Breaking News.. pot calls kettle black

Its strange to hear Steve Jobs profess concern about a open web when everything else his company does is so militantly closed. This is the company that first put DRM into music, that won’t let your change your own battery, will tie to you to one phone carrier and will only let you install software from their store.

OK, but we are talking about the open web, not Apple’s OS…

People tend to associate Flash content with two things; video and games. Fortunately Jobs provides alternatives for both, for video he cites the H.264 codec. Which is fine, but isn’t H.264 a licensed, closed technology? so much so that the Firefox developers want nothing to do with it. Apple are also the company that have their own propriety, closed video plugin – quicktime, something Jobs appears to have forgotten all about.

As for games, Jobs mentions the 50,000 games in the App store, you know the same marketplace where you have to buy a Mac, pay a yearly license fee and pray Apple deems it worthy and does not pull it for some arbitrary reason. Ironically, a lot of those App store games are Flash ports, which otherwise could have been universally viewable on nearly every device with a internet connection.

The Eco Zoo has been doing the rounds on Flash showcase sites for a few years. In 2009 won a FWA Site of the Year award. It’s lovely 3D transitions, which replicate traditional pop up books, are still impressive today. Anyone know what 3D engine was used?

It’s no secret that some people view Flash as major annoyance, labelling it a CPU hog, security risk and ultimately, an unnecessary part of the web. This has lead to inventions like Flash Block and a general animosity towards the technology. Fortunately, its not too late for Adobe to change some opinions. Here are 5 things that we think could greatly improve the day to day usage of the Flash Plugin.

Google have been working with Adobe to seamlessly integrate the Flash Player Plug-in into Chrome. This means when you download Chrome for the first time you will not have to install Flash. Chrome also automatically updates, which means so will the Flash Player. This means fast adoption of new versions and better security.