3LiveShop: A new innovative way to shop on the web powered by Flash
I’m sure you remember seeing these really cool online shopping demos where you could talk to a real person instead of just clicking a few links. 3 Sverige have actually done it for real now and it looks amazing. It is truly innovative work from B-Reel.
We have created 3LiveShop for one reason only – to make it easier for our customers to choose the mobile device, the subscription and the service that suits their needs.
With 3LiveShop you get all the services and personal contact that you get in a regular store – even though you’re sitting somewhere else. You and the sales person can see and talk to each other while the sales person demonstrates products and services to you, just like on a video conference – only better.
Check out this video below to get an idea of what it looks like or if you happen to be in Sweden give it a try yourself!
MWC off to a great start
Mobile World Congress kicked off in Barcelona today and Adobe announced some amazing numbers. Developers and content publishers can now deploy Adobe AIR applications to more than 84 million smartphones and tablets running Android and iOS. Thousands of applications have been created and made available on Android Market and Apple’s App Store to date. By the end of 2011, Adobe expects more than 200 million smartphones and tablets to support Adobe AIR applications.
More than 20 million smartphones were shipped or upgraded with Flash Player 10.1 on over 35 certified devices in the first six months following the launch. For 2011, we’re expecting Flash Player to be supported on more than 132 million units worldwide. More than 50 tablets are expected to support Flash Player this year alone.
I’m really proud of what Adobe has achieved in such a short amount of time. This is my third year at MWC and we were actually talking about the things we’ve been showing at the show the last couple of years. It’s pretty amazing to see where we are today and to see the momentum in the market.
For more info check out http://adobe.ly/FlashMWC2011
Flash on!
Stealing content was never easier than with HTML5
HTML5 makes adding video and audio content to your site very easy but there is currently no way to protect that content. If we’re all completely honest we know that content protection is still a big deal for record companies, movie studios, and TV channels, yet HTML5 puts their content just up for grabs. Let me give you a few examples.
Unnamed video site
Video site X just rolled out a brand new HTML5 video player. Like I said, HTML5 makes it really easy to add video content to your site but it makes it equally easy to download that content. It only takes a “view source” to find the URL to the video file. Some video sites have also noticed that and are now building custom JavaScript based players in an attempt to make it more difficult to get to the video file. On this one site I counted almost 3000 lines of JavaScript code for a rather basic video player with sharing functionality. 3000 lines of code and it still only took me three clicks to download the video file! I already hear some of you saying that you can also easily get the video file from a Flash based video player. If you use progressive download that is completely true. I’ll get back to that later in this post.
Unnamed new music discovery site
The release of the beta version of this new music discovery site is actually what sparked the idea to write this post. As per usual the tech blogs were buzzing about it as a new music discovery site that didn’t use Flash because Flash is dead. So I checked it out… This particular site gives you unrestricted access to the entire music library. I was able to look up any artist and play back any song in high quality… I can also buy the song on the site for the industry standard $0.99. But with just two clicks I was able to download any song from any artist straight to my desktop without actually buying it. No need for torrents or the risk of downloading viruses. It’s all right there on this official music discovery site in high quality AAC audio (in an M4A file).
Flash
I already mentioned that it’s also pretty easy to download a file used in a Flash based media player if the site uses progressive download. The difference between HTML5 and Flash in this case is that you CAN protect your content when using Flash. As there still is no standard audio/video codec in the HTML5 spec there also is no way to stream video and audio content using HTML5 across different browsers. Companies (including Apple) have been experimenting with streaming technologies but I’m sure you remember that that only worked in a specific version of Safari on a specific version of iOS. The HTML5 spec also has no guidelines for any sort of content protection.
Flash does work cross browser and cross platform (as I’m sure all of you know). With the use of Flash Media Server you can also completely protect that content and get the added benefits of features such as adaptive streaming (to adapt to changing connection speeds), reduced bandwidth usage, DRM, multicasting, peer to peer delivery, and more. Bottom line: Flash is still the best platform to stream (premium) video and audio content.
flKinect: Socket server + AS3 library for Microsoft Kinect
Well… Now I may just have to get myself a Microsoft Kinect! I saw on Saqoosha’s blog that he was playing around with this and thought I would post this here. Koji Kimura wrote a Cocoa application to allow communication between the Microsoft Kinect and Flash. It looks amazing and opens up a whole new world of possibilities and it looks like the AS3 API is also very easy to use!
More info and downloads on Koji’s site.
As you may have guessed it is Mac only. If you know of any similar projects for Windows or Linux don’t hesitate to leave a comment below!
Update: Here’s another AS3 library + socket server app for Mac.
Update 2: Also check out as3kinect.org.
1 code base, 6 devices: Now including BlackBerry PlayBook
A couple of weeks ago I published a post about a proof-of-concept application that I built for a local commercial broadcaster. The app that I built in just 5 hours ran on 5 different devices. As I just started playing around with the BlackBerry PlayBook SDK I wanted to see how long it would take to push this app to the PlayBook. I was pleasantly surprised that it just worked! It only took me 2 minutes. So I can now say: 1 code base, 5 hours, 6 devices! It now runs on my desktop/laptop, HTC Desire HD (Android smartphone), Samsung Galaxy Tab (Android tablet), Google TV, AIR for TV, and now the BlackBerry PlayBook. And that, my friends, is the power of the Flash Platform! ;-) It’s a great time to be a Flash developer!
When you look at the video you will see one small flaw in my app though. The preloader screen doesn’t adapt to the bigger screen resolution so that will be the only thing I would have to update. Everything else is exactly the same code as the Android version of the application.
To get started building applications for the BlackBerry PlayBook check out the BlackBerry developer site. My fellow evangelist Renaun Erickson also has a ton of information about developing for the PlayBook on his blog!
Please note that the PlayBook emulator currently does not output audio from Flash video files and currently only plays videos that are encoded with the On2 VP6 codec. This is only a limitation because of the beta quality of the emulator.
InMarket: Monetizing your apps made easy
InMarket makes it incredibly easy to start making money with your AIR applications. InMarket provides a central mechanism to distribute, monetize and manage applications across various channels. In just a couple of easy steps and only a couple of lines of code you’ll be able to add a complete payment and licensing solution to your application.
Once your application is ready you can submit it to the InMarket Portal. InMarket will then submit your application to multiple application stores. Adobe is working with several store partners to provide the widest distribution possible for your applications across devices. Intel AppUp and the AIR Marketplace are the first stores that are supported and we’ll keep adding new stores once they become available. These stores will not only be available on laptops and netbooks but also on tablets, mobile phones, TVs, and set-top boxes. You can also just distribute the application on your own website using an AIR install badge.
One of the biggest benefits of InMarket is that you only need to remember one URL and login/password. If you have an update to your application you can just submit it to the InMarket Portal instead of having to update the file on all the different stores you published it on. The portal also has all the information available about your app and your revenue.
InMarket also allows you to create trial versions of your application. These trial versions can be time based or feature based. You can have a time based trial that gives the user full access to the app for a number of days or disable some of the features of the app until the user buys a license.
For instance, a feature based trial for a game could be one free level. If you want to play more you have to buy the app.
If you wanted you could even build an application that shows a “nagscreen” every x minutes to prompt the user to buy your app.
Adding InMarket to your application is also really easy. The InMarket portal will tell you exactly what you need to do and will even generate the necessary code.
If you sign up for InMarket today we’ll also give you a free code-signing certificate that you can use to sign your applications. You receive 70% of the sales revenue; Adobe and its partners take care of credit card processing, hosting, and marketing.
For more information and registration go to adobe.com/go/inmarket.
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