Flash Player 10.2 \\ StageVideo

Dear people of Earth, Flash Player 10.2 is out!

There has been a lot of talk on the optimalisation of video rendering and the use of Stage Video API:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/stagevideo.html

So I decided to do a little benchmark test.

Flash Player 10.2 without Stage Video API: fullscreen browser (1680x1050)

CPU 112%

Flash Player 10.2 with Stage Video API: fullscreen browser (1680x1050)

CPU 39.5%

HTML5 Video (Vimeo) small resolution (640x360)

CPU 63.7%

HTML5 Video (Vimeo) fullscreen (1680x1050)

CPU 100.7%

I think the Stage Video API is big step forward and we haven't seen the last of it.

Here are the pictures:

Flash Player with Stage Video: CPU 39.5%

HTML5 Video fullscreen: CPU 100.7%

Flash Player without Stage Video: CPU 111.2%

HTML5 Video (640x360) CPU 63.7%

The Adobe MAX Unaward show: An adventure

I think I may have found a new passion. A passion that will steer my life in a new direction.

A direction that will bring me joy and fulfill all the wishes I desire.

This new passion is called: Acting...

The always lovely Serge Jespers from Adobe called me up one day and asked me to join him on a project he was getting started with. He wanted to create a widget called: 'The Max Unaward show'.

However, he was not looking for some extra horse coding power. No, he needed an actor.... What, wait, me?

But people, when you get a call from Serge, no matter what the question is, your answer is yes! (ok maybe not for every question...)

And so the adventure began... We had a crazy day of doing preparation and shooting the video.

We started out with shopping for the most crazy 'tv host' outfit we could find. Yep it felt like the 'moron' brothers day out :-) and headed out to Amsterdam where Klaas Jan Tukker and Ton Frederiks from Adobe joined us to help with the project. I there realized that Ton really knows a ton (no pun intended haha) about video and video editing.

I wore Serge's shoes, who were like 4 sizes too big for me, for most of the day.

And my daughter loves the shirt so she adopted it with love:

Read all about the project and the making off here:

http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/09/02/give-yourself-a-max-unaward/

http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/09/03/max-unawards-behind-the-scenes-part-1/

http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/09/06/max-unawards-behind-the-scenes-part-2/

http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/09/07/max-unawards-behind-the-scenes-part-3/

http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/09/08/max-unawards-behind-the-scenes-part-4/

http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/09/09/max-unawards-behind-the-scenes-part-5/

Serge did a tremendous amount of work on the widget and writing about it.

Thanks to Serge, Klaas Jan, Ton and the Adobe crew!

Go now and Unaward yourself here:

http://max.adobe.com/widget/

I am out there with the big boys because I already won a MAX Unaward:

With love,

Wim

The guy who will stick to computers instead of acting.

Do you want Steve Jobs to control you porn collection?

I have been following the discussion between Apple and Adobe with increasing amazement. Somehow I still have a problem believing that the Flash ban is a pure technical issue. I think it's about protecting a business model. Which makes sense but...

A little future doom scenario (atmosphere wise, think Bladerunner)

1. Imagine Apple will implement the same business model for your desktop or laptop as they do on the Iphone/Ipad/Ipod. Which essentially boils down to: just use the almighty Appstore.
If you say: "no chanche in hell, that would be commercial suicide". Why is it then, that the iPhone/iPad are what they are now?

2. So if you want to install or download anything on your computer you will have to pass the Appstore. There is no get out of jail free card here. No downloading from the web what YOU choose. No, you can only download from a collection of what Steve and his employees like. (just like on the iPhone).

3. What if, just for the sake of argument, there's no app for it? Let's say a good porn app. I did a test and searched for "porn" in the Appstore. Besides some lame sex jokes, a porn name generator and, you read it well, an app to deal with porn addiction (sic: finally I got help), there is nothing worthy of the name.

4. Porn in this case serves my point because it's a metaphor.
Let's take it a step further: Replace porn by free news gathering for instance.
What if that controversial book or communist newspaper you want to read or a disputed video you want to watch has been banned by Steve on his almighty iPad? Yep, a device optimized for reading books and newspapers... Or maybe you would want to choose for using let's say NeoOffice instead of KeyNote on your new Appstore enabled laptop? Or you would want to play DarkOrbit (www.darkorbit.com) on your new computer that you bought yesterday (time of writing 60.000 people online)... I guess Steve's not gonna want that...

