Adobe AIR 2.5 announced, supports smartphones, tablets, TVs and desktops

Yesterday's session of the MAX 2010 conference saw the announcement of the latest iteration to AIR, Adobe's desktop runtime for HTML, Ajax, Flex, and (of course) Flash. AIR 2.5 brings greater device support with it, covering smartphones and tablets running BlackBerry Tablet OS, Android and iOS; Windows, OS X and Linux on the desktop; and TVs, with Samsung the first to jump on-board the AIR bandwagon with its Smart TVs due in 2011. With support for hardware features, such as accelerometers, GPS, cameras, microphones, and multi-touch, and hardware acceleration (currently only available for Windows) to make sure that the experience is still smooth, AIR could make quite a convincing write-it-once, get-it-out-on-everything platform. Adobe's even leveraging its Adobe InMarket to help developers get their AIR-driven apps packaged and into various app stores, minus its 30 percent cut of course.

Whether you'll be able to get AIR apps through Apple's approval process remains to be seen, but given Apple's relaxed stance, anything's possible. Excited Flex and Flash developers should be able to get the SDK imminently (currently still showing 2.0.2 at the time of writing), while the rest of us will have to sit back and wait with baited breath to see whether AIR 2.5 improves on its rather clunky forefathers

Adobe Connect 8 is now available for purchase or upgrade

The latest in the Adobe Connect line of Flash-based Web conferencing solutions is now available for purchase or upgrade. Featuring browser-based meeting and conferencing abilities, plus an iPhone and Android app, Adobe Connect 8 builds on an already strong teleconferencing package. Adobe is currently in the process of migrating eligible institutions over to Connect 8, starting with hosted solutions in North America and spreading to the rest of the world in 'early 2011.' If you're a system administrator with an on-premises Adobe Connect package, keep an eye on your inbox, as Adobe will be emailing customers in the next 7 to 10 days.

Head on over to the Adobe Connect 8 website for more information, including timelines for migration and purchasing details.

Adobe Flash Player 10.2 beta brings greater hardware acceleration

Adobe's pushing hard with hardware acceleration and for good reason: using the GPU takes a serious load off the CPU, which Flash is pretty hard on at the best of times, especially on Mac OS X. Adobe hopes to address those concerns with today's release of Flash 10.2 beta and the arrival of a new feature called Stage Video.

The idea behind Stage Video is that it'll enable hardware acceleration of the whole video rendering pipeline, and as a result, decrease CPU load by up to 85%. If that's not enough to get excited about, Adobe claims that Stage Video will make Flash player best-in-class for playback performance of video, with higher frame rates, reduced memory usage, and higher video quality with greater pixel fidelity. To the end-user Stage Video means faster and smoother video playback on the Web, and most importantly, Flash video will no longer slow your computer to a crawl.

Another addition in the 10.2 update is hardware acceleration support for Internet Explorer 9, which takes advantage of the native acceleration hooks available in IE9 for rendering surfaces. Support for full screen mode with multiple monitors has also been improved, now allowing you to keep video in full screen mode on one monitor while still being able to use the other for something useful rather than a blank, black screen reminiscent of a chalk board. Native custom mouse cursor support has also been integrated into Flash player, which will be useful for mouse-orientated Flash-based games.

Adobe reckons that Stage Video will bring "native video performance" to the desktop, and therefore could be an important step in the war with HTML5 video tagging. Grab the latest beta of Flash player 10.2 for Windows, OS X and Linux from the Adobe beta labs -- and then check out Adobe's Stage Video YouTube demo, which has already begun leveraging the new Flash technology.