February 7, 2012

Adobe Flash Failures; Who’s to Blame?

Adobe Flash FailuresAdobe – argues Michael Mace, Cera Technology CEO, was chiefly to blame for mobile Flash’s failure, having built itself into a corner from which they couldn’t escape once the mobile market began to take off.

“If you look for root causes of the Flash failure, I think they go back many years to a fundamental misreading of the mobile market, and to short-term revenue goals that were more important than long-term strategy at both Macromedia and Adobe,” Mace wrote.

In other words, Macromedia initially built the Flash market by giving away the player completely free. As that began establishing a Flash foothold on the consumer side of the equation, Macromedia did what so many other companies do with the oft-used strategy: It charged developers for access to the tools to create Flash content.

“The free Flash player eventually took on two roles on the web: it was the preferred way to create artistically-sophisticated web content, including an active subculture of online gaming, and it became one of the most popular ways to play video,” Mace wrote. “Flash reached a point of critical mass where most people felt they just had to have the player installed in their browser. ”

So where does the mobile market fit in? According to Mace, Macromedia started licensing a “Lite” version of the Flash Player to Japan’s NTT DoCoMo for the company’s iMode phones. But that put Adobe into a tricky predicament: It couldn’t offer the same Flash Lite to other manufacturers for free in an attempt to grow Flash adoption on mobile devices, lest it undercut its own deal. But other manufacturers weren’t interested in shelling out for Flash Lite.

Google Makes its Own Music Store Challenging Amazon and Apple

google music storeGoogle Inc. is making a web-based music store to contest with Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc., although the company may open up the service with no legal rights to market songs from most of the greatest record labels, reported by people knowledgeable about the matter.

As outlined by these folks, all of the major music firms have held discussions to permit their catalogues to Google for the new online store. But just the smallest, Citigroup Inc.’s EMI Group, is in close proximity to an agreement, according to them. EMI’s artists includes Pink Floyd, Gorillaz, and Katy Perry.

Not one of the three greater music firms is in close proximity to hitting an agreement, however they continue to keep discussions with Google. These companies are Sony Corp.’s Sony Music, Access Industries Inc.’s Warner Music Group and Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group.

Google is in a competition with opponents Apple and Amazon to make services that incorporate retail sales and remote music storage space, generally known as “cloud” services.

Apple Inc. is attempting to take the lead in this competition with this week’s release of iCloud, in which promises to provide a much more extensive combination of features than Amazon or Google does.

Zynga Inc. Looking for Opportunities Apart from Facebook

Zynga Inc.Zynga Inc., Online gaming company, has introduced a number of products aimed towards diversifying its company beyond Facebook and encouraging possible shareholders of their growth prospects in the flourishing social online games industry.

In their initial statement since submitting a preliminary public offering in July, the creator of Mafia Wars  and FarmVille stated Tuesday that it intends to kick off a website apart from Facebook by which gamers can gather together and have fun with its games. Zynga Inc. also introduced four new game titles with flamboyant graphics and much more advanced features, most of which could be played on mobile phones and tablet computers.

“The message to investors is that Zynga has big plans to significantly grow its business via platforms other than Facebook,” where Zynga presently has the majority of its 150 million customers, according to  Michael Cai, an analyst with Interpret, a research company in Santa Monica.

Even though Zynga reps won’t touch upon its pending IPO, analysts broadly believe that the company, similar to others for instance Groupon, is delaying up until the stock market stops convulsing.

“They filed when the market was very favorable,” according to  Michael Pachter, an analyst from Wedbush Securities. “When the market melted down in August, they realized they were no longer going to get the valuations they wanted.”

Zynga Inc. showed in public filings that it expected to increase $1 billion from the IPO, a figure that signifies that this company could be worth $10 billion or even more. Compared with Groupon, that lost $456 million in 2010, Zynga is money-making. It documented net profit of $28 million on $597 million in revenue this past year. However in the quarter that ended June 30, Zynga’s income dropped 90% to $1.4 million from $14 million a year earlier.

“The beauty of Zynga is that they generate a bunch of cash,” Pachter stated. “So they don’t need the money. And they have patient investors who can wait until the market conditions are more favorable.”
In the meantime, Zynga seems to be in shelling out mode, introducing new online games and seriously investing in technologies to flourish its reach in to mobile phone and various online platforms. Probably the most committed is a site, temporarily named “Project Z,” which the company outlined in its Tuesday news conference in San Francisco.

Flash 11 and Air 3.0 now Available for Download

Flash 11 and Air 3.0Adobe’s new update its Flash and Air – Flash version 11 and Air version 3.0 – are now available to download. With this new updates of the software, Adobe tied up the hardware acceleration into the programming which allows more robust applications. In these versions, Adobe now supports 3D gaming and Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound. Adobe confirmed that the latest version of Flash is capable of doing a thousand times faster rendering than the older version and that the developers should be able to make use of this power to develop more games that will rival console counterparts. The stage 3G technology feature allows developers to design apps that animate millions of objects, it can also handle extremely fast framerates.

While this latest version of technology is only available on HDTV’s, PC’s and Mac’s, Adobe is now planning to release versions for mobile support for Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS platforms, and Apple iOS.

Beyond HD support for monitors and tv’s, Adobe also promised a support for 64-bit platforms if the architecture is available to the user.

Adobe also announced the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, it is a program that creates iPad apps for a fee of $395 per application. The announcement includes Adobe Creative Cloud – a 20GB of storage for files created through the Adobe Creative Suite, and other six apps for iOS and Android platforms. The six applications include Collage, Ideas, Kuler, Debut, Proto, and Photoshop Touch.

While the new versions of Flash and Air are currently available for Linuz, Windows, and OS X platforms, these new versions require OS X 10.6 on an Intel platform to work well.

