Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

Adobe those wonderful chaps who develop Flash, have announced a full version(the same that your home PC or Mac runs) of there media software that will be available for your mobile, no more “Lite” versions.

This will be great news to most people who use there blowers to surf the internet and want full content support for websites. If you have a Windows Mobile device or a Palm(from 16th October) you will be able to pick it up before the end of this year. Those of us sporting Android or Symbian phones will have to wait a bit longer with an “early 2010” date pencilled in. Blackberry support is still being developed according to Adobe but there has been no mention of iPhone. Surely  due to the size of the iPhone market this can’t last too long.

Adobe have said full Flash support will bring “uncompromised web browsing of expressive applications, content and high definition (HD) video”. It will also improve general performance of phones visuals and will also bring mobile friendly support for touchscreens and also improve the quality of downloadable apps.

CAN’T WAIT!!

Adobe has confirmed that it is working to deliver on GPU accelerated Flash with Nvidia and Broadcom

The Flash player will be accelerated on all Nvidia GPUs and also utilise Broadcom’s Crystal HD chip – the focus is on platforms like Atom and Tegra, which don’t have enough horsepower to play HD Flash videos smoothly using just the CPU.

Unfortunately there is no specific date for GPU accelerated Flash and Broadcom has said that it should be in the first half of 2010. Not ideal but better than nothing!

CES is just around the corner so it is a busy time in the gadget world with a lot of big announcements due.

Alongside Adobe, Intel has announced plans to bring its new Media Processor CE 3100 to market along with a new optimized version of Adobe Flash. These efforts, according to Intel, will “provide consumers with richer and more seamless Web-based and video viewing experiences through advanced Intel-based cable set-top boxes, Blu-ray Disc players, digital TVs and retail connected AV devices.” Coincidentally, we want more seamless Web-based and video viewing experiences, so this new allegiance should work out perfectly. 2009 is looking to be the year of the multi-source set top box which is plenty interesting to say the least. Set top technology has hardly gone mainstream but manufacturers of all shapes and sizes are incredibly eager to make it happen.

This may not seem so interesting to most people but it is I promise. Adobe officially released Flash Player 10 on October 15th.

The new version of flash has some major improvements over Flash 9. One of the main improvements includes full-screen HD which should help for them specialist sites you like to go on.

The other features include:

3D effects

Create more intuitive, engaging interfaces using built-in support for 3D effects. Get started quickly without being a 3D master by designing in 2D and easily transforming and animating in 3D. Fast, extremely lightweight, and simple-to-use APIs, along with 3D tools in Adobe® Flash® CS4 Professional software, make motion that was previously accessible only to expert users via ActionScript® language or custom third-party libraries available to everyone.

Custom filters and effects

Create high-performance, real-time effects for cinematic experiences that quickly engage users. With new Adobe Pixel Bender™, the same technology behind many filters and effects in Adobe After Effects® software, these dynamic and interactive effects can be used both in production with After Effects CS4 and live with Flash Player 10. The Pixel Bender just-in- time (JIT) compiler can also be used to process other types of data, such as sound or mathematical functions, asynchronously in a separate thread.

Advanced text support

Take advantage of a new, flexible text layout engine that brings print-quality publishing to the web, building on more than 25 years of Adobe expertise in typography. Gain more control over text layout using an extensible library of ActionScript 3.0 text components to flow text and sophisticated typographic elements such as ligatures across multiple columns, around inline images, bidirectionally, vertically, or chained together. Create multilingual rich Internet applications (RIAs) using device fonts that can now be anti-aliased, rotated, and styled, or build your own unique text components.

Dynamic sound generation

Use enhanced sound APIs to dynamically generate audio and create new types of audio applications such as music mixers and sequencers, real-time audio for games, and even audio visualizers. Work with loaded MP3 audio at a lower level by extracting audio data and supplying it to the sound buffer. Process, filter, and mix audio in real time through the Pixel Bender JIT compiler to extend creative freedom beyond the visual experience.

Drawing API Enhanced

Perform runtime drawing more easily with restyleable properties, 3D APIs, and a new way of drawing sophisticated shapes without having to code them line by line. Developers can tweak parts of curves, change styling, replace parts, and use custom filters and effects, delivering improved throughput, creative control, and greater productivity. Enhancements to the Drawing API add the z dimension, real perspective, textured meshes in 3D space, a retained graphics model, read/write rendering, and triangle drawing with UV coordinates, while adding memory and improving performance.

Hardware acceleration Enhanced

Use the hardware processing power of the graphics card to paint SWF files into the browser and accelerate compositing calculations of bitmaps, filters, blend modes, and video overlays faster than would be performed in software.

Vector data type

Use the new typed array class for better performance, efficiency, and error checking of data.

Dynamic Streaming

Show exceptional video with streams that automatically adjust to changing network conditions. Leverage new quality-of-service metrics to provide a better streaming experience.

Speex audio codec

Take advantage of the new, high-fidelity and open source Speex voice codec, which offers a low-latency alternative for voice encoding. Flash Player also supports ADPCM, HE-AAC, MP3, and Nellymoser audio.

File upload and download APIs Enhanced

Bring users into the experience by letting them load and save files from your web application. New file reference runtime access allows local processing of data without roundtripping to the server.

You can download it here