Hello Sencha (& Goodbye Adobe)

This month I started a new job at Sencha, a small Silicon Valley startup that builds frameworks, tools, and services for the next web. I’m super-excited to join Sencha and to be working in a startup. Sencha has some killer frameworks (like Ext JS, Ext GWT and Sencha Touch) that make building amazing web content and web apps a breeze. The kinds of stuff you can do in the web with HTML and next generation browsers is truly stunning. I’ll be running the product management team, helping define, guide and take to market all of our products. Very exciting stuff.

Adobe’s been the smallest company I’ve worked for and I’ve always wanted to work in a real Valley startup. This was an amazing opportunity that crossed my path so I made the jump and I’ve said goodbye and thanks to Adobe. I look back at my years at Adobe very fondly — there are great people, products and customers there and I was sad to say goodbye to all my friends there. Doing a startup that I believe in made sense for me, so it’s a fond farewell to Adobe and to the Flash/AIR community. I’m super proud of the work we did shipping AIR for iPhone (aka Notus), AIR for TV (aka Stagecraft), the Mobile Distribution Service (aka Outbreak), and all the other projects, teams and efforts that continue to kick-ass.

Here’s to the next adventure! (and yes, we’re hiring!)

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Slides from MAX 2010 Flash Platform on TV Talk

I’m way late to this party, but better late than never. In October 2010, I gave a talk at Adobe’s MAX conference introducing the Flash Platform for TV which is Flash Player for TV and AIR for TV. Here are my slides that give a good overview of the TV ecosystem as a whole and Adobe’s products for the segment. I might extract some of this information in the future for a blog post, but the whole deck is here for your to download.

You can also see the recording of the session at the MAX 2010 archives. Unfortunately there were some recording issues with the audio so part of the audio drops out in the first part of the talk, but it’s great since you get the visuals of the demos in the archive.

Overview of the TV Ecosystem and an Introduction Flash Player for TV and AIR for TV

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Announcing AIR 2.5 for TV

I’m sitting backstage at the Nokia Theater LA Live, working on final prep and rehearsals for our CTO’s keynote. The doors are open and attendees are starting to come in. In the keynote, one of the many things we’re announcing is Adobe AIR for TV. We’re very excited that after a year+ of hard work, crazy travel, late nights, and many conference calls between San Jose, San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo, and Bangalore that we’re releasing the first AIR runtime to television sets and Bluray players

Our launch partner is Samsung, who will be embedding the AIR TV runtime on their SmartTV products. Very exciting opportunity for developers who want to get to new screens. There’s already been a ton of overage, but if you’re at MAX come to the keynote today to check out Kevin Lynch present some exciting demos that you won’t want to miss.

Here’s a list of places you can learn more:

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Speaking at Adobe MAX 2010

I’m speaking again at Adobe MAX this year, as well as co-teaching a set of lab sessions.

Here’s more info from what I just posted to the AIR Team Blog.

Adobe MAX is right around the corner and we’re super excited to start showing off the latest and greatest that AIR has to offer. There’s going to be a ton of exciting sessions covering desktop, mobile devices, and now the newest screen, TVs.

We’ve got two sessions specifically aimed at getting our customers excited about and educated in what AIR for TV is going to offer them. We also have a lab that will give you a chance to learn how to actually develop AIR for TV applications. Plus, as usual, we’ll have a couple of surprises up our sleeve that you won’t want to miss!

Our two sessions will help you learn two things: first, the ecosystem around TVs, Blu-ray Players, and set top boxes; and, second how to actually use the new AIR for TV platform to build and optimize applications that run on those devices. Expect these to be info-packed, fun, and engaging sessions to learn about a whole new screen to take your apps and content.

Flash Platform for TV: A New Ecosystem by Aditya Bansod (Principal Product Manager)
Join us for a sneak peek of Flash Player on Google TV and how Adobe AIR will soon power a whole new class of devices in the digital home, helping Adobe Flash Platform developers build experiences for an entirely new market of consumers. This session will provide an exclusive first look, with product demos of Google TV and AIR for TV

How to Develop & Optimize AIR for TV Applications by Don Woodward (Principal Scientist, Consumer Electronics)
Learn how to build engaging applications for the TV screen using Adobe AIR. Special focus will be made on design considerations and optimizations for building applications for the television.

In addition to the two sessions above, we will also be hosting three hands-on labs at MAX. You won’t want to miss these! We’ll be giving you all the tools you’ll need to walk out of the lab a super-charged TV developer.

Lab: Developing Your First AIR for TV Application by Don Woodward (Principal Scientist, Consumer Electronics)
Learn in this lab how to build engaging applications for the TV screen that run on Adobe AIR. Special focus will be given to design considerations and optimizations for building applications for the television.

So join us at MAX, sign up for the sessions, and learn what Adobe has been doing the last year to open up a whole new ecosystem for our community.

Aditya Bansod
Principal Product Manager

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Flash Player 10.1 on Google TV

I posted over on the Flash Platform blog over work we’ve been doing to bring Flash Player 10.1 to the Google TV.

