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Adobe gives the sack to Project ROME design app
Just over a month ago, we told you about a new content and website creation app called Project ROME that Adobe had released for a public trial. We just got a note from Adobe and a link to a forum post saying, in essence, ... never mind. Based on feedback from users, Adobe has decided to abandon development of the product after just a few weeks of public availability. Adobe has not given any specific reasons for canceling ROME, but our own brief trial showed its capabilities to be pretty limited. With all of the content creation software already available and the ease of building sites with content management systems like WordPress or Squarespace, ROME didn't seem to offer much that was novel. The education version of Project ROME is completely canceled, but the "commercial" version will remain available on Adobe labs for anyone who wants to use it.
RIM's Jim Balsillie says 'you don't need an app for the web,' rejects Apple's appification of the internet
It's no secret that RIM doesn't exactly agree with Steve Jobs' characterization of the company's prospects, and Jim Balsillie has some more to say on the Apple vs. RIM front, particularly where it comes to apps. It's hard to imagine RIM catching up with Apple's 300,000+ apps, but Jim doesn't think that's the point: "We believe that you can bring the mobile to the Web but you don't need to go through some kind of control point of an SDK, and that's the core part of our message." The statement was made at the Web 2.0 Summit a couple days ago, and on further prompting Jim made it clear he rejects Apple's "appification" of the web. RIM's strategy is obviously riding on highly portable Adobe AIR apps and Flash support in the browser (much like Microsoft's Silverlight app strategy for Windows Phone 7), and we look forward to seeing just how well that playbook plays out in the PlayBook. Of course, "there's not an app for that, but our browser is fully capable of performing that functionality" isn't quite so catchy...
RIM announces PlayBook simulator and SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS
We know you're all partyin' up a storm at the Adobe MAX conference, but just in case one of you missed it, RIM's announced the availability of the Adobe AIR SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS -- not to mention a little something called the BlackBerry PlayBook Simulator. Needless to say (but we'll say it anyways), we're more than anxious to get our hands on the latter. Unfortunately, it requires Adobe AIR 2.5 to run, while the latest release RIM's site is offering is 2.0.2. Buzzkill, right? That said, we suggest you keep an eye on the source link if you're looking to get in on the action yourself. Otherwise, if you're not willing to go all the way, we have some fine PR explaining matters after the break. Update: The source link has an active AIR 2.5 toolkit link. Huzzah!
Adobe announces Air 2.5 for TVs, tablets and phones, launches Adobe InMarket to package apps
Adobe's making a serious play for the app space today, and it's not limiting itself to phones -- its new Air cross-platform runtime environment is designed to toss apps on your smart televisions and tablets as well. Air 2.5 supports accelerometers, multi-touch gestures, cameras and microphones, GPS data and hardware acceleration in a variety of silicon. What's more, the company wants a piece of the action, so it's going to help developers bring their Air 2.5 apps to market by partnering with the stores themselves, and charging a mere 30 percent to take care of your hosting, billing and app store approval -- though we're informed the service will be free for the first year if you sign up today. The newly-christened Adobe InMarket won't help you get into the iTunes App Store, as you might expect, but it should assist with the Intel AppUp store... and perhaps a pair of brand-new marketplaces from RIM and Samsung as well. Remember when Samsung said it had a single platform for TV and phones late last week? We think this was what the company was talking about, because we have Adobe's word that the Samsung SmartTV will run Air 2.5 apps when it launches in early 2011. Air will also come standard in RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook, but it's not just for fun, productivity and games there -- Adobe told us that the PlayBook's entire UI is built on Air. We're not sure quite what we think of Adobe's role as encapsulated software middleman in the TV and tablet spaces, but we suppose that's what the firm's been doing on desktop PCs for years -- after all, what's Adobe Reader but a free way to open licensed PDFs? You should find the Adobe Air 2.5 SDK available on the company's website today, and a full press release after the break.
