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!
