For immediate release
HDTV Quality Web Video Reaches the Masses with Industry Standard Video Codec in Flash Player
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Aug. 21, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the latest update for Adobe® Flash® Player 9 software, code-named Moviestar, which includes H.264 standard video support - the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray® and HD-DVD® high definition video players - and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support, as well as hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced full screen video playback. These advancements will extend Adobe’s leadership position in Web video by enabling the delivery of HD television quality and premium audio content through the ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player and pave the way to expand rich media Flash experiences on the desktop and H.264 ready consumer devices. The latest update for Adobe Flash Player 9 will be available in beta for immediate download later today on Adobe Labs at http://labs.adobe.com .
With H.264 encoding already available in Adobe Premiere® Pro and Adobe After Effects® software, H.264 playback is now enabled in Adobe Flash Player, and will be supported by the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) and applications developed with Adobe AIR™ software, including Adobe Media Player™. Adobe AIR is a cross-operating system application runtime that enables developers to use their existing skills to build and deploy rich Internet applications to the desktop. The Adobe Media Player, which leverages Adobe’s Emmy® Award winning Flash architecture, delivers engaging video experiences to viewers while offering content publishers new abilities to distribute, track and build businesses around their media assets.
“Adobe is committed to providing a seamless creation-to-playback solution that allows creatives and developers to produce video and rich-media once, and then deploy that content across the widest array of distribution and playback environments,” said John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe. “Already a broadly adopted industry standard, the inclusion of the H.264 codec in Adobe Flash Player, Adobe AIR, the Creative Suite® product line, and the upcoming Adobe Media Player will accelerate customer workflows, enabling the creation and repurpose of high-quality Web video content without extra development costs.”
Broader Reach for Video Consumers
Adobe Flash Player content reaches over 98 percent of Internet-enabled desktops, as well as a wide range of devices. Today, both live and on demand television shows are being delivered online with video that can be viewed using Adobe Flash Player, and the technology also powers the video capabilities of social networking sites such YouTube and MySpace. As Adobe expands Flash experiences outside the Web browser, content can be shared across different devices and people can get great video experiences on the video players of their choice, including the upcoming Adobe Media Player. Consumers can also stream user-generated content such as home movies from Adobe Premiere® Elements with Adobe Flash Player and play video movies on handheld, portable devices.
“MTV Networks has consistently led the industry in making its popular music, entertainment and comedy programming available everywhere so our audiences can stay in touch with all the great content they love from CMT, COMEDY CENTRAL, Logo, MTV, Nickelodeon, Spike and VH1,” said Nick Rockwell, senior vice president and chief technology officer for MTV Networks. “Flash is an important part of that strategy and Adobe’s support of H.264 in Adobe Flash Player, Adobe AIR and the upcoming Adobe Media Player will ensure that we continue to deliver high-quality video to our diverse audiences who expect it.”
Content developers can reduce the cost of encoding and preparing data for distribution with H.264 and HE-AAC support in Adobe Flash Player, since these standards are already integrated into their existing authoring workflows. In addition, Adobe is working with an ecosystem of video encoding partners to expand rich media Flash experiences that already support these standards.
Availability
The public beta version of the update to Adobe Flash Player 9 software, code-named Moviestar, which includes H.264 and HE-AAC functionality, will be available later today as a free download from Adobe Labs at http://labs.adobe.com . The final release is expected to be available via update in the fall. Demonstrations of Adobe Flash® Media Server and Adobe Flash Media Encoder supporting the new codecs will be held during the IBC 2007 at the RAI Exhibition and Congress Center in Amsterdam, September 7- 11 (Stand 7.721) and again at the Adobe MAX conference in Chicago, which begins September 30th.
About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information - anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com .
Monday, September 3, 2007
Adobe: Shockwave Player
Adobe Case Study
Pearson Prentice Hall
Science Explorer© Active Art Digital Curriculum
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Choosing to develop our project in Director MX was an easy decision. We needed a technology to rapidly develop real-time 3D interactive simulations that would be accessible both online and offline, and work across a wide variety of machine platforms, operating systems, and browsers. The powerful capabilities of Director plus the exceedingly wide distribution of the Shockwave Player made Macromedia Director MX the obvious choice."
Peggy Bliss
Project Manager
Pearson Prentice Hall
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Print this Case Study
Developed byForgeFX
Products used Director MX
Try | Buy
Find more items that match:Choose an Industry
All Industries Architecture, Engineering & Construction Consumer Products Entertainment Financial Services Government Higher Education K-12 Education Legal Life Sciences Manufacturing Media & Publishing Non-profit Oil & Gas Other Photography Print, Production & Print Services Professional Services Retail Services Technology Telecommunications Travel & Tourism Utility Wholesale & Resale
and/or
Choose a Project Type All Project Types Accessibility Data Management Demonstration eCommerce e-Learning Games Help & Support Intranets & Portals Multimedia & Kiosk Mobile & Devices Presentations Rich Internet Applications Rich Media Advertising Video Web Applications Web Publishing Web Sites
Browse by Product:Select a Product Acrobat Acrobat 3D Acrobat Connect Adobe Bridge After Effects Audition Authorware Adobe Captivate Contribute Central Pro Output Server ColdFusion Creative Suite Director Device Central Dreamweaver Encore DVD Adobe Enterprise Connect Server Fireworks Flash FlashCast Flash Lite Flash Media Server Flash Remoting Flash Player Flex Builder Flex FrameMaker FreeHand Illustrator InDesign JRun LiveCycle Open HD Real-time Adobe Open HD Solution PageMaker PDF JobReady Photoshop Photoshop Elements Adobe Premiere Adobe Presenter Production Studio Reader RoboHelp RoboInfo Shockwave Player Stock Photos Macromedia Studio Web Publishing System Adobe Video Bundle Visual Communicator Pearson Prentice Hall is the nation's leading educational publisher of standards-based instruction materials for today's 6–12th grade classrooms. Their mission is to create exceptional educational tools that ensure student and teacher success in language arts, mathematics, modern and classical languages, science, social studies, career and technology, and advanced placement, electives, and honors.