Adobe launches Project ROME preview, all-in-one content creation/publishing
Apple's favorite software vendor has just released a preview of a new content creation and publishing tool called Project ROME. Project ROME is an Adobe AIR application that can either be run as a Web app in your browser or downloaded and installed on your local machine. Project ROME is mix of old-school desktop publishing, graphical editing, animation and content publishing. You can create everything from business cards, to newsletters or even full websites within the tool and then publish the content to your favorite social networking site or to an Adobe hosted account. It comes with a lots of built-in templates, or you can create your own and share them through Adobe. The new app can run on Mac OS X 10.5 or higher or on Windows. For now the preview is free, but it looks like Adobe plans to charge for the app at some point. Adobe has created both a home and business edition and a second version for education. Check out the videos in the second half of the post for a preview and grab it to try out for yourself at Adobe. [via Macworld]
Adobe announces HTML5 Video Player widget
Adobe's Dreamweaver Team Blog today broke the news that they've created an HTML5 Video Player widget which generates code to play video in the best player for a specific platform using a variety of video codecs. The widget is available through the Adobe Widget Browser and works with or without Dreamweaver CS5. It is based on the Kaltura open source library, and is compatible with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. The team blog noted that HTML5's <video> tag has limited browser support at this time, forcing web designers to "scramble for a solution" that would work regardless of browser or platform. The widget shifts from the <video> tag to Flash Player when the tag is not supported, and does this regardless of the device on which video is being watched. The standalone widget can run from directly inside Dreamweaver or as a standalone app using Adobe AIR. Hat tip to our old friend David Chartier.
Adobe AIR runtime for Android lands, apps already starting to follow
We've been looking forward to this for a while, and now it's here: Adobe AIR runtime for Android. That means developers using Flash Builder or Flash Professional CS5 can publish AIR apps directly to the Android Market, and all users will need is this little runtime from the Market and they're set. AIR's desktop-oriented .air packages aren't compatible, so you can't just go and grab anything, but there are AIR apps already starting to pop up -- AppBrain has a whole list of them in one of the source links below -- since Adobe has been trialling this with developers for a little while now. Check out a video demo of the procedure from the developer end of things after the break.
Adobe AIR 2.5 coming to Android in Q4 2010, but only to capable phones
When will Strong Bad and company become native Android applications? Anytime after Q4 2010 -- that's when Adobe says it wants to have Adobe AIR for Android runtimes publicly available in the Android Market, along with an initial batch of apps, and fairly exciting potential for more. The Android release will be part of AIR 2.5 and grant would-be developers access to your smartphone's camera, microphone, accelerometer and GPS as well as providing hardware GPU acceleration and multitouch input, which could make for some exciting PopCap games completely serious and not at all game related utilities down the road. Don't necessarily expect them to work on every Android phone, however, as there are some prerequisites for AIR, namely an ARMv7 processor or better with a vector co-processor, OpenGL ES 2.0 and Froyo, but Adobe says if your device handles Flash 10.1, it'll probably run AIR. On a related note, if you weren't yet sold on Google TV, a breath of fresh AIR might help -- Adobe told us it's presently pondering the correct time to add the cross-platform runtimes on Google's video streaming boxes as well.
Android GPS navigation: X-wing edition
Why settle for a Star Wars voice pack when you can completely replace your boring, "useful" navigation system will an authentic X-wing targeting computer? That's thinking of Flash-developer Christopher Caleb, at least, who put his skills to use to develop this note-perfect Adobe AIR-based app for Android. Of course, you won't get anything like maps or points-of-interest, but you will see your destination slowly approach in the "trench" as you get near it, and Caleb has of course thrown in plenty of R2-D2 sounds and Rebel Alliance pilot chatter for good measure. To top it off, you can also simply switch it to a clock mode when you're not on a trench run road trip. Head on past the break to check it out in action.
Android + Asteroids + multiplayer = Androideroids (video)
iPad Scrabble playable on your iPhone? Pretty neat. Desktop Asteroids playable on your Android smartphone? Rather more action-packed -- and a little less expensive to get into. Androideroids is a project of Grant Skinner and runs on Adobe's Air platform. It's an eight-player game hosted on a desktop, with each participant given a first-person smartphone view of the vast expanses of space and the hollow rocks scattered throughout it. Meanwhile, a desktop client displays an overhead perspective of the shenanigans, displaying everyone's life and score. Players can either shoot asteroids or each other, tapping on the screen to thrust and fire while tilting to turn. Honestly the move to first-person doesn't seem to have done anything to improve gameplay, but this is still one game of Asteroids we'd make room for in our games folder.
Adobe releases patch for 'critical' Flash vulnerability
As promised, Adobe has now released an update to Flash that fixes the critical vulnerability discovered earlier this month that could allow your computer to be remotely hijacked. The update naturally covers Windows, Mac and Linux users (and even Solaris, for that matter), and is recommended for anyone running Flash Player 10.0.45.2 or earlier -- the update will also, of course, bump you up to Flash 10.1 if you haven't made the jump already. Adobe AIR users are also advised to upgrade to the latest version released today but, as reported earlier, Adobe Acrobat and Reader users will still have to wait a bit for their fix -- while they're also affected by the vulnerability, they won't be getting an update until the end of the month. Update: Those not able (or willing) to upgrade to Flash 10.1 can also get a patched version of Flash Player 9 right here.
