The Flash Platform is fueling innovation
Flash has been fueling innovation since the day it was first released. When Flash first arrived on the web it opened up a whole new world for web designers. It literally lit up the web by adding the ability to create rich and engaging experiences on the web. Flash has evolved (and continues to evolve) with every new release. Every new release adds new capabilities and features to the web.
Some people say that Flash is a dying technology but I beg to differ. Flash is just in its teens, far from dead and is still fueling innovation today. I’ve said this a few many times before but I’ll say it again: The “skip intro”-era is already far behind us and Flash is now being used as a platform for full blown applications that run in every browser and multiple devices.
But don’t just take my word for it. Check out these hot new startups and what they are doing with the Flash Platform!
UJam was founded by musicians Hans Zimmer and Pharrell Williams together with music software pioneers Peter Gorges and Axel Hensen. They wanted to build a new and easy way to make music even for people that don’t know anything about music.
Pharrell Williams: “If you have a tune in your head no longer do you have to hope and pray that you have to find a team to help to put it together. Now you can do it yourself.” Hans Zimmer: “UJam makes it possible to turn a tune that’s stuck in your head in to music.”
UJam was recently demoed at TechCrunch Disrupt and actually came in second in the Disrupt startup competition. It is truly an amazing piece of software. You basically sing or hum a tune in to your microphone and the application turns it in to music. You have to see it to believe it. At TC Disrupt, the UJAM folks pointed out that their site wouldn’t be technically feasible without Flash… I can’t wait to play around with this but it’s still in early stages and not available to the outside world. Imagine if UJam and Audiotool came together…
VideoGenie was also launched at TechCrunch Disrupt. “VideoGenie automatically creates compilation videos that allow companies to solicit customer sentiment in the most impactful way possible. Marketers can easily use VideoGenie for testimonials, reviews, suggestions, and corporate communication. VideoGenie’s disruptive technology provides marketers with a cost efficient, effective way to create, collect, manage, and distribute compelling video content without the expense, training, and software traditionally required.”
VideoGenie uses the Flash Platform and its ability to record video from the user’s webcam with just a few clicks.
Have you ever been in a situation that reminded you of something you once saw in a movie? Or just thought of a quote that you heard in a movie once but you can’t remember which movie it was? You probably go and search on YouTube or try to find it on Google so you can share it with your friends. Your chances of finding it there are pretty slim mainly because of licensing. Movieclips.com have partnerships with 6 Hollywood studios to provide clips for their site. Their Mashup engine allows you to quickly search for a specific actor, movie, quote, action and/or situation and will provide you with a list of matching movies. Once you pick your favorite one, you can trim the clip to that specific moment you had in your mind and then share it with your friends.
“Navigaya is One Ultra-Hot Content Platform”, was the headline on TechCrunch.com a few weeks ago. TechCrunch’s Roi Carthy wrote: “What single adjective best describes Navigaya? Gorgeous? Stylish? Addictive? Having spent a few weeks playing with it, I’d have to concede, all of the above. There really is just no way around it, Navigaya is one of the most mesmerizing content products I’ve seen in a while.“.
Navigaya (completely built with Flash) is all about content. It allows you to browse content from all over the web in a new and very exciting way. It’s really hard to explain so check out the video to get a better idea of what it does.
The idea behind WeTransfer is nothing new. The way they do it is. WeTransfer allows you to send big files (up to 2GB) to your colleagues and friends. You just add the file(s) and the email address of each friend you want to receive it, optionally add a message and click “Transfer”. That’s it. No need to install anything. No need to register. While the files transfer WeTransfer shows you adverts (with gorgeous images) in the background. Easy, simple, beautiful and built with Flash.
Scribblar.com is an easy to use online meeting place where multiple users can collaborate on images, use shared whiteboards, have a live audio or text chat and more. Because Scribblar is built with Flash the user does not need to install anything new. Just send your customer the link to your online meetingroom and within minutes you are revising the artwork he commissioned, engaging in a creative brainstorm, or leading an online training session.
The social web has dramatically changed the way people do business and the way people communicate with and about brands. Radian6 helps brands understand who is talking about them and what people are discussing by monitoring different social networking sources. With an easy to use and clear interface the Radian6 suite also allows brand managers to easily engage with their customers wherever they hang out on the social web. It also gives you in depth statistics and reports to easily measure your impact on social networks. Radian6 built the entire interface using the Flex framework and the AIR runtime.
Even hardware startups are relying on Flash. The litl is a very good example.
From the litl blog: “The litl webbook is an “Internet computer”, a new type of computer built on and for the web. It can go online in a conventional laptop-like mode, rendering websites with its modern browser and built-in support for Flash. Used like this, it’s ideal for traditional “lean forward” web activities like searching, reading, typing, and clicking. However, the computer can also stand upright like an easel when its screen and keyboard are flipped around its hinge. In this new mode, the litl webbook and its exposed 12-inch screen transform into a platform for “lean back” or passive web activities — watching video, enjoying photos, listening to music, and scanning headlines, for example.“. In this “lean back” mode you’re actually using full screen Flash based applications that developers can build using the litl SDK and the Flash knowledge they already have.
