Category Archives: Adobe services

Taking HD Video and Mobile Apps to a New Level on the BlackBerry PlayBook

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The BlackBerry PlayBook is now shipping with Adobe Flash Player, so users can experience the best of the web—including video, games, animations and more – anytime, anywhere. Some of the latest Flash Player features, like hardware accelerated video decoding and rendering, will give PlayBook users a great mobile video experience allowing them to watch their favorite TV shows, movies or sports games in up to 1080p HD video on the device’s own screen or, thanks to the PlayBook’s HDMI interface, on any HD TV. Check out the positive feedback around Flash performance from top reviewers at the Wall Street Journal, Engadget, CNET, GigaOM, BGR and others.

With RIM’s BlackBerry Tablet OS Software Development Kit (SDK) for Adobe AIR and the PlayBook’s support for AIR native extensions, developers can easily use the same Adobe Flash tooling to create rich mobile applications. With the recently announced mobile tooling and framework support in Flash Builder 4.5, developers can create, test, and deploy high performing mobile applications on BlackBerry Tablet OS. Flex 4.5 will include support for BlackBerry Tablet OS in June 2011.

Check out this demo of Adobe Flash technology and some AIR applications for the PlayBook:

Several AIR apps will be available for the PlayBook at launch and in the coming months from Adobe, Epix, Facebook, salesforce.com, Universal Mind and others. There has already been some buzz from developers and our partners around AIR applications running on the PlayBook:

  • “Building applications for the PlayBook was a natural extension of our AIR development capabilities. Everyone on our team was impressed by the device, and we are very excited to build great experiences for this new platform!” Grant Skinner, Chief Architect/CEO, gskinner.com
  • “We are excited to showcase Reader’s Digest–the largest paid-circulation magazine in the world–on the new BlackBerry PlayBook. We are reinventing our iconic brand for the digital age, adding interactivity, video, audio and brilliant photos to our storytelling and condensed insights, and the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite is the key to getting it all done to our exacting standards.” Peggy Northrop, VP, Global Editor-in-Chief, Reader’s Digest
  • “I can’t keep my hands off iGIZMO on PlayBook. It’s interactive, entertaining and more impressive with every read. It’s a huge achievement and packed full of cutting-edge features that are enabling us to innovate on this exciting new platform. Now we can extend the reach of our brand to new audiences–and pursue new commerce opportunities–by using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite to make our content avaialble on the BlackBerry PlayBook. Our readers can now engage with ground-breaking photography, video reviews and interactive content on the go–wherever they are and whenever they want to enoy it.” James Billington, Editor, iGIZMO
  • “With Adobe AIR, we were able to extend the superior quality and accessible delivery of our Epix video experiences to the BlackBerry Playbook with minimal development effort.  We continue to look to the Adobe Flash Platform to help us provide an immersive entertainment experience to our customers, across multiple platforms and devices.” Emil Rensing, Chief Digital Officer, Epix
  • “Aqualux is a perfect fit for the tablet form factor, and it’s exciting to have it running on such a capable device.  I’m impressed with how seamlessly the Flash Platform is integrated with the OS.  Adobe and RIM have made AIR a first-class citizen on the PlayBook; key features like multitasking, in-app purchases, and UI controls are directly accessible via the AIR SDK, and empowered Aqualux to run with native features and native performance. “Alex Liebert, Milkman Games, LLC, http://www.milkmangames.com

Playbook users will also be able to enjoy more engaging, immersive digital publications created by media and business publishers using the new Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. With the new Adobe Content Viewer for PlayBook, media and business publishers, including Dennis Publishing and Reader’s Digest , can share their well-known titles and brands on the device. Content Viewer for the PlayBook is immediately available to content publishers through the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Prerelease program. Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, along with the latest set of soon-to-be-released tablet authoring tools in Creative Suite 5.5, can be used to create content for BlackBerry Tablet OS. Lastly, Adobe is providing enterprise applications such as Adobe Connect Mobile for web conferencing and LiveCycle for business workflows for the PlayBook, and the device ships with an optimized version of Adobe Reader for seamless viewing of PDF content.