Prentice Hall’s Science Active Art team developed an innovative product for its middle-grades science program called Science Explorer © 2005. The product is unique in the middle school market due to its depth and breadth of content and high level of user interactivity. The processes developed and utilized by this team, and the active art product itself are truly fine examples of Prentice Hall’s reputation for quality.
ChallengeThe Active Art team set out to develop a product where students become participants in learning rather than audience members through detailed explorations of core content. The team created interactive activities, simulations, and experiments capable of running on the company's PHSchool companion website that match the quality and detail of graphics in the Science Explorer textbooks. Like mainstream media’s multi-sensory experience, active art pulls students into the content and keeps them engaged in learning. The Active Art projects captivate the interest of the student s with cutting-edge 3D graphics and interactivity while allowing students to interact and learn at their own pace.
Prentice Hall and ForgeFX decided to use Macromedia Director to develop the product since the Shockwave Player supports textured real-time interactive 3D environments, and allows the developer to work in a well established and fully objected oriented programming environment.
SolutionDirector MX
BenefitsMacromedia Director MX enabled ForgeFX to create real-time 3D environments for Prentice Hall to demonstrate a variety of scientific concepts. Since the Shockwave Player is one of the most popular media players, students are able to access the active art projects seamlessly from school and from home. Through the use of the real-time 3D capabilities in Director, online simulations included smoke, particle systems, water, artificial intelligence, reflections, mesh deformations, and a host of other 3D features standard in most cutting-edge 3D tools.
The Macromedia W3D exporter allowed ForgeFX's 3D artists and animators to do their art work in 3D Studio Max and easily export their files into a format that worked well with Director.
Benefits include:
Using Macromedia Director, ForgeFX was able to deliver true real-time 3D environments that are capable of running online or from a CD-ROM on any computer.
The projects dynamically check their frame rate while running on every end user’s machine, and scale delivery to meet acceptable performance levels regardless of the end user’s processor speed and video card.
Because 298 million web users have Macromedia Shockwave Player, developers are assured that deployment of sophisticated 3D technology will be available to all users.
While Director is a full-blown, object-oriented development environment, it is also a rapid development tool, which allows the developer to create projects in a relatively short amount of time.
The developers took advantage of multi-resolution meshes and scalable geometry to allow users on low-end or high-end machines to interact with the content at performance levels tailored for their machines.
To reduce download sizes the content of some of the 3D Active Art projects are generated randomly which also ensures that the participants have a different experience every time they access the project.
Project DetailsWith the advancements and rapid adoption rates of the Internet, Pearson Prentice Hall now has companion websites for all of their textbook programs. Adding digital media to the student's curriculum allows for compelling content to supplement the course material. Science Explorer covers a wide spectrum of science content, including environmental science, human biology, chemical interactions, and motion, forces and energy, spanning the chapters of 16 books.
The Pearson Prentice Hall website is accessed by millions of students a year on a variety of operating systems, platforms, and browsers and needs a technology solution that is capable of deploying the projects to all students consistently. At the same time ForgeFX needed a robust development tool capable of creating interactive 3D simulations of ocean waves, seismic waves, the solar system, crystal systems, topographic maps, pheromone trails, volcanoes, cells, and a host of other complex scientific subjects.
"After working with the 3D capabilities in Director since their introduction, we at ForgeFX are still sometimes a little blown away by the strength of the technology that comes right out of the box”, said Adam Kane, lead programmer, ForgeFX.
”Within an intuitive coding framework, you get: on-the-fly mesh deformation, skeletal animation, reflection mapping, specular highlighting, point-based dynamic light sources, alpha-transparent texturing, and more. For physics, you can either use the included award-winning Havok engine or hand-roll your own via Lingo. For Prentice Hall, one project required that students be able to sculpt a mountain in real-time and then be able to see the topographic map that would result. Building on top of the foundation that Director MX provides, we were able to create the custom components for this experience in a relatively short period of time."
Working closely, the Active Art team and ForgeFX collaborated to develop a collection of educational software projects that is both compelling and exciting for the user, and accurate in regards to the scientific principles being taught. With a combination of coordinated conference calls and online meetings using ForgeFX’s extranet and file server, the teams were able to conduct weekly online reviews of every active art project in production and to make changes and corrections in real time, saving time and money for both teams.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Science Explorer© Active Art Digital Curriculum
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pearson Prentice Hall has found that developing projects using real-time 3D has many benefits. Because the 3D Active Art pieces are built using computer generated models, camera angles, and lighting effects, they are easy to modify and make changes to. It is easy for the developer to create a variety of options for the client to choose from while the project is in production. This allows for far fewer changes toward the end of the project and also allows for easy reuse of models and textures in other projects.