That's not gonna happen you say? We'll see... Steve can do what he wants, it's his business. Great products, great marketing, nice and shiny, working well (most of the time), all very true... But for me personally, I think I'm not gonna wait for the almighty Appstore true censorship to take mine elsewhere...

Let's see, what else is there... There is an operating system that permits me to install whatever is out there. It's called Windows. Wait there's another one... It's called: Linux or wait there's more: it's called Android... and on and on...

I say hooray for 'open' and freedom of choice!

Flash On The Beach: my session is online

The Flash on The Beach Jam sessions and elevator pitches videos are online. Yes!

John and the team have been working hard to get it all done and they did a great job.

My elevator pitch session is online too. Check it out here:

http://www.vimeo.com/7292596

or here:

http://www.flashonthebeach.com (scroll down and click Wim Vanhenden).

or here :-)

FOTB09 - Elevator Pitch - Wim Vanhenden from John Davey on Vimeo.

Cheers!

Flash On The Beach rocked!

Once again Flash On The Beach rocked!

Bottom line... FOTB is rock 'n roll...

If you are into all things creativity and programming you must at least go there once. The spirit of Jimi Hendrix lives on in Brighton people.

For a good and full overview please visit Flashmagazine, they have an excellent report waiting for you.

I was in the Elevator pitch sessions, which was very cool. 3 (yes three) minutes is not a long time to say what you want to say but all of the speakers did a great job. I met some very interesting people doing some great work!

It's been a blast to be a part of FOTB!

Check out some pictures and video of my talk. Thank to Dimitri for the video!

Thanks to John and his crew for doing it. Never mind the bollocks!

Flash On The Beach: Speaking @ elevator pitch

Yes! I will be 'performing' at the upcoming elevator pitch @ Flash On The Beach 2009.

The title of my session is: "Internet art: scrape, rip, steal and visualize"

If you are in the neighborhood stop by to cheer!

Thanks to John Davey and the FOTB team!

Session on Flash Catalyst

I just returned from a Flash Catalyst/Flash Builder session I gave at the Adobe headquarters in Belgium.

The always healthy Christoph Rooms, who is at this moment on a beach somewhere, asked me to. And who am I to refuse Christoph right? I got some help from my friend Maarten Cox and the people at iDA MediaFoundry. Thanks for that guys!

I must say Flash Catalyst is a pretty nifty tool... if you know what you are doing and even better, if you know what you are going to do.

Let me explain: If you buy a BMW 7 series, you don't buy this car only for driving. You bought it because it's exuberant and you want to show off. If you you are not into showing off and you just want to drive you would buy a regular car.

Now Flash Catalyst is your regular car. If you stick to that thought while working with it, you won't get any surprises later on. Don't expect it to do al the super fancy stuff. Then you should have bought the BMW 7 series, in this case a mix of more complex integration of Flash CS4, Flex and Flash Builder 4.

I really think that Flash Catalyst is going to be a great tool for the designer/developer workflow when it comes to interaction design and wireframing. It is perfect for RIA's and maybe even a full Flash website. But for the latter be aware of our car antology.

Instead of creating a RIA I tried to create a website example with one button and one extra page.

Thanks to Dietlev and Karel from Boulevart providing me with psd's and graphics and things.

Check it out here (click on the middle polaroid to go to another page):

http://www.wimvanhenden.be/catalystdemo/Main.html

By the way, this example, including scrollbars and stuff, is made with 0 coding, that is zero coding!

Conclusion:

If you plan ahead (there is going to be an intro...) and your photoshop file is well organised and without too many special features (remember the BMW7?) , merge as much as possible, you can create an example like this in about an hour:

http://www.wimvanhenden.be/catalystdemo/Main.html

Remember that Flash Catalyst is still in beta and the team is constantly improving it.

Useful links:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst/

http://www.digitalbackcountry.com/flashcatalyst/tutorial01/screencast/index.html

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashcatalyst/articles/building_datacentric_app_flashcast_flashbuilder.html