Adobe shuts down for a week

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…. Continue Reading

HTC Hero phone will have a Flash player

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… Continue Reading

Adobe ready to make money from office software at Acrobat.com

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… Continue Reading

Roundup: Signs surface of new iPhones, Google releases Page Speed, and more

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… Continue Reading

Adobe gives web designers more power with Flash Catalyst

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… Continue Reading

Acrobat.com challenges PowerPoint with collaborative presentations

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… Continue Reading

Adobe unleashes web video, widgets onto TVs

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… Continue Reading

Roundup: Aggregated links to newspaper web sites, and more

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… Continue Reading

Mobile Flash apps get better distribution, more money

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… Continue Reading

Adobe and Apple working to bring Flash to the iPhone? We’ve heard that before.

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… Continue Reading

Flash and AIR: Record downloads, winning platform race

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… Continue Reading

Sony Electronics holds a virtual trade show

Sony Electronics holds a virtual trade show

Sony Electronics staged a virtual trade show today for fans of professional broadcasting equipment. The company said thousands of people registered for the event, which was staged by InXpo in Chicago.
The event marks the first time that Sony Electronics has endorsed the virtual trade… Continue Reading

Adobe AIR brings web/desktop apps to Linux

Adobe AIR brings web/desktop apps to Linux

Adobe AIR, a platform for creating applications that transcend the barrier between the web and your desktop, is now fully compatible with Linux operating systems. Since AIR applications already work on Windows and Mac computers, this means developers can now build a single application that… Continue Reading

Adobe cuts 600 jobs

Adobe cuts 600 jobs

Looks like the economic crunch has come to Adobe, too. In releasing its preliminary fourth quarter earnings, the software company said it plans to lay off 600 full-time positions, or about 8 percent of its workforce.
The cuts are driven by poor sales for Creative… Continue Reading

EffectiveUI launches 360-degree video apps for training and games

EffectiveUI launches 360-degree video apps for training and games

Get ready for a new version of virtual reality.
Users soundly rejected so-called 360 degree technology in the 1980s when it first appeared in the form of data gloves and head-mounted displays. But now the technology has taken a big leap forward and two companies… Continue Reading

Flash Player 10 brings new effects to developers

Flash Player 10 brings new effects to developers

Flash Player 10, the latest version of Adobe’s nearly ubiquitous platform for web video and applications, is now available to the general public. The new features — most of them were already part of the test version released in May — include easier-to-use 3D effects… Continue Reading

So much for that tech stock rebound: Apple, Yahoo, Google killed again

So much for that tech stock rebound: Apple, Yahoo, Google killed again

The stock market took a plunge again today. While it wasn’t quite as bad as Monday’s free-fall, the Dow fell 348.22 points (3.22 percent), the Nasdaq fell 92.68 points (4.48 percent) and the S&P 500 fell 46.78 points (4.03 percent). Not good.
Some of the… Continue Reading

That is the sound of inevitability: Flash confirmed for the iPhone (again)

That is the sound of inevitability: Flash confirmed for the iPhone (again)

Updated
It finally looks like Adobe’s Flash platform, which powers YouTube and many other media-rich websites, has really, truly been confirmed for the iPhone. Kind of.
Adobe has been releasing hints about this in dribs and drabs for most of this year. During an earnings… Continue Reading

Long gestation period: Microsoft’s first iPhone app coming next year

Long gestation period: Microsoft’s first iPhone app coming next year

TellMe, a voice-recognition software company is at work on an application for Apple’s iPhone. This in and of itself may not be surprising, except that TellMe is owned by Apple nemesis Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft, at least by extension, is developing on the iPhone.
But we’ve… Continue Reading

Roundup: Green chemicals get started, gaming is ubiquitous, MySpace Music slowed again, and more

Roundup: Green chemicals get started, gaming is ubiquitous, MySpace Music slowed again, and more

Genomatica creates renewable chemical from sugar water — While most chemicals are petroleum-based, several startups are trying to create new alternatives. One of the first to succeed is Genomatica, which says it has a cheap process to make 1,4-butanediol, a component chemical of many common… Continue Reading