According to media, Adobe has released the Flash Player 10.1 (beta) for desktop computers seven months ago, also, a Flash Player beta version for Android system was released as well last month. Today, Adobe finally introduces the release of mobile edition Flash Player 10.1 and has promoted it to its global partners.

Despite the sharp criticism given by Apple CEO Steve Jobs regarding the stability, security, and resources use of Flash Player, Adobe debuts the mobile edition Flash Player 10.1 and wants to prove that it is a horrible mistake that Apple banned the Flash Player software in its mobile devices. Flash Player 10.1 is for sure to bring the complete network experience for mobile users, to support the websites that contain thousands of rich contents and applications, including games and animations, etc will also become an indispensable part of mobile experience.

Mobile edition Flash Player 10.1 is open for downloading today, therefore all the smart phones using the latest Android and Android 2.2 Froyo can enjoy the Flash Player 10.1 services. So far, the devices like Dell Streak, Google Nexus One, HTC Evo, HTC Desire, HTC Incredible, MOTOROLA DROID, MOTOROLA Milestone, Samsung Galaxy S, etc already with the perfect support to Android 2.2 and Flash Player 10.1.

Adobe said it will publish Flash Player software to other equipment co-partners as well, such as Blackberry, Palm webOS, Windows Phone 7, MeeGo, LiMo and so on. Users can download online and in the next few months, they can also buy the Flash Player 10.1 preinstalled devices like smartphones, flat plate, etc. At present, Flash Player 10.1 still has a long way to go and has to face the challenges in the next couple of years until it is accepted by more platforms other than Android 2.2. Adobe plans to expand the Flash Player 10.1 product line to more than half of the smartphones in global by 2012.

May 20th, 2010, manager of IE department Dean Hachamovitch said Microsoft IE9 browser will support VP8 video CODEC technology, the purpose of which is to improve IE9’s openness and compatibility.

WebM Project

Google has announced the debut of WebM project on Wednesday’s I/O developers technology conference. WebM is an open, royalty-free network media file format, and is supported by the commercial software giants such as Mozilla(the developer of Firefox browser), Opera(the developer of Norway browser), AMD, Nvidia , Oracle and so on.

WebM adopts VP8 codec technology, which is Matroska media technology based on the network video technology developer On2.. Early this February, Google has taken over On2 with $1.06 million dollars. On2 is well-known for video compression technology, and this technology has been widely applied in all kinds of desktop software and mobile applications. On2 customers include Adobe, Skype, Nokia, Infineon, Sun, SONY, American network television servicer Brightcove etc.

Microsoft Response

Regarding Google WebM, Hachamovitch said on Wednesday’s night in blog: “IE9 supports not only HTML5, but also H.264 video and VP8 video. However, the premise is the users must have the VP8 codec pack installed in Windows.” He stressed that there are still some specific technical problems need to be solved before IE9’s perfect support to VP8.

Hachamovitch said: “I want to make it clear that we hope to maintain IE’s security and stability, but at the same, improve its openness and compatibility. We promise to the customers that IE9 shall support all the frequently-used media formats. Meanwhile, the intellectual property rights of Windows clients, developers, and all internet users, will be protected.

Standard Competition

Fully support to networl video is one of the new functions of HTML5 internet browsing standard. But for the network video standard, Ogg Theora and H.264 are deadlocked. Microsoft, as one of the important contributors to H.264 standard, decides to continually support it in Windows operating system and IE9 browsers. Apple also stands by H.264 and said the H.264 video technology will become the alternative products of Adobe Flash.

However, Mozilla and Opera have different voices. They disapprove H.264 format. In addition, the insiders who establish the the technical specification of HTML5 also said, network video standard should not only choose specific codec.

Insiders said, WebM project may help reduce the conflict between Ogg Theora and H.264. But if WebM can not get the support from Microsoft and Apple, it is very hard to be the actual network video standard. Apple hasn’t comment on Google’s release of WebM project yet.

Highly recommended by Mozilla

Mozilla preachers Chris Blizzard wrote in blog on Wednesday: “VP8 is superior to Ogg Theora speaking of codec quality, and it can compete with H.264 speaking of picture quality. We will support WebM in Firefox, and today we released the beta Firefox 4.0, with the early support to WebM.”