"Choosing to develop our project in Director MX was an easy decision”, explained Peggy Bliss, project manager, Pearson Prentice Hall. “We needed a technology to rapidly develop real-time 3D interactive simulations that would be accessible both online and offline, and work across a wide variety of machine platforms, operating systems, and browsers. The powerful capabilities of Director plus the exceedingly wide distribution of the Shockwave Player made Macromedia Director MX the obvious choice."
From Pearson Prentice Hall Science Explorer © 2005 by Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Prentice Hall. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Pearson Prentice Hall™ is a trademark of Pearson Education, Inc. Pearson® is a registered trademark of Pearson plc. Prentice Hall® is a registered trademark of Pearson Education, Inc.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pearson Prentice Hall
Science Explorer© Active Art Digital Curriculum
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Choosing to develop our project in Director MX was an easy decision. We needed a technology to rapidly develop real-time 3D interactive simulations that would be accessible both online and offline, and work across a wide variety of machine platforms, operating systems, and browsers. The powerful capabilities of Director plus the exceedingly wide distribution of the Shockwave Player made Macromedia Director MX the obvious choice."
Peggy Bliss
Project Manager
Pearson Prentice Hall
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Print this Case Study
Developed byForgeFX
Products used Director MX
Try | Buy
Find more items that match:Choose an Industry
All Industries Architecture, Engineering & Construction Consumer Products Entertainment Financial Services Government Higher Education K-12 Education Legal Life Sciences Manufacturing Media & Publishing Non-profit Oil & Gas Other Photography Print, Production & Print Services Professional Services Retail Services Technology Telecommunications Travel & Tourism Utility Wholesale & Resale
and/or
Choose a Project Type All Project Types Accessibility Data Management Demonstration eCommerce e-Learning Games Help & Support Intranets & Portals Multimedia & Kiosk Mobile & Devices Presentations Rich Internet Applications Rich Media Advertising Video Web Applications Web Publishing Web Sites
Browse by Product:Select a Product Acrobat Acrobat 3D Acrobat Connect Adobe Bridge After Effects Audition Authorware Adobe Captivate Contribute Central Pro Output Server ColdFusion Creative Suite Director Device Central Dreamweaver Encore DVD Adobe Enterprise Connect Server Fireworks Flash FlashCast Flash Lite Flash Media Server Flash Remoting Flash Player Flex Builder Flex FrameMaker FreeHand Illustrator InDesign JRun LiveCycle Open HD Real-time Adobe Open HD Solution PageMaker PDF JobReady Photoshop Photoshop Elements Adobe Premiere Adobe Presenter Production Studio Reader RoboHelp RoboInfo Shockwave Player Stock Photos Macromedia Studio Web Publishing System Adobe Video Bundle Visual Communicator Pearson Prentice Hall is the nation's leading educational publisher of standards-based instruction materials for today's 6–12th grade classrooms. Their mission is to create exceptional educational tools that ensure student and teacher success in language arts, mathematics, modern and classical languages, science, social studies, career and technology, and advanced placement, electives, and honors.
Prentice Hall’s Science Active Art team developed an innovative product for its middle-grades science program called Science Explorer © 2005. The product is unique in the middle school market due to its depth and breadth of content and high level of user interactivity. The processes developed and utilized by this team, and the active art product itself are truly fine examples of Prentice Hall’s reputation for quality.
ChallengeThe Active Art team set out to develop a product where students become participants in learning rather than audience members through detailed explorations of core content. The team created interactive activities, simulations, and experiments capable of running on the company's PHSchool companion website that match the quality and detail of graphics in the Science Explorer textbooks. Like mainstream media’s multi-sensory experience, active art pulls students into the content and keeps them engaged in learning. The Active Art projects captivate the interest of the student s with cutting-edge 3D graphics and interactivity while allowing students to interact and learn at their own pace.
Prentice Hall and ForgeFX decided to use Macromedia Director to develop the product since the Shockwave Player supports textured real-time interactive 3D environments, and allows the developer to work in a well established and fully objected oriented programming environment.
SolutionDirector MX
BenefitsMacromedia Director MX enabled ForgeFX to create real-time 3D environments for Prentice Hall to demonstrate a variety of scientific concepts. Since the Shockwave Player is one of the most popular media players, students are able to access the active art projects seamlessly from school and from home. Through the use of the real-time 3D capabilities in Director, online simulations included smoke, particle systems, water, artificial intelligence, reflections, mesh deformations, and a host of other 3D features standard in most cutting-edge 3D tools.
The Macromedia W3D exporter allowed ForgeFX's 3D artists and animators to do their art work in 3D Studio Max and easily export their files into a format that worked well with Director.
Benefits include:
Using Macromedia Director, ForgeFX was able to deliver true real-time 3D environments that are capable of running online or from a CD-ROM on any computer.
The projects dynamically check their frame rate while running on every end user’s machine, and scale delivery to meet acceptable performance levels regardless of the end user’s processor speed and video card.