Adobe AIR getting native Android app compilation
Sound familiar? That's right: Adobe's looking to move some of the same technologies it developed for Flash-to-iPhone app compilation over to Android, where we imagine the company will be meeting a much more receptive audience. AIR -- part of the Flash portfolio of products -- now has a native Android app feature in beta, letting you pump out .apk files from code written in ActionScript 3. Adobe's targeting a release "by the second half" of the year, so this shouldn't take too long to go gold... not to say there aren't perfectly good ways of pumping out Android apps in the meantime, but this should make it a little less painful for seasoned Flash guys to port their stuff. [Thanks, bono]
An eyeful of Adobe's Android / Tegra prototype tablet running Air
After getting a pretty great glimpse of Adobe's Tegra 2- and Android-powered prototype tablet yesterday, we decided to head over to the Web 2.0 Expo show floor ourselves to get some first-hand impressions. Unfortunately, the company couldn't get a single website to open (Flash-based or otherwise) given lackluster WiFi, leaving us with only a tease of its power via an Air-based slideshow. To drive home what we heard yesterday, this prototype isn't being prepped for release at any point in the future -- more so, this is to serve as a showcase for the future potential of Adobe on Tegra 2 tablets. We'll stop by again tomorrow morning and hope the show floor's connection will be better by then, but in the meantime, enjoy the smattering of pictures and video we managed to get this afternoon. %Gallery-92402%
Adobe shows off prototype Android tablet running Air and Flash 'flawlessly' (update: it's Tegra 2!)
Well, here's something of a surprise. In addition to demonstrating Flash running on phones like the Nexus One and Palm Pre at the now-happening Web 2.0 Expo, Adobe also has a prototype Android tablet of some sort on hand that, according to Zedomax, runs Flash and Air apps "flawlessly." Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any details at all on the tablet itself, and judging from the looks of things, it is a prototype in the truest sense of the word (check out the other shot after the break). It does seem to deliver the goods when it comes to Air and Flash, however, with it able to run Wired's Air-based magazine app and play YouTube videos without so much as a hiccup, although we'd definitely like to see it in a few more taxing situations. See for yourself in a pair of all too brief videos after the break. Update: looks like that "flawless" Flash performance is all thanks to Tegra 2, as we've been informed by NVIDIA just now. Here's the statement: "It is indeed Tegra 2. We worked closely with Adobe to show how next-gen Tegra can bring the complete web to tablets at Web 2.0. You can expect to start seeing Tegra 2 devices appearing this summer, with plenty on the way in the third and fourth quarters of the year."
Adobe AIR developer demonstration: one game, five platforms, all the same code
We love the idea of Android apps running on iPhone and vice versa, and that's exactly what Adobe's selling with its multiplatform development solution AIR -- but though we've seen a demo here and there, conversations we've had with the company led us to believe that AIR was not yet up to the task. However, Adobe dev Christian Cantrell has the proof -- he created a game of Reversi that runs on five platforms without having to change a single line of code. In a video after the break, he demonstrates iReverse running on OS X, Windows 7, Ubuntu Linux, the iPhone, a Droid and the new iPad, explaining how it took only a series of seriously tiny platform-specific wrappers to make his program function on each. Since each platform has its own hardware strengths, this kind of convergence isn't always a good thing -- but if it provides extra incentive for developers to get cracking on hot new apps, we're all for it.
Wired's tablet app goes on show: developed on AIR, heading to the iPad (video)
Mmm, digital magazines. They are the little bites of paid-for content that all the publishers believe we should be deeply enthralled with. Hoping to show us why exactly it is that we should all care (and pay) for prepackaged digital content is Wired's latest and most comprehensive demo of its tablet app on an unspecified 16:9 device. Setting aside hopefuls like the Joojoo and Adam for a moment, it is clear that this is ultimately intended for Apple's iPad -- the device that stands by far the biggest chance of making the digimag concept a commercial success. Interesting choice of development partner, then, as Condé Nast has opted to use Adobe's AIR platform for the underlying mechanics. Adobe promises its Packager for iPhone, part of CS5, will allow devs to easily port AIR apps to run natively on the iPad, but until Apple gives its official assent to the final code, nothing is guaranteed -- and Packager hasn't even officially shipped yet. As far as the app goes, it'll come with Twitter and Facebook integration, and navigation is geared toward the touching and swiping model so prevalent today. See it on video after the break.
