern, Adobe will also be announcing a closer collaboration with ARM to accelerate the adoption of both Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR on ARM-powered devices.

Once that collaboration bears fruit, maybe we’ll finally see Flash on the iPhone. But I’d be willing to bet my iPhone that we’ll see it on Android phones first.