Google Improves Google+ iPhone App

Google+ iPhone AppGoogle has enhanced the iPhone application its own social network, Google+. The Google+ iPhone App now has features that are recently revealed on the social network website.

The improved Google+ app now allows you or let you join a “Hangout”, it is a new videoconferencing service in which people can chat with others within their circles. Though it’s possible to join an existing Hangout through the iPhone application, you still need to open your Google+ account in your personal computer to start a new Hangout videoconference.

Huddle, a former group IM feature has been rebranded as Messenger – don’t get confused with Yahoo! Messenger and Windows – now features the ability to send photos along with a message. According to Google, they improved the reliability of the Messenger.

The +1 feature that allows you to share a post, you can now do the same to share a comment to a post, and in the Google+ site, you can now share a post to a single individual only rather than making it visible to the entire circles. And just like the “@(name)” feature of Facebook, you can also do this in Google+ making it easier to mention a member in one of your circles.

And finally, the notifications have been improved and tweaked which enables user to have more control of it. The users have the options to receive notifications for comments, shares, mentions and etc. You also have the option to be notified if someone adds you to their circle.

Facebook Changes Triggers Complains

Facebook ChangesFacebook unveils another update again but as expected, users around the world is again complaining about the new features. These changes are intended to make it easier to see updates from connections in the world’s most popular social network.

Various complaints are swarming around the internet today, this includes a “Petition against the new Facebook homepage” and we can see some of it in Twitter, which is also a very popular social network but doesn’t have complicated features that users usually complain about.

Some said that these changes of Facebook were moves to be more like the competitors Twitter and Google+ which is also getting big.

“#NewFacebook is like America,” according to a Twitter user.  “Plenty of people discontent(ed), but it’s not like anyone is actually going to leave.”  the user also added.

Almost all of the Facebook users complain angrily about these changes but still they are sticking and adapting with the popular online community.

Last week, Facebook launched the “subcribe” button letting the users follow people in a Twitter-style. This allows users to hear anything from the users that they follow but doesn’t need to be their friend.

Facebook did not announce any changes or updates in the future but we might as well expect it so won’t be surprised.

Google Helps Developers for the Ice Cream Sandwich Update

Ice Cream Sandwich UpdateAndroid Honeycomb developers are starting to plan for their new update, the Ice Cream Sandwich. Google helped them by showing how to update applications to work on phones.

As the new Ice Cream Sandwich update draws nearer, it’s not yet too late for Google to help the developers to start preparing for the big day. Today, Google updated the official Android developer’s blog giving the Honeycomb developers instructions how to update the applications for the changeover to Ice Cream Sandwich. Unfortunately, the blog post from Google did not give any hints for the exact release date of the new OS update, but the post provided quality information for the developers.

The developers of Honeycomb have two options in this update, either to make your app useable only on tablet computers or be able to embrace the Ice Cream Sandwich and allow your applications to be used on all of the android devices. It’s clear in the post that Google recommended the second option, seeing the new Ice Cream Sandwich will be used on tablets PC’s, phones or any other device that they can think of.

The developers are instructed how to make a single app display as it was built for both small and large display screens. The single application can now adjust itself to whatever device it is installed on, without having to install, buy, or download different versions of the same application for both phone and tablet pc’s.

Hotmail Problems Sparks Complains of Users

hotmail-problemsA protest sparked because users of Hotmail experienced problems accessing their accounts Thursday night. Complaints did not stop until service is restored.

7 p.m. on Thursday, Hotmail service temporarily ceased down the operation to all of its users around the world.  Many of the users complained about the problem, some even voiced it out to Microsoft and in the site Downrightnow.com

Microsoft confirmed the problem at 9:45 p.m., and said that users may also experience accessing their personal files on the SkyDrive storage service and its Windows Live Applications – this includes Powerpoint in, word, excel in Office Live.

Chris Jones, the author of the “Inside Windows Live” blog (also focuses on the engineering behind SkyDrive, Messenger, Windows Live, and Hotmail) said “If you’ve been trying to use Hotmail, SkyDrive, or our other Live properties in the last couple of hours you may have noticed problems accessing our services. We’re aware of these issues and actively working to resolve them. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience…”

Two hours later after the acknowledgement of the problem (11:49 p.m.), he updated the blog telling the readers that Microsoft changed its domain name service configurations and was having it propagated by the DNS system to restore the service in full operation. He stated, “Depending on your location you may still experience issues over the next 30 minutes as the changes make their way through the network. Thank you for your patience as we have worked to address these issues…”

Twitter Announces 100 Million Users

twitter usersFrom Twitter’s San Francisco Office, Dick Costolo said that more than half of 100 million users of the site log’s in every day. He also added that 40% of the users just read the tweets from their friends without tweeting themselves.

Twitter, the most popular microblogging social network boasts that it now generates more than 5 billion posts or popularly known as “tweets” each month, the site also gets 400 million unique visits each month and claims that half of the active users are using their mobile phones to tweet.

Illustrating Twitter’s growth, the company mentioned some politicians, celebrities, and sport icons that use the service. Twitter also revealed that 40 percent of the British MP’s are using twitter, together with 35 of the Britain’s police forces and 396 British Olympic players. Even the TV networks, radios, and online media is there too.

In the past few weeks or even months, Twitter seems to be in the middle of every news. It includes Louise Mensch MP that complained of threats from hackers because she suggested shutting down of Twitter in times of unrest, also Jonathan Agnew, a cricket commentator also spoken about the abuse of from the Indian cricket fans during the summer’s test series.

On the other hand, police forces are also using Twitter to communicate better with the community that they are serving. Even farmers are on Twitter too, tweeting about the awareness of the problems in their industry.