Flash

Feb 5 2009   6:57AM GMT

Why I am Interested in Flash on Mobile Devices Like iPhone or BlackBerry

Posted by: William Peterson
iPhone, BlackBerry, Flash, Web, Mobile

My previous posts about Adobe Flash support on Apple iPhone:
When Apple’s iPhone Becomes Rich: The Road to Flash or Silverlight on iPhone
Adobe Flash on iPhone/iPod Touch, Another Advancement for Mobile Business

Maybe it’s somewhat off-topic to discuss this old problem at the 3rd time, as Flash is just an old-fashioned tool for Web development. However, most multimedia animations in current Web sites are built on Flash technology, so what I’m talking about is Web enhancement on mobile devices.

Nowadays those smartphones such as iPhone or BlackBerry provide us the better Web-based usabilities. If Java and Flash are perfectly supported on those devices, the mobile business could be boosted as an alternative to our desktops over Internet.

Days ago, in an interview with Bloomberg at the Davos, Adobe chief Shantanu Narayen mentioned this issue.

“It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” he says. “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.”

Since Flash Lite is too feature-limited, and standard Flash is kind of crash-maker, the balanced solution is not easy to implement. As an end user, I just want to surf the Internet on mobile as normal as I can do on any computer.

William Peterson

Nov 19 2008   3:52AM GMT

When Apple’s iPhone Becomes Rich: The Road to Flash or Silverlight on iPhone

Posted by: William Peterson
iPhone, Mobile, IT professional, RIA, Rich Media, Technology, Silverlight, Flash, Review, Business

Yesterday I read Brian Chen’s “Why Apple Won’t Allow Adobe Flash on iPhone“, and found that the “Flash on iPhone” topic is really everyone’s talking-about in the town. And most users would be disappointed with clause 3.3.2 of the iPhone SDK agreement.

“An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise … No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).”

I guess everyone is thinking, it’s not a jeopardous thing to allow Flash on iPhone platform, and Apple might be too arrogant. However, we have to wait Apple’s agreement - it would be in 9 months I think. Besides, we don’t refuse any tricks, such as the belgian interactive designer Thomas Joos made his tricks to port Flash Lite to the iPhone (http://vilebody.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/porting-flash-lite-to-the-iphone-btween/),

Other Riches: Can Microsoft Silverlight Catch It At First?

Jobs says Flash just doesn’t cut the mustard and won’t show up on the iPhone. Does that mean we can expect Silverlight running on the iPhone first? The 2.0 version of Silverlight features enhanced video support, and initial mobile support for Nokia S60 or Windows Mobile (http://silverlight.net/learn/mobile.aspx). According to Scott Guthrie, VP of Microsoft’s .Net developer division, the company has been working on Silverlight for the iPhone. But, like with Flash, Apple is reluctant to allow third-party Web plug-ins on its handset. If I’m Microsoft, I’ll try my best to persuade Apple, to capture the leading role in the mobile rich market.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Nov 2 2008   10:14AM GMT

Over Microsoft Silverlight 2, Adobe Flash Player 10 Goes Upper

Posted by: William Peterson
Rich Media, Technology, Adobe, Silverlight, Microsoft, Flash, Flash Player

Just a few days later the clickjacking issue of Flash Player 9, Adobe quietly attracts the mass with that fresh flagship product Flash Player 10, with new 3-D technologies, and better rich media engine inside. So what Microsoft Silverlight should do on this?

Frankly, I appreciate the great development of Microsoft Silverlight, which already has the most right technologies for Web applications. Here the problem is, why should we give up Flash technologies for Silverlight? I talked about kinda this topic for many times, and i thought that the turning point for Silverlight could be an another advantage for more Web developers. If our developers get that real value, it’s no doubt for the coming boom.

By the way, Adobe Flex is another good example, I think.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Oct 1 2008   10:29AM GMT

Adobe Flash on iPhone/iPod Touch, Another Advancement for Mobile Business

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, iPhone, Apple, Mobile, RIA, Rich Media, Web 2.0, Technology, Learning, Adobe, Flash, Review, Business, Corporate, Online Apps, Flash Video, Solutions, iPod Touch

Since Adobe Flash Lite in Windows Mobile platform smartphone is greatly common, and a lot of people benefit from mobile Flash applications with interactive rich media such as Mobile Learning, why the popular Apple iPhone still can’t support kinda Flash plugin for Safari or standalone Flash container for the hottest Flash streaming such as YouTube?

Yesterday Adobe at Flash on the Beach 08 Conference (FOTB) said the company is actively developing a port of its Flash animation plugin for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but Apple’s mobile operation system is a “closed platform” and so is out of Adobe’s control. Adobe indicated that it will not use Flash Lite but a better approach to faster iPhone processor and graphics chip.

