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.

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.

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.

Any tetris fans out there?

http://www.firstpersontetris.com/

First-Person Tetris is a non-commercial project
inquires: hello@firstpersontetris.com

How to Download Embedded Flash Files using your Browser

By Saikat Basu

Today, Flash is everywhere. Animations, music, games, advertisements or even streaming presentations. Speaking of games, here’s a list of site with the best flash games.

The use of Flash plug-ins in browsers is now almost obligatory. Yes, it’s easy to view and enjoy the rich media content delivered by interactive Flash embedded pages. But what if I want to download some of these files as keepsakes? The greatest benefit – I can watch them offline in my own jolly time. Convert them to a format of my choice. Or embed them again in a PowerPoint presentation. Or even transfer them to my mobile phone.

Flash animation files are embedded as SWF (Small Web Format) files in webpages. Rather than depending on any software or a third-party website, downloading Flash content is dead simple. The only tool required is a browser and a bit of patience to do the rummaging around.

Just one note: As we will be heading into the internet cache folders of the respective browsers, it pays to clear it of all old files before navigating to the desired page. It makes the Flash file search a lot easier.

So, here’s how to do it in three of our popular browsers.

Download SWF files using Firefox

1. Fire up Firefox and browse to the page which contains the embedded SWF Flash file that you are eyeing to download. Let the SWF file stream through once completely.
2. On any empty part of the page, right-click and select the Page Info context menu option. Or alternatively, go to Tools – Page Info.

   

3. Select the Media tab. The Media tab lists all image formats, icons, style sheets and flash files that were rendered by the webpage.

   

4. Look amongst the items to find the particular file with the SWF extension. The type column will show up with an Embed filetype. Highlight the file and click Save as to save the file on your hard drive.

Download SWF files using Internet Explorer

In IE8, we have to head to the Temporary Internet Files folder which stores all rendered files during a browsing session. (It can be directly accessed from here in Windows XP - C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files.)

1. Go to the IE Menu bar. Click on Tools – Internet Options.
2. On the General tab, click on Settings under Browsing History.
3. The Temporary Internet Files and Browsing History box opens up.

   

4. Click on View Files. You will get all the rendered webpage elements in this folder.
5. To rummage about effectively amidst the mass of files, choose View – Arrange by Type from the menu. Also go to Tools – Folder Options, and uncheck the Hide extensions for known file types option.
6. Seek out your SWF files, copy and then paste it to your preferred location.

   

Download SWF files using Opera

In Opera, downloaded SWF files can be accessed in two simple ways –

• Type opera:cache in the address bar.
• Go to Tools – Advanced – Cache from the toolbar.

Either way, a huge list of downloaded page elements opens up with their URLs. Search for a file with the .swf extension. Alternatively, you could search (Ctrl+F ) and hunt it down, with swf as the search query.

Right-click on the particular file and choose either Saved Linked Content As or Save to Download Folder to save the SWF file on the hard disk.

After downloading the SWF file, one can use the Adobe Flash Player to view the Flash file or a supported media player like Media Player Classic. Or, an easier way would be to just open it in a browser by right-clicking it and selecting the browser of choice.

These are the ways we can use to single out the Flash files from a webpage. In my experience, I personally have been more comfortable with Firefox than the other two. I am still searching a way perform this in Chrome but it is proving impossible without third-party support. Numerous third-party tools can do the same job better by converting it to a format of your choice. But it always pays to know that you can fall back on a browser alone.

Aibek had the same idea about offline Flash files when he covered How To Download and Play Flash Games Offline in a previous post. That post extends the possibilities of the fun we can have with Flash files.

What about you? Do you let it play on the webpage or do you dig under and take a Flash file offline?