Today, I was implementing the Google Maps API for a site I was developing and noticed that you can now use the Google maps API to embed maps in Flash (take that Yahoo!). This may be old news, but it’s new to me:

This API lets Flex developers embed Google Maps in Flash applications. Similar to the JavaScript version, this ActionScript API provides a number of utilities for manipulating and adding content to maps through a variety of services, enabling you to embed robust, interactive maps applications on your website.

More information can be found here.

An engineer from the Adobe Flash team, Tinic Uro, is reporting that they have found the bottleneck which has plagued the Flash player’s performance on OS X. With the beta release of Flash player 10, speeds are said to be increased by up to three times. Good news for all OS X users.

Flash Player 10 beta can be downloaded from Adobe Labs.

Slowly but surely, Flash is hacking away at the reasons people hate it. Flash has crossed a big bridge with the recent news that both Google and Yahoo! can now search content in SWF files. Yeah, I’m as suprised as you. Here’s a quick breakdown of the news, based on this article from the Flash team.

Q: Why is this news important?
A: Because all SWF files that may have had relevant and informative content were essentially invisible to all search engines before this announcement.

Q: Why is Adobe doing this?
A: To legitimize Flash sites as a viable, search friendly option and to give the Flash haters one less reason to complain.

Q: Which versions of the SWF file format will benefit from this improved indexing and searching?
A: All of them. Yeah, every single one. Yup, that kind too.

Q: What do content owners and developers need to do to their SWF content to benefit from improved search results?
A: Zip, Zilch, Nada. Now go have a margarita and tell your clients how much of a genius you are.

Q: What technology has Adobe contributed to this effort?
A: A custom Flash Player that returns links and text from within the flash file.

Q: How are Google and Yahoo! using the Adobe Flash technology?
A: To deliver improved web search capabilities for SWF applications.

Q: When will the improved SWF searching solutions go live?
A: Google is rolling them out now and Yahoo! is hot on their heels.

(more…)

Adobe’s released an upgrade to all version of the CS. Go to Adobe’s site for the official information. Flash Mazagine has a better take:

The only real news here for Flash/FLEX developers is the ability to embed SWF content inside Acrobat 9. In reality this is what you’d pay for. For Print professionals, this is much more interesting as the new PDF preview features alone can save failed print runs.

So – unless you work at a print shop and double as a print designer, you can safely ignore this upgrade.

Adobe is developing a new SDK, called SwitchBoard,  that allows AIR apps to talk to the Creative Suite apps.

In 2007, Adobe announced Adobe AIR™ – the Adobe Integrated Runtime – for creating stand-alone web applications based on the web standards of HTML, Flash®, and Ajax. The AIR environment allows developers to create dynamic, appealing, cross-platform applications. Now, with the Adobe technology code named SwitchBoard, AIR applications can communicate with applications in the Adobe Creative Suite®.

Adobe AIR developers can create applications that participate as first class citizens in creative workflows. Each SwitchBoard solution consists of an AIR application written for SwitchBoard, JavaScripts, and the SwitchBoard service that delivers the scripts to the Creative Suite applications. AIR developers only need to include a Flex library called SwitchBoard.swc in their projects in order to send and receive scripts to and from Creative Suite applications.

SwitchBoard brings together the power of the automation in the Creative Suite applications with the potential for third parties to extend the creative process with new applications produced using AIR. The result is an extensible, powerful, cross-platform environment that can quickly adapt to today’s rapidly changing creative workflows.

I’m a late posting this, but Flashmagazine.com has a some information and a few spy shots of the UI for Flash CS4. This is going to be a great release! The only thing that CS3 had going for it was ActionScript 3. Now it’s the designers/animators turn to get new features.