Because 298 million web users have Macromedia Shockwave Player, developers are assured that deployment of sophisticated 3D technology will be available to all users.
While Director is a full-blown, object-oriented development environment, it is also a rapid development tool, which allows the developer to create projects in a relatively short amount of time.
The developers took advantage of multi-resolution meshes and scalable geometry to allow users on low-end or high-end machines to interact with the content at performance levels tailored for their machines.
To reduce download sizes the content of some of the 3D Active Art projects are generated randomly which also ensures that the participants have a different experience every time they access the project.
Project DetailsWith the advancements and rapid adoption rates of the Internet, Pearson Prentice Hall now has companion websites for all of their textbook programs. Adding digital media to the student's curriculum allows for compelling content to supplement the course material. Science Explorer covers a wide spectrum of science content, including environmental science, human biology, chemical interactions, and motion, forces and energy, spanning the chapters of 16 books.
The Pearson Prentice Hall website is accessed by millions of students a year on a variety of operating systems, platforms, and browsers and needs a technology solution that is capable of deploying the projects to all students consistently. At the same time ForgeFX needed a robust development tool capable of creating interactive 3D simulations of ocean waves, seismic waves, the solar system, crystal systems, topographic maps, pheromone trails, volcanoes, cells, and a host of other complex scientific subjects.
"After working with the 3D capabilities in Director since their introduction, we at ForgeFX are still sometimes a little blown away by the strength of the technology that comes right out of the box”, said Adam Kane, lead programmer, ForgeFX.
”Within an intuitive coding framework, you get: on-the-fly mesh deformation, skeletal animation, reflection mapping, specular highlighting, point-based dynamic light sources, alpha-transparent texturing, and more. For physics, you can either use the included award-winning Havok engine or hand-roll your own via Lingo. For Prentice Hall, one project required that students be able to sculpt a mountain in real-time and then be able to see the topographic map that would result. Building on top of the foundation that Director MX provides, we were able to create the custom components for this experience in a relatively short period of time."
Working closely, the Active Art team and ForgeFX collaborated to develop a collection of educational software projects that is both compelling and exciting for the user, and accurate in regards to the scientific principles being taught. With a combination of coordinated conference calls and online meetings using ForgeFX’s extranet and file server, the teams were able to conduct weekly online reviews of every active art project in production and to make changes and corrections in real time, saving time and money for both teams.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Science Explorer© Active Art Digital Curriculum
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pearson Prentice Hall has found that developing projects using real-time 3D has many benefits. Because the 3D Active Art pieces are built using computer generated models, camera angles, and lighting effects, they are easy to modify and make changes to. It is easy for the developer to create a variety of options for the client to choose from while the project is in production. This allows for far fewer changes toward the end of the project and also allows for easy reuse of models and textures in other projects.
"Choosing to develop our project in Director MX was an easy decision”, explained Peggy Bliss, project manager, Pearson Prentice Hall. “We needed a technology to rapidly develop real-time 3D interactive simulations that would be accessible both online and offline, and work across a wide variety of machine platforms, operating systems, and browsers. The powerful capabilities of Director plus the exceedingly wide distribution of the Shockwave Player made Macromedia Director MX the obvious choice."
From Pearson Prentice Hall Science Explorer © 2005 by Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Prentice Hall. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Pearson Prentice Hall™ is a trademark of Pearson Education, Inc. Pearson® is a registered trademark of Pearson plc. Prentice Hall® is a registered trademark of Pearson Education, Inc.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Great Adobe related Blogs!
Adobe maintains its own blog web site. The link below is to the list of Blogs on this site.
http://blogs.adobe.com/blog-list.html
The following link is to a particular blog that is widely read by the Adobe blog readers. Check out the “categories” link and “archive” link to look for information on your favorite Adobe application.
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/
http://blogs.adobe.com/blog-list.html
The following link is to a particular blog that is widely read by the Adobe blog readers. Check out the “categories” link and “archive” link to look for information on your favorite Adobe application.
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Kuler by Adobe
Kuler
From Adobe Labs
Table of contents [showhide]
1 kuler APIs
2 RSS Feeds
2.1 Get RSS Feeds
2.1.1 Example usage
2.2 Search RSS Feeds
2.2.1 Example usage
3 Themes
3.1 Theme Thumbnail
3.2 View Theme
[edit]kuler APIs
kuler is all about color and inspiration: explore, create, and share color themes.
Due to popular demand we are publishing the kuler APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). These APIs allow you to submit requests to http://kuler.adobe.com/kuler/API/, which returns lists of feeds (highest rated, most popular, and newest color themes posted to the site) or searches themes.
Prior to using these APIs, please review the API documentation below and the kuler Terms of Use, and download the kuler API logo. This logo must be included on your website/application. By using the APIs, you indicate that you have read and agreed to the kuler Terms of Use.
Questions? For general questions, review the kuler API FAQ. To discuss the APIs, use the discussion tab at the top of this page, or the kuler talk forum. If you are still unable to find an answer, please send your question to kulerapi(at)adobe.com.
We're excited to see what you come up with, and we plan to feature the best applications in a Showcase Gallery on Adobe Labs. If you'd like to include your work on the showcase, send the URL of your application to kulerapi(at)adobe.com.
