Vendor of Flash alternative sees bright future for Silverlight
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David Stubenvoll, CEO at Flash alternative vendor Wowza Media Systems, says Adobe has to assume that Microsoft's new Silverlight rich-media player will "become ubiquitous."
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Why Flex and Apollo will shake up client application development Adobe Flash came from nowhere to become the obvious choice for embedding video into websites, despite the presence of well-established alternatives including Real, Windows Media and Quicktime. Could it have a similar impact on client application development? Last month Adobeâs Ben Forsaith ran a Flex 2 workshop for the press, showing off the new Eclipse-based IDE called FlexBuilder.â¦
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Chuck Shotton has his Leopard, but hit a wall. "Leopard's migrate user function has failed 3 times on 3 separate clean installs. This is a seriously broken, critical piece of the OS."  Mossberg and Pogue missed it, didn't make it into USA Today. That's the motivation behind the flash conference idea. After two or three days, organize the knowledge as covered by the bloggers, really cover it as tech news has never been covered before. If necessary, have another flashconf two weeks or a month later.
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Looking to compete with Adobe's dominant Flash media player, Microsoft released version 1.0 of its Silverlight player on Tuesday. Redmond's goals for the software are ambitious -- they're shooting for 200 million downloads in the product's first 10 months, without relying on Windows Update for distribution.
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(InfoWorld) - Developers have high hopes for Adobe's newly named AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) software, but reservations remain about the technology's cross-platform capability and learning curve. Formerly called Apollo, AIR is described by the company as a cross-OS runtime enabling developers to use existing Web development skills to build Internet applications that can run on the desktop. Currently available in a beta release, it is due to ship by the end of the year. "I would say that [AIR] creates kind of a new breed of applications that are somewhere between traditional desktop applications and Web applications," said Lee Brimelow, senior design technologist at early AIR user Frog Design. "It kind of opens up a new world to Web developers. It enables Web developers to enter the desktop space," Brimelow said. "It allows you, for example, to take an online e-mail account like Yahoo Mail [and] you could have an offline app that allows you to read your mail and compose mails," he added. "One of the major [benefits] of AIR is that it is cross-platform so we donât have to worry about 'Is it a Mac thing, is it a PC thing?' " AIR is more or less a wrapper for Flash, said Gabor Vida, president of Teknision, a rich media application developer. But it is not tied to the operating system, he said. "We just deploy an AIR file, and it's the exact same file whether on a PC or on a Mac," with Linux support due soon, Vida said. AIR, however, is not as powerful as Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation or Apple's Cocoa development technologies, Brimelow said. With those, developers have fuller access to the user's hard drive and OS capabilities, he said. But WPF is only for Windows, Brimelow noted. One developer who said he has not tried AIR nonetheless was interested in it. AIR could be an improvement compared with third-party solutions for running the Flash projector offline, such as FlashJester, said Kurt Suchomel, founder of the Vermont Flash User Group and a developer at Draftfcb, an ad agency that also develops Web sites. "Itâs exciting to me to hear that there's a possible product that's something similar to that," but could offer more versatility, Suchomel said. But he expressed concerns about how effective AIR will be on different operating systems, wondering if there will be "possible gotchas on each platform." AIR is supposed to be identical on the Mac and on the PC, Suchomel said. "I would just hope that it is truly that way," he said. "It will "be interesting to see what the bugs are. "My natural concern is the learning curve for developing with Apollo, even though it does support all the major Web technologies [HTML, JavaScript, CSS, XHTML, and Flash]," Suchomel said. "I am looking forward to developing in Apollo since it gives me a way to create one rich Internet application and run [it] on multiple operating systems." Another developer who also had not experimented with AIR expressed similar curiosity. "It just seems like it's going to be really cool," said Steve Farwell, marketing director at Traveland USA, which sells recreational vehicles. He also is host of the Orange County Flash User Group in Southern California, or OCFlash. Farwell said he liked the idea of combining Web applications with desktop applications that can work with the local file system.Â  AIR could have benefits in applications such as hospital systems, where a physician has intermittent connectivity to the network, he said. Self-employed developer and AIR beta user Robert Hall, manager of the Philadelphia Flash Platform Adobe User Group, reiterated what Adobe said about the project. "It makes it really easy to take your existing Web apps and all the skills you have â¦ and repurpose them for desktop apps," he said. "For me, the big benefit is I'm able to leverage my existing skills that I've been working on for years," Hall said. As the product still in a beta form, the feature set is not complete, Hall cautioned. AIR "fills a major, major niche," said Gordon Clarke, manager of FlexUserGroup.org.Â  Developers can move to the desktop and create client-server applications without having to learn a new language, he said. Sometimes-connected applications offer advantages, Clarke said. "If you want to have rich media, it's better to have a lot of it coming from your desktop than having to download it off the Web," he said. Clarke likened AIR to the iPod, where music can be downloaded or heard on the Web, and Microsoft Outlook, which lets users browse e-mail offline. At effectiveUI, which developed the eBay Desktop shopping application using AIR, the president of the company said AIR could supplement or displace Java in different instances. AIR could be used to help build GUIs (a weakness for Java), while Java could reside on the back-end server, said effectiveUI President Anthony Franco. "One of the things that Java developers struggle with is developing interfaces," Franco said. "[AIR] could replace Java in the GUI development of an application." Adobe's Flex and Flash are part of the Apollo, or AIR, framework, Franco said. But AIR differs from Microsoft's new Silverlight technology, in that Silverlight is more of a competitor to the Flash Player, he said. AIR has enabled effectiveUI to develop the type of application sought by clients and to do so within budget, Franco said. The advent of AIR also will mean development of office suites running on AIR, said Chris Charlton, group manager of the Los Angeles Flash Users Group and a Web architect at Adobe solution provider Almer/Blank. Packaged software, chat applications, and business tools will result, he said. AIR applications are going to pull some market share from existing applications that have been on a single platform only, Charlton said. Adobe's new technology represents perhaps the next evolution of how people engage with the Internet,Â  providing functions of theÂ  browser without all the overhead, said Michael Lebowitz,Â  CEO of Web design firm Big Spaceship. The firm is using AIR to build a media center application for energy drink company Red Bull. "The browser right now is sort of monolithic. It's a one-stop shop for anything you might do on the Web," Lebowitz said. "The problem with that is that's not always effective."
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Company hopes to boost use of its Flash format for delivering streaming video with new development kit.
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At this week's Web 2.0 Conference, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen talks about why Photoshop won't be a hosted application, what he thinks of Microsoft's Silverlight, and Google's Gears.
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Farewell, my lovely old flashlight? Incandescent bulbs are being supplanted by a new generation of light-emitting diodes.
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InfoWorld - Developers of Moonlight, a Linux client version of Microsoft&#39;s new Silverlight multimedia technology, are closing in on feature-completeness, a leader of the project said on Monday.
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Members of Microsoft&#39;s Developer Network got a sneak peek at Microsoft&#39;s Avalon windowing elements technology last week. Avalon, which will make the user interface much more than just a
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Microsoft Corp's   Silverlight Web video players will be rolled out on a number of  Web sites on Wednesday, including celebrity news destination  "Entertainment Tonight," in a sign of the growing rivalry  between the software giant and Adobe Systems Inc. .
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The arrival of February has brought with it a new Community Technology Preview of WPF/E, which has frequently been referred to as a Flash competitor, but has more to do with blending Windows applications with the Web.
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the public beta availability of Popfly, the company&#39;s mashup creation tool for non-technical users introduced in alpha form in May.During Ballmer&#39;s appearance on Thursday at the&#160;Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, a Microsoft staffer gave a demo of Popfly in which he showed how the tool can be used to create applications for sites like Facebook&#39;s social network and Microsoft&#39;s Windows Live Spaces without the need to write code.Popfly is built on Silverlight, a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering video and interactive applications. Silverlight is Microsoft&#39;s answer to Adobe&#39;s ubiquitous Flash technology.While acknowledging that Adobe has done &quot;a good job in rich media&quot; with Flash, Ballmer nonetheless said there are plenty of opportunities for Microsoft to innovate as Web applications &quot;continue to get richer and richer.&quot;Speaking at the same event on Wednesday,&#160;Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen downplayed Silverlight&#39;s threat to Flash, saying Flash has been around for 10 years, is widely adopted and has a broad ecosystem.Ballmer, who answered questions from conference chair John Battelle and from attendees, said that the clamor over Web-hosted office productivity applications like Google Apps and suites from Zimbra and Zoho as major threats to Microsoft Office is misguided.In the communication and collaboration software space, Microsoft is focused on making its applications accessible in whatever way customers require, and that the issue isn&#39;t a black-and-white opposition between packaged and hosted software.He acknowledged that Microsoft pays attention &quot;to what the other guy is doing&quot; and is receptive to implementing good ideas in its products.As the interest in hosted applications rises, critics have said Microsoft has been slow in responding with a hosted alternative to Microsoft Office, and that it risks missing an opportunity that others are eagerly pursuing.Asked if he was getting impatient with Microsoft&#39;s search and online advertising efforts, where the company lags far behind leader Google, Ballmer said he&#39;s confident his company will continue to improve in the coming years as it focuses on several key areas.For example, Microsoft will continue improving its search engines, because they are key for generating online ad revenues. It will also continue to strengthen its consumer communication services, like webmail and instant messaging.Key as well is having a strong ad platform, which is why&#160;Microsoft spent $6 billion on aQuantive, and a strong ad syndication business, he said. Ad syndication will go through a major transformation in the next five years as the focus shifts from matching ads based on a Web page&#39;s content to based on users&#39; online behavior, he said.Ballmer declined to comment when asked about rumors&#160;Microsoft is buying a stake in Facebook, but he said&#160;the companies&#39; existing online ad partnership&#160;is going very well.He dismissed questions about the consistent speculation that&#160;Microsoft might buy the embattled Yahoo, saying Microsoft is confident in its strategy to at some point generate 25 percent of its revenue from online advertising. &quot;We believe in our independent path. We like what we&#39;re doing,&quot; Ballmer said.Microsoft also released at the event a beta version of the Windows Live Photo Gallery photo management tool that adds publishing support for Yahoo&#39;s Flickr photo-sharing site. As of Thursday, the Microsoft product has a &quot;publish on Flickr&quot; option in addition to its ability to post photos directly to the Windows Live Spaces blogging and social network. The Windows Live Photo Gallery is available on the Windows Live beta page .Microsoft further announced new features for its Live Search for Mobile search engine and launched Live Search 411, a toll-free directory assistance service accessible by calling (800) CALL-411 (800-225-5411).Additionally, Microsoft provided an update on the adoption of&#160;Silverlight, whose 1.0 version was released a month ago. The number of partners in the Microsoft Silverlight Partner Initiative has grown to more than 50 organizations, and more than 40 customers have delivered Silverlight applications.Microsoft also said that Silverlight 1.0 is now available in 10 languages, including simplified and traditional Chinese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese.
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When Macromedia&#39;s Flex was released, the company noted that it reflected the emergence of a push toward services-oriented architectures (SOAs), which resulted in applications that are
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Adobe Systems Flash-based service, already integrated with Salesforce.com, lets developers embed voice services into Web applications.
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InfoWorld - Maven Networks, which provides hosting services for Internet TV, will announce Wednesday plans to add Microsoft&#39;s new Silverlight technology as a video delivery vehicle.
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We say 'Hah!' to your puny desktop experience At the Mix07 conference in London last week, Scott Guthrie, co-inventor of ASP.NET and Microsoft's general manager for the technology, presented the latest plans for ASP.NET and Silverlight and took a swipe at the competition in the process.â¦