Raising the bar… again: FP10.1 & AIR2 betas on Labs
Wohooow… It’s always great to wake up to new toys to play with! Flash Player 10.1 and AIR2.0 are now available on Adobe Labs.
This is a very exciting release for Adobe. Not only is it the first time that we sim-ship Flash Player and AIR for all 3 major operating systems (Mac, Windows & Linux), Flash Player 10.1 is also the first runtime release of the Open Screen Project. While we’re only releasing the beta version of Flash Player 10.1 for the desktop we do plan to roll out additional betas prior to the release with more features, performance improvements, new tooling options and support for mobile platforms. I’ve been lucky enough to play with some smart phones that already have Flash Player 10.1 and I am absolutely amazed to see the performance on these devices. It’s also great to finally have FP10 in the browser on a mobile device. It’s great to see you can now have the full web in your mobile browser!
We’ve already talked about and demoed some of the new features at MAX. Check out the feature page on Labs for a complete list of new features in Flash Player 10.1 and Christian Cantrell’s blog for a comprehensive list of new features in AIR. Christian also has a bunch of code samples on his blog demonstrating the new features. Also check out Adobe TV for more demos and tutorials.
Don’t forget… These are pre-release BETA releases. While the Flash Player and AIR teams do their very best to maintain backward compatibility, things may break. And that is exactly why we do these public betas. If you do come across an application that doesn’t work, make sure you tell us about it!
I can’t wait to see what you guys are going to build with this new set of building blocks… Flash on!
Video tutorial: “Elf Yourself” yourself – Personalized video on the web
Note: Please update your After Effects CS4 installation to make sure you have the latest version available via the Adobe Updater. There is an issue with the preinstalled After Effects script that requires you to work with the latest point release (separate downloads available for Mac OS and Windows).
Ever wondered how you can create personalized video on the web? Want to create your own ElfYourself.com? This tutorial shows you how it’s done using After Effects CS4 and Flash Professional CS4. Ooh.. before I forget… One of my evangelist colleagues has a cameo appearance at the end of the tutorial ;-)
Kevin Lynch at NewTeeVeeLive
Earlier this week, Kevin Lynch was a guest at NewTeeVee Live. He talks about Flash on TVs, the future of the Flash Platform. He also talks about how open Adobe has become and was also asked about his stance on HTML5.
The gallery: HBO Imagine
Just about every week, I come across many cool sites and applications. To showcase these apps and sites, I’ve created a new category on my blog: The Gallery. The Gallery will be a place to showcase cool and innovative Flash applications and sites.
The HBO Imagine site is a great one to kick off this new category. HBO Imagine is an interactive movie. You’re not only the director in this movie but you also need to solve the crime. Great work by The Barbarian Group and BBDO showing off high quality Flash Video in a 3D environment.
Life as an evangelist: year 2 – Time flies…
Wow… Has it really been 2 years already? That means I joined Adobe 2 years and 8 months ago. Wow… Time does fly when you’re having fun! :D A year ago, I wrote a blog post looking back at my first year as an evangelist. I thought I should make this a tradition and thus here’s year two…
While I definitely travelled less this year (mostly thanks to economy and thanks to the fact that our European team has grown quite a bit) I still managed to talk to a guesstimated 14000 people (same as last year) on 34 trips (compared to 53 trips last year). On average, a trip was 2.85 days so I spent about 97 days away from home (163 days last year). I visited 25 different cities in Europe, the US, the Middle East and Asia, which gave me a carbon footprint of about 15000 kg.
Blog visits grew 200% compared to last year with visitors coming from 197 different countries. The top 5 countries are the US, Belgium, the UK, Germany and to my surprise India in 5th place. 33.4% of all the traffic on my blog came from referring sites (thanks for the links!). My Adobe On Twitter post was the most popular post this year getting 4.8% of all the traffic this year. May 11th was the best day for my blog when my blog post about the release of the new NY Times reader was featured on Techmeme.
My “Create Flex Components with Flash CS4 Professional” video is my most popular video tutorial on Vimeo. Looking at my Vimeo account just made me realize that I should really pick this up again. So my goal for the rest of the year is to put up some new tutorial videos. Keep an eye on my blog, Adobe TV or Vimeo account…
This has been another spectacular year with plenty of highlights… but if I had to pick one, I would say that my demo in the day 2 keynote at MAX in Los Angeles was probably my biggest highlight of the year. The audience, the venue and the team behind MAX made this a truly amazing experience. One I hope to repeat many times! I also had a lot of fun building the MAX widget. It was amazing to see the numbers the widget generated and therefore a big thank you to all of you who installed it on your blogs, Facebook pages etc. Aah man… Seriously… Just picking one or two highlights isn’t enough. There’s also my trip to India, the trip to Israel, … Yes… This really is a cool job! ;-)
Oh… Speaking of cool jobs… You may have heard that my good friend and colleague Andrew Shorten is moving into a new role at Adobe. That means we need a replacement for Andrew. Those are some mighty big shoes to fill but if you feel like you could be a perfect candidate for the job, check out Andrew’s post about the job and make sure you send us your resume today.
Year 3 has just started and I can already tell you it’s going to be a very interesting year! I’m really excited about getting Flash Player 10.1 on devices, the imminent release of AIR 2.0, Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst… It’s going to be another amazing year!
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