[edit]RSS Feeds
The following API requests return lists of formatted RSS feed items. The syntax in each case follows the prefix http://kuler.adobe.com/kuler/API/
Kuler:Sample RSS Feed
[edit]Get RSS Feeds
rss/get.cfm?listtype=[listtype]&startIndex=[startIndex]&itemsPerPage=[itemsPerPage]
Returns a list of feeds of a specified type.
listType: Optional. One of the strings recent (the default), popular, or rating.
startIndex: Optional. A 0-based index into the list that specifies the first item to display. Default is 0, which displays the first item in the list.
itemsPerPage: Optional. The maximum number of items to display on a page, in the range [1..100]. Default is 20.
[edit]Example usage
Get highest-rated feeds
http://kuler.adobe.com/kuler/API/rss/get.cfm?listtype=rating
Get most popular feeds
http://kuler.adobe.com/kuler/API/rss/get.cfm?listtype=popular
Get most recent feeds
http://kuler.adobe.com/kuler/API/rss/get.cfm?listtype=recent
[edit]Search RSS Feeds
rss/search.cfm?searchQuery=[searchQuery]&startIndex=[startIndex]&itemsPerPage=[itemsPerPage]
Returns a list of feeds that meet specified search criteria.
searchQuery: Optional. A search filter. This can be one of the predefined filters listed below, or a simple string term to search on; for example, "blue". If you specify a simple term, the search looks for that term in theme titles, tags, author names, themeIDs, authorIDs, and hexValues. By default, retrieves all available feeds.
These filters are available:
themeID:[themeID] - search on a specific themeID
userID:[userID] - search on a specific userID
email:[email] - search on a specific email
tag:[tag] - search on a tag word
hex:[hex] - search on a hex color value (can be in the format "ABCDEF" or "0xABCDEF")
title:[title] - search on a theme title
startIndex: Optional. A 0-based index into the list that specifies the first item to display. Default is 0, which displays the first item in the list.
itemsPerPage: Optional. The maximum number of items to display on a page, in the range [1..100]. Default is 20.
[edit]Example usage
Get feeds for a specific e-mail user
http://kuler.adobe.com/kuler/API/rss/search.cfm?searchQuery=email:user@kuler.com
[edit]Themes
[edit]Theme Thumbnail
rss/png/generateThemePng.cfm?themeid=[theme_id]
Retrieves a thumbnail of a specific theme
themeid: Required. The id of a specified theme.
For example:
http://kuler.adobe.com/kuler/API/rss/png/generateThemePng.cfm?themeid=11
[edit]View Theme
To view a specific theme directly in the kuler public website, use the following URL:
http://kuler.adobe.com/#themeID/[theme_id]
For example:
http://kuler.adobe.com/#themeID/42374
Retrieved from "http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Kuler"
From Adobe Labs
Table of contents [showhide]
1 kuler APIs
2 RSS Feeds
2.1 Get RSS Feeds
2.1.1 Example usage
2.2 Search RSS Feeds
2.2.1 Example usage
3 Themes
3.1 Theme Thumbnail
3.2 View Theme
[edit]kuler APIs
kuler is all about color and inspiration: explore, create, and share color themes.
Due to popular demand we are publishing the kuler APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). These APIs allow you to submit requests to http://kuler.adobe.com/kuler/API/, which returns lists of feeds (highest rated, most popular, and newest color themes posted to the site) or searches themes.
Prior to using these APIs, please review the API documentation below and the kuler Terms of Use, and download the kuler API logo. This logo must be included on your website/application. By using the APIs, you indicate that you have read and agreed to the kuler Terms of Use.
Questions? For general questions, review the kuler API FAQ. To discuss the APIs, use the discussion tab at the top of this page, or the kuler talk forum. If you are still unable to find an answer, please send your question to kulerapi(at)adobe.com.
We're excited to see what you come up with, and we plan to feature the best applications in a Showcase Gallery on Adobe Labs. If you'd like to include your work on the showcase, send the URL of your application to kulerapi(at)adobe.com.
[edit]RSS Feeds
The following API requests return lists of formatted RSS feed items. The syntax in each case follows the prefix http://kuler.adobe.com/kuler/API/
Kuler:Sample RSS Feed
[edit]Get RSS Feeds
rss/get.cfm?listtype=[listtype]&startIndex=[startIndex]&itemsPerPage=[itemsPerPage]
Returns a list of feeds of a specified type.
listType: Optional. One of the strings recent (the default), popular, or rating.
startIndex: Optional. A 0-based index into the list that specifies the first item to display. Default is 0, which displays the first item in the list.
itemsPerPage: Optional. The maximum number of items to display on a page, in the range [1..100]. Default is 20.
[edit]Example usage
Get highest-rated feeds
http://kuler.adobe.com/kuler/API/rss/get.cfm?listtype=rating
Get most popular feeds
http://kuler.adobe.com/kuler/API/rss/get.cfm?listtype=popular
Get most recent feeds
http://kuler.adobe.com/kuler/API/rss/get.cfm?listtype=recent
[edit]Search RSS Feeds
rss/search.cfm?searchQuery=[searchQuery]&startIndex=[startIndex]&itemsPerPage=[itemsPerPage]
Returns a list of feeds that meet specified search criteria.
searchQuery: Optional. A search filter. This can be one of the predefined filters listed below, or a simple string term to search on; for example, "blue". If you specify a simple term, the search looks for that term in theme titles, tags, author names, themeIDs, authorIDs, and hexValues. By default, retrieves all available feeds.
