If you haven’t seen this yet, check it out NOW! Visit www.comcast.net and click on one of the links to “Watch video” and you’ll be taken to a very innovative, dynamic Flash/FlashCom/FVSS-based video player. You can get video feeds from CBS news, AP, TechTV, E! Entertainment, and several more - for free!

One small catch - I found that it can be strangely difficult to find links to the video player. I’m not sure why they don’t just put a “Watch Videos” link on the home page - or maybe I just missed it…

NewsGator
Just read about this on John Porcaro’s Blog. Very convenient if you’re an Outlook user.

[Re-posting for more comments]

It’s planning time again and the product team has a lot of great ideas. I’m curious to know what your number one designer-oriented feature for the next version might be. Is there something that Photoshop does that you wish Flash did? What about animation tools? Or video-related features?

I’m not prompting you to vent about bugs or the return of old features, I’m really looking for some new ideas that we may not have thought of.

Your ideas and suggestions are very welcome.

We have just posted a new demonstration that I created which provides Flash users with an overview of basic Director MX 2004 concepts like the workspace.

Visit Macromedia On Demand for the free presentation:
http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/ondemand/index.cfm?id=145&type=1

According to this article, Australian company
Catalyst Communications and Training is building an online sign-language dictionary for the deaf community in Australia.

The article mentions, “Finding the right sign will only be a matter of typing in a word and viewing it as a Macromedia Flash video.”

It’s great to see so many companies opting for Flash as their video delivery platform. A wise choice considering 93% of Web users will be able to see the video (via FLP 6 and up). The second most pervasive video player, Windows Media Player, is only installed on 61% of Internet-connected desktops - and it is an 11MB+ download for Windows! Flash Player 7 is only 463KB for Windows.

The Auslan dictionary will be made available from www.ridbc.org.au.

Macromedia is planning to have a booth at NAB 2004 this year. To the best of my knowledge, this will be the first time that we have had our own booth at the show.

For those of you that are not familiar, NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) is the biggest video show of the year. We decided to have a serious presence this year due to Flash’s ground-breaking web video support. With Flash Player 6 standing at 93% + penetration, it’s hands-down the most widely available video playback mechanism on the web. Our video support story is so good that we really want to try and get Flash into the hands of video professionals.

As of Dec’03, according to NPD research:
Flash Player 6 - 93%
Windows Media Player - 61%
RealPlayer - 57%
Quicktime - 47%

We’re working on some top-secret plans to have a REALLY COOL sponsor at the show this year. I can’t say who yet, but I guarantee it will be cool. All I can say is that they’ll be in our booth giving away free stuff…

Greg Rewis and I will be there doing all of the theater demos so we hope to see you there.

Also, if you have any references to some great Flash video experiences you’ve encountered, please post them in the comments so we’re sure we don’t miss anything.

I have to thank the wonderful people of Singapore who attended our MAX conference last week. We had a great time and really appreciated the positive feedback that we received from the audiences. I spoke with many developers who are creating some fantastic RIAs that are very innovative. Keep up the great work.

Thanks again!

I just want to thank all of the wonderful people that I met while travelling India two weeks ago. Our MAX conferences held in Bangalore and Delhi were a great success. I’ve presented to thousands of Macromedia customers over the last four years and I must say, these two audiences were the best that I’ve ever had. I’ve never had a large audience pay such close attention to what I was saying. I didn’t see one yawn or rapid “dozing off” head-bob! ;- )

I was also impressed by the quality and quantity of the questions that we received from the audience. It was very clear that Macromedia’s “Rich Internet Application” propaganda, er, I mean, marketing campaign has really resonated well in India. I was even asked by one team of developers how they could solve a performance problem they encounter when loading 700,000 complex data records into the Flash player via Remoting! OMG!

James, Titu and I have posted our PPT presentations on the right-hand side of my Blog. Feel free to download and relive the experience. ;- )

Thanks again to everyone. I thoroughly enjoyed my trip. And James and I are really glad we survived the three hour drive to from Delhi to Agra to visit the Taj Majal. It was well worth the white knuckles and the encounter with the “Monkey Picture Money” guy (inside joke).

If you do any work with video you should check out this seminar series organized by Pinnacle Systems. I’ll be presenting a 30min piece that introduces video professionals to Flash - but existing Flash users can benefit from the Liquid Edition demonstration.

Liquid Edition has the FLV exporter bundled with it and it allows you to right-click and export directly to FLV from within the Liquid Edition timeline. It’s actually a very powerful app. I’m no longer a Final Cut Pro snob. Down side: it’s Windows only…
This seminar series is currently being offered in the following cities:
Los Angeles (3/18)
Houston (3/23)
Phoenix (3/25)
Boston (3/30)
Atlanta (5/4)
Seattle (5/6)
San Francisco (5/11)
Denver (5/13)
Dallas (5/18)
Philadelphia (5/20)
Washington, DC (5/25)

Sign up for free here: http://www.pinnaclesys.com/liquidtour2004

The US Patent office has nullified the EOLAS patent on browser plugins. EOLAS can still appeal the decision, but this ruling might mean Microsoft will not have to make a change to Internet Explorer that forces a dialog box to appear when any browser plug-ins, including Flash, are used on a page.

More at Reuters

[via John Dowdell]