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Mission critical Flash

by Serge Jespers on 12. Mar, 2010 in Flash Platform, Flex

NATO started using a Flex application for their Mission Support System in 2007. I saw it in action once… but if I told you about it I would probably end up in a dark dungeon 20 floors below the NATO HQ in Brussels. During MAX in San Francisco in 2008 Peter Martin and Mansour Raad from Adobe Consulting and ESRI discussed the application. The presentation (available on Adobe TV) gives you an idea of how NATO is using Flex.

Today, ISS announced that under the sponsorship of the Air Force Research Laboratory and direction of Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) they developed and deployed an application to enable critical infrastructure monitoring to the White House Situation Room.

The ISS team developed an application for deployment on the SPAWAR touch table framework, leveraging touch technologies to provide insight into the current status of various elements of critical infrastructure across the United States.  The application provides users such as the President and his staff with the ability to view the status of any of thousands of pieces of critical infrastructure with a single tap on a touch surface.

According to Rob Rogers, Vice President of National Systems at ISS, “The touch table application for the White House presented many interesting challenges to the team.  The application is really a mash-up of technologies including the ISS-developed Web Enabled Temporal Analysis System framework for data access and aggregation combined with a custom touch interface developed by ISS, utilizing the Adobe Flex framework, finally sending results to Google Earth.  The President, Vice President, and the Secretary of Homeland Security have used the application and have expressed positive feedback.”

I doubt that I will ever get to see that application…

Flash on!

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Robert Scoble interviews Flash Platform execs

by Serge Jespers on 11. Mar, 2010 in Flash Platform

Earlier this week, Robert Scoble visited the Adobe office in San Francisco to talk to Anup Murarka (director on the Flash Platform team) and Aaron Filner (group product manager for AIR). In the first video they talk about Adobe’s recent announcements. In the second video they debunk some of the recent claims that were discussed in the tech community. They talk about HTML5, Apple, battery life, multitouch and more… After watching the videos, also read Robert’s (@scobleizer) thoughts on his blog.

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The MWC 2010 Flash Challenge

by Serge Jespers on 04. Mar, 2010 in Flash Platform, mobile

At the recent Mobile World Congress my colleagues gave me a map… and 10 minutes to find all Flash-enabled devices at Mobile World Congress 2010. You should know that there is 65.000 square meters of exhibition space at MWC and there are over 1300 exhibitors. You also need to navigate between over 50.000 attendees. I’m sure you get the idea… This was not an easy challenge… But… I’m always up for a challenge… So here’s the video…

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3000+ reasons why Flash isn’t going anywhere soon

by Serge Jespers on 03. Mar, 2010 in Flash Platform, Flash Player

The FWA is almost 10 years old (established in May 2000) and they started their 10th anniversary celebrations early by launching a brand new site (created by Belgian based Flash rockstars Group94). The FWA is one of the few sites I visit daily and a great inspirational resource. Every day they award the best site with their acclaimed and much wanted “Site of the Day” award. Winners proudly add the yellow ribbon to their site to show that they won.

The FWA has awarded over 3000 sites in the last 10 years… Less than 10 of those use a technology other than Flash. So… If you’re looking for great examples of why Flash isn’t going anywhere soon, The FWA is a good place to start! In just about every thinkable category from games to architecture to educational to fashion and more you can find inspiring examples that showcase the power of the Flash Platform.

If you have any doubts that Flash doesn’t have a future, you should just look at some of the amazing sites and apps showcased on The FWA!

Here are some of my favorite recent FWA winners:

Flash on!

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Adobe at Mobile World Congress: Booth photo tour

by Serge Jespers on 15. Feb, 2010 in Flash Platform, devices, mobile

Lots of excitement at the Adobe booth at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Our announcement about Flash Player 10.1 and AIR for mobile devices is definitely buzzing!

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Photos shot with a Google Nexus One.