Apple definitely will approve the great deal I think. And finally we get what we expect of familiar Flash-based interactive applications on mobile devices as exact two-win. I promise, the enhancement of Flash will extended iPhone as the mobile business center. Certainly Adobe Flash for iPhone/iPod Touch will optimize the experiences on Web.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Sep 14 2008   11:26AM GMT

Look upon the Never Rivalry: Pushing Silverlight to Flash Presentation

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, YouTube, IT professional, RIA, Rich Media, Enterprise, Web 2.0, Technology, Learning, Adobe, Silverlight, Microsoft, Flash, Review, Business, community, Corporate, Online Apps, Flash Video, Webcam, Web Presentation, Business presentations

The NBC’s Olympic Games in Silverlight boomed Microsoft’s rich media technologies a lot, but it still stands outside the stage where Adobe Flash dances. Microsoft is not the god, neither is Adobe. Actually Silverlight did well in many specifications as newly developed kit for the Web, while Flash seemed old and out of some emerging developments. To fight the mainstream, let’s look around what Silverlight.

In the developer Niraj Swaminarayan’s Silverligh vs. Flash - An Analysis Report, we can see that some parts are not that crucial for most Web developers. So I take my hands to the opinion that, the so-called rivalry is really not that important like lots of observers said. YouTube can be a Silverlight based video sharing community as well as Flash offers.

I’m concerning about the impact on my favorite Webcasting industry where the Silverlight platform could not step in currently. If Silverlight lives better and better as expected, what’s the critical issues we’ll face when replacing with Silverlight? The IT infrastractures for a business do not require the value of emerging technologies. That’s why Windows Vista could not become the mainstream with its 2 years’ experiences. Certainly it’s not a bad idea to take Silverlight presentation in the future.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Sep 9 2008   7:06AM GMT

Build Web Presentations with Presenter’s Video

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, IT professional, Rich Media, PowerPoint, Flash, Review, Business, Webcam, Solutions, Web Presentation, Business presentations

Are you suffering the high cost and continual repetition of live presentations?
“As a president, I always join many meetings and trade shows to present our products or corporation. There is no problem with the live presentation. But I’m stuck when I want to sharing the meeting with others after it. Because I need present the same presentation again and again even spend additional high costs on driving or flying. The boring continual repetition makes me crazy. Is there any way to take my live presentation to the web? – Mr. Cooper”

PowerPoint is still the most popular tool for presentations now. It could integrate images, movies, narrations, animations to make the presentation animated and interactive. But the PowerPoint file is big and hard to share on the web, hard to integrate with the presenter’s video and narration to live up the presentation.

How to distribute the live presentations to web to reduce the cost?
As everybody knows that, web presentation is a big cost and time saving solution. If we could run the presentation with the presenter’s video and narration online, it will be perfect. The difficulty of the web presentation is hard to integrate the presenter’s video and narration along with the PowerPoint presentation content. Is there any way to fix this problem?

A brand new service gives you an easy-to-use way to integrate the presenter’s video with PowerPoint slideshows, sharing the results online. This simple tool makes it a piece of cake to run the presenter’s video content side-by-side with PowerPoint presentations. So the audience could get the presentation running alongside with presenter’s video and narration in action, likes that the presenter stands by them. This really has the power to bring online presentations to life.

There are many tools such as Wondershare PPT2Flash Professional and services like Omnisio, Zentation to integrate the video along with the PowerPoint slideshows. Here is the comparability of the two ways.

PPT2Flash Professional converts the PowerPoint presentations to Flash with presenter’s video and narration in one click. It works as a PowerPoint add-in. Presenter could easily distribute the Flash presentations to their website or training center for sharing. The Flash format is safer and smaller for web distribution.

Omnisio and Zentation are simple online applications for the synchronization and sharing of the Slideshare-hosted PowerPoint decks and Google Video-hosted content. You could upload your video to Youtube and then upload the PowerPoint presentation to Slideshare, use Omnisio and Zentation to synchronization them together. They will generate one webpage for you. You could share the content with others on this webpage.

In a nutshell, for inner continual presentations, PPT2Flash Professional seems a better solution; for external one time presentation, Omnisio and Zentation are better solutions.

 

 

By William Peterson, Partnered with Sabrina F.

Aug 27 2008   1:23PM GMT

YouTube’d Everything, That’s Our Web 2.0 World, Right?

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, YouTube, IT professional, Rich Media, Web 2.0, Technology, PowerPoint, Flash, Review, Online Apps, Webcam, Web Presentation, Slidecast, SlideShare, Scribd, Business presentations

We know, YouTube has been an icon of Web 2.0 community for long time, and making everything YouTube is what we’re doing currently. Actually, we cannot put anything but video clips on YouTube. But we can visit his brothers and sisters. SlideShare and Scribd are the well-known ones among them.

SlideShare - YouTube of Presentations
It’s the most mature community to share our PowerPoint slides from one-time use to slidecasts. As I ever criticized Web presentations, SlideShare community is really popular upon its well-done construction and promotion. Currently it is the standard de facto and the icon as Web presentation in our Web 2.0 world.

