Adobe demos multi-platform app created using single code base

Christian Cantrell, a technical product manager at Adobe, has created an app for multiple platforms including OSX, Windows 7, Linux, Android, iPhone OS, iPad OS and browsers – no biggie, right? But here’s the cool bit, all the apps use the same code base. In other words, Cantrell wrote an app once and didn’t have to change it to get it on other platforms, he just needed to apply slightly different platform "wrappers".

From Cantrell’s blog: "The app is called iReverse… Although iReverse is fun to play, the most amazing thing about the project is the fact that it runs in all these different environments completely unchanged. In other words, the exact same code base is used to build versions for five different environments. There’s no other platform in the world that can boast this level of flexibility – not even close." Check it out in the video below

Adobe in Push to Spread Web Video to TV Sets

The denizens of Hollywood and Silicon Valley have, by and large, vastly different value systems, role models, even tastes in cars, food and clothing.

But they increasingly agree on one thing: a standard for online video called Adobe Flash.

Flash was once known primarily as the technology behind those niggling Web ads in the 1990s that gyrated and flickered on the screen. Today, it is a ubiquitous but behind-the-scenes Web format used to display Facebook applications, interactive ads and, most notably, the video on sites like YouTube and Hulu.com.

Now Adobe Systems, which owns the technology and sells the tools to create and distribute it, wants to extend Flash’s reach even further. On Monday, Adobe’s chief executive, Shantanu Narayen, will announce at the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas that Adobe is extending Flash to the television screen. He expects TVs and set-top boxes that support the Flash format to start selling later this year.

For consumers, what sounds like a bit of inconsequential Internet plumbing actually means that a long overhyped notion is a step closer to reality: viewing a video clip or Internet application on a TV or mobile phone.

For Hollywood studios and other content creators, a single format for Web video is even more enticing. It means they can create their entertainment once in Flash — as the animated documentary “Waltz With Bashir,” from Sony Pictures Classics, was made — and distribute it cheaply throughout the expanding ecosystem of digital devices.

“Coming generations of consumers clearly expect to get their content wherever they want on it, on any device, when they want it,” said Bud Albers, the chief technology officer of the Disney Interactive Media Group, who will join Adobe executives at the convention to voice Disney’s support for the Flash format. “This gets us where we want to go.”

See the full article at the NY Times.

Bsquare bringing Flash to Android phones

Adobe is working on a version of Flash for Google’s Android mobile phone operating system, but it turns out it’s not the only one.

On Wednesday, embedded software specialist Bsquare plans to detail its work in the area. "Bsquare has been tapped by a global tier 1 carrier to port the Adobe Flash player to the Android platform on more than 100 embedded devices," according to a message sent to reporters about the news.

Flash is a software foundation that’s popular for games, video streaming, and other more sophisticated Web site features, but it’s mostly a fixture on PCs rather than mobile devices. Apple’s iPhone, the technological leader among smartphones by many accounts, doesn’t support Flash.

Google Android leader Andy Rubin demonstrated Flash on the T-Mobile G1 Android phone at an Adobe conference in November.

See the original article at Webware.