Introducing: Flash Coffee Meetups
If you’re anything like me, you probably drink a lot of coffee, love Flash and enjoy talking about geek stuff… Blend all of these ingredients together and you get “Flash Coffee“!
Join Adobe Platform Evangelists from across Europe for a cuppa, an espresso, a double non fat latte or whatever your chosen caffeine jolt is and see what’s new with the Adobe Flash Platform. Ask some questions, see Flash Player 10.1 running on Android devices, see what’s new with Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst, show what you are working on…
These meetups are informal and small, taking place at various coffee shops around Europe. Come along and join us for a drink and a chat! We’re limiting the numbers per meetup depending on the location so register early!
I just added the first two dates and I hope to see you there.
- Flash Coffee Amsterdam – June 9th – Beurs van Berlage Café – Raffle prize: a Google Nexus One
- Flash Coffee Antwerp – July 7th – Starbucks Antwerp – Raffle prize: Flash Builder 4 Premium
(You have to attend to be eligible to win the raffle prize!)
Keep an eye on http://bit.ly/flcoffee for more dates.
Cannes Lions widget powered by Adobe and Influxis
The Cannes Lions Festival is only a few weeks away now. The Cannes Lions Festival is a global festival for those working in advertising and related fields. Thousands of delegates from around the world attend the festival to view shortlisted work and attend seminars, workshops and master classes (via Wikipedia).
Adobe is planning lots of seminars and workshops this year and we’re also helping out with the Young Lions competition. Our CEO Shantanu Narayen is also speaking at the event.
A few weeks ago I built a little widget for the festival. The idea is similar to the MAX widget. It displays the latest Cannes Lions news, users can record their own testimonials and it’s incredibly easy to add the widget to your own social network page, blog or site.
I used Adobe’s Distribution/Promotion Service to enable the share functionality in the widget. This service is incredibly easy to use. With just a couple of lines of code you can add the share menu to your application. There’s no need to write any code that talks to all the specific social network APIs. The Distribution/Promotion Service does all that for you.
The video recording is handled by Influxis. I had never used the Influxis service before but I kept hearing good things about them. I’m glad to say that they are all true! The Influxis admin panel is just amazingly easy to use. Literally within seconds you can have your FMS app up and running on their servers. Influxis is also one of the few providers that give you full access to the Flash Media Interactive Server which was needed to enable this in-app recording experience. I know this almost sounds like an Influxis commercial but trust me… If your app uses Flash Media Server you have to check out Influxis. They even provide a bunch of ready-to-go apps so you can get started in a few minutes.
If you’re going to Cannes for the Cannes Lions Festival, leave a message here or come and say “hi”. See you in Cannes!
Android week: Winner of the Google Nexus One
Wow… 707 comments on my “Win A Google Nexus One” post… Thank you all for your birthday wishes and your thoughts on Flash and AIR coming to Android devices.
Using the SQL statement below, I picked a winner from all entries.
SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = 2558 ORDER BY RAND() limit 1
The lucky winner is Patrick Welfringer.
Thanks again for al your entries. It’s amazing to see the excitement for Flash Player 10.1 and AIR coming to Android and other mobile devices.
Android week: Tech blogs about Flash Player 10.1 on Android
Tech journalists always get to play with the coolest gadgets before everyone else. Luckily one of the benefits of working at Adobe is that I also had access to the early bits of Flash Player 10.1 for Android. I’m sure you’ve all seen us blog and tweet about how great it is to have Flash Player running on mobile devices. I’m also pretty sure that some of you also didn’t believe us ;-). I don’t blame you… I agree… I admit that I did indeed drink the Kool-Aid. Heck… I’ve been drunk on Flash Kool-Aid for at least 13 years now :D.
So… If you have a hard time believing us Flash junkies evangelists then hopefully these tech bloggers/journalists can convince you. Flash Player 10.1 on mobile devices rocks!
Financial Times: “I have been impressed with the fully featured experience of 10.1 after trying it for a few days on a Nexus One review unit running Android 2.2. Flash now not only plays video on websites flawlessly and enables full-screen gaming, but it also responds to touchscreen gestures so that objects in a game can be manipulated with a finger stroke. It also taps into accelerometers, meaning automatic adjustment to portrait or landscape mode.”
J/K On The Run: “Pretty reasonably impressed with Flash Player 10.1……[...] Yes, it rocks!”
CNet: “Unsurprisingly, the best performance came from Web sites that have already been optimized for mobile phones; that is, they’ll render the page with hardware accelerometers and trackballs in mind. When we off-roaded from Adobe-suggested sites, we found that Flash Player worked as it would in a desktop environment.”
Engadget: “It’s getting there, it works, it works surprisingly well.”
Mashable: “Adobe Flash 10.1 is also serious about performance. It includes hardware acceleration with H.264 video decoding, advanced memory management (which can decrease RAM usage by 50%), and a sleep mode that slows down the Flash player if an Android-powered device enters screensaver mode.”
Forrester Research: “I’ve been testing a Froyo-based Nexus One for the last week side-by-side with my iPhone, and I think it’s great to not have to deal with “little blue cubes” on the sites I visit every day. The Froyo Nexus is fast, the multitasking is excellent, and contrary to assertion, I have not noticed a significant difference in battery life when I view Flash enable content (I barely get through a full day with my iPhone 3G even with a Mophie juice pack at full charge). When it comes to Flash apps running on Froyo itself, it’s also pretty clear to me that they can deliver an engaging mobile experience.”
Flash on!
Android week: The Web and TV marriage: Google TV
A few years ago I used to work for Belgium’s biggest commercial broadcaster. In my last year there (now 7 years ago) I investigated interactive TV. I was pretty disappointed to see what was available at that time. Almost 5 years ago my local cable operator (Telenet) launched interactive digital TV in Belgium and I was still disappointed. While their set-top box is connected to the web, it only uses it to “call home” when you order VOD content. Ooh… and you can read your email on it…
A few weeks ago, Telenet updated their set-top box UI… And I was still disappointed. Telenet is in a unique position. They are already in my house with an Internet connected STB that is connected to my big screen TV. This is where I want to see my web content. When I search for my favorite TV show, I want to see when it plays on my favorite TV channels but I also want it to show me related web content from YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, … When I browse their VOD content, I want to read other people’s reviews from IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Twitter, … That is what I want from my digital tv… And Google just launched it at Google I/O. Google TV is exactly what I want to see on my TV… It’s 2010 for God’s sake! Unfortunately I live in Belgium and I probably will not see Google TV any time soon…
Here’s a demo of Google TV recorded by the Adobe TV team. Oh… And before I forget: Google TV runs Flash Player 10.1 and AIR!
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