Full Flash goes mobile (with Google's backing) Adobe has unveiled Flash Player 10.1. Announced today at the company's MAX conference in Los Angeles, the product's most notable feature is that the full player - rather than a cut-down "lite" version - will be delivered to mobile devices and netbooks as well as for the desktop No Apple iPhone yet. But supported mobile …
Just as a public service message to anybody that cares about preventing their box from getting owned while just web surfing I recommend if at all possible removing flash from their computer. Short of IE it is probably the most insecure widely available commerical software and the one hackers really target. Like I mentioned just see all the zero days that have come out for it as well as the pwn contests that brought fully patched secure even *nix boxes down. Also look up flash cookies as that is what the advertisers are using these days to track you. Your browser does not get rid of these. I recommend the betterprivacy plugin for firefox to make sure these get deleted. I do need simple flash for some sites but I use gnash on Linux as I trust their security much more than I do Adobe's (though gnash especially on windows doesn't run any flash 8+ correctly). Flash imho is one of the silent dangers to the internet no one seems to mention. Probably because the artsy fartsy mactard web designer crowd loves their development tools. No matter how good the tools are if the gdam flash runtime is an open portal for malware it deserves to fail.
""We can pull this information down to the customer instead of them having to come to our website," he says,"
Uh, dude, that's not the customer pulling. That's you pushing. If your customer isn't interested at the moment, pushing crap on them is spamming by any other name ...
"adding that financial services companies are particularly keen to find new ways of getting "information" to their clients."
Uh-huh. Usually telling us that the interest rates are going up, the credit limits are going down, and in general they are trying to screw as much money out of us little people as they can, before various governments put limits on their cavalier business practices.
"It seems that if Adobe has its way, Flash marketing will be appearing in our documents as well as on the Web."
Nah. All that crap is blocked at the border routers in any network run by anyone with half a clue.
This is bad news for Apple, their reasons for not taking on the Flash platform are varied and obvious i.e. "it could potentially replace the need for an app store" etc but that's a feeble excuse considering this announcement.
As Flash "Lite" was a poor mans contender for the real thing, I don't think Apple felt much pressure from the competition - but this may just change things.
I hope anyway.
... and in Perfect Pause, Truly Overwhelming Force of Fully Engaged Minds
"Full Flash goes mobile (with Google's backing)" ... And with their banking would they be a Law unto themselves and beholding to Zero Fiscal Controls.
Which would produce for them a Relative Socio-Political Dilemma for Creativity to Seed and Feed with Increasing Wealth, for the Google Money Machine never stops, even if Other Dodgy Businesses are Halted because of Temporary Idiots Tempted to Run into Sub-Prime Toxic Markets. Which is about the Kindest thing which can be said on the Sorry Sad Tale.
Released from the Constraint and Worry of there being Stop Controls on Funding and Energised with the Fact that Funding is always available and invented for .gov operations, would that put Google in an Advantageous Virtual Global Governance Position?
Answers on a post card please to Glasshouse Street hostelries where Head Office Staff can Cogitate and Ruminate on Shared Big Picture Thoughts.
It's quite simple, really. Either enable Flash on the iphone/touch and possibly impact sales of discrete apps on the app store, or leave Flash disabled and watch as all the other mobile platforms have a complete web browsing experience while the iphone/touch continue to show a blank part of the page where the best part of the content should be. Possibly impact sales of hardware which will definitely impact sales on the app store.
"According to Adobe...the current version 10 has achieved 93% penetration. Riastats.com shows a more modest 81% for Flash Player 10, but it remains well ahead of rival runtimes such as Microsoft Silverlight and Sun Java."
riastats.com says that 81% of flash installs are version 10, but does not (seem to) say what percentage of all browsers have flash 10 installed, nor compare install base to Silverlight or Java.
Hey I remember the 'good old days' when flash was fairly new (ver. 5 or 6??) and all that could be done was basically similar to 'cutout' animation...
Then came news about fancy new features, everyone saying how wonderful this would be for making arty effects, almost like full TV animation! great while that lasted....
And what did we get?? lots of the baddest taste in animated adverts, that no tool could stop, so we had to 'get by' without it until a way was found... ( IE?? dunno wot you mean...)
looks like we'll have more of the same.. another round of flash-block & noscript, barman!!!!
Oh, great. Just friggin' _great_.
Jeez, am I even more glad than ever that I still own a good old-fashioned "dumb" phone. It makes phone calls, sends/receives text messages, and that's it. No GPS, no funky apps, no nothing. It's just a goddamn' _phone_, it works as advertised, and I like it that way.
I'll never forget when Flash first came out. All the designers in my department, as well as our creative director, were raving about all the wonderful goodness that was possible -- while I, in the meantime, ever the cynic, could only see it as a delivery system for even more annoying advertising; Web pages encrusted with banner ads were bad enough, but Web pages encrusted with banner ads that won't friggin' hold still? Kill me now.
Sadly, fifteen years later, I could only say "told ya' so". The real pain in the ass these days is the number of sites who demand I enable Flash just to look at their goddamn' _content_, let alone all the bouncing, wiggling gee-whizziness. If it weren't for that, I'd have gladly totally removed Flash; as it is, I use Flashblock on Firefox, with various sites whitelisted as the need arises.
Luckly, I won't have to deal with this PDF bank statement crap myself, as I could also see, very early on, what we were in for when banks began hyping online banking and bill-paying.
Aauuuggghhhh.
The man you are quoting is Will Cawthorne, of Adobe software, not Bruce Lawson. Please, try and pay attention before reaching for your "Shouty Caps Gun".
I can assure you, Bruce Lawson is not an "idiot marketer". He's the senior Web Accessibility officer at Opera software and a well-known speaker on making content on the web as widely accessible as possible. In fact, the only quote from him in the article was with reference to his words about the potential dangers of proprietary systems, as opposed to open standards, in web design (and he was speaking in general terms at a recent conference - not specifically about Flash 10, as such).
He's also a very nice bloke. I use to work with him, hence my need to defend him.
As for Google's endorsement of Flash: I suspect Google's stance is to be against anything they think the Googlebot might not be able to crawl inside and index. This makes them pro-open standards, but it also makes them pro, any other format that they can harvest and harvest and harvest.
"This makes them pro-open standards, but it also makes them pro, any other format that they can harvest and harvest and harvest." ....`By Daniel 1 Posted Monday 5th October 2009 12:48 GMT
Daniel 1, That also means that they are Susceptible and Vulnerable to Novel Information that can be Pharmed and Phormed to Groom their Search Machinery
Linux drivers too please!
Aside from the fact its not good for banks to even think about flash, there is a lot of shiney video content out there that i would love to make use of on my Zotac ION (currently im at the mercy of the fantastic XBMC and video plugin's + flvstreamer ) but cant. Throw in hardware accelerated flash and make it open source (so as i can actually install it on Ubuntu) and ill be happy.
Not sure how missed that. I should know better than to post late at night.
Again, I'm sorry Bruce, if you're reading this.
Mr. Cawthorn, on the other hand, is a chowderhead.
But "shouty caps gun"? That I take issue with. I'm perfectly capable of pointing out the obvious and/or insulting someone without resorting to caps. English is funny that way ... Martian syntax, however, appears to require a liberal sprinkling of caps, it's probably a form of punctuation. Good to see you in fine form, amfM :-)
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