These filters are available:
themeID:[themeID] - search on a specific themeID
userID:[userID] - search on a specific userID
email:[email] - search on a specific email
tag:[tag] - search on a tag word
hex:[hex] - search on a hex color value (can be in the format "ABCDEF" or "0xABCDEF")
title:[title] - search on a theme title
startIndex: Optional. A 0-based index into the list that specifies the first item to display. Default is 0, which displays the first item in the list.
itemsPerPage: Optional. The maximum number of items to display on a page, in the range [1..100]. Default is 20.
[edit]Example usage
Get feeds for a specific e-mail user
http://kuler.adobe.com/kuler/API/rss/search.cfm?searchQuery=email:user@kuler.com
[edit]Themes
[edit]Theme Thumbnail
rss/png/generateThemePng.cfm?themeid=[theme_id]
Retrieves a thumbnail of a specific theme
themeid: Required. The id of a specified theme.
For example:
http://kuler.adobe.com/kuler/API/rss/png/generateThemePng.cfm?themeid=11
[edit]View Theme
To view a specific theme directly in the kuler public website, use the following URL:
http://kuler.adobe.com/#themeID/[theme_id]
For example:
http://kuler.adobe.com/#themeID/42374
Retrieved from "http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Kuler"
Adobe SWOT Analysis
Adobe has a great number of strengths. First major strength is the widespread name recognition that the company has. Largely because of the product Acrobat, and specifically the reader that is installed on most PCs throughout the United States and the world. This is a piece of software that reads PDF files, which Adobe has made free for the public. This was a very smart idea on the part of Adobe. As stated previously, this brings the Adobe name into almost every home and business. Another major strength for Adobe is that they were one of the first companies to specialize in graphic design software. It hasn’t been too many years since graphic design started to be done almost solely with the computer. Adobe quickly cornered this market and has continued to remain the leader. The third major strength working in Adobe’s favor is that the industry they chose to make software for is continuing to grow day-by-day and continues to give the company the opportunity to make more software products to fit the industries growing needs.
One major weakness in the way Adobe does business is a lack of marketing. In doing research, we found that Adobe has products for audio recording and editing, video recording and editing in addition to the popular photograph editing, illustrating, and publication layout. They also have products to enhance other software out on the market including a product called Ovation which is designed to work with Microsoft PowerPoint to improve presentations. This was only one of several different kinds of software that we found out that they offered. With both the design industry and the social media market growing as fast as they are, it was surprising that there’s not more information out there about these products that they have available. Another weakness that we have observed is that they don’t seem to be staying ahead of the market. Their products Photoshop and Illustrator were on the cutting edge of the graphic design industry and Adobe has made themselves indispensable to graphic designers with these products. More recently, however, they haven’t seemed to stay ahead of the new trends. While they do have products for the newer industry, the name Adobe is not nearly as well established within those industries.
The major opportunity out there for Adobe right now is that its software serves some of the fastest growing industries. With the growing trend in social networking media like MySpace, Facebook, and others, photo editing and video editing are growing hobbies among the amateur market. Graphic design is also a very fast growing industry. If Adobe can capitalize on the software that it offers for these tasks, they can really put themselves ahead of the competition, not only in its graphic design software, but in the other types of software as well.
The biggest threat out there for Adobe is change. As the markets continue to change, the software has to consistently change as well. With industries that are growing this fast, it can be tough for technology companies to stay ahead of the change. Microsoft is continuing to grow and expand the types of software that it offers. Microsoft already has a photo editing software, a drawing software, and a desktop publishing software. With the growing amateur market, these lower tech, lower priced software options stand to pull some of the market from Adobe unless they can find a new way to compete.
One major weakness in the way Adobe does business is a lack of marketing. In doing research, we found that Adobe has products for audio recording and editing, video recording and editing in addition to the popular photograph editing, illustrating, and publication layout. They also have products to enhance other software out on the market including a product called Ovation which is designed to work with Microsoft PowerPoint to improve presentations. This was only one of several different kinds of software that we found out that they offered. With both the design industry and the social media market growing as fast as they are, it was surprising that there’s not more information out there about these products that they have available. Another weakness that we have observed is that they don’t seem to be staying ahead of the market. Their products Photoshop and Illustrator were on the cutting edge of the graphic design industry and Adobe has made themselves indispensable to graphic designers with these products. More recently, however, they haven’t seemed to stay ahead of the new trends. While they do have products for the newer industry, the name Adobe is not nearly as well established within those industries.
The major opportunity out there for Adobe right now is that its software serves some of the fastest growing industries. With the growing trend in social networking media like MySpace, Facebook, and others, photo editing and video editing are growing hobbies among the amateur market. Graphic design is also a very fast growing industry. If Adobe can capitalize on the software that it offers for these tasks, they can really put themselves ahead of the competition, not only in its graphic design software, but in the other types of software as well.
