An updated version of the Flash Player 10 Beta has been posted on http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenotes.htmlAdobe Labs. Some bugs have been fixed and new features been http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenotes.html#features>added including limited fullscreen keyboard access (allows you to play games or interact with a video player while in fullscreen mode), support for Ubuntu and support the Video4Linux v2 camera API, amongst other things.

You can get Player 10 Beta on labs.adobe.com.

Asa Whillock just posted some terrible news on the Flash Media List. Former Adobean and Flash Media Server Product Manager Steve Wolkoff was killed suddenly in a car accident this weekend. His girlfriend Cindy is in a critical condition.
Please keep Cindy and Steve's family in your thoughts and prayers.

I never had the pleasure to meet Steve personally but I worked with him on several pre-release programs and he was also a regular contributor on the mailing list. He remained positive even when times were tough - I remember the backlash at the initial FMS2 licensing, yet Steve steered the product in a new and better direction and he had a real positive impact on the product.
Steve was always kind, helpful and enthusiastic and simply a pleasure to work with. This is a tragic loss and he will be sorely missed.

Steve's memorial on Freewheel

DoubleClick memorial

This is a follow-up to my post "Live Uefa Euro 2008 via FMS". I've just heard that the Euro 2008 is streamed live with Flash in France too.

This time DBee is doing the encoding for the website of the french TV Channel M6. They are serving a 1.1Mbps stream (1Mbps VP6 video + 64 Kbps MP3 audio) sized at 534x300 (16/9), using a Digital Rapids StreamZ Live and FME as a backup, from a DVB-T source via SDI input. The stream is served by the FMS3 Limelight platform which sustains a 'very heavy load' in terms of concurrent streams, however exact details on viewership could not be shared.

The user experience both on the page itself as well as in full screen is nice, a fact confirmed by the choice of the public: up to 65% of the users choose Flash, compared to Windows Media which is also being offered. This is an interesting figure, because on a comparable event one year ago during the Evian Masters, DBee reported that only 40% of users picked Flash while over 60% chose Windows Media.

The next match is the semi-final between Russia and Spain on the 26th of June, but note that streams are geo-locked to French web users.

Just a quick heads up. There will be some more live webcasting throughout the day today, and we'll also be utilizing the chat a great deal. This was a well received feature yesterday and actually brought tears to my eyes with laughter at times.
The chat is projected up front on the stage and constantly used as a talkback channel to the speakers on stage - a great concept in my opinion.

b.TWEEN is turning out to be a great event. It's my first time in Manchester and which is a great city and a brilliant place for a venue. We're at the Museum of Science and Industry, so there's some cool old school tech to be seen, too. I'll head down to the powerhouse later and check out the steam engines...

I've just arrived at b.TWEEN08 in Manchester.

The official line about the event is as follows: b.TWEEN is a unique cross media gathering where interactive ideas are seeded, shared and sold.
(It uses technology in innovative ways and radical formats to deliver cutting edge, interactive events with networking and business at their core.
b.TWEEN is about knowledge sharing, being inspired, learning from peers and doing deals.

My company muchosmedia has built the text chat that runs alongside the live webcast (all the streaming is being handled by our friends at Kinura). What's unique about the chat is that we've come up with and built a gateway to allow the audience to take part in the chat (which is projected onto a big screen at the venue) via sending an SMS text message to a dedicated number. I'll post some images as soon as I can.

And now for something completely different. Have you ever thought about riding a submarine? Or how about simply controlling it, RC style? Well now you can and you can do it in style via Flash and FMS.

On Fosters.co.uk riders can control a marine ROV (remotely operated vehicle) which is more commonly used for commercial exploratory underwater operations. The ROV is in a 100,000 litre (roughly 26,000 US gallon) tank at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth.

The whole system is built almost entirely using Adobe products. Flash Media Interactive Server sits at the centre of the set up. In addition to serving the video streams that are broadcast from Flash Media Encoder, FMIS carries messages back and forth between the clients and our on-location software. The on-location software is an AIR application which handles queuing and translates the riders' actions into commands that are being send directly to the submarine through a serial connection.

This must be the most widely accessible use of ROV technology to date!

About the creators: JustAddTonic are a digital agency that specialise in emerging and non traditional interactive media. They were contacted by Play, to create a website that allows users to 'ride' a submarine in real time and you can see the result here (registration required - but worth it).

