The FlashCanon

While Chris and I were at Flashforward Austin, we found out what different people were doing with Flash while talking with them. We started talking about all of these different things ourselves and got to wondering just how many people in any given room used Flash for any given task. For example: we talked to a couple of guys who built animations for a company in the health industry. Along those same lines, I used to build animations for court cases, but I now work for an advertising agency building full sites, micro sites, and banners (no, nothing like the annoying mortgage ads with the list of state abbreviations).

Anyway, to get to my point, that topic was brought up again today and I thought I’d go ahead and see if I could get the answer to the burning question: What do you do with Flash?

I’ve been kinda quiet here lately because I’ve gotten started writing my book, but I thought I’d do a quick post to mark the release of the Flash Player penetration numbers for September 2006. Looks like we’ve got the following in what the survey is calling “Mature Markets”:
Flash Player 6: 96.0%
Flash Player 7: 94.8%
Flash Player 8: 89.1%
Flash Player 9: 35.9%

In the US and Canada:
Flash Player 6: 97.0%
Flash Player 7: 95.6%
Flash Player 8: 90.3%
Flash Player 9: 40.3%

Europe:
Flash Player 6: 95.8%
Flash Player 7: 94.3%
Flash Player 8: 87.8%
Flash Player 9: 36.8%

And Japan:
Flash Player 6: 98.5%
Flash Player 7: 98.0%
Flash Player 8: 92.0%
Flash Player 9: 24.8%

Here’s a nice little article I just read by Ryan Blitstein over at Mercury News. Ryan writes about the history of Adobe and how it came “from $83,000 in revenue in 1983 to $83 million five years later” and continued to rise to “an expected more than $2 billion this year.” He also writes about how John Warnock and Charles Geschke “launched the desktop publishing revolution” starting with a little thing called PostScript and how they “were heavily involved in Adobe’s $3.4 billion acquisition of Macromedia”.

It’s a good little read. Check it out here.

Looks like the 16 finalists for the 2006 MAX Awards have been announced.

For Achievement:
Charter One Bank
U.S. Army

For Advertising and Branding:
Nike Air Max
Volkswagen GTI Features

For Industry Innovator:
Fidelity Labs
The Wharton Course Auction

For Interactive Process Management:
Kane County Circuit Clerk
Verizon Wireless

For Media and Entertainment:
Click.TV
Smilebox

For Mobile and Devices:
MTV Mobile - Italia
Poolside Airhockey

For RIA/Web Development:
Dorado
goowy webtop

For Training and Collaboration:
TeachCTA
TIAA-CREF

Congrats to all! For links to the finalists and honorable mentions, check out the MAX Awards site

Via Light Reading:

ATLANTA — Internap Network Services Corporation (NASDAQ: INAP - message board), a leading provider of performance network services over the Internet, today announced it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire VitalStream Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: VSTH - message board). VitalStream is a leader in audio and video streaming services and a global provider of integrated rich media content delivery services that enable businesses to broadcast digital media content to worldwide audiences via the Internet.

Read more HERE.