World-Famous Race Delivered in High-Quality Video to Cycling Fans Online

Sydney — June 25, 2009 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that leading Australian public broadcaster Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) will stream the 96th annual Tour de France live online using Adobe® Flash® technology, the No. 1 platform for delivering video on the Web*. Cycling fans throughout Australia will be able to watch the most prestigious and well-known bicycling event in the world, via the SBS Web site at www.sbs.com.au/tdf. The race begins on July 4 and continues through July 27, 2009 with 21 stages, covering a total distance of 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles).

SBS chose the Adobe Flash Platform to stream the race live in high-definition video, and will offer instant messaging capabilities for viewer interaction, text and audio race commentary, and real-time rider tracking complete with elevations, routes, and rider positions.

“With Adobe Flash technology and Akamai’s world-class video streaming services, we are offering our viewers a seamless, instant-on Web video experience for watching the Tour de France live on the Internet,” said Toby Forage, executive producer of Sport Online for Special Broadcasting Service. “With extensive interactivity such as the ability to chat live with other fans, we are catering to viewers who want compelling experiences and new ways to engage with their favorite sports.”

Enabling a seamless, instant-on Web experience Adobe Flash Media Server software is powering the live video streaming for the event, delivered by Adobe Flash Video Streaming Service partner Akamai. Utilizing Adobe’s server software, SBS can deploy consistent, high-quality video as a truly seamless, instant-on Web video experience across all major platforms and browsers.

“With the Adobe Flash Platform, broadcasters like SBS are enabling viewers to experience sports live in ways that go beyond the events themselves, incorporating new levels of interactivity and community among fans,” said Jim Guerard, vice president and general manager of Dynamic Media at Adobe. “Adobe Flash technology supports some of the largest live streaming events with millions of fans engaged online. We’re looking forward to the Tour de France and providing cycling fans with a fun, interactive online experience.”

“The Adobe Flash Platform has been globally adopted to stream live events that want to combine high quality dynamic video and rich interactivity,” said Tim Napoleon, chief strategist for Digital Media for Akamai. “Working with SBS and Adobe, we’re able to take advantage of the power and reach of the Flash Platform and deliver an online video experience that will thrill the global Tour de France fan base.”

The Adobe Flash Platform is a complete system of integrated tools, frameworks, clients and servers for the development of Web applications, content and video that runs consistently across operating systems and devices. Adobe Flash Player is on over 98 percent of connected computers and delivers approximately 80 percent of Web video worldwide. Major broadcasters and media companies including MLB.com, CCTV International Networks and DirecTV, are already using the Adobe Flash Platform for streaming live events and the platform powers social networks sites YouTube and MySpace.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information – anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

* April 2009 data from independent research firm comScore

The White House is using Flash for their live streaming. The news broke that the White House is also using Adobe Connect Pro to cut travel costs. President Obama himself made his first appearance in the Connect room last week.

With Adobe Connect Pro, they can greatly reduce travel costs because they don’t have to fly everyone to one location.

Anyone with an internet connected PC and Flash Player installed can join the meeting from wherever they are. With Connect Pro, you can even completely customize the look and feel of your online meeting room. With the Adobe Flash Collaboration Service, you can even build your own Connect experience and/or add it to your own application.

Great choice, Mr. President! Flash on!

abridged from Serge Jespers

The Online Office Trifecta at Acrobat.com: Documents, Presentations, and now a Spreadsheet
Posted by Ryan Stewart: 15 Jun 2009 08:51 AM PDT
Last night the Acrobat.com team pushed out Acrobat.com Tables, a spreadsheet tool that lets you use all of the same collaboration features of Buzzword and Presentations with Microsoft Excel-like functionality. It’s got a lot of your basic spreadsheet functionality so you can use a number of complex formulas and you can also switch into private view so that even if you’re sharing the document the people you’re collaborating with won’t be able to see every part of it.

It’s got the same UI as the rest of the Acrobat.com family so it’s easy to add rows and columns and I also liked the addition of the “summary row” that you can tack on to the end and put formulas into. I found a few bugs while messing around but it’s a pretty impressive piece of work for the Acrobat.com team and I think it’s a good example of a well-written Flex application. I think we’ll call it little Bobby tables.

In addition to Tables the team also announced that they’re rolling out premium pricing for Acrobat.com. The premium pricing has two plans and lets you host larger meetings, create more PDFs and share larger files.

Posted by Ryan Stewart: 15 Jun 2009 02:06 PM PDT
Today we’ve published the RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) specification as part of the Open Screen Project so that anyone can download it and add RTMP functionality to their applications or code. We announced that we were going to be opening it up earlier this year and now it’s available. RTMP is one of the core (and probably most interesting) parts of the Flash Player. It’s what enables a lot of the rich media as well as real time collaboration features inside that have made the Flash Platform so successful. By publishing this spec we’re giving every developer access to the protocol and the ability to implement it however they see fit. My hope is that we’ll see the same explosion we saw with AMF where we have a number of different projects and implementations for many languages.

