The explosion of Flash content like widgets has created several complex problems, like how to index it in search engines, how to make it work on mobile, and how to track it. The latter is being addressed today at Adobe Max, where Google is announcing Analytics Tracking for Flash, which will let publishers track metrics for their flash applications from within Google’s popular stats package.

Aside from the unique file format, one of the major differences between tracking Flash and tracking webpages is that Flash can be embedded anywhere – meaning that analytics software needs to be able to measure interactions from not just a single location, but from within an application, regardless of where it’s placed.

To demonstrate how Google Analytics now does this, the company has teamed up with web-based Flash creation tool Sprout. Now, users who publish widgets and other Flash apps using Sprout can track metrics such as time spent, what links and objects users click within an app, and goal tracking – all from within the same Google Analytics account as their website.

Google and Sprout demonstrate how this works in the video below:

While Analytics for Flash is an interesting breakthrough in its own right, it also could be the dawn of a new era in marketing and how companies pay for advertising. As opposed to paying simply for clicks and for views, advertisers can now (in theory) pay for actual engagement, because it can be accurately measured.

Sprout is currently charging clients based on a “pay per publish model,” meaning the client pays each time someone actually does something with an app – like customize it (with Sprout’s “remix” feature) or republish it to a social networking profile. Sprout is marketing this new approach through a product they are calling SproutMixer.

Although most of the widget platforms like Clearspring and Gigya offer their own tracking solutions, Google Analytics adding its own support for Flash tracking is a big deal – it’s a solution that any Flash developer can implement into their applications – without the need for a middleman. As such, it could have significant implications on how online advertising is paid for, and how the widget companies evolve their business models.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:New Google Analytics Plagued with ProblemsGoogle Analytics Announces New Features, Urchin UpgradeGoogle Voluntarily Taking Your Analytics DataGoogle Analytics Now Compares Different Data PointsThis Post is Being Tracked by Google Analytics!Google Analytics Gets a Beautiful New InterfaceIt’s Official…Google Buys MeasureMap

Sprout, a Flash platform that first launched in January 2008 to let developers easily create Flash widgets and websites, is reaching another milestone today: integration of Google Analytics into Flash to properly track user engagement and participation.

The new product, called Sprout Mixer, is a tool that lets users create customized widgets that incorporate brand and personal content - see here for an example. Those widgets are then put on websites, where other users can interact with them and create their own versions.

…and Google Analytics is integrated into the platform.

Realizing that Flash is a better name than Flex for a platform, Adobe is now referring to everything it does related to Flash (including the Flash Player, Adobe AIR, Flex developer tools, and Flash media servers) as the Flash Platform. That’s what I’ve been calling it anyway, so I’m glad they finally caught up.

Beyond the marketing shift, Adobe will be making some more significant announcements at its MAX developer conference this week. Here’s a summary:

1. Release of Adobe AIR 1.5. The Adobe AIR client now has better performance and memory handling, but most importantly it supports Flash Player 10 and Webkit (which is what the mobile browsers in both the iPhone and Android are based on). Flash Player 10 means more 3-d graphics. This version of AIR will also include an encrypted database that should appeal to developers of enterprise apps.

The new company is focused on protecting and managing personal digital data. It will continue to offer Mozy’s personal backup product and will add new products over time. The Mozy platform has over a million users, 200,000 of which are paying customers.

There isn’t much information on what new applications the company will launch. But if PI Corp. is anything to go on, look for rich metadata and contextual information to be a part of it. PI Corp. was acquired before launching their flagship storage/backup product. But their website suggests they are far more focused on managing, organizing and searching files than simply backing them up - something Mozy never tackled. The combination of the two platforms is more than interesting.Source:TechCrunch

Adobe’s Flash Player is on 98 percent of all desktop computers, but it is still struggling to make the jump to mobile phones. If you want Flash on a mobile device, right now you have to settle for a compromised version: Flash Lite. But Adobe is committed to bring the full Flash Player experience to mobile phones, as evidenced by its Open Screen Project. On Monday, at its Adobe MAX developer conference, it will demonstrate Flash Player 10 running on a Windows Mobile phone. (However, Flash won’t actually ship on Windows Mobile until late next year). Product manager Michele Turner tells me:

We will be showing the first delivery of Flash on mobile phones, on other platforms. You will see it on Windows Mobile.

Turner also indicates that an “Android port” is coming. But what about the iPhone, which famously doesn’t use Flash? (Although there’s been some talk of that happening). Turner will only say:

Apparently, Adobe’s Creative Suite 4 was launched the other day, and I am absolutely astounded by the significant price of the software.

I have always thought that Adobe’s products were severely over-priced, but I don’t even remember CS3 costing nearly as much as the retail price of CS4. Has the company lost its mind?

Are people and businesses, especially in today’s economy, really going to pay $2,500 for the master suite, $1,800 for the Design Premium suite or $1,700 for the Web Premium or the Production Premium suites?