BoosterMedia built their entire business around building Flash based games. – VIAAS is a video monitoring system that relies on Flex and Flash. – Crystal Mapping does mind mapping in a Flash based UI. – Jilster allows multiple users to collaborate on creating a magazine. The UI uses Flash and the magazine is delivered on paper. – Lumacentral used Flex to built an online creation/ordering/management system for marketers. – ScrapHD is an online scrapbook application. – Pearltrees enables you to organize, discover and share stuff you find on the web. – Shufflr.tv is a social video browser built on top of the AIR runtime.
The list goes on and on… And I bet that while writing this post at least a few more saw the light of day. The Flash Platform is a popular choice for startups and that is probably not going to change any time soon.
Flash on!
PS: If you’re working for a cool startup that uses the Flash Platform, feel free to leave a comment or get in touch!
Kevin Lynch (Adobe’s CTO) blogs about Flash, past and future, Apple iPad, HTML5, OSP and more.
Adobe’s CTO Kevin Lynch just published a blog post with his thoughts on Flash, past and future, Apple iPad, HTML5, OSP and more.
The blog post entitled “Open Access to Content and Applications” gives you a good idea on where Adobe and the Flash Platform is going and what we are doing with our Open Screen Project partners. It also repeats that “we are ready to enable Flash in the browser on Apple’s devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen.”
Read the post on blogs.adobe.com/conversations
Kevin Lynch at NewTeeVeeLive
Earlier this week, Kevin Lynch was a guest at NewTeeVee Live. He talks about Flash on TVs, the future of the Flash Platform. He also talks about how open Adobe has become and was also asked about his stance on HTML5.
Life as an evangelist: year 2 – Time flies…
Wow… Has it really been 2 years already? That means I joined Adobe 2 years and 8 months ago. Wow… Time does fly when you’re having fun! :D A year ago, I wrote a blog post looking back at my first year as an evangelist. I thought I should make this a tradition and thus here’s year two…
While I definitely travelled less this year (mostly thanks to economy and thanks to the fact that our European team has grown quite a bit) I still managed to talk to a guesstimated 14000 people (same as last year) on 34 trips (compared to 53 trips last year). On average, a trip was 2.85 days so I spent about 97 days away from home (163 days last year). I visited 25 different cities in Europe, the US, the Middle East and Asia, which gave me a carbon footprint of about 15000 kg.
Blog visits grew 200% compared to last year with visitors coming from 197 different countries. The top 5 countries are the US, Belgium, the UK, Germany and to my surprise India in 5th place. 33.4% of all the traffic on my blog came from referring sites (thanks for the links!). My Adobe On Twitter post was the most popular post this year getting 4.8% of all the traffic this year. May 11th was the best day for my blog when my blog post about the release of the new NY Times reader was featured on Techmeme.
My “Create Flex Components with Flash CS4 Professional” video is my most popular video tutorial on Vimeo. Looking at my Vimeo account just made me realize that I should really pick this up again. So my goal for the rest of the year is to put up some new tutorial videos. Keep an eye on my blog, Adobe TV or Vimeo account…
This has been another spectacular year with plenty of highlights… but if I had to pick one, I would say that my demo in the day 2 keynote at MAX in Los Angeles was probably my biggest highlight of the year. The audience, the venue and the team behind MAX made this a truly amazing experience. One I hope to repeat many times! I also had a lot of fun building the MAX widget. It was amazing to see the numbers the widget generated and therefore a big thank you to all of you who installed it on your blogs, Facebook pages etc. Aah man… Seriously… Just picking one or two highlights isn’t enough. There’s also my trip to India, the trip to Israel, … Yes… This really is a cool job! ;-)
Oh… Speaking of cool jobs… You may have heard that my good friend and colleague Andrew Shorten is moving into a new role at Adobe. That means we need a replacement for Andrew. Those are some mighty big shoes to fill but if you feel like you could be a perfect candidate for the job, check out Andrew’s post about the job and make sure you send us your resume today.
Year 3 has just started and I can already tell you it’s going to be a very interesting year! I’m really excited about getting Flash Player 10.1 on devices, the imminent release of AIR 2.0, Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst… It’s going to be another amazing year!
5 UK Flash experts discuss the Flash Platform and Flash community
Back in February, Stefan Richter, Mike Jones, Dave Williamson, James Whittaker, Bola Roibi and Andrew Shorten met up in London to discuss the power of the Flash community and the new challenges the Flash Platform faces (as featured in .net Magazine May 2009 issue 188). The highlights of this round table discussion are also featured in this month’s Web Design TV podcast (subscribe in iTunes).
The discussion is quite lengthy but it’s definitely interesting to watch. Apologies for the squeaky floor sounds though. Chester Chipperfield was nice enough to lend us his apartment for the round table discussion. But when you start walking around on authentic floor boards, they tend to squeak a little bit. ;-)
Feel free to follow me on: 