I'm impressed. A mainstream Israeli newspaper has run an article about my blog in its computer section, labeling it to contain 'Everything about Flash'.

Guy Aharonovsky was kind enough to send me the article and translate it as well. Here it goes:

EVERYTHING ABOUT FLASH
What does the technology enable us to do.
A devoted website which was built by the ten fingers of Stefan Richter, Flash video expert, has become one of the greatest resource on the web for Internet video.
The website provides information about all the softwares, plug-ins and extensions needed to built Flash applications, include online manuals , and show tenths of wonderful examples by the best creators around.
Website address: www.flashcomguru.com

Whatever next? The New York Times? Please speak to my PR department (j/k).

Do you write a lot of ActionScript classes in FlexBuilder? I do and one of the great little keyboard shortcuts I use time and time again is Apple-Shift-O (or Source > Organize Imports, for a Windows shortcut consult the docs).
What this command will do is remove all unnecessary imports and organize all the required ones nicely. A block of code such as this will end up looking like this So hit that shortcut once in a while, it's worth the split second it take. Note that this won't work with MXML files, but only in ActionScript class files.

If you are in the UK and near a computer (but not near a TV) wanting to watch live football (or soccer if you prefer) action then head over to the BBC One Euro 2008 pages and watch it there - streamed live in Flash via FMS.

The quality is nothing to write home about, which is likely due to a low bitrate used. My guess would be sub-300 kbit (see screengrab). Still, even in fullscreen and way better than the stamp sized experiences we used to see only a few years ago. How times have changed - here we have one of the biggest sporting events in the world streamed live, for free, over the net. I wish Sky would take some ideas from that.

But bitrates aside (they could be adjusted if wanted by the broadcaster), this is a huge event for live Flash video. After the Masters a few months ago I doubt that anyone still has any doubts about Flash as a viable and credible live streaming platform.

Off topic, but I'm sure still relevant to many readers. This morning I hopped over to Jay Charles's blog and read a post about a huge explosion at ThePlanet's Houston datacenter. ThePlanet is a large hosting provider of dedicated servers (maybe the biggest in the US?), and I run two servers there myself, one serving up the page you are currently reading.
Downtime for a popular website is of course a bad situation, but accidents do happen and not all the time is there someone to blame - they are simply that: accidents. When you face a service outage (my site and server were not affected) then all you can ask for is that the provider does everything in their power to restore availability to the sites and servers in question.
Which brings me to my point: having read this thread of posts by ThePlanet's staff, and listened to this message by their CEO made be realize the gravity of the situation (it was a miracle that nobody was killed or injured by the incident) I would like to highlight the excellent service the people involved have provided. I have been very happy with ThePlanet ever since I signed uo several years ago, but I think it takes a situation such as this to really show what a company is made of. Of course this incident puts things into perspective too: for one it shows how fragile this whole interweb thing really is, and secondly how very insignificant 'being online' can be.

In times when people are quick to criticize bad service it's important to highlight the good examples too. My hat's off to the staff at ThePlanet for putting things right as quickly as humanly possible, and for keeping their customers informed about the progress - even when there was little to report. It doesn't really matter exactly how long things take when you know that someone in Texas is working their backside off to get you back online.

I've been using ThunderBolt AS3 for all of my Flex and Flash projects for a while now an don't think I could live without it. It's great for debugging and also helps troubleshoot issues that only my clients seem to encounter :-)
For those who don't know, ThunderBolt AS3 is a Logger extension for Flash and Flex AS3 projects which uses Firebug and Firefox to show traces and debug information right inside the browser. Usefulness: 10/10.

ThunderBolt AS3 is now also available for AIR, and while I haven't used this latest version yet I have no doubt that it's equally as versatile as the 'old' Flash/Flex version. I highly recommend you give it a try if you are building AIR projects (or use the initial version for your Flash AS3 and Flex work).

ThunderBolt AS3 for Flash/Flex
ThunderBolt AS3 for AIR

CBS have launched their redesigned Flash based video player supporting H.264 HD videos. Viewers are able to watch full length episodes of their favorite shows such as CSI, Criminal Minds and How I met Your Mother, to name but a few.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to bring up any of the content which I presume is down to geographical restrictions. Hopefully viewers from the US could try the player and tell us about their experience by leaving a comment below.