We can’t wait to see how these developments with Adobe Flash technology will change the way people work and play as they engage with digital experiences across desktops and devices. We’d love to hear your feedback and experiences, and stay tuned for more exciting announcements to come!

Adobe and The Recording Academy Unleash AIR App to Make The Grammy Awards More Social

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Originally created by The Recording Academy and its ad agency of record, TBWA\Chiat\Day, and now available in the Intel AppUp center, the MusicMapper is an Adobe AIR application that allows users to tag songs and stories to physical locations. By displaying these tags on the Music Is Life Is Music microsite, people can experience each other’s musical journeys in a unique and intimate way while celebrating the songs that have had significance in one’s life and the places connected to those songs.

The app has great traction already and is helping build excitement leading up to this Sunday’s Grammy Awards show. And like all good social apps, its value extends past Sunday’s event, as music fans are encouraged to share stories and interact with each other on an ongoing basis.
 
For developers, MusicMapper is another example of how Adobe’s InMarket program enables apps to reach millions of users through a variety of app stores across devices. Using InMarket, developers have one centralized portal for publishing, managing and monetizing apps across multiple app stores.
 
Check out the MusicMapper app and let us know what you think!

Day One at Adobe MAX 2010!

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Greetings from MAX 2010, where the news is all about how the Flash Platform is powering the multi screen revolution. It’s been a really exciting Day One keynote, full of surprises, and this morning we’ve seen the following from Kevin Lynch & his special guests:

  • Web authoring is being enhanced, including CSS support to optimize delivery of HTML content for multiple screens, a new prototype (“Edge”) which enhances motion design (and is built on JQuery), and Site Catalyst support in CS Live for Web/browser adoption stats
  • It’s a good thing…when Martha Stewart herself is on stage! She showed off a beautiful new version of Martha Stewart Living magazine on an iPad, recognizably branded, followed by Kevin showing Wired magazine on the 16×9 Malata tablet running Android. Kevin was then joined by Joe Simon, the CEO of Condé Nast to talk about how they are optimizing delivery of CN magazines using Adobe tools on multiple devices (including the New Yorker showing off dynamic pagination in HTML), demonstrating this on the iPad, Malata, and Samsung Galaxy Tab tablets. Kevin continued with some exciting sneak peeks including dynamic wrapping of text around shapes in HTML, and the New Digital Publishing Suite for publishers who want to create, produce, distribute & monetize, & analyze their content (now in beta), as well as an announcement that Adobe is contributing to WebKit
  • Moving on to the digital home, Kevin showed off a Samsung TV streaming Amazon’s Video on Demand service with HD video on a GoogleTV, as well as HBO Go HD video, with support for StageVideo. AIR is not only for Android but also for TVs – and the CTO of Epix, Marc Goldberg, made a special appearance to show off a new Epix app for TVs. In FMS, you’ll soon have on-the-fly video encoding support as well as P2P support for video (the keynote today was being streamed using P2P)
  • And how about some editing on tablets? Demos included not only content aware and fill, but also color mixing on a tablet interacting with Photoshop running on a laptop
  • As for the enterprise, there are new LiveCycle ES 2.5 announcements, and David Nüescheler, CTO of Day Software, joined Kevin on stage to demonstrate multi screen content for enterprise. Kevin then showed off an eUnity healthcare demo – built in Flex 4.5, now in beta – showcasing how a Canadian hospital is now viewing/interacting with MRIs in the Flash Player…on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet! (You can see a video of the BB PlayBook here later today.) Mike Lazarides, RIM President & Co-CEO joined Kevin onstage to talk about how the UI for the PlayBook is based on AIR, and then demo’ed some AIR apps on the PlayBook, including SAP’s CIO Cockpit, SalesForce Chatter, and HD video from BBC Motion Gallery, and showing off multi-tasking on the tablet. The SDK is now available for the PlayBook, and those developers who write an app that’s accepted by RIM will be eligible for a free BlackBerry PlayBook.
  • In gaming, Kevin showed off Sony Picture’s “Green Hornet” movie Flash-based game for desktop and mobile, as well as hardware accelerated graphics in a Retro Shooter game on an HTC phone. He entertained the crowd with the Idle Worship game, a new social game now in beta – particularly entertaining if you’ve ever wanted to throw a lightning bolt. Following that, he showed off game controller support for Flash while demo’ing Meteor Storm, and then came the big gaming surprise – a prototype of a 3D driving game that took full advantage of hardware acceleration, which he navigated using a USB steering wheel from Logitech. Here’s a preview of this 3D functionality which will be available in an upcoming release of Flash Player and AIR
  • And at the very end came an announcement that got a huge response, when Christy Wyatt, Corporate Vice President from Motorola announced that all MAX attendees were getting a free Motorola Droid 2 phone, because “anyone who’s not giving you Flash on a mobile device is not giving you the Internet.”