The biggest threat out there for Adobe is change. As the markets continue to change, the software has to consistently change as well. With industries that are growing this fast, it can be tough for technology companies to stay ahead of the change. Microsoft is continuing to grow and expand the types of software that it offers. Microsoft already has a photo editing software, a drawing software, and a desktop publishing software. With the growing amateur market, these lower tech, lower priced software options stand to pull some of the market from Adobe unless they can find a new way to compete.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Adobe Market Share Analysis
When we think of Adobe, we think of PDF files (Portable Document Format). As well we should. Adobe owns the market when it comes to the graphic and text files that we download from the internet. We take it for granted the universal use of the PDF file. It was marketing genius for Adobe to give away its document viewer. There is a download link on most of the internet pages that post PDF files. Before reviewing Adobe’s products in relation to its competitors, it is important to know the history of the products Adobe offers today. Today’s market analysis will look similar to what Adobe’s managers were faced with throughout much of their history.
The founders of Adobe left Xerox to develop and sell the Postscript page description language. Apple licensed Postscript and desktop publishing was invented. Adobe marketed digital fonts. However competitors Apple and Microsoft introduced competing fonts. Adobe developed the Adobe Type manager to try and stay in the market. Over the years Adobe had to concede the market to OpenType font format.
Adobe developed the Adobe Illustrator software package for Apple computers. Illustrator competed with, and stole the market share from Apple’s MacDraw. Adobe’s follow up product to Illustrator was Photoshop. Photoshop was Adobe’s mainstay graphic application and quickly dominated that market.
Adobe did not immediately capitalize on Photoshop by expanding it into the desktop publishing market. Because of this, they lost market share. Unable to develop what they needed in house in a timely manner, Adobe used the profits from earlier success to purchase what it needed. Ultimately they released FrameMaker which was a fully integrated desktop publishing program.
This leads us to Adobe’s most important products today, at least from a market analysis point of view. Adobe’s market focus should be in two main areas, one concerning its Acrobat products, the other concerns its Creative Suite product.
Adobe needs to maintain its PDF files as being the defacto standard for use in product manuals, scanned documents, any document on a web site that all down loaders can open with the free Acrobat Reader. The money stream for licensing the format and selling Acrobat must continue well into the future to support internal software development and company acquisitions. This is the same model that was used for years with the Postscript product. The cost per user is small, but the number of users is very large. It is like printing money.
There is a dark shadow falling on Adobe in the form of competition from Microsoft. Microsoft has developed a file format that competes with PDF, the XPS (XML Paper Specification) file. Microsoft has made this format available as an open source standard. To aide in making it popular, Microsoft has bundled Microsoft XPS Document Writer into its Vista operating system. XPS Document Writer is their equivalent to Adobe Acrobat. Users of Windows XP can download and install the SPX viewer from the following link
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/xps.mspx
Microsoft’s marketing model is to give away the XPS viewer program to all XP users. The XP viewer is the equivalent to Adobe Acrobat viewer. They then bundle Microsoft XPS Document Writer with all future Windows operating systems starting with Vista. Their dominance of PC operating systems guarantees that XPS will be widely used. Microsoft is also pushing XPS as an open source format so that other companies can use it free of charge. Microsoft is trying to eliminate Adobe’s PDF format.
What can Adobe do? It doesn’t hurt to be king of the hill right now with their Adobe Acrobat products. Adobe Acrobat reader is installed on nearly every PC. Adobe is able to advertise and offer new products to consumers every time an automatic update takes place. If they can improve the functionality of Acrobat while keeping the cost down, they can maintain an advantage over Microsoft (see following text concerning India). Adobe should be able to keep its products fresher than Microsoft. XPS is tied to an operating system and users do not all update their software.
The Adobe Creative Suite integrates Photoshop, Illustrator InDesign and ten other programs into one package. The Suite costs less than the combined price of purchasing each program by itself. The package is becoming more capable and more tightly integrated with each release. Professional customers appreciate being able to do all of their work within one integrated package. Customers needing the full functionality of the suite also appreciate the price break.
Competitors of Creative Suite is the open source AJAX , QuarkXpress and Microsoft’s new Expression Web. Ajax and QuarkXpress are not nearly filled with the features that Creative Suite boasts. Expression Web is Microsoft’s replacement for Front Page. At this time Creative lab has the lead on all of these products in terms of capability.
To summarize, Adobe must keep its costs down while maintaining the lead on the capabilities of its products. It cannot compete with free products on price alone, it must innovate. This requires a two prong approach. For the bulk of its software development it must use offshore software engineers. Adobe already has an R&D facility in Bangalore India. Adobe must leverage low cost labor for the bulk of its development work. That will keep costs as low as possible. Adobe must then innovate in its experience American facilities, or if necessary it must find and acquire companies who have integrated products. Low cost, and the best innovation will be needed to ward off open source software and Microsoft. Don’t count Adobe out, they have been in the game for 25 years and will not go down without a fight!
The founders of Adobe left Xerox to develop and sell the Postscript page description language. Apple licensed Postscript and desktop publishing was invented. Adobe marketed digital fonts. However competitors Apple and Microsoft introduced competing fonts. Adobe developed the Adobe Type manager to try and stay in the market. Over the years Adobe had to concede the market to OpenType font format.
