Yesterday we pushed out the first Release Candidate of AIR3 and Flash Player 11, and with that, we’ve outed another new feature of AIR – Native Extensions.  This represents a further opening up of the Flash Platform in that you will finally be able to add new features to the runtime.

History of Native Extensions

The origin of Native Extensions actually goes back all the way to Flash Lite in 2005 and were in fact part of my first engineering project at Adobe.  Back then we had the idea to enable a man machine interface (MMI) to the Flash Lite runtime to enable complete device interfaces to be built in Flash, the Samsung D600/D900, LG Prada, LG Cookie etc were the result of that effort .

The feature later evolved to become part of an OEM runtime called Adobe Mobile Client which was integrated into the BREW MP Platform to enable low-end devices to be produced with advanced interfaces and at much lower cost.

More recently we started working on “StageCraft”, the code name for a project to bring AIR/Flash support to the TV ecosystem.  With the first iteration it was apparent that remote controls were all different, it would be impossible to create a completely consistent API for all of the various pieces of consumer electronics out there.  With that, Native Extensions were reborn and redesigned to enable OEMs to build these custom APIs with ease.

Which brings us to today’s announcement, the opening of the Native Extension feature for all to use.

What are Native Extensions for?

From a high level this feature enables you to:

• Achieve deeper integration with target devices
• Incorporate legacy native code in your applications
• Achieve maximum performance for critical code

As I see it, we built the Native Extension feature originally to enable access to platform or device specific features that don’t form part of the platform today.  Just to give you some context here, we always have debates about adding new features in the runtimes, many are community sourced, some OEM focused and some are internal like Flex etc.  Imagine what happens when the Acrobat, Photoshop and Runtime engineers are free to finish their pet projects

Here are some thoughts on deeper API possibilities for devices today:

• Notifications
• Gyroscope
• Bluetooth
• Advertising
• NFC / Payments
• USB Accessories
• Media FX/Encoding
• Text to Speech
• Contacts
• Calendar
• Alarms

Of course let’s not ignore the various possibilities that are now open for desktop developers that want to access provide new interfaces for legacy products.

The benefit is that now customers conversations shouldn’t end with “Can you support XX with AIR on XX platform?”, from this point on the answer will always be yes, assuming you have the technically capability to implement it, or can acquire the extension from someone who can.

Using a Native Extension

From Actionscript, the use of an already built Native Extension couldn’t be simpler.  In the example below you can see the first iteration of the Native Extension that I’ve been creating for Android Tablets with multiple displays.

            import flash.external.ExtensionContext;

            if(!extensionContext)
            {
                extensionContext = ExtensionContext.createExtensionContext("com.android.MultiDisplayInfo", "");
                return extensionContext.call("getInfo","getCount") as int; 
            }

Get Started

Today we’re announcing an exciting new Adobe AIR App Challenge for two upcoming Sony Tablet devices.  It’s available to those of you in Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, UK and USA.

There are lots of prizes ($200,000 USD) available for various categories of applications, as well as early access to the devices and Adobe AIR 3, and a paid-up trip to Adobe MAX for finalists.  All that and more for optimizing your applications for Sony’s new devices.

Let’s take a look at the devices..

Sony Tablet

Both tablets come with Sony quality design and hardware, most importantly, with incredible quality screens.  Each of the devices has a Tegra 2 chipset from NVIDIA and will be “PlayStation Certified”, so expect some of the best quality games seen on the 1st-gen PlayStation and Xperia PLAY smartphone.

The tablets will ship with Flash Player pre-installed, but interestingly the Sony Tablet devices will ship with a new Sony Web browser.  With that, we can expect better performance for Flash and browsing the web, compared to the stock browser.

The Sony Tablet S1 (codename) which has a stunning curved body designed to feel lighter in the hand, like when you fold a magazine.  It comes with a 9.4 inch display, so will be great for Entertainment and reading.  As many of you have heard me say, 10″ screens feel too big for my little Irish hands, so it’ll be interesting to see what it’s like.

Sony Tablet S2 (codename also) is quite different as it comes with two screens.  The underlying technical specs are identical between the devices, but this device is going to be great for building applications that long for unique interfaces that make use of the dual-screens.  I’ve got my sights set on a mixing deck idea, but it’s also going to be a nice way to play games; Battleship anyone?