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Adobe AIR for Mobile Devices at Mobile World Congress

by Serge Jespers on 15. Feb, 2010 in Flash Platform, devices, mobile

Today Mobile World Congress kicks off in Barcelona. If you follow my Tweets or are a regular reader of my blog, you already knew we had some big announcements coming to the show. I’m so happy we can finally talk about this ;-)

Adobe AIR for mobile devices
If you are in Barcelona for MWC, make sure you drop by our booth! We are demoing AIR applications running on Android devices. This is fantastic news for Flash Platform developers who can now build applications that not only run across different desktop operating systems but can now also be deployed to Android devices. It’s obvious that AIR for Android takes full advantage of the improvements and new features we added to Flash Player 10.1. Those include multi-touch, gesture inputs, accelerometer input, GPS and screen rotation. My fellow evangelist Kevin Hoyt recently recorded a demo showing a couple of AIR mobile apps (Tweetbox, Southpark, Acrobat Connect) on the Motorola Droid. For more information, visit www.adobe.com/go/airmobile.

Flash Player 10.1 for mobile devices
I’ve been using Google’s Nexus One for a week now. One of the perks of working for Adobe is having access to the prerelease bits of new technology we are working on. The Nexus One I’m using actually has Flash Player 10.1 installed on it. It is extremely refreshing to be able to use the full web on your mobile device! Just the other day I wanted to view a video on Qik.com. While Qik has a mobile HTML5 site, the Nexus One didn’t seem to have the correct video codec. So I opened the normal Qik site which uses Flash Player to play the video… I pressed play and the video played. No blue Lego blocks, no missing plugin headaches. It just worked and that’s the way it should be. So far, I haven’t seen any Flash content that didn’t work on my Nexus One. I think that’s pretty impressive seeing as this is still a prerelease version. So yes… We are still working on it and no… you can’t download it today. But it’s coming soon and it truly is the missing piece in the mobile web puzzle. Whether you are addicted to Farmville or Bejeweled or if you’re like me and don’t want to install an app for every single news site you visit, you’ll be able to use those games and watch those videos in your mobile browser soon!

While most of the content just works, you should really think about tailoring your content to deliver the best possible user experience on mobile devices. Get a head start and learn how to do just that on Adobe Devnet.

I’m also really excited to see the Dell Mini 5 Tablet in action. In the video below Alan Tam shows a sneak peek of Flash content running on Dell’s upcoming touch-based tablet.

We’re demoing Flash and AIR content on a number of different devices at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week but if you can’t make it, make sure you don’t miss these demo videos. I’ll also record a few demos at the booth today and post them to my blog later… If there’s anything specific you’d like to see, don’t hesitate to leave a comment. Stay tuned!

It’s a great time to be a Flash Platform developer! Flash on!

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Preparing for Mobile World Congress

by Serge Jespers on 12. Feb, 2010 in Flash Platform, devices, mobile

Believe me when I say that Adobe is going to rock at Mobile World Congress next week! I wish I could tell you about all of our announcements today but you’re gonna have to wait a little longer…

If you are in Barcelona for MWC, please come and say hi! The Adobe booth is located in hall 1 (stand 1D45). We’ve teamed up with lots of content and device partners and we will be showing lots of cool stuff at the booth!

Keep an eye on my blog and the Flash Platform blog for more info throughout the week!

Hope to see you there!

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The power of the Flash Platform part 4: Online gaming

by Serge Jespers on 11. Dec, 2009 in Cool stuff, Flash Platform

farmville

There’s a good chance you immediately recognized the game in this screenshot. Over 28 million people played Farmville yesterday. Another 10 million played Cafe World. 6 million for FishVille Mafia Wars (Mafia Wars is not a Flash Game. Thanks Robert for pointing that out!). In fact, Zynga alone (maker of these games) serves 60 million players every single day… And all these games are built with the Flash Platform. I might as well stop this blog post right here because that’s a very impressive number.

There are also a ton of Flash games available on the web that are used to launch or promote a new product. Check out these games by Red Bull, Coca-Cola, and Cheetos.

Red Bull Soapbox RacerCoca-Cola Happiness FactoryOffice Pinata

There are many many many games like these out there. Know a cool one? Feel free to share the link in the comment section!

