Mobile-friendly versions of Adobe Flash and AIR available now, without mobile (yet)
Adobe is releasing new beta test versions of its Flash and AIR technologies today. Those new versions don’t just include much-requested features, Adobe says — they also represent a big push onto devices beyond the PC, starting with smartphones.
One big caveat, however. Although Flash 10.1, in particular, is probably most noteworthy for being in development to work on most major smartphone platforms except the iPhone. Today’s release only works on personal computers (Windows, Mac, and… Continue Reading
Adobe laying off 9 percent of workers
Adobe, maker of the Flash technology that powers many online videos and games, and maker of popular design software Photoshop, announced today that it’s cutting 680 full-time jobs, totaling around 9 percent of its workforce.
The news follows several other unpleasant announcements from Adobe over the past year. The company already announced plans to cut 600 jobs a year ago, and in July it reportedly shut down North American operations for a week. In both cases,… Continue Reading
Web 2.0: Adobe CEO confident against Microsoft, vague on iPhone
Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco today, focusing particularly on the company’s Flash platform. His overriding message: When it comes to providing the underlying technology for web video, games, and other applications, this is Adobe’s game to lose — and Adobe doesn’t plan to lose.
In this market, Narayen is going head-to-head with software giant Microsoft, and as interviewer John Battelle noted, “They’re not joking around.” (Microsoft’s vice… Continue Reading
Adobe brings Photoshop.com image editing to the iPhone
Adobe just released a free iPhone version of its popular Photoshop application, allowing you to do lightweight photo editing on your phone.
Like the free website Photoshop.com, Photoshop.com Mobile is meant for casual users, not the artists who do heavy-duty image manipulation on the desktop version of Photoshop. There’s a simple interface for doing things like cropping the photo, making it black-and-white, and adding effects like soft focus and a “sketch” mode that makes your photo… Continue Reading
The iPhone finally gets Flash apps — but not Flash websites
When Adobe announced the latest version of its Flash technology, a bunch of writers (including me) jumped on the fact that Flash 10.1 would eventually work on most major smartphones, except Apple’s iPhone. Looks like we spoke too soon. Sort of.
At its MAX conference in Los Angeles today, Adobe announced that after more than a year of speculation, Flash (which powers 75 percent of web video, 70 percent of web games, and plenty of other… Continue Reading
Adobe announces new Flash technology for pretty much every smartphone — except iPhones
Update: Adobe just released some big news regarding Flash and iPhones.
As speculation continues about when Adobe’s Flash platform is coming Apple’s iPhone, a new announcement suggests Apple is becoming the odd man out. Adobe says its new, more mobile-friendly version, Flash Player 10.1 should soon work on most major smartphones — including the BlackBerry, and excluding the iPhone.
Adobe says Flash already powers 75 percent of web video and 70 percent of online games, and in… Continue Reading
Adobe to help Flash developers distribute their apps
With today’s launch of Flash Platform Services for Distribution (yes, it’s a mouthful), Adobe hopes to become a one-stop shop for web developers. Not only will developers use Adobe technology to build their web applications, they’ll use Adobe services to distribute, promote, monitor, and make money from those apps too.
Adobe’s Flash Platform is already one of the most popular formats for delivering web content — Adrian Ludwig, group manager for the Flash Platform, says 80… Continue Reading
Team Apart hits the right price for collaboration: $0.00
[Update: The first 100 VentureBeat readers to click this promo link will be admitted to Team Apart's beta automatically.]
Online collaboration spaces, in the past year, have gone from high-concept, low-execution beta sites to a regular workplace tool. Google Docs, Adobe Connect, WebEx and Microsoft Office Live Workspace are the high-profile, high-volume tools. Startups Scribblar and DimDim hope to disrupt the playing field. Team Apart, which unwrapped its own online collaboration site for a public beta… Continue Reading
Adobe’s Mobile Flash to get accelerometer, multi-touch support in 2010
Updated
One of the big topics at our MobileBeat 2009 conference last week was whether the future of smartphones lies in native mobile applications that we download, or in rich mobile websites that we access through our web browser. Now Adobe may be giving websites a boost — it has plans to release a mobile version of its Flash platform (which powers many websites, videos, and other media) at the end of 2009 or in early… Continue Reading
Adobe shuts down for a week
The San Jose Mercury News reports that Adobe Systems, maker of the Flash player used for most Web video clips, has shut down its North American operations for the week as a cost-cutting move.