Adobe and Google are working closely together on a number of different efforts including support for Flash Player 10.1 and AIR across various platforms and devices. One of these new platforms is Google TV, Google’s new Android based platform that brings the power of the web in to the living room. Google TV includes Flash Player 10.1 integrated directly into the Google Chrome browser delivering the full Web to consumers on their television sets. The digital home is a huge step for Flash and it represents an amazing new screen for developers and content creators to bring rich interactive content to the TV.

With support for Flash Player 10.1, Google TV customers have access to the full web. This includes the approximately 75% of online videos and web games that use Flash, the vast numbers of rich Internet applications, and content across social networks. Flash Player 10.1 will support hardware-accelerated video playback and deliver smooth, HD (1080p) quality video on Google TV devices. We’re excited that having Flash Player 10.1 as a key part of Google TV will enable an additional screen for the more than 3 million Flash developers to create content for.

We are seeing widespread interest from our partners in the digital home space and we are working closely with them to include support for Flash. Today, consumers can experience rich Flash-based applications, content and user interfaces in televisions, set-top boxes, and Blu-ray players from Samsung, Vizio, Haier, BestBuy Insignia, and Tivo. Game consoles such as Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3 also feature Flash technology.

Want to see it in action? Check out this video we shot on site at the Googleplex showing Flash Player running on Google TV.

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Eight Hour Email Break

You know you’re probably doing something wrong when there’s exactly eight hours between your last email from the night before and the first from the next day. At least I’m sleeping eight hours a day. I call it my eight hour email break.

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New Year, New Job (Same Adobe!)

What’s a better way to start a new year than a new job? In January, I moved over from our AIR group, where I was doing iPhone stuff, to our Digital Home group, helping to bring Flash in to the Digital Home and connected living room segment.

I’ve had an amazing time working to bring AIR to the iPhone (and now the iPad!). It was a very unique opportunity to work within the company on a small, motivated, focused and talented team to bring out what was effectively a secret project and launch it at MAX. With the CS5 launch right around the corner, it’s super-exciting to see the technology ship in Flash (apparently our team is in the credits!) and get developers access to what we’ve been working on.

It’s a very exciting change and I’ve been having a blast these last three months working in the new team. We’ve been working hard to build out our strategy and get all the pieces in place to really execute and bring out a whole new set of TV experiences over the next few years. Having spent the last few weeks traveling and talking to customers it’s amazing what kind of innovation will happen in this space in the next few years. Hardware specs in TVs, Bluray Players, and set top boxes are growing rapidly which will enable content creators and developers to unlock the TV in ways we haven’t seen before. To give you some flavor of this, we’re seeing a quick move in the industry from 300MHz CPUs last year up to nearly GHz CPUs in the next 6-18 months.

So what is Adobe doing in the Digital Home space? Well, there’s some stuff that’s pretty obvious, some stuff we’ve shipped, and some stuff I can’t mention just yet. I’m lucky enough to be working with a team that has the first release under their belt which is a Flash Lite 3.1 based runtime optimized for TV-style devices. We’ve got a ton of customers building content and others shipping that content on their devices. As we go in to the year  we’ll see a lot more devices ship with Flash. Plus, we’re hard at work on the next version of our runtime and our software solution (hint: it’s a lot like we’ve done for mobile web browsing). But more details on that later!

BTW: I’ll be at NAB next week in Las Vegas if anybody is there and wants to chat about what Adobe is doing in this space. DM me @hyperionab. I’m also presenting at the theater in the Adobe booth Tuesday at 230pm in the Las Vegas Convention Center, giving a talk entitled “Extending the Adobe Flash Platform Across Screens”. It’ll also be on Adobe TV if you missed it and wanted to see it.

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Requesting Access To the Flash CS5 Beta

We’ve been posting in a few places how to get access to the Flash CS5 private beta program. This whole iPad thing has gotten people really excited, so folks have been emailing our [email protected] address in order to request access. Here’s a screenshot of my inbox getting flooded with the access requests. Much love to the Flash community!

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Flash iPhone Apps and the iPad

If you were anywhere near tech news today, you probably noticed Apple announced the iPad. I don’t fully get it, but hey — they’re Apple and they’ll probably sell a few million of them.

The cool thing for iPhone developers is that their iPhone apps run out of the box on the iPad. The iPad is 1024×768 device that runs an “Apple A4” processor. What this means to iPhone developers is their UIs will be by default upscaled by 2x from their native 480×320 to 960×640. I’m going to assume there will be some unused areas of the screen since the aspect ratios don’t match up between the two devices.

The processor, an Apple A4 is a new beast that has no mention prior. I’m going to venture a guess here that it’s an ARM core, probably Cortex A8 or Cortex A9, built with some of the IP they acquired from P.A. Semi.

Since they’re running iPhone / iPod touch apps which are ARM binaries, it’s unlikely they’re running an emulation layer of any sort, and just running the apps straight on the A4 core.

What does this mean for Flash app built with the Packager for iPhone? It means more devices and faster processors! We’ll be working to ensure that our packager works to enable developers to target the new iPad device. Even today, apps that are already in the App Store built with the Flash Platform should be supported.

My colleague Michael Chou has posted additional information on the Flash Platform blog. Also, Christian Cantrell has posted a great article on authoring for multiple screen sizes that went live today.

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