Opera also launched a beta browser which supports WebM format. Opera CTO Hakon Wium Lie said: “HTML, CSS and JavaScript have never had patent, Internet should always be open.

Although the video function of HTML5 standard may be a significant threat to Adobe Flash, Google and Adobe are already in the alliance and Google has decided to integrate Flash to its Chrome browser. Because of this, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch said on Wednesday that Flash player will be integrated with VP8 function and the new product is set to be released within one year.

You may be also interested in:

Recommend Several Flash Standalone Players under Linux

How to Delet Flash SWF Cache under Firefox

According to foreign media reports, Adobe company delivered an advertisement and open letter on May, 13th, strongly accused Apple for strangling the competition. Apple previously had made it very clear that the Adobe software applications were totally banned on iPad and iPhone.

Adobe said in the advertisement: “We like Apple. What we don’t like is the person who grabs your freedom to choose. You definitely have the freedom to choose what are you going to create, how to create, and what to experience on the internet.” Adobe also bought a full-page on Washington Post today, gave all the details about this dispute between Adobe and Apple. At the end of the open letter were the signatures of co-founder Geschke Chuck and John Warnock.

In this letter, Adobe declared: “the essence of the problem lies in: who is the real controllor of Internet? We think the answer is the Internet users, rather than any of the powerful company.”

It is reported recently that Apple is developing the Flash-alternative project Gianduia, which was revealed in WWDC(Worldwide Developers Conference) last year.. Apple has said it will support HTML5, JavaScript and CSS, but not Flash.

The insiders think the Adobe open letter is a strong evidence that the divergence between Adobe and Apple is getting worse. Two weeks ago, the CEO of Apple just issued a 29-paragraph-long article to accuse Adobe Flash for “major technology defect”. It is said that Adobe has officially sued to America Anti-Monopoly Government Department and it may investigate this case accordingly. This means the contradiction between the two is intensified thoroughly.

Some useful links for your reference if you want to convert flash SWF to other popular video/audio/picture formats.

http://www.swfkits.com/swf_to_video/
http://www.swfkits.com/swf_to_avi/

According to foreign media reports, Microsoft has urged its Windows XP users to upgrade the pre-loaded Adobe Flash Player 6.0 due to multiple security flaws on Tuesday.

Microsoft has released the #979267 safety proposal to urge its users either upgrade to the latest version of Flash Player or unload the old one due to several security flaws found in the early 6.0 version.

It’s very rare that Microsoft would propose safety advice for third-party products. It does so because the Adobe Flash Player 6.0 is pre-loaded in Microsoft Windows XP and it’s necessary to remind users that Adobe had stopped supporting Flash Player 6.0 since 2006. The latest version of Flash Player is 10.0.42.34.

Microsoft’s purpose is very clear, they hope the users understand that the security flaw only occurs when the old version of flash player and old Windows are used at the same time, because the new Windows are without built-in Flash Player yet.

Microsoft said: “Adobe Flash Player 6.0 is provided at the same time with Windows XP, it contains several security flaws that may execute remote control code when browsing some specially-made webpages. Adobe has fixed those vulnerabilities in the latest Flash Player. Microsoft strongly recommends to upgrade to the latest Flash Player for those who is still using the old version of Windows XP and Adobe Flash Player 6.0.”. Nevertheless, Microsoft indicates that there is no attack found so far related to those security flaws.

This security proposal is released for Adobe Flash Player 6.0 and together with other security vulnerabilities on Tuesday. The service pack this time will affect all the Windows system, but only the Windows 2000 is catalogued to “Critical” level while other subsequent versions of Windows are put to “Low”, so the Flash issue is more important and with higher priority.

According to the foreign media reports, Firefox developer Mozilla said recently that the newly-released Firefox upgraded version with flash auto-detect mechanism has led to 10 million latest flash downloading from Adobe website in a week.

Mozilla released Firefox latest upgraded version 3.5.3 and 3.0.14 last week which perfectly fixed three critical security flaws in the previous version. In addition, in order to prevent attackers using Firefox plugin flaw to attack its users, new versions will initially detect whether the flash player that Firefox using is the latest or not.

