Maybe I should consider working for theFWA because a while after I blogged about my colleague Wim’s new experimental portfolio, it got included in worlds most famous webgallery: theFWA.com. Congratulations Wim, it does not happen much that an individual works up his way into the ‘website of the day’. Keep it up! If you missed the experimental experience, no need to panic: http://www.wimvanhenden.be

You don’t see them very often these days ( or at least i’m missing them ) but my colleague Wim Vanhenden released his personal website this week and to be honest: it is a little bit experimental. Hmm, let me rephrase that last sentence: it is totally experimental. Take a look around at wimvanhenden.be and let this Belgian internet artist know who your favourite band is and what you are thinking to let him take you on a journey. I know Wim put a lot of effort in this website and I really like the result. It has been a long time since I came across a personal portfolio that was focussing more on art and experience than on content only.

In WebDesigner’s 13th edition I got published with an interview as a result of the Max Award we won in Milan. In the ‘Behind The Scenes’ section I’m talking about Flash and the iPhone, Boulevart and my vision on mobile in general. I’m very proud to represent Boulevart in one of the most cutting-edge multimedia magazines in the Netherlands!

[via flashmagazine.com]

It’s now confirmed that Adobe and Apple are now working together to bring Flash to the iPhone. In an interview with Bloomberg News today, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen hinted that the iPhone CPU is the main problem and that “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver”.

Until now, most industry insiders have thought that it wouldn’t be possbile to bring Flash to the iPhone. There are several good reasons for Apple to prevent Flash on the iPhone. It would break their consistent UI experience, it could pose a threat to the iTunes distribution model and the low specs of the phone itself. Steve Jobs himself said almost a year ago that the full-blown PC Flash version “performs too slow to be useful” on the iPhone, and a mobile version called Flash Lite “is not capable of being used with the Web”.

Meanwhile, Adobe have been working on a custom version of the Flash Player for the iPhone. This player has never been released to the public and todays Bloomberg story hints at the reason it’s still not released. Shantanu says “It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating”. We’d guess from this that it is indeed the slow processor in the iPhone that is the culprit. Initial speculations indicated that the iPhone had a 620Mhz CPU. Later reports adjusted that down to about 400Mhz.

[...]

Find more info at flashmagazine.com.

During yesterday’s “Town Hall meeting”, at FOTB08, a panel of Adobeans was ready to answer any questions that would come up.

One of the questions everyone asks all the time is when we will see the Flash Player running on the iPhone. Paul Betlem, Sr. Director of Engineering, answered the question by repeating what they’ve been saying for a few months now. We can notice how many people picked up on his answer and how many people see it as the confirmation of Flash on the iPhone. This is what Paul said:

Adobe is committed to bringing Flash Player to the iPhone. While the development work has begun, we can’t share more details at this point. It is important to note that we do need to work with Apple beyond what is available through the SDK, its emulation environment and the current license around it to bring the full capabilities of Flash to the iPhone. We think Flash availability on the iPhone benefits the millions of joint Apple and Adobe customers, and we want to work with Apple to bring these capabilities to the device.

source: Serge Jespers

John Gruber picked it up and shared a very interesting thought on this topic. You can read the whole article here. John basically says the following:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Apple will not publish a Flash player for the iPhone unless and until there exists some other mobile phone that (a) does run Flash, and (b) starts taking sales away from the iPhone. Which, my guess is, means never. Apple has no motivation to allow it. If Adobe really wants to get Flash on the iPhone, they should shut up about the iPhone and start talking about and coding for Android. An excellent implementation of Flash for Android would give Adobe some amount of actual leverage. Until then, Adobe’s just embarrassing themselves every time they mention it.

I think John is right, altough he does not have to talk about Android alone I think. I discussed this today with my colleague Wim Vanhenden and we both believe that if Nokia can provide a touchscreen device with the same capabilities as the n95 and a higher/nicer user experience combined with acceptable mobile browsing they can compete with the iphone by adding a flash player. If Adobe would develop a flash player for android as well, I agree with John, saying Apple could be motivated to publish a flash player on the iphone. Let’s wait and see how it turns out.

Peter Elst just posted a very interested blogpost about an article he read this week in “inside digital media”, talking about Flash and Silverlight 2.0.

“After reading the latest edition of the Dutch “inside digital media” magazine on Flash versus Silverlight I felt compelled to clear up some misconceptions. This is a very interesting topic and it is a must to provide correct information. In this article the information is not really the case.” – Peter Elst

Definately worth reading!

A while ago, Maarten Cox, a colleague of mine at Boulevart, released a cool AIR Application called CrazyCam. As a windows-user, you were never able to show off like mac users when they are using photo booth. From now on, you can make crazy funny pictures like every mac user out there. Ofcourse, mac-users can also use this application, as it has some other effects then photobooth.

CrazyCam offers 33 effects like mirror-effects, fire, water, snow, rgb, ascii and many more (which were created by Paul Neave ). Just choose an effect on the left side, do a crazy face and make a snapshot!

You can find more info on Maarten’s blog or at labs.boulevart.

I finally found the time to update my ResizeImage Class. It gives you the opportunity to resize your images proportional. The most important change is that I made it static so you can use the resize function everywhere without making instances first.

For those who don’t know, it’s an as3 class I wrote and you can use it for any type of project. If it’s a commercial one then it would be appreciated if you send me an email or give me a credit.

Go and have fun, you can download the class HERE.

If you want some more info you can check my previous post. You will find some more explanation about the code.

Thomas

Today Adobe announced the Adobe Open Screen Project, which is dedicated to ensuring a consistent rich Internet experience across a broad range of digital screens and form factors including mobile phones, consumer electronics, televisions and personal computers. This experience will be driven by the Adobe Flash Player and AIR (in the future) and is meant to ensure that designers and developers can focus on the consumer experience and know their efforts will scale across different platforms and screens. The Open Screen Project is meant to enable a consistent runtime environment for designers and developers across desktops and devices.

There are lots of companies involved in this project, all of them believing in this unified vision of the future. You can find all the members of the Open Screen Project here

What exactly are they up to there at adobe? Well to give a quick summary, these are the most importants things they are going to change:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
• Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
• Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

Go and check Ryan Stewart’s blog to get more detailed info about what these topics actually means for the community and desktop-developers. Adobe has released a video and further information for developers also, definately worth checking!

Also Mark Doherty’s post posted his impressions about what it means exactly for mobile developers!
You can read more about the Open Screen Project here as well as an FAQ.

And last but not least: let’s quote Aral Balkan:
What does that mean for us? It means Flash _everywhere_. It means you picked the right platform to develop your skills on. It means Flash will be around for a long, long time!