Finally someone has taken our advice and started displaying premium content via Flash video with embedded ads. As I have said in this space before, content providers need only create Flash based video content to distribute their stuff to viewers and then they can grab the largest online viewing audience of any video app. Larger than Windows Media Player, larger than Quicktime, larger than all other video types.

ABC has created and released a new Flash based video player for four of its shows that embeds video with non-skippable ad content from AT&T. Users can choose from four differenct shows (Desperate Housewives, Lost, Commander and Chief, and Alias) and view content in each with sponsor advertisments within.

Screenshots and more after the jump.

Yesterday Google debuted its new Finance page and today I got a chance to browser the app for a while. Google Finance promently features a Flash based live ticker for any stock and includes a zooming interface on that ticker to display financial data for the last three years. A list of news stories (found by Google News, of course) is displayed along side the ticker and is even linked within the data at various points to relate the news to the stock. I can see this as a developing application meant to compete with the likes of E-Trade for portfolio display via Flash (though E-trade's Flash RIA is a lot more complex and integrates buying and selling). I would like an API though so I could integrate the data and ready made charts into various sites. This would be great for internal live stock and market trackers for major organizations. Want to see how the world views your company? Just keep it on your homepage.

Read more about Google Finance around the web: Mike Downey links to Adobe's stats, Paul Kedrosky wants more and suspects this is a Flash demo (he doesn't see the AJAX-i-ness that lovingly integrates with the Flash fun, I guess), JD points to the Flash charting and notices the XmlHttpRequest to connect to the headlines, TechCrunch gives its usual run down with links to what the Web 2.0ers think, our Blog-daddy Jason Calacanis thinks it is no Yahoo and wants to know why more sites don't implement Flash this cleanly (me too), and our blog-sibling The Unofficial Google Weblog sees this beta as a good move that will possibly beat out Yahoo's offerring (guess he doesn't agree with Jason).

Looking for some Flex to fill out your Friday night? About a month ago (yes I know I'm behind, but I'm trying to catch up) Mike Potter of Adobe post a quick Flex and PHP write up and included the code for a simple app to update a SQL database via PHP from Flex 2.0. Check it out for yourself, but make sure you edit for functionality. One of his commenters notes that the code's simplicity leaves open a security hole via SQL query injection.

Back in August we discussed the possiblity of moving Flash Player to the PlayStationPortable. Apparently someone has finally done it. Make has a post up about the release of a brand new hack created by PSPHacks.net that has gotten Flash Player 7 to work on an older firmware of the PSP (1.5). They is currently working on getting this to work on the 2.0 firmware for PSP, but in the meantime, crack open that PSP and add a little Flash goodness.

What does this mean to you? Well Flashers should be able to easily modify they Flash 7 (MX2004) goodness to look great in widescreen mode. Plus someone may want to create some old style FLVs (pre-On2 codec) and play them widescreen style on the go.

Check out sample pics at Make and download the hack yourself from PSPHacks.net

An answer to the Mac Intel problem has started to emerge. Recently I said I would need to delay a possible MacBookPro purchase due to the non-universal Flash problem. Wel Tinic Uro, Flash Player developer, has written up a reason to lower my worries. Apparently the Intel Macs will: "ship with a native Intel version of the Flash Player 8 plugin."

Yay! I could deal with running Flash 8 in Rosetta till upgrade time if I can still view my Flash in a natively run Safari. Plus this means Flash users (read site visitors) who are early adopters aren't cut out of viewership.

On a side note, one of the comments on Uro's article states this is a preview release player which may have been pushed in an effort to ease the Mac Intel transition from Adobe.

via What Do I Know

Toyota presents first full Flash 8 only website for major corporation. They have created a special translation of their Japan specific Hybrid City website that requires Flash Player 8, but the tag at the bottom of splash page says: "It is translated to English only for the Macromedia demonstration." Entering the presentation shows you exactly why the site needs Flash 8. The full screen presentation (with hilarious English dubbing of course) includes use of the new Flash video codec plus video blurring and alpha techniques. Its possible this presentation is just a direct conversion from a Shockwave (Director made) file to Flash 8 like the playdoCAM project. Also this really isn't that strange considering the amount of Flash already used by Toyota across their other sites.