Mitchell Baker, chairman of Mozilla, said that in the last week, about 1/3 new version users have downloaded the latest flash player from Adobe after seeing the reminding message. “User response rate is very high, usually the response rate is only 5% when they see software upgrade information.”, Mitchell said.

Mozilla security team personnel Jonathan Nightingale explains that the fact a large number of Firefox users would like to update flash player indicates the importance of network security issues. He said last week the reason why new Firefox has to detect whether the flash player it is using the latest version or not is: first, flash player is very popular; second, 80% Firefox users are still using the old version flash player according to a corresponding survey.

Adobe company also confirmed that the visitors of flash player upgrading webpage in the past week had a rapid growth. Adobe products security and privacy department director Brad Arkin appreciated the latest detecting mechanism very much by saying “For Adobe, it’s definitely a good thing for massive users to have the upgraded flash, it assures their security and we are very happy to see Mozilla sending the flash upgrading message to its users.”

P.S. You may be also interested in another blog about How to Delet Flash SWF Cache under Firefox.

Now there are many teaching videos in the form of SWF spreading on the Internet. Quite useful, but how to watch those teaching videos under Linux operating system?

In fact, these SWF format videos are compiled flash bytecode files and can’t be played by regular video players like MPlayer and VLC Media Player, which otherwise is capable of playing other flash-delivered FLV files. Here comes the topic today: the introduction of three flash SWF players under Linux OS.

1. Swfdec

The earliest open-source flash implementation scheme, is able to play the most of flash 7 format videos and contained in almost all release repositories. Both 32 and 64-bit versions are available.

Installation under Fedora 10: su-c ‘yum install swfdec-gnome’

2. Gnash

Gnash is an emerging open-source flash implementation scheme, currently only supports flash 7 format videos. It’s quite active in the recent two year’s release, there are 32 and 64-bit versions.

Installation under Fedora 10: su-c ‘yum install gnash’

3. Adobe Flash Standalone Player for Linux

Adobe Flash Standalone Player was included in the Adobe Flash Debugger and can be downloaded from Adobe’s official website. There is only 32-bit version available but with the best SWF compatibility due to the official version.

Installation under Fedora 10: download and unzip with 7-zip, double-click the generated flashplayer icon to start. If you want to create SWF play association under GNOME, right-click any SWF file, choose “properties”-“open”-“add”, find and select the unzipped flashplayer, click “ok”. Then check the radio in front to make it the default SWF player, click “close” at last to quit settings.

4. Moyea SWF to Video Converter Std/Pro

Moyea SWF to Video Converter Std/Pro is a SWF player as well as a SWF converter which can convert SWF files to all kinds of popular video formats efficiently and swiftly.

Installation: click here to download and install the trial version for free.

5. Windows Media Player

Usually Windows Media Player can’t play SWF files under the default settings, however, if we manually change some settings, theoretically it can play. To be more precise, I’m still testing it and will write another blog about it when it’s done.

Summary

After the personal test using several English grammar SWF videos, Gnash sometimes may have the asynchronization between video and audio, Swfdec performs well, so does the Adobe Flash Standalone Player and Moyea SWF to Video Converter Std/Pro.

Which among the above-mentioned standalone flash players is your favorite? Pick one and enjoy the SWF teaching videos now!

By the way, If you only have a few SWF files, those standalone flash players might be troublesome. In this case, what you need is just a web browser with flash plugin. Drag the SWF file to the address bar and that’s all it takes to enjoy your nice teaching videos.

Adobe Flash, with the great success in Internet field, is going to enter TV market soon. Many TV manufacturers and content distributors positively follow up to bring you different visual experience.

From computer to television, Adobe company aims to bring the excellent animations and videos into consumers’ sitting room.

Adobe has announced the release of its latest version of flash multimedia platform, which indicates flash technology has officially entered the digital home entertainment equipments like television, STB, blue player and other devices. The purpose of this TV-and-Electronics-Optimized flash version is to let viewers can enjoy HD videos, interactive applications and new user interface directly on television.

As part of the announcement, Adobe also revealed some cooperation partners of this technology, including Intel, Comcast, Disney, Atlantic Netflix, Records and the New York Times.

