The US Open is not only using Flash for their live and on demand video they’re also using it for data visualization. Making data look interesting is probably one of the most difficult things to do but IBM has built a really cool application for the US Open tennis tournament.

The US Open PointStream application (built with Flex by IBM) visualizes match data and stats in real-time to give you insight into the way your favorite players are performing. There currently are no live matches so it only shows the data from the last played match. You can bet on me checking out the app the next time our national tennis heroes Kim Clijsters and Yanina Wickmayer hit the tennis courts.

Hat tip to Read Write Web.

The Google I/O keynote is only a little over 3 hours away. I am super excited about Google I/O this year. I wish I was there… But if you’re like me and you couldn’t make it out to San Francisco you can still be a part of it.

Both today’s and tomorrow’s keynote will be streamed live on Google I/O’s YouTube channel. I can’t think of a better way of celebrating my birthday than to sit back with a nice glass of wine and watch the keynote live. I know… I am a bit of a geek :D. You can count on me doing the same thing tomorrow ;-). Trust me… You don’t want to miss this event… We have some very exciting announcements coming up and I’m sure Google also has a thing or two up their sleeves!

The keynote starts at 9:00 am PDT. That’s 12:00pm in New York, 5:00pm in London, 6:00pm in Belgium, 1:00am in Tokyo.

Oh… And just in case you missed it: I’m giving away a Google Nexus One!

I’m sure that by now you will have noticed that Adobe MAX is literally just around the corner. The pre-conference show starts this weekend and the countdown has started to Monday’s first keynote. I have managed to sneak in to some rehearsals this week in the San Francisco office and I was absolutely speechless when I saw the amazing things we have lined up for the keynotes and sneaks.

I’m sure some of you will not be able to join us in Los Angeles and that is why we are doing everything we can to make sure you don’t miss out. I’m sure you already know that you can watch the keynote sessions live wherever you are but the conference will also be covered on the Adobe MAX blog, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Photoshop.com. For a complete list of social media resources, check out http://max.adobe.com/resources/

We also published a list of official and community driven Twitter-tags on http://bit.ly/adobemaxtags as well as a list of interesting Tweeters to follow http://bit.ly/adobemaxtweeters. For a full list of Adobe employees and products on Twitter, check out http://bit.ly/AdobeOnTwitter.

If you are in L.A. and are taking pictures, make sure you add them to the Adobe MAX Flickr group (http://bit.ly/adobemaxflickr) and check out the Flickr photostream (http://bit.ly/adobemaxphotos). I’ll try to add some backstage shots whenever I can.

And last but certainly not least, Lee Brimelow has put together a new DeadDrop challenge, which will start at noon on Tuesday October 6th. The winner will receive the grand prize (a US$7,500 value) including an Apple MacBook Pro with Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection and Adobe Flex Builder Professional fully loaded, a conference pass to MAX 2010 with 3-nights of hotel accommodation, and more. For details, watch the video at http://adobedeaddrop.com.

I hope you are as excited about Adobe MAX as we are!

Imagine you are the most powerful man on the planet. You want to organize a town hall meeting online so that anyone anywhere can view the meeting online without having to install anything new. Which technology would you choose? The answer is simple: Flash.

Barack Obama just started an online town hall meeting where he will answer the questions people could submit and vote for online. I’m currently on a hotel network and it’s still streaming in nicely.

They are streaming this using Flash Media Server 3.5 (the latest version of FMS) which does dynamic streaming and even allows you to pause the live broadcast. Check it out on http://www.whitehouse.gov/openforquestions/

Flash on!

Last Friday, Microsoft sent out a press release announcing that “…the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) has selected the company’s Silverlight technology to enable live and on-demand video streaming of the official inauguration swearing-in ceremony on the PIC Web site…“.

I’m not entirely sure if it’s worth bragging about one site using Silverlight. Even if it is the “official” site… Especially since all the big networks are using Flash technology to stream the event. It’s also funny to note that “… the list of donors to the inaugural committee does not include any contributors who list Silverlight-rival Adobe Systems as an employer. As we have reported here before, it does include several high-profile Microsoft executives, including CEO Steve Ballmer…“, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. A Microsoft spokeswoman was quick to note that “… these donations are personal contributions from the named Microsoft executives, and not representative of Microsoft the corporation …“. I’m sure a $200.000+ contribution wouldn’t have hurt though. ;-)

When I read the press release, I remembered that video interview that Robert Scoble did with Eric Schmidt a while ago. Eric is the director of media and advertising evangelism at Microsoft. In that interview, Eric Schmidt confirms (although not in those exact words) that it was Microsoft who built the NBC Olympics site and that NBC only delivered the content for it. He says that his evangelism group was responsible for project management. The developer side of things was done by Scott Guthrie’s group. A team at MSNBC was responsible for the content and his group worked with external developers. Now, I am not completely unbiased of course, but to me that sounds as if Microsoft paid for the whole site.

I’m not suggesting anything here but it makes you wonder how technology is chosen these days.

Anyway… There will be plenty of live sources to watch tomorrow’s inauguration. I kinda wish I was in Washington to witness it live but instead I’ll be watching it online on Current.tv, MSNBC.com, FOXnews.com, CNN.com, UStream.tv or any of the other big networks who are all streaming live video with Flash on a day-to-day basis. Go Flash!