The move is striking because Adobe is, by most metrics, successful. In addition to Flash, Adobe now develops and sells many of the most popular software tools used by graphic designers and website builders: Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and several others. The… Continue Reading
HTC Hero phone will have a Flash player
If you’ve got an iPhone in your pocket, you know what’s most conspicuously missing from it (besides a keyboard): a Flash player.
Adobe’s Flash technology has evolved in the past four years from being hated for the proliferation of “Skip Intro” website home pages, to being loved as the Internet’s default TV-watching technology. Flash made YouTube work reliably in 2005. So why isn’t it on our phones yet?
Well, now it will be, although not on an… Continue Reading
Adobe ready to make money from office software at Acrobat.com
For the past year, Adobe’s online office software site Acrobat.com has been completely free, but that’s about to change. Core products like the Buzzword word processor will remain free, but Adobe says it’s now offering paid services too.
Acrobat.com is Adobe’s answer to online collaboration services like Google Docs. I’m not a regular user, but when I tried out Buzzword I thought it was a better-looking, richer product than Google Docs. On the down side, until… Continue Reading
Roundup: Signs surface of new iPhones, Google releases Page Speed, and more
Here’s the latest action:
More signs of new iPhones coming this summer – European mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse has added spots for four new iPhone models to its inventory, according to AppleInsider’s sources.
Google introduces Page Speed – It’s a Firefox add-on that gives suggestions about improving the performance of web pages.
Current TV journalists scheduled for trial today – Laura Ling and Euna Lee were detained in March while reporting about North Korean refugees in China. Analysts say the… Continue Reading
Adobe gives web designers more power with Flash Catalyst
With two new products available in beta testing today — Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder 4 — Adobe is hoping to reinvent the way that websites and applications are built in the Flash format.
Flash sites (which may be most familiar to your average web surfer through the fancy sites that Hollywood studios put up to promote movies) are often the richest in multimedia and graphics, and they also tend to be carefully designed. However, Adobe… Continue Reading
Acrobat.com challenges PowerPoint with collaborative presentations
Acrobat.com, Adobe’s website of free office software, is unveiling a new tool today that marks the early steps towards competing with PowerPoint, the ubiquitous presentation-making software in Microsoft Office. As a part of Acrobat.com Labs, Presentations is still in early testing mode, with many features still to come. But judging from the demonstration that Adobe’s Erik Larson gave me last week (including a presentation made in Acrobat.com Presentations, naturally), there’s a solid core for Adobe… Continue Reading
Adobe unleashes web video, widgets onto TVs
Adobe Flash, a platform for integrating animation and video into web pages, is making the jump to a television near you. Adobe’s newest take on Flash is slated to usher in a new era of enhanced living room gadgets – converting web-enabled TVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes into web video-ready, widget-friendly powerhouses.
To date, Flash has mainly been used to create ‘containers’ (i.e., YouTube’s embeddable video player) for delivering rich internet media to websites. With the rise of the… Continue Reading
Roundup: Aggregated links to newspaper web sites, and more
Here’s the latest action:
As an online publication largely comprised of former newspaper journalists — It’s pretty obvious what we here at VentureBeat think about newspaper leaders demanding payment anytime anyone aggregates any of their content. But we’ll stay mum, at this point, out of respect for all the great journalists who work at newspapers. Instead, here’s what Gabe Rivera, creator of news aggregator Techmeme, tells CNET:
“It’s illuminating to observe that both The Wall Street Journal… Continue Reading
Mobile Flash apps get better distribution, more money
In advance of this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Adobe is making several announcements to encourage developers to build applications using its Flash and AIR platforms. The biggest announcements are a new distribution method for Flash Lite (the mobile version of Flash) and a new $10 million fund for the development of Flash and AIR apps.
Mobile devices seem to be the next big frontier for Adobe’s Flash, which powers much of the media and… Continue Reading
Adobe and Apple working to bring Flash to the iPhone? We’ve heard that before.
Adobe Flash support has been at the top of everyone’s list of features they want on the iPhone since the device was first released in the summer of 2007. The apparent roadblock had been Apple, which didn’t think Flash would perform well enough on the device. But Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen said this week that Adobe and Apple are actually now working together to bring the technology to the phone, according to Bloomberg.
But Narayen… Continue Reading
Flash and AIR: Record downloads, winning platform race
Adobe Flash, the company’s platform for web applications and video, is already on virtually every computer everywhere, but the latest version is on an even faster track to world domination. Flash Player 10 and AIR have been downloaded a record number of times, the company announced today.
During the two months after Flash Player 10 was officially released in October, it was installed on 55 percent of Internet-connected computers, and is on track to be installed… Continue Reading