One of the big issues with Flash is that it introduces all sorts of security vulnerabilities, especially if you don’t have the latest security patches and updates. Google has chosen to embrace Flash both in its Chrome browser and Android OS (as opposed to that other company which won’t let Flash anywhere near its iPhones and iPads). But it wants to minimize the security risks posed by Flash. Today, it is releasing a new version of the Chrome browser for Windows in its beta channel which sandboxes Flash and other extensions. (New versions of chrome are released simultaneously in three channels: developer, beta, and stable). Sandboxing will come to the Mac and Linux versions soon.
Google previewed these changes during its big Chrome event about a week ago, and it’s been talking about sandboxing Flash at least since March. → Read More
Aviary is very good at what they do. That is, offering relatively powerful tools for amateur artists to edit content online. But all of those tools are Flash-based. And some of Aviary’s partners didn’t like that too much, feeling they were too cumbersome. And some users were interested in the tools, but also wanted something more lightweight. So Aviary went to work, and came up with a new editor built entirely with HTML5.
The project, which they codenamed “Feather”, is an HTML5 photo editor that resides on both Aviary’s site, and can be easily integrated with any third party site. The tool, which appears as a small square widget overlay, allows people to quickly edit photos without Flash. And it gives third-party sites an option for a light tool that their users can use right on the site. → Read More
And it really doesn’t matter if I’m wrong I’m right where I belong, sings Paul McCartney on his latest album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Facebook Band, which sits high on the iTunes charts. Boy, is he not kidding. He’s taking the time for a number of things that weren’t important yesterday. So should we.
On the surface it seems like business as usual, with the heads of big Internet companies sitting down with John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly at this week’s Web 2.0 Summit. The Android tablets are starting to drop now; they’re half the size, half the weight, and amazingly the same price. What? Here’s some guy with a Comcast XFINITY iPad app, which lets me control my DVR at home but doesn’t let me view any of the network content that is choking the hard drive nor the on-demand versions that would let me not record them in the first place. What?
Much is made of data portability but how it ain’t gonna happen because it wouldn’t be good business. Mark Zuckerberg was personable and engaging and all that good stuff, but why on Earth would he want to fix something that is so not broken? Why would Evan Williams want to give away Track for free when he can release a new iPhone app with Track push notification tied directly to our credit cards? What? → Read More
Today during the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen sat down with John Battelle to talk a bit about his company. The first thing they talked about was Apple. And despite Battelle saying he wouldn’t focus on it, it kept coming back up. But it led to Narayen revealing on interesting stat.
“The amount of Flash video, despite what you might read in the press, is going through the roof,” Narayen said. He then said that Flash 10.1, the latest version, has exceeded every other Flash player in history in terms of adoption. → Read More
Today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen sat down for talk with host John Battelle. With his first question, Battelle didn’t beat around the bush: Apple.
Narayen noted that it’s appropriate that the theme of his conference is “points of control” because that’s what this standoff between Apple and Adobe is all about. “There’s a war happening for developers,” Narayen said. → Read More
Apple keeps giving Adobe the brush-off—what with the new MacBook Airs shipping without Flash and Apple’s prohibition (recently rescinded) on porting Flash apps to the iPhone. Without Apple, industry observers are asking “Where does Adobe go from here?” Apparently, right into the arms of Android.
On Monday, Adobe will be releasing AIR 2.5 at its Adobe MAX developer conference. The latest version of AIR, which up until now has been a platform for creating desktop apps, will extend the runtime to smartphones, tablets, and TVs running the Android operating system (as well as the Blackberry Tablet OS). For the most part, that means Android phones, Android tablets, and Android-powered Google TVs. Just last week, Adobe Connect Mobile became available for Android, and Adobe Reader X extended the ability to read PDFs to Android mobile phones, Windows Phone 7, and Blackberry tablets. SInce becoming available earlier this year, Flash 10.1 for Android has been downloaded 2 million times, and will be pre-installed in future Android phones. → Read More
Adobe released the latest version of Flash for the Mac recently, bringing it up to speed with the Windows version, which has built in hardware accelerated video decoding. The version you want is 10.1.82.76, which you can dowload directly from Adobe. [Via LifeHacker & ByteArray] → Read More
Last March, Adobe and Google jointly announced that Flash Player would soon come built in to the latter’s Chrome browser, eliminating the need for users to download, install and update it separately.
On Thursday evening, Google released Chrome 5.0.375.86 to the Stable channel on Linux, Mac, and Windows, with a fix for a number of security issues. More importantly, the integrated Flash Player has now been enabled by default. → Read More
Sure it looks horrible and the video is awful, but believe us when we tell you that the same guys who created the Spirit jailbreak have ported Flash to the iPhone. The video, apparently taken through the pinhole camera truck the Bloodhound Gang built back in the 1980s to see where they were being taken after a kidnapping, shows a Strongbad clip. This is obviously a proof of concept in its purest sense – it’s basically a bit of Flash ported to the iPod Touch using some unknown method – but it proves that it’s possible. You can keep your eye on the project by following Comex on Twitter. → Read More
Adobe has fixed that critical flaw that afflicted so many versions of Flash. So if you’re interested in not being on the wrong end of a malicious attack you would do well to upgrade to the latest version of Flash, version 10.1. → Read More
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced that it has formed the Tablet Task Force, a group comprised of publishing and interactive industry executives, in order to “help create an infrastructure that would support a variety of rich new advertising opportunities for the emerging technologies of tablets and e-readers”.