The Challenge

Adobe and Sony are challenging developers and content publishers to build breakthrough mobile apps optimized for the Sony Tablet S1 and Sony Tablet S2.  We have a panel of some amazing judges, both Sony, Adobe and industry experts picking finalists and winners across four key categories.

Each category has a cash prize of $20,000 USD and promotion on the Sony Tablet devices, with a $100,000 USD Grand Prize awarded for the best overall application.

• Entertainment
• Lifestyle and Community
• Gaming
• Business and Productivity

Our team of judges will be reviewing applications throughout the process, and will look favourably at applications that span across different platforms.  Maybe your application works on Sony Vaio PCs, or Sony Televisions with GoogleTV?

If you get in early enough, before September 16th, you’ll have the chance to be one of the 10 MAX Award Finalists.  So get in early and you can get a free trip to Adobe MAX in LA!

In addition, $10,000 USD will be awarded for the following applications:

• Most Innovative Application
• MAX Public Favorite – awarded by community vote

The top 80 finalists in the contest will get pre-release access to the devices for a 4 week period, the Adobe AIR 3 runtime, and access to the very latest tooling to complete your application.  You’ll be on the leading edge of Flash development and innovation.

Adobe AIR 3 Beta

You will use Adobe AIR 3 Desktop Beta, released soon for the desktop to optimize your applications for both devices.  So you can start to consider how your existing or new applications would make use of the dual screen, be as novel as you like!  (cough, mixing desk, cough)

For the Sony Tablet S2 you will use the upcoming Native Extension feature in AIR 3, one of the most exciting features in the upcoming release of the platform.  Native Extensions give us an easy way to optimize applications for dual screens, that’s because we can now access any API on a host Operating System!

All applications should support both the Sony Tablet S1 and S2.

Key Diary Dates

• Sept 16: Deadline for MAX Showcase App prizes
• Oct 1-5: MAX Public Favorite Vote & MAX Showcase App winners attend Adobe MAX
• Oct 10: Deadline for Entries
• Nov 11: Final App Submission for Finalists to the Android Market
• Nov 17: Winners Announced

Submit your app or app project now at airappchallenge.com

As you have undoubtedly noticed by now, we’ve been updating the Flash Player and AIR runtimes with increased frequency.  In fact, we’re moving to a new (roughly) quarterly update schedule for the runtimes that we hope will deliver huge advances across the web in a very short time.

Why?  I guess there are a number of reasons, the most interesting one is mobile investments bringing new fruit and HTML beginning to take more of the weight.  If you remember, during the 18months when Flash Player 10.1 was launching we received a lot of feedback that we were over-committed to mobile in general.  I think unfortunately the word didn’t get out that these investments were much broader than just mobile devices.   It was a ground up effort to enable the Flash Platform to support sweeping changes in the way media is composed, rendered, protected and analyzed.

Looking at the world through Tomi Ahonen’s eyes, you can see that a growing majority of web access is now on mobile devices.  That is, if you include the numbers of people using mobile only and mobile or desktop devices.  Of course these devices require new tools, new ideas and new content that runs effectively – it’s time for a shift in thinking.

Historically this is actually a pattern of advances on the web if you look at Flash releases, maybe some of you recognized it?

• Flash 1 – Vector Graphics Support
• Flash 3 – MovieClips, loadMovie
• Flash 6 – AS1, XML, Video, Unicode, Drawing API, events, AMF
• Flash 9 – AS3, H.264, JIT Compiler, E4X, Binary Sockets
• Flash 11 – Full 3D etc

Note: I’m not attempting to be precise here, it’s just a pattern that describes the general points where the Platform has evolved over time.  There are obviously matching HTML/Jscript/CSS advances to match, all of which make the wheels of the web go round.

So in our efforts to drive web innovation, and take the Flash Platform to new places, let’s look at the current and upcoming Flash Player releases.

Flash Player 10.2

New Features include:

• StageVideo support, pushing decoding and screen blitting of H.264 video via the GPU.  This is actually a feature that comes from the Digital Home investments, and in fact Flash Lite on Nokia phones rendered video in much the same way.
• Complete Hardware rendering path on IE9
• Native Mouse Cursors, enabling richer gaming experiences

StageVideo should now be included in all situations where you are presenting video.  It’s automatically enabled on mobile and Digital Home devices, but on the desktop it’s not always possible to use this method.  Get started with StageVideo today.

