Cringely’s latest column starts with a lot of praise for the future of Flash after Macromedia and Adobe merge. He believes, rightly so, that Flash is the key reason for the merger if only because it has one of the largest market shares on the planet (about 98 percent). He even sees Flash as a way to pre-distribute new Adobe software, such as a Cringely dreamed up VOIP system, to the world via the free and automatic upgrade of Flash player.

What he doesn’t realize is that the capability is already there. Since Flash MX or version 6 came out, Flash has had the ability to connect users and create teleconferences. Flash Communication Server could be used as a backend for a proposed VOIP solution and could add a possibility of video to the application. Plus, after Flash Lite 2 is released mobile users should have access to most of the same capabilities that desktop users have. Already Flash Lite 1.1 allows RSS aggregation via an advanced XML socket within ActionScript.