A Lot More Flash (And AIR) Phones Coming Soon From Ribbit

an entire development platform for building Flash phones on December 13. Ribbit’s development platform is already in private beta and allows programmers to build Web phones that can make, receive, and record calls, send voice messages, and manage contacts. Ribbit runs the back-end VOIP service, and it supports applications built on both Adobe Flex and AIR

Adobe Hires Co-Inventor of Image Resizer Technology

Adobe Image Foundation (AIF) Toolkit

The Adobe Image Foundation (AIF) Toolkit preview release includes a high-performance graphics programming language that Adobe is developing for image processing, codenamed Hydra, and an application to create, compile and preview Hydra filters and effects. The toolkit contains a specification for the Hydra language, several sample filters, and sample images provided by AIF team members. The AIF technology delivers a common image and video processing infrastructure which provides automatic runtime optimization on heterogeneous hardware. It currently ships in After Effects CS3 and will be used in other Adobe products in the future. The next release of Flash Player, codenamed Astro, will leverage Hydra to enable developers to create custom filters, effects and blend modes.

Hydra is a programming language used to implement image processing algorithms in a hardware-independent manner. Some benefits of Hydra include:

• Familiar syntax that is based on GLSL, which is C-based
• Allows the same filter to run efficiently on different GPU and CPU architectures, including multi-core and multiprocessor systems in a future update
• Abstracts out the complexity of executing on heterogeneous hardware
• Supports 3rd party creation and sharing of filters and effects
• Delivers excellent image processing performance in Adobe products

For more details, please see the Hydra language specification that is included as part of the AIF Toolkit.

If you would like to see the AIF presentation from the 2007 Adobe Max Conference, it is available for download as PDF from here

Video Card Support

The following table lists the video cards supported by the AIF Toolkit.

Note: This version of the AIF Toolkit only supports filter execution on the GPU. However, support for software-based rendering is expected in a future update.

Manufacturer	Series	Model Numbers
NVIDIA	QuadroFX Series	FX 5500 SDI, FX 4500 SDI, FX 5600, FX 5500, FX 4600, FX 4500 X2, FX 4500, FX 4400 (discontinued, replaced by the FX 4500), FX 4000 SDI, FX 3500, FX 3450, FX 1700, FX 1500, FX GO 1400, FX 1400, FX 1300, FX 570, FX 560, FX 550, FX 540, FX 370, FX 350
	8 Series	GeForce 8800 GTS/GTX/Ultra, GeForce 8600M GT, GeForce 8500 GT
	7 Series	GeForce 7950 GT/GS, GeForce 7900, GeForce 7800, GeForce 7600, GeForce 7300, GeForce 7200 GS, GeForce 7100
	6 Series	6800 Ultra, 6800 GT, 6800 GS, 6800, 6800 XT, 6600, 6500, 6200, 6200 TurboCache, 6200 LE, 6100, 6150
AMD/ATI	Radeon HD2000 Series	HD2900, HD2600, HD2400
	Radeon X1000 Series	X1950, X1900, X1800, X1650, X1600, X1300, "All In Wonder" X1900 (X1900 GPU), "All In Wonder" 2006 PCI Express cards (Based on X1300 GPU)
	FireGL	Avivo PCI Express, V8650, V8600, V7600, V5600, V3600, V3300, V3400, V5200, V7200, V7300, V7350

Note: The AIF Toolkit does not run on MacBook systems. MacBooks use the Intel integrated graphics subsystem which does not provide sufficient OpenGL support in hardware. This AIF Toolkit release will run on MacBook Pro systems, though.

A tutorial describing how to write a simple Hydra filter is available as HTML or PDF.

Download the Setup EXE file
Download the Setup ZIP file.

NoteTag

NoteTag is a proof-of-concept by a new project at Adobe currently code-named Kiwi. The Kiwi Project is an exploration of Read/Write RSS and Web 2.0 components for Adobe Flex and the Adobe Engagement Platform.

NoteTag is a sample Flex 2 application that allows users to capture notes during meetings and assign tasks within those notes to individuals. Underneath the hood, NoteTag stores notes as blog entries, formats tasks using a microformat, and uses tags to link tasks (from notes) to people. NoteTag uses a preliminary set of Kiwi Project component libraries, including an AtomProtocol library, a simple TagServerProtocol library, and an extended RSSRW library that supports setting data in an RSS feed.

NoteTag is a proof-of-concept release. As such, the NoteTag source and the Kiwi Project component libraries (described below) are of experimental quality; we have released them as-is under the Adobe Labs license. NoteTag also includes the Cairngorm Framework from Adobe Consulting as a compiled SWC compatible with Flex 2. Cairngorm has its own license which is included in the Cairngorm folder inside the NoteTag ZIP file. We want to share our direction and listen to your feedback so that we can continue to incorporate it into our Read/Write RSS and web 2.0 Flex development strategy and planning.

See The Demo

Kiwi Connections Library

The Connections Library defines some utility classes for managing connections to web services, and is used by the AtomProtocol and TagServerProtocol libraries.

• Docs
• Zip (docs, source, and SWC)

Kiwi AtomProtocol Library

The AtomProtocol Library includes an AtomProtocol interface, and two AtomProtocol classes, one for Blogger (Atom Publishing Protocol 0.3) and one for Typepad (Atom Publishing Protocol 0.4).

• Docs
• Zip (docs, source, and SWC)

Kiwi TagServerProtocol Library

The TagServerProtocol Library includes an TagServerProtocol interface, and a TagServerProtocol class that connects to the del.icio.us API.

• Docs
• Zip (docs, source, and SWC)

Kiwi Feeds Library

The Feeds Library extends the original RSS and Atom libraries on the ActionScript 3 Labs page to include methods for setting data in the RSS feeds.

• Docs
• Zip (docs, source, and SWC)

Adobe™ Flash™ Ajax Video

The Adobe™ Flash™ Ajax Video (FAVideo) component is a small, open source Flash component that you can use to provide video playback within an Ajax application. It exposes all of the formatting and video playback controls necessary to build a video player customized entirely using HTML and Javascript.

• One line instantiation makes it trivial to integrate video playback within an HTML and Javascript interface.
• Simple APIs provide the ability to manipulate video size, position, and scaling prior to or during video playback.
• Video playback parameters such as playback, video seek, cue points, and audio control allow sophisticated programmatic integration with Ajax applications.

See The documentation.