Many of you have noticed that Flash Player 10.2 has yet to launch on mobile, for which there are number of reasons.  Those are quite obvious really, it’s just much more complicated to ship on mobile phones and tablets.  In addition, we’re targeting the new Android 3.0.1 release from Google as well, a platform that brings fresh features and challenges.

That said, Flash Player 10.2 is expected to ship on Android in two days time.

Flash Player 10.3

Already fast on the heels of 10.2 is a desktop beta version of the next Flash Player to launch.  This is actually on the most exciting releases for some time because it delivers new features, many of which are driven by the community.

New Features include:

• Media Measurement
• Acoustic Echo Cancellation
• Integration with browser privacy control for local storage
• Native Control Panel
• Auto-Update Notification for Mac OS

With these new additions, the community will be able to create incredible VOIP applications in the browser.  One of the missing items for those applications was Echo Cancellation, essentially processing of the Microphone inputs so that you won’t need a headset.  I’m certainly going to use this for my Radar application.

Another nice new feature is the native control panel, this will make Flash feel more integrated into the Desktop or device experience.  Finally we can get rid of the horrible SWF based settings manager on Adobe.com, something that confused even me.  Users will be able to control their own security and experience much more easily, as well as make the best of Browser security.

Media Measurement is going to be great for our Omniture customers, enabling them to analysis content playback much more easily.  Let’s face it, it’s a feature for monetization, but that’s always good.  Last year over 128Billion Megabytes were streamed through Flash Player, that’s 100% growth.  So with this feature our customers will be able to get a much broader view of what’s going on during playback, helping to improve and monetize those experiences.

You can download the beta today.

Flash Player Inclubator

As you read above, this is part of our ongoing efforts to seed the community with bleeding edge technology.  I like to think of it this way, HTML will be taking care of some of those slideshow and simpler web experiences, micro-sites, product data and maybe some basic video playback.  This isn’t something that scares me, in fact it’s completely the opposite.  Lets face it, the more HTML can take on, the more new innovations we can deliver with Flash.

I find the whole HTML5 and Flash argument quite amusing, anyone that’s old enough to remember how the web evolved will recognise that Flash was successful because it solved problems for our customers.  So it makes sense (and it’s exciting) that it will evolve to solve new problems as HTML catches up, and we’re helping those technologies catch up.

New Features:

• All of Flash Player 10.3
• 3D Rendering Pipeline “Molehill”
• more to come

Interestingly, the StageVideo api enables play back video on a hardware surface using an OpenGL (ES2.0)/Direct3D shader API to convert from YUV to RGB.  It shouldn’t take you long to realise that Molehill uses the same apis for 3D rendering, thus enabled by Stagevideo.

Flash is so widely distributed now that we don’t have the option to simply cut off those users without GPUs or the correct drivers.  So for these users we have a seamless fallback to a new component called SwiftShader, a Transgaming product of which Adobe is a licensee.

You can see some of the incredible work underway below:

Developer and/or Browser War

(Personal Opinion)

Finally, in case some of you didn’t notice, we’re in the middle of a browser war.  Each of the major players (including Adobe) are working incredibly hard to drive innovation on the web, adding new features, increasing performance and fighting for territory.

This has unfortunately led to some adverse press attention being poured on Flash, one of the most talked about technologies of the past year.  What’s important here is that we all keep a level head, listen to customers concerns, but always consider someones motivation for targeting Flash to gain press attention.

Example One

• March 11th – Mozilla, “Flash is Dead” (two days prior they released an RC build of Firefox 4),
• March 14th – Microsoft launches IE9 with hardware accelerated Flash integration as a feature

Example Two

• April 27th – Google
• April 29th – Apple

Net is, Flash is a product made successful by those who use it – that’s probably you.  It’s not just a pile of 1′s and 0′s, it’s a complete ecosystem that is largely, and most successfully, presented within HTML  It’s success has been driven by the Flash community creating incredible millions of pieces of content over the past decade, enabling online business and entertainment to thrive.

I have no doubt that HTML5 is going to be great for all of us, that includes Flash developers who will be free to create even more advanced forms of content on even more screens.  That’s why I believe that Flash is the innovation engine for the web and digital experiences, the use cases may well change – but the reason for Flash existing won’t.