Kevin Towes has a great writeup on the changes. The important part for developers:

The specification documents how the RTMP protocol works, this will enable you to send and receive data from Flash Player or AIR. You can learn how to use the RTMP handshake, understand how the RTMP Chunk stream is formed, how RTMP command messages are created and the message formats. This information will let you leverage the client side ActionScript classes, NetConnection , NetStream, SharedObject and others that today move data back and forth between Flash Player and Flash Media Server.

There are a couple of things that aren’t included in the spec. As most of you may know, we’ve been evolving both Flash Media Server and RMTP over the past couple of years and have created specific protocols based on it to enable our partners to do things like protect digital content. Those include, for example, RTMPe for encrypting RTMP streams and RTMFP (the real time media flow protocol) for doing P2P communication between Flash Players.

While it took us longer than I would have liked, this is still very significant for our developer community and the wider Flash ecosystem. With the AMF, FLV, F4V and RTMP specifications now open developers have a published set of rules that will let them better integrate SWF applications into their backend systems and architecture. These two specs are the keys to communicating with the Flash Player and I hope this shows that we continue to try to make the Flash Player as transparent as possible even if we aren’t open sourcing it. It’s also important to note that you’re allowed to expand on the RTMP spec and create unique implementations for your own needs.

The distributable player solution consists of the following components:

Flash Lite 3.1 Distributable Player. Flash Lite 3.1 includes the same features as Flash Lite 3.0, such as support for Flash Player compatible video, with some additional enhancements including improved security model for SWF file access. The solution delivers a standalone player for applications, without affecting the Flash Lite browser plug-in or pre-installed standalone player, if present.
Download and Discuss

* TryDownload the distributable player solution now
* DiscussDiscuss the distributable player solution in the forums

Adobe Mobile Packager. The Adobe Mobile Packager is a desktop tool to wrap a SWF application with a player version checker, an icon, and metadata into an installable file for user-friendly discovery on S60 and Windows Mobile devices. The resulting output file is recognizable by S60 (.SIS) and Windows Mobile (.CAB) operating systems, acting essentially like .ZIP or .AIR files.

Authoring support is provided via Adobe Flash CS4 Professional and Adobe Device Central CS4 with corresponding updates, or via Adobe Flash CS3 Professional and Adobe Device Central CS3.
How it works

Take advantage of the distributable player solution in these basic steps.

Distributable Player Solution Workflow
1. Create

Create and test your Flash Lite application using Adobe Flash CS4 Professional and Adobe Device Central CS4 (with corresponding updates below), or Adobe Flash CS3 Professional and Adobe Device Central CS3.

* Get Adobe AIR 1.5 update for Flash CS4 Professional
* Get Flash Lite 3.1 update for Device Central CS4

2. Package

Use the Adobe Mobile Packager to wrap your SWF file with an icon, metadata, and a version checker that downloads the latest Flash Lite player over the air.
3. Distribute

Distributable Player:Supported Devices
From Adobe Labs

Because it is a solution for off-deck rich application distribution, the Flash Lite 3.1 Distributable Player will be supported on smartphones with open operating systems which allow Over-The-Air (OTA) software downloads. At launch, the solution will be supported on Adobe tested devices based on Windows Mobile 5 for Smartphones, Windows Mobile 6 Standard/Professional, S60 3rd Edition, S60 3rd Edition feature pack 1, and S60 3rd Edition feature pack 2 devices platforms. Adobe will certify additional devices over time, prioritizing the most popular devices for the above mentioned platforms.

Supported devices (last updated: February 16, 2009)
S60 Devices

1. Nokia N78
2. Nokia E65
3. Nokia N95 8GB
4. Nokia N95
5. Nokia N73
6. Nokia N81
7. Nokia 6120 Classic
8. Nokia E51
9. Nokia N81 8GB
10. Nokia E71
11. Nokia N96
12. Nokia N82

Windows Mobile Devices

1. HTC-Pro S621(Same as T-Mobile Dash)
2. HTC S740
3. HTC Touch Cruise P3650
4. HTC Touch Diamond
5. HTC Touch P3452
6. HTC TyTN II P4551
7. Motorola Q
8. Motorola Q9c
9. Motorola Q9h (CDMA)
10. Motorola Q9m
11. Motorola Q Norman (same as Moto Q 9h(GSM))
12. Palm Treo 700w
13. Palm Treo 750
14. Palm Treo Pro
15. Samsung SGH-i607 BlackJack I
16. Samsung SGH-i617 BlackJack II
17. Samsung SGH-i780
18. T-Mobile Shadow
19. T-Mobile Wing

After downloading, your end users can discover your Flash application through a visual icon just like other applications on the device.

Benefits

Since the distributable player solution mimics the Adobe Flash® Player desktop model of content-triggered downloads, you can be confident that your users’ devices will always have the latest Flash Lite runtime.

Plus, the distribution model enables you to deliver free or paid applications to millions of open OS smartphones, through direct-to-consumer distribution or your existing distribution channels, or via Adobe’s aggregator partners, which include GetJar, Thumbplay, and Zed.

Finally, this solution gives end users a better experience by providing intuitive discovery and installation of Flash Lite applications. Consumers using supported Windows Mobile and S60 phones in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, UK, and the U.S. can easily download applications. (Additional countries will be added over time.) After downloading an application, consumers see its user-friendly icon in the device menu.
What it is