All of this coming on the heels of our news announcements today, including the release of Adobe® AIR® 2.5 SDK for televisions, tablets, smartphones and desktop operating systems (http://blogs.adobe.com/air) and these other announcements:

  • http://m.flash.com has been updated with AIR for Android apps and social features, so you can share your favorite sites or apps as well as submit your site to Adobe; now available, http://tv.flash.com with 12 experiences powered by Flash for Google TV

Lots of sessions to come, and more fun previews tomorrow with @BenForta and his special guests. Keep an eye on this blog for new updates throughout MAX!

Samsung sponsoring Adobe MAX

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Samsung is a Gold Sponsor at Adobe MAX and is hosting two sessions to give developers the tools and information about this great new pathway for their interactive content and applications:

Free the TV – The New Opportunity in TV Applications
Presenter: Olivier Manuel, Director of Content
Date: Tuesday, 1:30pm in room 512

Samsung is freeing the TV, with its Samsung Apps line of televisions and Blu-ray players, which can download, install, and run apps. Samsung Apps is built into all Samsung 2010 Blu-ray players, Blu-ray Home Theaters, and most TVs 40’’ and larger. Now distributing content to the $150 billion TV market is as easy as creating an app! And, Samsung is offering $500,000 in cash and prizes for the best looking, most brilliantly conceived, and most functional apps. At this session you’ll learn more about this app contest, the new market for TV applications, and what makes a great TV app.

[Register for Olivier's Session at: http://bit.ly/d0L6j8]

Learn about Samsung SDK to distribute your AIR apps to Samsung Smart TVs
Presenter: Jason Han, Product and Service Planning, Samsung Electronics America
Date: Wednesday, 1:30, Room 511C

Distributing and monetizing your AIR applications to millions of Samsung Smart TVs and Internet connected devices is easy with the Samsung SDK. Explore the Samsung SDK, the Samsung Apps, integration with Adobe AIR 2.5 and the app submittal process. Also learn about valuable resources such as test centers which are available to help ensure your success.

[Register for Jason's Session at: http://bit.ly/d9ifIO]

With less than six days to go and all the great content that Adobe and it’s partners are bringing to the show, all I can say is it’s going to be one awesome MAX! See you there!

Spark Booth – Camera Kiosk on AIR

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One of the latest trends at weddings and birthdays are photo booths where party goers pile together, make wacky faces, and take home a strip of images to savor the sometimes-embarrassing moments forever. Sure, if you were planning a party you could find a pricey booth somewhere on the web, or – if you’re a clever AIR developer like Jon Wu – you could take 3 days and create Spark Booth, an application built using the Adobe Flash Platform. Jon uses Melrose (now in private beta), the newest addition to the Adobe Flash Platform Services, to distribute and monetize the app — Adobe manages all the back-end server transactions and reporting.

Spark Booth began as a small project for the developer’s wedding and is now downloaded thousands of times a day so even you can have a photo booth at your next karaoke anniversary party – no major investments needed; just a computer, a webcam, and the AIR app.

You can read the full story here, download the case study and go get the app.