By now you have probably seen Apple’s surprisingly lacklustre HTML5 showcase (or not if you don’t want to install Safari). The demo’s have drawn criticism for the use of browser sniffing, vendor specific prefixes, reverting to the quicktime plugin on the iPhone and the use of the patent-backed H.264 video codec (part owned by Apple). Which would be fine if this was presented a tech demo, but its being promoted as a wholesale, standards compliant replacement to Flash that you can use today.

In response, Antonio Holguin has put together an alternative Flash showcase that of course, works on all browsers. While its exciting to have a competitor to Flash (Adobe really needed an accurately placed kick) Apple’s own demos show Flash is not a “old” technology and for the foreseeable future HTML5 is simply not ready for real world deployment.

So, it turns out a Myspace page is not really cutting it any more. This dark, atmospheric environment is a genuinely original approach to what a band website can be.

Prizes

The winner will receive 3 fully featured Flash templates courtesy of Flashscope (worth over $80):

• XML Plus advanced flash template
• Clean style premium XML flash template
• Super Scalable Multipurpose XML Flash Template

How to enter

• Comment on this post = 1 point
• Tweet this post = 5 points
• Promote this post on a Flash forum = 10 points
• Blog about this post = 15 points

The winner will be the person with the most points at the end of the contest. The twitter posting is limited to a maximum of 5 tweets per account. Forum posts are limited to one per site.

Please leave a comment with links to your posts, tweets etc so we can calculate totals.

The deadline

The contest has now closed and the winner notified.

Visit Flashscope

10 Downing tweets is great little site which tracks all of the twitter buzz on the UK general election. If you are planing of voting today its also worth checking out the fascinating voter power index to see just how much, (or more likely, how little) your vote is worth.