Web

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

Jan 5 2009   7:00AM GMT

Mouse Over Multimedia: Add Interactive Content to Your Site with Apture

Posted by: William Peterson
Multimedia, interactive, Apture, snaP, contextual content, media, YouTube, WikiPedia, Flickr, video clips, Web, Web Presentation

You may know snaP shots to add a quick preview of outgoing links, but actually snaP was used as advertising more than contextual content, as I know. So the unexpected pop-ups that occur when you accidentally scroll over text links become irritating irrelevant advertising sometimes. Apture is a little different. It gives independent publishers the power to find and incorporate relevant multimedia items, such as video clips from YouTube, photos from Flickr, Wikipedia articles, music, podcasts, and much more from around the web directly on to your site with a single click of a button.

Tablefy has a brief look at the pros and cons of Apture, and we really consider the free service as a unique product and well worth checking out. You may experience with examples or watch the video tour below:

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Dec 27 2008   9:49AM GMT

On the Meeting: Teleconferencing, Videoconferencing and Web conferencing

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, CIO, IT professional, Review, Business, Corporate, Web Presentation, Business presentations, Businss Training, Web conferencing

Sure, once mostly a face-to-face practice, now executives are increasingly offering their wisdom via teleconference. It’s really more efficient than old ways to facilitate with modern technologies. Certainly teleconferencing is just the live exchange of voice on the meeting, and the videoconferencing has been used widely in last decade. Then now, conducting a live meetings or presentations via the Internet could be easier for anyone. Web conference, or Webniar can be seen everywhere over the Internet.

Right, I’m a techie fan, and here I’d like to review these current technologies for teleconferencing, videoconferencing and Web conferencing.

1. Internet Teleconference, such as Skype
Internet telephony involves conducting a teleconference over the Internet or a Wide Area Network. One key technology in this area is Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP). A lot of commercial VoIP networks available over the world, and Skype is the most popular one for personal and SME uses. Actually Skype offers a series of solution for business to start off such tele-conferencing soon.

One thing left, video conferencing is supported on Skype. And it’s usually my first place alternative for international calls.

2. Videoconference Impact on Education, Medicine and Business
No doubt videoconferencing could be sort of essentials on distance education, and also helps most doctors diagnose any complicated illness. And especially on business, it enables individuals in faraway places to have meetings on short notice. Time and money that used to be spent in traveling can be used to have short meetings. The technology is also used for telecommuting, in which employees work from home.

I ever tried such video conferencing on e-learning, and it works well. And it’s also widely used for any international conference on UN, or most multi-national enterprises.

3. The Boom of Web Conferencing Services
Web conferencing is not just the Internet version of teleconferencing or video conferencing, there’re some other typical advanced features here: slide show presentations, live or streaming video, VoIP, Web tours, meeting recording, whiteboard, text chat, polls and surveys, and screen sharing/desktop sharing/application sharing.

A lot of IT vendors provide Web conferencing service, including Adobe, IBM and Microsoft. But I still prefer another two services: Cisco’s WebEx (http://www.webex.com/) and Citrix’s GoToMeeting (http://www.gotomeeting.com/).

We really have more and more meetings to go, and technologies just make them cost-efficient with our brilliant ideas.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Dec 23 2008   5:42AM GMT

Not Late to Send Your Online Christmas Card Today!

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, Technology, Online Apps, Web Presentation, Holiday, Christmas Card, Christmas

Ready to Christmas yet? So I guess you’ll send lots of Christmas cards as usual this year. But for our eco-friendly future we know, online Christmas card is so popular on recent years. Here PresentationHelper.co.uk introduces a simple Online Christmas Card Maker for everyone in Christmas.

With this card creator you can write your own personal message to a friend or loved one on your chosen card, without the need for any design software. You can then send the Christmas cards as an email, a web link or just print it off and send it.

Besides, there’s an old version Christmas Card Generator from PresentationHelper.co.uk, which is also awesome for the holidays.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Dec 18 2008   7:26AM GMT

No Death by PowerPoint: We Know Its Midlife Crisis

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, IT professional, PowerPoint, Review, Web Presentation, Business presentations, presentation

Recently Ms Laura Bergells showed us an interesting research on PowerPoint Death with data analysis. Clearly, more and more people is concerned about the health statistic of our PowerPoint, because we’re still using it well now and gonna use it more in the future.

I agree that PowerPoint is the best ever presentation tool for desktop authoring. And I guess everyone is considering the inevitable threats from so many Web apps for presentation. PowerPoint is experiencing a midlife crisis as everyone does, but we still like it, don’t we?

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Dec 18 2008   7:23AM GMT

SlideShare Ribbon: Socialize Your Presentation from PowerPoint 2007 Now

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, Technology, PowerPoint, PowerPoint 2007, Online Apps, Web Presentation, SlideShare, presentation

No doubt SlideShare has same creative power as YouTube in Web 2.0 presentation, like its LinkedIn App, Facebook, etc. Now, according to SlideShare’s latest blog post “SlideShare makes PowerPoint social”, it is introducing an add-in for PowerPoint 2007 to makes the sharing and social features of SlideShare accessible without even leaving PowerPoint.

SlideShare Ribbon

As the good connection with desktop and Web apps, this SlideShare release is catching and pushing the industry leading of Web presentation. Microsoft finally joined the market days ago, but it seems not easy to be the king here.

To install the SlideShare Ribbon, you’ll need to PowerPoint 2007, Windows XP Service Pack 2 or later, and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Nov 9 2008   12:25PM GMT

The Way We Use: Google Docs in Office and Classroom

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, Office, Technology, Learning, Google Docs, Review, Business, Online Apps, Web Presentation, Google Presentation

Honestly I’m not promoting Google Docs for Google as an affiliate, the “Google Docs” in this article could be any kinds of online office applications, such as Zoho, ThinkFree, etc. Google Docs is just the might-be popular one as I know. And here I’m expressing my personal experiences about that.

Google Docs Make Office More Productive

I usually open those attached Word or Excel documents in my Gmail with Google Docs. That’s the best convenient and safe method I think to review these documents at the first impression. And then recently, more and more co-workers of mine like to share some documents via Google Docs to complete them with collaboration. It’s really save time and energy to do so. And the best part is, we can resume the work anytime anywhere if we get Internet to access Google Docs.

Google Docs Makes Classroom More Interesting

As not a teacher, I’m not sure more uses of Google Docs in classroom, but some teachers ever told me the Google Docs way to enrich the class is so friendly and it can be accepted by more students easily than the ways with LMS (Learning Management System). Certainly Google Docs cannot replace LMS, but for most documents, presentations sharing, it’s easy to get a class closer. There’s an good example presentation by Tom Barrett:

Eleven Interesting Ways to use Google Docs in the Classroom
http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dhn2vcv5_8323t58h3ft

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Nov 2 2008   10:48AM GMT

Post Presentation 2.0: Showing Your Presentations When You LinkedIn with Friends

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, Google, Technology, PowerPoint, Facebook, Google Docs, LinkedIn, Web Presentation, SlideShare, Google Presentation

I really can’t believe this great feature from LinkedIn: a new platform called “Applications” allows you to add PowerPoint presentations from SlideShare or Google Docs to your profile. The service is amazing and good.

Certainly, this still-beta-testing “LinkedIn Applications” feature seems to be a copycat of “Facebook Application. However, it’s just the real post Web 2.0 collaboration. For kinda online presentations like SlideShare or Goodle Docs, it’s show time. Likewise that Omnisio combines SlideShare with YouTube, PowerPoint presentations are going to a new day, and I call it “Post Presentation 2.0″.

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