According to foreign media reports, the rumors about BlackBerry tablet PC ’s release has lasted for several months. Ashok Kumar, an analyst from Rodman & Renshaw, has released a statement last Friday regarding this issue, which accurately revealed the news that may make the rumors come true.

From Boy Genius Report released in May, it is guessable that BlackBerry tablet PC screen size might be 8.9 inches, only the bluetooth or WiFi connection available, has to mate with BlackBerry phones. When it comes to June report from Wall Street Journal, it is estimated that the equipment will come with “a slide-out keyboard, which can operate BlackBerry new system on it, and with general search column.”

Kumar said in the statement, actually the size of BlackBerry tablet PC is 7 inches, with 1GHz Marvell processor, two cameras for video conference. Insiders have confirmed the accuracy of the news, meanwhile, they also said BlackBerry tablet will support Flash, and the hardware-based Flash accelerator is also available.

Adobe CEO, Mr. Shantanu Narayen previously said that Flash 10.1 will land BlackBerry in the late 2010. Although the impact of flash-supported BlackBerry tablet is still unknown in the market, it is definitely an ideal equipment for mobile enterprise users.

Anyhow, whether the BlackBerry tablet will be released in the upcoming Dec is still a mystery.

PS: for more ways to make flash playable on devices which radically do not support flash, please turn to this useful tool for help.

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.

Flash is a very common format used to deliver animations over Internet. Flash brings us a lot fun but at the same time, flash viewers have to concern the security issues as well. The first flash file virus WF/LFM.926 appeared in early 2002 but was fortunately refused by patch tools emergently released from Macromedia company. However, just after two years in November, 26th, 2004, another new virus DJ2005 (Win32.Troj.QQMydj2005) which can be downloaded automatically with the flash file was found. When you are browsing the exquisite flash files, be extremely careful if another website is opened simultaneously or an irrelevant program is downloaded automatically, because that might be the virus! It can modify explorer. exe process and registry, besides, it can also send messages through QQ to cajole other users.

Strategies: first, scan DJ2005 trojans through free online virus check http://scan.kingsoft.com/; second, make sure your virus database is up to date to prevent any new virus; third, make sure your flash player, flash converter or other flash relevant programs are clean and safe, 100% virus free.

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 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.