In July 2010, TED’s curator, Chris Anderson, took to the stage to discuss how web video is changing the world. Anderson says, “It’s not much to say that what Gutenberg did for writing, online video can now do for face-to-face communication.”
This video inspired the crew here at Zoom, so we wanted to share it with you.
Synopsis (from TED website):
“TED’s Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation — a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. But to tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace radical openness. And for TED, it means the dawn of a whole new chapter…”
If anyone has seen the previews for Flash 10.1 it is very exciting. One medium for playing videos, games, animations, ads, navigators, … working across all platforms, except Apple.
Using Flash can bring down the cost of developing mobile apps. There are currently 5 major app stores for mobile devices; Palm, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Blackberry. As things are right now you would have to make an app in each market (using different languages and technology) to reach the entire mobile audience, but Flash 10.1 will change this.
Flash 10.1 is set to run on everything; netbooks, tablets, computers and smartphones. So every site that works on your computer will also work on any internet connected device if it supports Flash 10.1. Flash 10.1 is also GPU (hardware) accelerated, so animations and video will run extremely fast even on lower priced hardware. This also brings me to question if Adobe CS5 will also have 3d rendering with openGL or DirectX. Flash 10.1: Full Flash for Everyone But iPhone, Actually Playable HD Vids
The exception will be any of Apple’s mobile devices which are unfortunately becoming the IE6 of mobile devices. They hold just enough market share to have to support them, but don’t play nice with everything else out there. Some companies are falling back to HTML5 when encountering a devices from Apple, others are turning to apps. This is a major inconvenience to have to spend extra time and money to develop something specifically for 24% of the smartphone market.
HTML5 is nice for video, but if you support HTML5 with h.264 video then you choose to not support anyone using Firefox (50% of internet users). Also features that can be done on Flash; multi-bitrate streaming, full screen, embeddable video, video ads, overlays, hotspots and interactions are not available. So HTML5 can not be used alone, but only in combination with another technology. If you want to see more about HTML5 you can view my other post for more information.
Fortunately for everyone Adobe has an answer that will save time and money. If you created a mobile application in Flash 10.1 it will not run on Apple, or will it? With the new Adobe CS5 Suite you can now export Flash to an iPhone app. So you will be able to build an app to run on everything with one technology.
There is an example below of Flash application that was built by the New York Times for a mobile site. It can also be exported as an iPhone app, submitted to the store where it will undergo a 2-6 week approval process, hopefully be accepted then can be used as a fallback for the mobile site. The development costs will be lower and the user experience will be consistent across all platforms.
A PADD (Personal Access Display Device – coined from Star Trek) is a hand held touch screen device that displays information and preforms various tasks. The devices available to consumers will not be able to open doors, read oxygen levels or complete transactions with a finger print reading, but they are excellent for a quick update on news, checking your email, watching videos or playing a casual game.
Many companies have released or will be releasing their version of a PADD this year. Each one has different features and price ranges, so if this interests you I would recommend taking the time to find the one in your price range that will fill your needs.
