Much is being debated about Adobe’s decision to end life for Flash mobile. Remarks have ranged from ‘didn’t Steve Jobs say so’ to ‘what the *#$$’ to ‘I feel like I’ve been let down by Adobe’ and so on. While I am sure Adobe has its own reasons, but in my opinion, it simply came down to ‘Return on Investment’. Now keep in mind, we are Adobe’s scaling partners. So our goal is also to make profit with Flash player (identical to Adobe’s), and have experienced every pain that Adobe has. In this capitalist world, goal of any business is to create ‘value’ in exchange of the ‘effort’ one puts in. In this case, it was just a matter of deciding whether the return on investment on Flash was worth the effort. Ultimately Adobe decided to follow route that would generate dollars as a business and in the process ended up killing Flash on mobile. ......continue reading

Much has been debated about Steve Job’s decision to not support Flash on iPhone.  Even though 99 % of all internet enabled PCs are Flash capable , Steve decided to choose not to go with Flash. Much has been debated about Steve’s decision and the battle between two. Many people(including myself) love the functionality that Flash offers and don’t want to miss out when they start using a smart phone. Several Android phones come equipped with Flash made by prominent OEMs such as  O2 - Samsung Galaxy. Now iPhones accounted for ~ 17% smartphone share for the final quarter of 2010. So that left more than 80% of smart phone users with access (or potential access) to Flash.  Samsung, of all companies, seems to be doing great when it comes to selling smartphones (and tablets) and, not surprisingly, there’s a legal battle going on between Apple and Samsung for ‘copying ideas’. ......continue reading

We are glad to report that we have certified Flash 10.3 on Freescale’s i.MX53 reference platform. The port runs on Android OS and uses hardware decoder for H.264. Parts of On2 and Sorenson video are also accelerated in hardware leading to a much better user experience.  Freescale’s i.MX processor is based on ARM Cortex A8. i.MX51 runs at 800 MHz whereas i.MX53 runs at 1 GHz. The i.MX53 port is built on top of the previously certified i.MX51 port and includes new security patches and some additional hardware integration. The certification is done at a resolution of 1024X768 and we feel that it may be possible to go as high as 720P resolution. (We have not run tests at this resolution yet - so no promises but a possibility This assumes that 20% increase in speed compared to i.MX51 and hardware integration will help). ......continue reading

FITC is coming to Amsterdam in 2012. This event promises to showcases work that is shaping the future of the digital interactive industry. (BTW, I think FITC stands for Flash In Tin Can but I am not sure….. On a side note Flash related conferences do have some ‘Flashy’ names like ‘Flash’ on the Beach Anyways, if you are interested in going and want to save some $$s, feel free to use discount code ‘EmbeddedFlash’ while registering. It’ll save you at least 10%. The tickets are priced low for early registrants and you can save even more if you use the code. ......continue reading

Well, I have been lazy when it comes to writing a blog of late, but here I am. Lot of things have happened since my last post and the world of multimedia continues to get as interesting as it could. Flash has been upgraded to Flash 11 and AIR 3 is now available. The greatest improvement in Flash 11, Stage 3D (previously known as Molehill), promises to revolutionize the gaming industry with stunning 3D capabilities. ......continue reading

We’ve been working closely with Freescale for a while now on certification of Flash 10.1. I am glad to inform that Flash 10.1 has been certified on MX51 platform. The certification is complete for both Android as well as Linux. Freescale’s i.MX 51 platform features a 800 MHz ARM Cortex A8 processor featuring Neon instruction set. The platform also offers a Hardware accelerator support for H.264 alongwith hardware alpha blending and color space conversation support. The port is available to customers via Freescale immediately. ......continue reading

Adobe has announced that Flash 10.3 is now available. According to Adobe, “Flash Player 10.3 improves stability, enhances security and user privacy protection, and provides new desktop video and audio capabilities for enterprises and developers”. Not all the features are available on 10.3 mobile though- in fact the key feature that allows application developers access to analytics data is not available on mobile. This is not surprising given the fact that the Omniture engine is for desktop environment and will not be available until it is ported to Android or some other mobile platform. ......continue reading

Google has recently announced that they are dropping support for H.264 in Chrome browser. What this means that the developers wanting to use H.264 video in their HTML5 content will have to encode it using WebM or Theora video codecs. WebM is based on the On2 technology’s VP8  codec that Google acquired last year. ......continue reading

Everyone seems to be excited about 10.2. If you’ve seen demonstration of the stagevideo features from Adobe web site, then, yes, there’s a reason to be exited. Flash 10.2 is trying to solve a basic problem that differentiates Flash from other media player. Flash 10.2 will essentially allow users to integrate graphics with hardware accelerated video. In the past, Flash video has been all software based. This has not been an issue because most of the previous generation technology did not allow full screen technology and the usage of Flash to view full screen was limited. ......continue reading

Here are some tidbits from CES: ......continue reading

I was at CES last week and saw many interesting gadgets. I’ll write more on that as I get time but something I thought was a must mention was MIPS based smartphone running Android. MIPS is generally associated with home entertainment and ARM with smartphones. But it seems that everyone is trying to go after the other’s markets these days - if ARM is going after Home Entertainment so why not MIPS? At the MIPS demo suite, I saw demo of a phone running Android 2.1 on MIPS 34Kc class processor. The CPU was manufactured by a Chinese SoC and the phone incidently was also being sold in Chinese market as a low end smartphone. What made a it interesting was that the CPU ran at 400 MHz and manufactured using 0.13 micron technology. The phone ran Android 2.1 and one would have expected that a 400 MHz phone running Android would give mediocre performance. ......continue reading

AIR for TV 2.5 is now available. AIR for TV is basically the next version of FLDH (Flash Lite for Digital Home or Stagecraft). FLDH sported hardware acceleration friendly API interface and AIR for TV carries that forward. Actionscript extensions are also available with AIR for TV. AIR for TV is derived from Flash 10 and supports pretty much all the Flash 10 features. AIR is optimized to run on CE devices and supports hardware accelerated HD video. Some other features that are CE device friendly are: ......continue reading

So I finally settled on a phone that I can keep for some time…. T Mobile Mytouch 4G. It comes with Android 2.2 and Flash 10.1. Having inside access to Flash, I was a bit worried at first as to how Flash would perform and if  it would crash at sites where I’d expect it to crash and if H.264 decoded video would be flawless… but WOW! I am impressed with the performance and overall experience of Flash 10.1 on Mytouch. ......continue reading

FOr those of you living in New England area, RIA Unleashed may be of interest to you. RIA Unleashed is the premier event for Adobe Flash, Flex, AIR, and ColdFusion developers in the New England area. This year the event has expanded to two days, November 11th and 12th. Day one is devoted to  hands-on training in areas such as Flex, Flash, AIR, AIR for Android, and ColdFusion. Day 2 is the conference day, featuring 4 tracks and over 20 sessions on Adobe technologies and development. ......continue reading

Recently I had a privilege to be on the panel at Renesas Devcon 2010. Renesas, for those of you don’t know, is one of the top chip companies and has a large portfolio of microcontrollers.  I was one of the panelists on ‘Meet the Experts’ session that focused on multimedia technologies. The session was titled “Multimedia Issues in Embedded Systems Design”. The audience was fairly interactive during the session and the discussion centered around on Android, Flash, Video, Audio, Hardware decoders and in general challenges in designing successful products. Some of the key giveaways I noted from the session are as follows. ......continue reading