Will people actually pay more for Adobe’s software suites than most spent on the computers on which they will be installing? Will they shell out five to ten times more for the design/development software than they did on the operating system on which they will be running the software (the current price of Windows Vista Ultimate - full version - is $319 - most Linux builds are available for free, and the boxed versions usually average between $50 and $100)?

Are people truly still willing to shell out $1,000 just for Adobe PhotoShop? Is PhotoShop really still that much better than Corel Paint Shop Pro (which retails for ~$99 - $60 for the upgrade) or GIMP/GimpShop (which is completely free and works completely cross-platform)?

Because I work for an educational institution, we are able to get a discount, but Adobe’s educational discount is a little strange. They only offer the full version of each product to educational institutions, and they sell it at the cost of the upgrade package. They do not offer the upgrade package to educational institutions.

When CS3 was released, we picked up the Design Premium suite for around $300. The educational edition of the Design Premium suite is now selling for twice that price.

Do you think that this pricing structure is a result of the massive software pirating that occurs with Adobe’s products, or is it possible that it’s the other way around?

Curtiss Grymala is the full-time Webmaster for a community college in Virginia. In his spare time, he runs a freelance Web development company called Ten-321 Enterprises, is an active participant in the HTMLCenter Forums and offers small snippets of code and bug reports to the developers and modders of the YaBB Forum system. He has been developing Web sites and applications for nearly 15 years.

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Over the past week Adobe has apparently started to push out Flash 10 to general users. There appears to be issues with the way Flash 10 handles uploads versus the previous version, Flash 9. CN reader Jamie Lin sent over a handful links this evening pointing to trouble with uploads. Here are some examples of uploading issues:

• Wordpress trouble ticket system
• Wordpress general user forums
• Vimeo user forums
• Allvoices blog
• Flickr - apparently Flickr has moved to a different type of connection to avoid the Flash upload issue

From my research, the issue comes from how Flash 10 handles the "SWFUpload" function. YouTube may also be affected by this upload issue however I was not able to confirm in my testing.

I have an email into my contacts at Adobe and will report back. For now most of the links above suggest not updating to Flash 10 at this point.

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When the iPhone was first released, there was an abundance of speculation over whether the phone’s lack of Flash support would cripple its browser and give us something less than “the real web” that Apple had promised. At the time, Steve Jobs explained that the full version of Flash wouldn’t run well on the iPhone (the iPhone runs on an ARM11 chip, which doesn’t play nice with Flash), but that Adobe’s Mobile Flash was lacking in functionality - he wanted a product in the middle before Apple would consider putting Flash on the iPhone.

Today at the Flash On The Beach (FOTB) conference, Adobe has confirmed that such an application is in development (it had previously been speculated to exist, but there was no official word from either company). Adobe Sr. Director of Engineering Paul Betlem made the announcement, stating “My team is working on Flash on the iPhone, but it’s a closed platform.”

Adobe AIR is a platform that can be utilized to create rich desktop applications. Twhirl and AlertThingy are two recent examples of applications built on AIR.

freshAIRApps is a community resource that offers a directory of AIR applications, news, resources along with developer tutorials. Corvida posted a review of the service on Readwriteweb and noted, "FreshAIRApps is poised to be the premier directory for all your Adobe AIR needs by providing a haven for users and developers to mingle together."

Apparently Adobe is now going after anyone who uses the word "air" in a domain name that has content related to the Adobe AIR platform. freshAIRApps creator James Whittaker noted today:

I have recently been informed that Adobe systems believe that this website and it’s domain name are in infringement of their trademarks. This is because I am using the word AIR in the domain name freshAIRapps.com. Adobe seem to think that they own the trademark of AIR and that I can’t use it and should hand the domain over to them and stop the website. After reading through the list of Adobe trademarks they only reference Adobe AIR and not AIR. I have been in communication with members of the Adobe evangelist team who truly believe that I am helping the community and promoting the use of the AIR runtime and subsequent applications built on the platform. I started this site because I have a genuine interest in AIR and other Adobe technologies.

James concludes by saying that, "Adobe has let me and the community down by trying to block sites that appear to challenge their marketplace, even though none of the apps featured on this site are hosted by me." If James properly redirects the domain, the change should be semi-transparent.

We will try to get some comments from Adobe AIR evangelist Ryan Stewart today. Going forward, freshAIRApps will now be known as RefreshingApps.

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Qoof is a video commerce startup that offers a widget eTailors and publishers can use to publish product videos on their sites. Founded by Richard Kligman in 2006, Qoof’s operations and team of over 10 employees are based out of Bet Shemesh.
Kligman first came up with the […]

Source:Mashable!
It is easy to see by all the headlines today that Adobe, Google, and to a lesser degree Yahoo, are getting all the love. As Stan Schroeder posted earlier this morning, Adobe is getting together with Google and Yahoo to put some new technology in place that will make Flash enabled Web sites indexable by […]