In reality, it’s all about the iPad, as evidenced by the focus on Apple’s device in this industry report on ‘tabvertising’ (PDF).
Also noteworthy: the IAB actively tries to kill the “myth” that lack of Flash support on the iPad is going to be a problem for advertisers, saying it “incredibly intensive on any computer to run, burning through batteries faster”. → Read More
Adobe has warned users that a critical flaw exists in its Flash, Adobe Reader, and Adobe Acrobat software, and it affects every single platform—Mac, Windows, Linux, Solaris, you name it. Should a “hacker” exploit the flaw, he or she could take control of your entire system. Not to defer to Apple‘s wisdom, but do you really want such a flaky piece of software running on your iPhone or iPad? → Read More
As everyone on the Web knows by now, Steve Jobs does not think too highly of Flash and therefore you cannot watch Flash videos on the the iPad (or the iPhone). Apple’s position has stirred a lot of debate about how much video on the Web is iPad-friendly. It turns out that about two thirds of new videos are currently being encoded in the H.264 format, which is playable on the iPad, but media sites still need to either package that video in an app or in an HTML5 video player viewable in the iPad’s browser.
Streaming Media decided to shed more light on the issue by surveying 1,147 online media professionals about their iPad and HTML5 video plans in a report available here. According to the survey, 49 percent plan to support HTML5 video on their media sites by the end of next year, and 36 percent plan to support video on the iPad either through dedicated apps or an iPad compatible Website. → Read More
Brian at PocketNow posted a browser comparison video showing the iPhone, the Nexus One, and the HTC HD2 all viewing the same websites. He installed Froyo on the Nexus One and downloaded the Flash beta which allows him to run almost all Flash content. It’s really long.While I do enjoy a long video of a man playing with Android phones, 11 minutes worth of a man playing with phones (found after the jump) might be a bit tiring. However, the money shot comes at about 1:40 where you see some Flash games playing in the wild. I think the most interesting part of that part of the video is how close Flash games running on a good processer are to standard, natively written games. So fine, you say, things look great. Why not run Flash? → Read More
Adobe, no one seems to want to say this to you, but I will. Stop it, you’re embarrassing yourself.
You’ve just spent God-knows how much money on an ad buy that blankets much of the technology press (including this site). It’s a strange passive-aggressive message that just makes Jobs’ aggressive-aggressive post from a few weeks ago seem even more forceful. And it’s transparent. But worst of all, it won’t work. You must know this.
On the face of it, the ad is an attempt to convince people that you’re the good guys in this fight. “We Love Apple” — the problem is, you don’t love Apple. Why on Earth would you? They’re completely screwing you right now. Everyone knows that. You’d have to be crazy to love Apple right now. → Read More
VP Eugene Wei might have overstepped recently when he posted to the Hulu company blog that they are looking at HTML 5, but don’t expect it to meet their needs any time soon. This is disappointing to iPad users since the current Hulu player won’t work for them. → Read More
In the court of public opinion, I doubt Adobe has much to worry about. They make products that are synonymous with image editing – after all nobody ever “MS Paints” Emma Watson’s head onto a nude body, they Photoshop it – and for the vast majority of users Flash or no Flash on a mobile device is immaterial. However, companies must fight and fight they must. Adobe’s latest salvo? A reminder to the world that they love openness and Apple through a new ad campaign and essays by Adobe founders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock. Click here or the thumbnail below to see the ad. → Read More
Adobe’s much-beleaguered Flash is about to take another hit and online documents are finally going to join the Web on a more equal footing. Today, most documents (PDFs, Word docs, Powerpoint slides) can mostly be viewed only as boxed off curiosities in a Flash player, not as full Web pages. Tomorrow, online document sharing site Scribd will start to ditch Flash across its tens of millions of uploaded documents and convert them all to native HTML5 Web pages. Not only will these documents look great on the iPad’s no-Flash browser (see screenshots), but it will bring the richness of fonts and graphics from documents to native Web pages.
Scribd co-founder and chief technology officer Jared Friedman tells me: “We are scrapping three years of Flash development and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramatically better reading experience than Flash. Now any document can become a Web page.” → Read More
If you need an official XBox 360 USB Flash Drive (and we all do), why not go down to the SanDisk store and pick up an 8 or 16GB flash drive for $34.99 and $69.99 respectively.
N.B. – You can basically use any flash drive with your XBox and, as nice as SanDisk is, this stuff is a bit pricey. → Read More
A sharp eyed blogger at the Web 2.0 Expo in SF spotted something rather interesting today at the Adobe booth. Apparently, there is a Google Tablet out there somewhere, and it’s running Android (duh). Not only that, but it seems that Flash runs pretty much seamlessly on prototype. Here we go again. → Read More
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