Flash Newz

Flash Now Open Source!

Brajeshwar Oinam — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:27:52 +0000

Today, Adobe announced the Open Screen Project and with it came the ultimate good news — the SWF and FLV/F4V formats are now totally open source. Adobe has dropped the licensing restrictions on the formats. So, not only can you create tools that writes SWFs (this was already open) but now you can create tools that plays the formats back (you no longer need to just rely on the Flash Player).

The Open Screen Project initiative by Adobe is supported by a group of industry leaders, including ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless.

Well, one of the missing name in the list above is that of Apple, which feels that Flash is not good enough for the iPhone. It may be remembered that CEO Steve Jobs has publicly criticized Flash for being too slow.

The project is dedicated to driving rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. Also supporting the Open Screen Project are leading content providers, including BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC Universal, who want to reliably deliver rich Web and video experiences live and on-demand across a variety of devices.

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Unworthy of the Flash Goddess Crown

Mark Rivera — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:37:06 +0000

So back in January this year, Flashnewz reported the commencement of the 2008 Flash Goddess Award. Flashgoddess.com, a site promoting the creativity of female flash designers everywhere was set to grant a mortal woman a title that of a goddess! Alas, the deity was spurned by her subjects and due to so few applicants to the contest, a FlashGoddess was not dubbed her title nor granted her magnificent powers. The winner was to receive a number of gifts including a copy of Flair, a Flash presentation software package, $500 worth of development files, as well as tickets, accolades and member profile status to the 2008 FITC Design and Technology Awards.

The FITC is a Canadian-based organization with the purpose of focusing on new media technology development. The FITC Toronto & Design Festival is a conference that showcases new interactive design techniques and development tools with exhibits, workshops, award ceremonies and social party mixers. Unfortunately no one was showered with this multitude of goodies, but some women that did participate received some tickets to the event that were originally designed as runner-up prizes.

The recipients of these tickets went to the following:

Kate Bond www.pushingink.com
Shauna Ehninger www.thedreadedgrove.com
Jennifer Kossack www.jennicartoon.com
Elysha Poirier www.elyshapoirier.com
Michelle Rueda ruedaminute.com

Even though there will be no reigning FlashGoddess this year, a hearty congratulations goes out to the featured flash designers for their excellent work and admissions to the design festival.

Stream from Virtual Directories with FLVPlayback Component

Stefan Richter — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:57:52 +0000

Here comes a little gotcha that could potentially have you pulling your hair out for a fair few hours, and some more once you realise how simple the ‘fix’ is.
If you are streaming files from FMS (be it version 2 or 3) then you may have made use of its Virtual Directory feature. This allows you to use a key (basically a named mapping) to point FMS at different storage locations for video files.

For example you could configure a key name of ‘myvideos’ and map this to a location of C:\myfiles\videostorage. The tag in vhost.xml would look like this:

myvideos;C:\myfiles\videostorage

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How About This for Some Fantastic Looking Video?

Stefan Richter — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:30:35 +0000

Fabio ‘Encoding Wizard’ Sonnati has outdone himself once again and published an HD resolution video clip on his site. What’s stunning about this example is the low bitrate of only 500kbit.sec, while maintaining an amazing quality.

Double click the video to go full screen. Nice job Fabio!

Flvmagazine.com Caught Stealing Site Content

Stefan Richter — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:11:11 +0000

It’s amazing how unscrupulous (and naive) some folks are these days. What’s the matter with Flvmagazine.com (no need to go there by the way, the site is rubbish) publishing content that’s blatantly scraped off other websites? And not only that, but after stealing the content they don’t even give credit to the original author.
Simon just spotted one of his tutorials on Flvmagazine’s website. I had a little dig around - and now I wonder if Lee Brimelow knows that some of his content is also being pirated. Who else?

Flvmagazine (by Flvhosting.com) - the company which advertised on this site once and never paid their bill - should get a grip.

What’s New In ActionScript 3.0

Brajeshwar Oinam — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:58:39 +0000

Here is a recent podcast from Peter Elst on “What’s new in ActionScript 3.0.”

Peter Elst is a certified Flash instructor, Adobe Community Expert, and User Group Manager for the MMUG Belgium. Peter explains what ActionScript 3.0 is capable of and how you can take advantage of it.

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Flash On The iPhone - Yes Or No

Brajeshwar Oinam — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:58:39 +0000

Imagine: The Web without Flash?

Apple’s iPhone, in recent times, has been the must have uber cool device/phone for those who are style-aware, techno-savvy, geek-cultured, business-professionals and Apple fanboys. It is pehaps one of the most marvellous innovative evolution from Apple, fantastically marketed down the tech-piped throats of the internet-aware civilization.

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Badmash Flash on US Prime Minister Candidacy

Brajeshwar Oinam — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:18:37 +0000

Badmash is bored. Don’t get us wrong. We love us some Bollywood. We couldn’t help but getting addicted to MTV Roadies. We even admit to curling up with an episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati every once in a while.

Keyur Patel, of Velocity Interactive Group, likes giving birth to new companies. His latest kid is a Badmash, a newly formed pune-based (India) Studio. Sandeep Sood of DoubtSourcing, who thinks brown people are funny, is the head writer at Badmash.

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Adobe Publishes Flash Media Server 3 White Paper

Stefan Richter — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:16:23 +0000

You can now download a comprehensive (over 50 pages!) long white paper from the Flash Media Server 3 product page (click the White paper link on the right or simply click here).

I’ve only read about half of the document so far and while it contains a good dose of marketing material it is also a great overview of what FMS3 is and what it can deliver in terms of features and performance.

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No Flash On The iPhone

Robert Scoble — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:48:26 +0000

On a week when Microsoft landed a big deal to put Silverlight on Nokia phones, Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, tells Adobe that there won’t be Flash on the iPhone.

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