Other posts in this series:
The power of the Flash Platform Part 1
The power of the Flash Platform Part 2 – Augmented reality
The power of the Flash Platform Part 3 – Video

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Native iPhone applications built with Flash – FailBlog Player Demo

by Serge Jespers on 09. Dec, 2009 in Flash Platform, devices, iPhone, mobile

Write once, deploy anywhere. Sounds nice, no? Sadly it’s not really a reality today. The currently available technologies are very fragmented and today there is no technology out there that makes that dream a reality.

I have a strong feeling that is going to change dramatically in 2010. Some will disagree or say that I am too biased but I really do think it’s going to happen… Want proof? Ok… You got it!

I’m sure you’ve all heard that the next release of Flash (CS5) will allow you to build native applications for the iPhone. Instead of having to learn a new language to built such a native app, you just build it with the tools and technology you all know and love. The demo video below shows an application that I’ve been building the last couple of days. A FailBlog video player that gets all the latest FailBlog videos and allows you to watch them on your iPhone or mobile device. It is completely written in ActionScript 3.0 and plays Flash Video (FLVs with On2 VP6 in this case. So no need to transcode your videos!) on the iPhone. And that’s not even the coolest thing about it! The coolest thing about this is that I can export this as an iPhone application, SWF file and AIR application with just one button click. At the end of the video you’ll see a sneak peek of the same application running on a Palm Pre in its browser with Flash Player 10.1! And that is the power of the Flash Platform! Write once, deploy anywhere? It’s finally becoming a reality!

If all goes well, you should be able to play with the iPhone version of this app before the end of the year. I still have some optimizations to do and have to clean up some bits and pieces but I’m feeling confident that that shouldn’t take too long. Keep an eye on my blog for more details!

Flash on!

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Reminiscing: most influential Internet moments of the decade

by Serge Jespers on 20. Nov, 2009 in Flash Platform, Flash Player

The Webby Awards just published a great list of the ten most influential Internet moments of the decade. It’s great to see that they didn’t forget to give props to Flash Player for causing the online video revolution:

Online video revolution (2006)
In 2006, a perfect storm of faster bandwidth, cheaper camcorders, and the groundbreaking use of Adobe’s Flash 9 video player by YouTube combined to launch the online video revolution. The trifecta led to a boom in homemade and professional content – the Diet Coke and Mentos guys, lonelygirl15, SNL’s Lazy Sunday, and Senator George Allen’s “macacagate” – that has reshaped everything from pop culture to politics.
From http://www.webbyawards.com/press/topwebmomentsdecade.php

ffwdWhile it’s a great acknowledgement of one of the great things Flash has done for the web, I personally think Flash had caused a revolution way before that. Before Flash, the web was pretty dull and the only animation you would see on a site was perhaps a piece of text in a <blink> tag or an animated GIF. I’m sure you’ll all remember those and some of you may also remember the early days of Flash. If you’re in Belgium, you may remember the early days with the sites for Peter Hoogland, the Big Brother sites and the Idols site. The early days with sites like Gabocorp, Eye4U, NRG and later DerBauer. The early days with amazing Flash work from Joshua Davis, Branden Hall, Mano1, Yugo Nakamura and the crazy Flash based gadgets from Phillip Torrone. The early days of the very first Flashforward conferences in San Francisco and New York (I still have the attendee workbooks)…

Back then I would have never thought that I would one day work for Adobe. I remember the Adobe keynotes at Flashforward very well. I remember the Adobe speakers were the only ones wearing suits (Not kidding). I also remember the Adobe Flashforward party in NYC very well. We were all driven to a club somewhere. The party started out really quietly (food and drinks included) but then at (I think) midnight, the music stopped playing, the houselights were dimmed and the stage lights were switched on. And then the crowd was completely surprised by the performance that started. Adobe had hired Run DMC to perform live at their party… That was absolutely amazing and it was probably the best conference party ever!

Aaah man… The early days… I better stop now… I’m starting to feel old ;-) I do wonder who was there and is now following me on Twitter and/or my blog…

Flash on!

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