Last week we published a new Facebook SDK for creating Flash and AIR applications that incorporate Facebook connectivity using their new Open Graph API.  The design of their API is really great and uses Open Authentication version 2.0, so it’s easier than ever to connect your applications – and help them go viral.

Creating an application couldn’t be simpler, just go to this link and fill in the details to retrieve your Application ID.  You’ll only need that to connect your new application.

Admittedly I was a little surprised to see that AIR on Android wasn’t supported, although the full source is published and so it was easy to start adapting it for use on Android.  In the video above you can see how simple it is to connect your applications.

Below you can download the full source and step through the application.  Maybe you can add a feature that supports status updates?

FaceCard Download

FacebookMobile Download

Radar

In addition, I have been adding support for Facebook and Twitter connectivity to my Radar application – currently available on the Android Market.  This application has become much more complex as a result, but I think it’s now looking really great.

You can download the application on the Android Market, or for the Desktop here.  If you are feeling brave then you can find the source for this application below.

Radar Source Download

Today I published my P2P video application, “Radar” on the Android Market for free, it took about 15mins in total.  You can now all go and download the application and rate it five stars minimum

Serge is also going to try and keep a list of the current applications here.

Installation

We have worked closely with the Android team to ensure that the seamless AIR runtime installation from the desktop is mirrored on devices.  This isn’t a simple process and as you will notice, it’s not perfect.  Today, the first AIR application that gets installed will ask the users permission to download the AIR runtime – this comes from the Android Market.

To be clear, on mobile devices there is a very clear security process for 3rd party installations.  We don’t intend to break that model for the time being as it comes with a number of benefits – like updating the runtime for example.

Get Started

This is obviously a very exciting time and there are already some Flash based games and applications sitting on the market from Flash developers around the world.  I tried playing with a few of them and it’s exciting to see so many of you jumping at the chance to go live, arguably a few jumped too soon.  Please Please test your applications thorough and ensure high quality!!

Submission process

Set yourself up as an Android Developer, it costs $25 and you can use Google Checkout.

Certificates

Once you’re all signed up, you only need to submit your application APK, created from Flash Professional or using the wonderful command line.  In either case, you will need to ensure that your certificate is valid for 25 years.

Go to the AndroidSDK\tools folder using your Terminal or Command Prompt.

adt -certificate -cn flashmobileblog -ou markadoherty -validityPeriod 25 2048-RSA ./androidCert.p12 somepassword

Once completed, you can now compiled your APK as before – selecting this new certificate. Android publishers are free to use self-signed certificates created in this way, however it is advisable to use a proper certificate. The Adobe AIR certificate is well recognized (Verisign based) and works on Android, Mac, Windows, Linux and more to come.

Icons

You will need icons, 48×48 and 72×72.  Google have provided a very detailed set of guidelines on icon production, so I suggest you drop by and ensure that you’re following the best practices.  Liz Myers has a great video session on icons and how to stand out over here (note that this was for Flash Lite, but the concepts are the same).

Screenshots

In addition, in the Android Market there are usually some marketing screenshots.  These help users decide whether they are interested in your app or not and so I suggest that you spend some time making them great.  You can submit two of them at 320×480 or 480×854.

Lastly, you will want to submit a promotional graphic for use on websites and other materials at 180×120 portrait.

Marketing

In these early days I recommend adding Adobe AIR into your description for the application.  This will ensure that users are aware that they need a Froyo device and you can also benefit from free marketing moving forward as users will be able to search for “Adobe AIR”.

Last week I visited Toronto in Canada for the second FITC Mobile event, part of the Mobile Innovation week held in the city.  As always the event was a great success and it was nice to meet up with old friends, and hear about the exciting new ideas in the mobile industry.

Samsung were a sponsor this year again, and thankfully the team had brought along a couple of Samsung Galaxy Tab devices for the attendees to play with. The device is very nice, light in the hand and with a beautiful bright screen – the whole experience is very fluid. Something that I missed at the launch was the inclusion of a phone, so it was great to see added functionality and play with the browser.

With a little arm twisting I managed to install the very latest AIR2.5 beta for Android and test out my application, Radar.

On the way to Canada I have been playing with dynamic layouts, and trying to figure out how the application will scale for different screen sizes. At the time I was only thinking about the desktop, Nexus One and Droid 2 – but hey, why not a tablet

The video below shows the experience running well, although the demo gods were circling…

Terry Ryan, Paul Trani and Brian Rinaldi were also at the event, it was great to catch up with the US Evangelists. In fact Paul also recorded a great video demo of Flash in the browser on the Samsung Tablet here:

I am also provide the update source files for this demo below, maybe you can think of new features and play around with the UI?