Adobe brings AIR to Android, promises Flash 10.1 in the first half of the year
Convergence has always been a big theme in tech, and its focus at MWC this year seems to have landed firmly on procuring an application platform that is OS-agnostic. Earlier today, we heard of the big carrier cabal intent on slaying the beast that is multi-platform development through cooperation, but if you ask Adobe the answer is much simpler: just slap AIR on your phone. The company's grand vision of the future sees AIR as the facilitator of a "feature-rich environment for delivering rich applications outside the mobile browser and across multiple operating systems." If that sounds like your cup of tea, it's now available on Android and there are a number of cool demo videos at the DevNet link below. As to Flash Player 10.1, that's also heading to Android, to be completed within the first half of this year, while also including support for WebOS, Symbian, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices. We all know who's missing from that party, but Reuters reports Adobe has expressed confidence that Apple will "eventually bow to market pressure" and join in on the fun as well. We shall see. Video of AIR apps running on the Droid awaits after the break.
Comcast On Demand Online renamed Fancast Xfinity TV, now streaming nationwide
After taking some time in limited beta, Comcast has renamed its TV Everywhere streaming venture Fancast Xfinity TV and made it available nationally to all customers with internet and cable TV subscriptions. A simple browser plugin authorizes up to 3 computers per account, but now that it's live we've found more has changed than just its unfortunate new name. Users won't need to be at home to activate their computers for viewing; all that's needed is a login and with plenty of cross browser compatibility it should work easily no matter your setup anywhere within the U.S. For us, the Comcast Access installer worked flawlessly on one Windows 7 equipped netbook while failing with an error message tech support couldn't decipher on a similar desktop. Once up and running, there's even some high-definition streaming video available (Juno, Max Payne, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary and others) with more on the way. All told there's about 2000 hours of content online including HBO and Starz restricted items, peep the full list on Fancast.com or check out the setup and viewing process in our gallery below. Technical glitches aside, for the price of absolutely nothing over our current cable and internet bill with HD streaming already active, we may have a new way to keep up with our stories while on the go. %Gallery-80361%
Samsung Go netbook gets $100 cheaper with one-year Times Reader 2.0 subscription
Publicly, at least, The New York Times has seemed perfectly kosher with the way things are moving in the newspaper industry. Rather than freaking out and wondering why they didn't make the move to digital earlier, it's apparently looking to push the digital distribution of its content via discounts and partnerships with hardware providers. In a rather unique and unprecedented move, the paper has today announced that prospective readers can receive $100 off of a Samsung Go netbook if they subscribe to Times Reader 2.0 for a year. The machine will come pre-loaded with the Adobe AIR-based application -- which pushes published content to one's machine on the double -- and will be sold exclusively through J&R Music and Computer World. Of course, NYT wants $179.40 for a one-year sub, so the deal's not exactly awesome or anything, but the offer stands for first-time subscribers until March 2010 if you're interested.
Intel Atom dev program launched, seeks to inspire netbook-centric applications
So, here's the situation. The current fleet of netbooks would be rendered next to useless with Vista loaded on, but having Windows XP on there forces manufacturers to regurgitate specification lists. Rather than using the introduction of Windows 7 to fully pursue a world where netbooks can actually run around freely with 2GB (or even 3GB!) of RAM and chipsets powerful enough to open seven Excel sheets simultaneously, Intel is today sparking up its Atom Processor Developer Program. The reason? To "spur a new wave of applications for... netbooks, with support for handhelds and smartphones available in the future." Call us calloused, but that sounds a lot like a company pushing for "lite" software that functions on sluggish hardware. Granted, we know that's not exactly the case here -- after all, even we wouldn't argue that some applications could benefit from being re-written to operate on a 10.1-inch display -- but it still feels like Intel's pushing software programmers to cater to underwhelming hardware rather than innovating its chips to work faster and more efficiently. There's no doubt that this feeling is compounded by just how long we've been waiting for a new wave of Atom CPUs, but at long last, we digress. The program actually has quite a few positive merits, such as striving to "reduce overhead and streamline the creation of new applications" for smaller devices -- something that would benefit every user regardless of processor. So far, both Acer and Dell have voiced their support for the program, giving us at least a modicum of reassurance that the Aspire One and Mini lines aren't vanishing anytime soon. Hit the read link for the glorified details, if you're into that type of thing.[Via jkkmobile]