Scribd - YouTube of Documents
I introduced it before when it was just launched: Meet Scribd’s iPaper: Flash-based Viewer Platform Built for All Web Documents - PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and More . Certainly we cannot refuse such a great offer to store and share your various documents, from text and image files to PDF and Microsoft Office 2007 files. That’s almost everything in our Web 2.0 world.

We shouldn’t ignore the other parts of Web 2.0, such as social bookmarks; however, YouTube has led us start Web 2.0 in a rich format, which is the everything in our Web world.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Aug 5 2008   3:07AM GMT

New Presentation Technology in Review: Thank MVP Geetesh on FlashPPT

Posted by: William Peterson
Development, IT professional, Office, Technology, PowerPoint, Learning, Microsoft, Flash, Review, Business, PowerPoint 2007, Tips, Live, Business presentations

In early twenty-first century, I devoted myself into the presentation innovations, shaking up a business practice were settled to the future. Quite a few of my thoughts may come out as I also like to dig more on Microsoft PowerPoint. Yet Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals) in PowerPoint have their own opinions on the experienced presentation skills. I really appreciate their works in practice. Here I recommend MVP Geetesh’s latest professional reviewing and ranking for the Flash/PowerPoint mixed tools on his FlashPPT site. You’ll find the technical details about the PowerPoint to Flash presentation (http://www.flashppt.com/blog/).

Also, you may like the presentation guru Geetesh Bajaj’s another presentation site Indezine (http://www.indezine.com/) and his PowerPoint Blog (http://www.indezine.com/blog/), which contain more nice PowerPoint templates and a lot of presentation resources for everyone.

One thing I need to claim, I’m not Microsoft MVPs only the IT presentation concerned businessman. So I just think that improving presentation skills is important for modern guys with new presentation technologies to make the business world easier. We don’t need to be the PowerPoint MVP, but we appreciate all efforts of the MVPs to help us become the MVP in our own field with better presentation skills. Thank all MVPs.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Jul 20 2008   8:46AM GMT

Make Shows in Trends: Business Presentations in YouTube Way

Posted by: William Peterson
YouTube, IT professional, Enterprise, Technology, PowerPoint, Microsoft, Flash, Review, Business, Corporate, Flash Video, Business presentations

Let us think of more useful ways to wake up the popularity to make and judge the old business presentations. Nobody can ignore the incredible power from the best-ever online community YouTube, even Obama wants his final presidential victory. Not in your business style for YouTube? Just remember, every firm is a potential IT-based organization in this Internet era.

It’s not any “YouTube+PowerPoint” ways like SlideShare, which can not beat up any points with the real YouTube community. “Hi buddy, you cannot upload your presentations to YouTube, whatever they’re PowerPoint files or Flash animations!” This verdict is like saying that all presentations must be in PowerPoint or Flash formats. Actually, video presentations have been favored by millions of peoples before the PowerPoint and Flash were born. Just put all your old presentations to the front stage. Some tools might be practical this time. TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio (you must know the great one tool) can completely recording and publishing PowerPoint presentations, or some handy manual enables you to create YouTube contents with nothing other than PowerPoint and Windows Movie Maker. Besides, any trends-hunter has made the exact kit for this requirement: PPT2YouTube.

You may say “it’s totally not business way”, but it would never be bad to do so whatever the people in YouTube watch and comment your presentations. Business should not waste such great online resources to make up the gap or create more new opportunities.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Jul 13 2008   4:56AM GMT

Flash, Silverlight Go Searchable - A Little Thinking of Search Engine Optimized Rich Media

Posted by: William Peterson
Development, Web, Google, CIO, IT professional, RIA, AJAX, Technology, Learning, Adobe, Silverlight, Flash, Review, Business, Online Apps, Solutions, Google Search, Business presentations

No needs to mention that the proudly announcement of Adobe’s that “Rich Media Search on the Web” on July; as we guess, Microsoft also teams its Silverlight technology up with the rich media content searchable trend. It’s really long long waiting to make this available after years of Flash technology booming. Like Neil Armstrong’s first words on the moon, “that’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind”.

Coming with Google’s “Flash indexing algorithm“, we know the SEOs (Search Engine Optimization) can not live standalone without the requirements from the market. The little thinking from me on search engine optimized rich media: business presentations over the Web now essentially catch up with the help of SEOed.

There’s much to admire about Adobe’s web technology initiatives over the past year or so, such as recent Adobe AIR, Acrobat.com. But this one, advanced RIA technology with SEO compliance inspires me indeed. As most developed Web apps take SEO as better user experience advantage over Rich Internet Apps, now for searchable Flash, I really recommend businesses to do in this way.

The last words to notify on this thinking, most traditional manufacturers of Flash authoring tools should rearrange the producing of Flash, to satisfy the SEOed Flash content better.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran