News from Mobile World Congress 2010

There is a lot of exciting news for the Flash Platform community coming out of Barcelona, Spain at the Mobile World Congress.

Firstly, Adobe has announced that Flash Player 10.1 is coming for almost all mobile operating systems including Android, the BlackBerry® platform, Symbian® OS, Palm® webOS and Windows Mobile®. Flash Player 10.1 is the first version of the Flash Player released through the cooperation of over 70 organizations including 19 of the 20 top mobile providers through the Open Screen Project.

View an excerpt from the Google Keynote:

It was also announced that AIR 2.0 would be coming to these same platforms over the next year, allowing Flash Platform developers to create applications distributable through application stores such as the Android Marketplace.

See what Nvidea has to say about Flash and AIR:

A plethora of new tablet devices were announced, all of them supporting Flash and AIR runtimes. Many of these devices allow open development, full multitasking, and extensive hardware configurations.

What perhaps may be the most important long-range announcement is that the world’s largest wireless operators (Verizon Wireless, AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Deutsche Telekom, China Mobile, and Vodafone among them) are uniting to create “an open international applications platform” in an effort to tap demand for mobile applications. As things stand right now, the mobile world is fragmented across different operating systems, runtimes, networks, and application distribution mechanisms. This new platform would provide a single point of entry for application developers and meshes well with the open, cross-platform application distribution environment made possible by Flash Platform technologies.

Mobile is huge right now and will only gain greater momentum in the years to come. The fact that so many mobile players are collaborating on these various runtimes and initiatives should be heartening to anyone invested in the future of mobile application development.

It’s a great time to be a mobile developer, and an absolutely stellar time for Flash Platform developers!

More info:

• Adobe Unveils AIR on Mobile Devices; Readies Flash Player 10.1 for Launch
• Android catching up fast!
• AIR and Flash Player coming for Android and Mobile Devices
• The unofficial Nexus One Flash demos

Flash Player 10.1 Demo on Android 2.1

Today, Google hosted an “Android Press Gathering” where they revealed the detailed of the Google “Nexus One” phone. Shortly thereafter, Adobe posted the following video demonstration of Flash Player 10.1 running on the forthcoming Android 2.1 (coming soon for Nexus One, Droid, so forth):

Looks like it’s running very nicely on the device!

I’ve been using a Motorola Droid, myself, and have been quite pleased with the Android OS.

Adobe Developer Connection – Q & A Article

Last month, I participated in a phone interview with the education team at Adobe to talk about how the University of Denver is using Flash Media Server to stream both live and on-demand content across campus and out into the world. The resulting article was recently published on the Adobe Developer Connection website.

Topics covered include our CourseMedia™ system, live events, and various video uses across departments. It’s a fairly quick read and a comprehensive look at what DU is doing with media streaming using the Flash Platform.

Check it out: Q & A with Joseph Labrecque

Educause 2009: Streaming Video for Education

I’d encourage anyone going to Educause in Denver to stop by the Adobe Booth (#909) for a theater presentation by myself and John Schuman.

Streaming Video for Education
Wednesday, November 4
12:45pm–1:15pm

In this session, you will learn the inner workings of a real-world video solution for higher education based on Adobe Flash technology. Join John Schuman, Adobe education solutions architect, and Joseph Labrecque, senior multimedia application developer at the University of Denver and an Adobe Education Leader, as they take you through the underlying technologies that went into the creation of the amazing video applications of the University of Denver.

UPDATE: Here are the slides in PDF format.

For more information, check out the previous seminar recordings.

Presentation for FITC @ Adobe MAX 2009

I gave my presentation at 3:30 on Monday in the FITC unconference room at Adobe MAX. It was well attended and everything went well, for the most part. I did not have a good wireless connection and couldn’t run a live demo- but had screenshots to cover me in such a case.

Thanks to FITC and Influxis for a great setup! Thanks to Adobe for publishing unconference sessions in official materials- it makes a big difference in terms of turnout!

Here are my slides in PDF format:
MAX-2009-FITC-Labrecque.pdf

And the source for my Midge experiment:
MidgeEvents.zip

Here is the video:

This was streamed live by the FITC/Influxis crew. Audio was being picked up from my internal laptop microphone, so I apologize for the quality!

Here is a supplemental video of what you would have seen if the LACC had reliable internet access:
Get the Flash Player to see this content.

On a related note, you may also want to check out John Schuman’s MAX session which makes mention of my work on the DU CourseMedia™ project:

A few friendly (but important!) corrections to the above presentation regarding the University of Denver:

• Regarding AIR, we do have a dedicated solution for AIR that works with a variety of projection systems in the various room configurations across campus. I actually presented on this project at FITC Unconference last year at MAX 2008.
• My team has 3 developers total, CourseMedia™ has 2 devs (the work of Alex Martinez on this project cannot be diminished – he is the CF/DB guy on this and it is truly his baby!), and all 3 of us are full time. We do employ some part time student workers though, who are also essential.
• Leslie Trumble isn’t my boss- that would be Julanna Gilbert, director of the CTL at DU :)

Many thanks to John for showcasing our work! With such great amounts of information you can’t expect to not have some inaccuracies – c’est la vie!

All sessions from Adobe MAX can be viewed from the following URL beginning October 11th: https://max.adobe.com/online/

UPDATE October 22 2009:
All sessions from FITC Unconference at Adobe MAX can be viewed at http://fitc.influxis.com/