So far, Adobe flash player is mainly used in computers to play the animations and videos from Youtube and other similar websites in web browsers. In this market Adobe won a great success. According to the survey held by comScore, 80% online videos are displayed using Adobe flash technology.

Adobe has been developing a flash program for mobile phones before, so people can watch flash videos while moving. Now, Adobe turns its attention to the big screen of HD TVs in sitting rooms, this means people can watch YouTube videos directly on TV, and at the same time, watch their favorite TV programs as usual.

“There are some videos support TV-play recently,” director of Adobe Flash Commerce Department Murarka said, “but not all the video content is TV-friendly. For example, there are many devices can play YouTube videos, but not all the videos from Youtube.”

Developers can also develop Addons for TV to present web contents. Addon is a series of specially designed web applications that can be easily added to consumer electronics.

Yahoo already works with Intel for TV-Addons development. Through which you can have the access to Flickr, Yahoo News, Yahoo Weather, Yahoo Finance, USA Today, eBay, YouTube and ShowTime Networks. All MOTOROLA, Samsung and Toshiba have the plan to add Yahoo Addons into their televisions.

Murarka said that Yahoo is not really competing with Adobe. He pointed out that both Adobe and Yahoo are intented to cooperate with Intel, and it’s true that flash technology has also been adored by Yahoo.

“Yahoo supports desktop flash, and we hope Yahoo also supports flash on TV,” Murarka said, “we think flash is extremely valuable in some new frameworks”.

Murarka did not say which consumer electronics manufacturer will use the new version of flash platform, but for equipment manufacturers and developers, new platform is already available now. The flash-supported TV and Set-Top Boxes will come out soon later this year as well.

MURT(Multi User Real Time) web application is currently a very hot topic. The latest Google Wave even showed the very cool real-time gadget demo last month. These real-time web applications include ordinary web collaborative application, web game, various SNS(Social Networking Service) extended application and SNS game, etc.

There are two ways to realize the front-end for such applications: socket/flash or ajax. In oeder to achieve better real-time effect, ajax is gradually replaced by comet because ajax occupies too much sever resources. The sever realization usually depends on the realization of developers’ socket sever, but the sever usually has some performance and scalability problems, therefore, to realize the full function requires a lot of energy and money.

Hemlock is a new web development framework, focused on allowing easy development of real-time, many-to-many applications. It uses XMPP(Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) MUC chatroom as backend interactive application channel, connected to XMPP sever through flash. XMPP sever like openfire, ejabberd, etc itself supports multiple severs, therefore, even the default version can support 100,000 concurrents, it won’t have a big problem either to support millions of users if it’s being optimized a little bit.

Showcases of how Hemlock applications work.

Click here to learn more about what can you do with flash.

Adobe company issued a statement said that it will cooperate with Google and Yahoo! to optimize the flash player technology, so that the flash content can also be searched by searching engines.

According to foreign medias, in order to add the genuine flash content to searching engine results, Adobe is working with Google and Yahoo! now to improve the quality of seaching results by providing the optimized flash playing technology. Adobe flash player advanced product manager Mr. JustinEverett-Church said this project will show the flash content searching results in the form of text and links. Flash-based applications, games, even the contents of advertisements shall be found by searching engines. The flash webpage made in .swf format also can be found easily. He also said: “the flash players will be installed in Google and Yahoo’s server so that they can play real-time flash files. This means the end-users will be guaranteed with better searching results. After all, searching online flash content is always a very big challenge.”

Mr. Vanessa Fox, editor of online media EngineLand, said that this cooperation can be a positive interpretation about how Adobe reacts to searching engines, but it takes time to judge whether it is profitable to do so. He explained: “searching engines are not able to grab any online flash content before. I’m holding a conservative opinion though I am optimistic about this technology. But honestly, still not sure how many webpages can be found by searching engines exactly.” It’s true that those flash-technology-based websites can obtain higher traffic, however, this project is only able to extract text and links from flash files, animations and videos are still not available.

The cooperation between Adobe and Google, Yahoo! will be continued to improve searching technology so that the publishers, developers, and users can all benefit from it. Delightfully, both Google and Yahoo! expressed their huge support for this project.