DOWNLOAD SOURCE

A few weeks ago I published a video demonstrating the amazing P2P features in AIR2.x, running on the desktop and on Android devices. Well I have been hard at work improving this application and making it robust enough to show here in India at the Flash Platform Summit.

The result is a pretty complex application that enables users to establish P2P video calls. I have used Google Maps in 3D mode and added Gesture support, Twitter for Authentication and a completely new API.

As promised, here is the source for you to download.  Remember that Tom Krcha is our P2P and FMS expert, so make sure that you keep up-to-date on his blog for more elaborate uses of P2P.

DOWNLOAD

Note: These AIR features are “working”, although they may not make it into the v1 product.
Note: This is not an Adobe product, but simply a feature demo that took 3 days. Any one can build P2P applications with Flash and AIR.

This week I have been working on a couple of different mini-projects to test out new beta features of AIR 2.5 for Android. The engineering team are pushing out features every week, and I have to say I’m very very impressed with their efforts. We are arguably now at feature parity with the desktop AIR releases, which is precisely the goal of the Open Screen Project.

In the 5/7 build we have added Camera, Microphone, StageWebView and NativeExtensions features to the beta. Of course AIR comes with all of the Flash Player 10.1 features along with multi-touch/gestures, support for bitmap matrix caching and Geolocation APIs in addition.

The code isn’t exactly stable so I don’t want to release it just yet. I hope I can finish it by next week, by which time it will have a name.  I changed the name of this demo since it’s not an Adobe Flash Platform product, which caused some confusion. There aren’t plans currently to release this as a product, however I will publish the source code for all.

Flash/AIR on!

Some of you will have seen our recent series of e-seminars and blog posts about EVA, the Evangelist tool for day-to-day activities.  As you would expect, it’s a multi-screen application that uses all of our technologies where possible.

In terms of production, I am responsible for the mobile implementation and for that I created a number of features such as the GeoServices library, Twitter widget and radar widget – all of which I covered in previous blog posts.

One of the team gripes with the Twitter component is that it’s too hard to login to Twitter using the PIN based mechanism.  With that in mind I jumped at the chance to use StageWebView that is now part of the AIR 2.5 beta on Android devices.

Download Source

m.flash.com

We have released Flash Player 10.1 to our OEM partners in what has been an incredible engineering effort working with our Open Screen Project partners.  One of the problems with the Flash Player generally, is that it is invisbile.  As a user its so easy to forget that a single web technology is powering billions of videos, games, Rich Internet Applications and now desktop applications with AIR.

So we have been working with the worlds leading content providers, alongside our OEM partners to create experiences that shine.  With that, we’ve aggregated these together over at m.flash.com so that you can enjoy them on your mobile phones.  I think it will really help to sell those mobile and device projects that we’ve all been thinking about.

iPlayer

If I’m honest, this is the one that I have been most excited about, and this week the BBC launched iPlayer 3.0. with support for Android Froyo devices and Flash Player 10.1.  As I live in the UK, and I know many of you don’t, let’s take a look at just how huge the service has become.

Simply put, iPlayer is like Hulu for BBC content providing video on demand services for UK citizens.  Using the service we can watch BBC content that we’ve missed, across 10 TV channels and 11 radio stations.  On top of that, we can also watch TV live using iPlayer online to work around poor terrestrial signals – or in my case, a tiny television

In perspective (BBC iStats for May 2010)

• 130m radio and television streams watched, across PCs, consoles and mobile phones
• 13m live streams were broadcast, including a huge amount of live radio proportional to video streams
• 6.5m video/radio requests from mobile phones
• Peak usage tracks linear broadcast usage almost exactly – the shape of things to come

Currently the iPlayer is available on the Nintendo Wii, PS3, Mac, Windows, Linux, Symbian, Windows Mobile and iOS devices.  As you would expect, when it comes to scaling the iPlayer platform across all of these devices, the task is huge.  That’s where Flash comes in, if you look at the list above (and more still) we have demonstrated Flash on all of them.

When you test your Flash-enabled site, why not let me know?  Let’s add it to m.flash.com