The first one is a teaser ad from HP but make sure you watch the second video! Adobe’s Alan Tam shows the device in action! No CGI tricks here! Alan shows Adobe AIR and Flash in action on the device: Video playback from MTV.com; A Spongebob Squarepants game (most casual games on the Web run in Flash); photo editing at Photoshop.com and reading the digital version of the New York Times. Now that is the web experience I want on a slate device! I’m ordering this the minute it becomes available!

A few people have also noted that the demo doesn’t work across different platforms even when using the same browser. While I wanted to demonstrate how Flash and HTML5 can coexist and even complement each other, it is (sadly) also a demonstration on how HTML5 is being implemented differently across browsers and operating systems. Feel free to post a comment if you know about fixes or workarounds in the JavaScript to make it work on more browsers.

Geolocation is a good example. HTML5 is going to get a geolocation API that works just beautifully even on devices with no GPS. Flash based applications will (currently) only get access to geolocation APIs when targeting the AIR runtime on mobile. Some browsers (I only know of Firefox 3.5 on Mac and the WebKit browser on the Nexus One) already support the HTML5 geolocation API… So why not use that to get geo information into your Flash based application?

It’s actually extremely easy to do…

But first a little bit of background as to why I was looking for this functionality. I’m actually building “this demo app” that needs the geolocation in order to have the functionality I was looking for. I want this app to work in as many places as possible. With the Flash Platform I can build this for my browser and my desktop. For the Apple phone I can export it as a native app and for the Nexus One I can use the device browser with Flash Player 10.1.

Now… How does it work? The HTML5 geolocation API is extremely easy to use and, like I said earlier, you don’t even need to have a GPS enabled device.

function getGEO()
{
	// First check if your browser supports the geolocation API
	if (navigator.geolocation)
	{
		alert("HTML 5 is getting your location");
		// Get the current position
		navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(position)
		{
			lat = position.coords.latitude
			long = position.coords.longitude;
			// Pass the coordinates to Flash
			passGEOToSWF(lat, long);
		});
	} else {
		alert("Sorry... your browser does not support the HTML5 GeoLocation API");
	}
}
function passGEOToSWF(lat,long)
{
	alert("HTML 5 is sending your location to Flash");
	// Pass the coordinates to mySWF using ExternalInterface
	document.getElementById("mySWF").passGEOToSWF(lat,long);
}

In my Flash application, I’m using ExternalInterface so I can communicate between JavaScript and my SWF. When my Google Maps component is ready, I call the GetGEO JavaScript method:

ExternalInterface.call("getGEO");

When the JavaScript method gets a result from the geolocation API, it will pass it on to the passGEOToSWF method. In my Flash application, I just listen for that method call and then call the code to update the map.

ExternalInterface.addCallback("passGEOToSWF", onPassGEOToSWF);

If you don’t have an HTML5 ready browser, check out this video of the application running in Firefox 3.6. Even cooler is that this also works in the browser on my Flash Player 10.1 enabled Nexus One (Please note that the network is slower on the N1 and thus it isn’t able to keep up with loading new map images. This has nothing to do with Flash Player 10.1 or the application.):

If you have Firefox 3.5 or newer installed, you can give it a try yourself: http://www.webkitchen.be/geolocation. I’m sure there are other browsers out there that also already have the geolocation API but this is the only one I tested on the Mac.

Hopefully this gives you a good idea of how HTML5 and Flash can also just work together (instead of killing each other ;-)). Flash on!

UPDATE: While writing this blog post, @robertbak pinged me on Twitter saying that he wrote a library to use in your Flex applications. Check it out on the Flex Exchange.

UPDATE: For the source files check out this blogpost.

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!

For more videos from Mobile World Congress, check out the MWC page on Adobe TV.

For more info about Brightcove, check out brightcove.com.

Around the same time, I came across Canvas by WooThemes and decided to build something on top of this framework theme. February has been really busy so I didn’t get around to building it yet. But… Tonight I noticed that someone/something inserted a link to a malware site (If you’re on Windows, please double check if the malware link didn’t install anything on your machine. I apologize if it did.). From the first investigation, I noticed some weirdness going on in the theme files and thus decided to expedite the theme switch. It’s now using a default Canvas theme but hopefully the code injecting security hole is now gone.

If you still see something weird, it would be greatly appreciated if you could let me know. Thanks!

One of the biggest improvements in Flash Player 10.1 is the memory and CPU consumption which obviously also has a big impact on the battery life. Battery life on mobile devices is very important and thus always top of mind for the engineering team!

There was a lot of commotion around the video that my colleague Michael Chaize published. He showcased a number of Flash based apps to show off the performance of FP10.1. Some of the applications he showed are CPU intensive and thus also potential battery drainers.

Mark Doherty posted a great follow up post with some background information on how we test battery consumption and performance internally. He also recorded a 17 minute YouTube video which resulted in a 6% battery drain. That results to being able to watch over 4 hours worth of YouTube video over WiFi using Flash Player. I can’t even do that on my brand new MacBook Pro (which is supposed to be able to give me 8 hours of battery life)… I’m not even sure I can do that on my Apple phone using their native YouTube app…

Today, Michael posted a follow up video where he plays a 26 minute video and plays a Flash based game for 12 minutes.

He noted a 10% battery drain after the playing the video which calculates down to 4.3 hours of video. Playing the Flash based game for 12 minutes resulted in a 4% drain which boils down to 5 hours of continuous gaming in the browser using Flash Player 10.1.

Those numbers are pretty impressive to me! Especially when you consider that this is still a pre-release version of the Flash Player running on a pre-release version of Android.

Kudos to the Flash Player team! Flash on!

The AIR 2 release is just around the corner but you can already start building and testing your apps with the public beta available on Adobe Labs.

If you’re interested in learning about the new features AIR 2 has to offer, check out my presentation slides from FITC and the demo files that go with it. Also check out Tour De Flex for more code samples.

I can’t wait to see what you guys are going to build with AIR 2 and its new capabilities!

Photo by Lee Turner.