via H1DD3N.R35OURC3

I’ve been having computer problems. Internet Explorer kept taking forever to load sites and Firefox wasn’t really being friendly on my Windows box. So what do I do? Uninstall Flash player 8 first. It’s a beta and sometimes they cause problems. Then I install Flash Player 7 and test out my browsers again. Everything back to normal, whoo-hoo! But now I don’t have 8 anymore, and I want it, heck I need it. What do I do? Go back to the Flash Player 8 page and re-install. Test again and voila, all works perfect. It seems I having been keeping up to date. Now I have Flash Player version 8,0,15,0 installed, the latest and greatest player. Now it’s your turn to make sure you’re up to date. Open a website with a Flash movie or game or application and right-click or control click (Mac). Select About Flash Player 8… from the drop down menu. This will open a page on Macromedia’s site with more information on Flash player. On the right your version number will be displayed. If you don’t have 8,0,15,0 as of today, you don’t have the latest version of the beta. Upgrade for the best experience. Remember it’s beta so it’s not really done yet. If you want this to be more automatic you can change your automatic global notifications to check for Flash player updates as often as every 7 days via the Macromedia Flash Player Settings Manager’s Global Notification Settings Panel.

Tom and Jon are blogging the development process behind a Flash-based racing game they are creating. The blog just started last month, but should be an interesting case study in independent web development. Currently they are working on creating a tile-based map for the game that is read via an array and then mapped out via ActionScript. Subscribing to their RSS feed might be a good way to see how other developers out there create their games and may even help you get those creative processes going.

Yet again Tinic Uro (Principle engineer for Flash Player) has posted a great article about Flash Player. Apparently Flash Player 8 doesn’t just appear faster on my Mac, it is faster. It seems that the latest and greatest version of Flash Player uses OpenGL in OSX (10.2 and above) the display content. Of course older Macs that don’t support OpenGL rendering mode will not see a jump in performance, but Macromedia would love if you still tried out the new Flash Player on your Mac and told them if and how it kills it. Once Apple users and Mac heads are done rejoicing over the speed increase they should go read Uro latest at the link.

John Dowdell pointed me towards Moock’s post on the new Express Install for Flash Player that’s part of Macromedia’s detection kit. According to Moock, Express Install can be used to force your use to upgrade to the current version of Flash player if their installed version isn’t good enough to run your site. Unlike auto update, the developer is able to control the install process and even set the location the web browser will return to if a restart is require. Developers just need to make sure they follow good design practices and future proof their Express Install scripts so a page built for Flash 8 won’t try to re-install Flash 8 on a Flash 9 or above system. My only problem is with an express install in Firefox. I usually have tens of tabs open at a time and a browser quit requires me to save all my locations before restart. Also, browser restarts can be scary to a user, but this is a Mozilla problem not a Macromedia one. Now designers can make sure their users meet the site requirements and thus keep more visitors from leaving for good.

Goowy is featured as Macromedia’s Showcase Site of the Day and seems to be the first full featured rich internet application that uses Flash 8. The Beta site requires an email to login and test so I went ahead and signed up for my own @goowy.com in order to log in and test it out. The site uses the new drop shadow functionality throughout and even mimics Apple’s OSX with a feature tool bar that has bouncing icons (like the dock). Goowy takes advantage of the new text render engine to make reading your email via a Flash interface even easier. Other features include cross browser support for HTML email, support for multiple image formats to skin the client (upload a custom jpg to create a personal background) and a new multiple file upload system for email attachments. All of this is rolled into a Flash-based online email package. This is definitely the future of web-based email. With fast animated transitions between sections and an online operating system feel, this could be just what Macromedia wants for Flash Platform and rich internet applications.

The third Macromedia developer relations podcast drops a mentions of a new cool feature for the coming Maelstrom. Flash 8 will feature a ExtrenalInterface class for ActionScript that allows a developer to enable external programs to call functions in their Flash project. It also allows ActionScript to make calls to those external programs. This means that Flash projects created for Flash player 8 and later (Maelstrom+) can call Javascript without the use of the Flash JavaScript Integration kit. The podcast even mentions the possibility of having a C# program call a function in an embedded flash file and vice-versa. The FlashCoders Wiki has more information on this new feature and even a code snippet to show exactly how to use it.

The Yahoo search blog announced the winners of the Y!Q Challenge recently and I immediately started think of ways to integrate their implementations into a Flash project. Y!Q is a dynamic search implementation that pops a layer over your webpage with a short Yahoo search of related content. The documentation and APIs are freely available online.

Why not take that Y!Q information and load it into a dynamic Flash project instead of a CSS controlled layer. Then you could control the view of the content and possibly create a scrolling search layer that has a limited height and width. Or, considering Y!Q is controlled via a JavaScript library file, your Flash project’s text could call the Y!Q HTML layer into existence via the Flash and JavaScript integration kit and float it above your site content.