Adobe developed the Adobe Illustrator software package for Apple computers. Illustrator competed with, and stole the market share from Apple’s MacDraw. Adobe’s follow up product to Illustrator was Photoshop. Photoshop was Adobe’s mainstay graphic application and quickly dominated that market.
Adobe did not immediately capitalize on Photoshop by expanding it into the desktop publishing market. Because of this, they lost market share. Unable to develop what they needed in house in a timely manner, Adobe used the profits from earlier success to purchase what it needed. Ultimately they released FrameMaker which was a fully integrated desktop publishing program.
This leads us to Adobe’s most important products today, at least from a market analysis point of view. Adobe’s market focus should be in two main areas, one concerning its Acrobat products, the other concerns its Creative Suite product.
Adobe needs to maintain its PDF files as being the defacto standard for use in product manuals, scanned documents, any document on a web site that all down loaders can open with the free Acrobat Reader. The money stream for licensing the format and selling Acrobat must continue well into the future to support internal software development and company acquisitions. This is the same model that was used for years with the Postscript product. The cost per user is small, but the number of users is very large. It is like printing money.
There is a dark shadow falling on Adobe in the form of competition from Microsoft. Microsoft has developed a file format that competes with PDF, the XPS (XML Paper Specification) file. Microsoft has made this format available as an open source standard. To aide in making it popular, Microsoft has bundled Microsoft XPS Document Writer into its Vista operating system. XPS Document Writer is their equivalent to Adobe Acrobat. Users of Windows XP can download and install the SPX viewer from the following link
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/xps.mspx
Microsoft’s marketing model is to give away the XPS viewer program to all XP users. The XP viewer is the equivalent to Adobe Acrobat viewer. They then bundle Microsoft XPS Document Writer with all future Windows operating systems starting with Vista. Their dominance of PC operating systems guarantees that XPS will be widely used. Microsoft is also pushing XPS as an open source format so that other companies can use it free of charge. Microsoft is trying to eliminate Adobe’s PDF format.
What can Adobe do? It doesn’t hurt to be king of the hill right now with their Adobe Acrobat products. Adobe Acrobat reader is installed on nearly every PC. Adobe is able to advertise and offer new products to consumers every time an automatic update takes place. If they can improve the functionality of Acrobat while keeping the cost down, they can maintain an advantage over Microsoft (see following text concerning India). Adobe should be able to keep its products fresher than Microsoft. XPS is tied to an operating system and users do not all update their software.
The Adobe Creative Suite integrates Photoshop, Illustrator InDesign and ten other programs into one package. The Suite costs less than the combined price of purchasing each program by itself. The package is becoming more capable and more tightly integrated with each release. Professional customers appreciate being able to do all of their work within one integrated package. Customers needing the full functionality of the suite also appreciate the price break.
Competitors of Creative Suite is the open source AJAX , QuarkXpress and Microsoft’s new Expression Web. Ajax and QuarkXpress are not nearly filled with the features that Creative Suite boasts. Expression Web is Microsoft’s replacement for Front Page. At this time Creative lab has the lead on all of these products in terms of capability.
To summarize, Adobe must keep its costs down while maintaining the lead on the capabilities of its products. It cannot compete with free products on price alone, it must innovate. This requires a two prong approach. For the bulk of its software development it must use offshore software engineers. Adobe already has an R&D facility in Bangalore India. Adobe must leverage low cost labor for the bulk of its development work. That will keep costs as low as possible. Adobe must then innovate in its experience American facilities, or if necessary it must find and acquire companies who have integrated products. Low cost, and the best innovation will be needed to ward off open source software and Microsoft. Don’t count Adobe out, they have been in the game for 25 years and will not go down without a fight!
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Adobe FlashCast
bc
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press/Analyst Contacts
Stefan Offermann
Adobe Systems Incorporated
408-536-4023
sofferma@adobe.comElisabeth Petersson
Telenor
+46 709 61 42 07
elisabeth.petersson@telenor.comTelenor Sweden and Adobe Partner to Deliver Mobile Content ServicesBranded Content Channels Bring Engaging Mobile Experiences to Telenor CustomersSAN JOSE, Calif. — Feb. 12, 2007 — At the 3GSM World Congress, Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) and Telenor (Nasdaq:TELN) announced a partnership to deliver Adobe FlashCast™ in Sweden. Telenor will conduct the first trial in Europe, joining several operators across the globe now testing FlashCast, a flexible client-server solution that effectively delivers rich and engaging data experiences to mobile phones. Trial users will be able to access specific channels dedicated to weather, news, and entertainment.Designed to solve many of the limitations of today’s mobile data services, FlashCast impacts the entire mobile ecosystem by expediting and simplifying the delivery of mobile content. It not only enables pioneering, mobile network operators like Telenor to differentiate their brands in the fiercely competitive wireless market, it also helps to establish recurring revenue streams by increasing data adoption and usage. Similarly, it enables content developers and handset manufactures to create and deliver more dynamic applications.“FlashCast makes it easy for users to discover personalized content, from gathering news and traffic conditions to gambling or booking a round of golf,” said Michael Bergman responsible for New Business at Telenor Sweden. “This is of growing importance to our subscribers as the market for mobile content services continues to intensify.”For innovative operators like Telenor, the remarkable success of NTT DoCoMo’s FlashCast application is a great example. Since the i-channel™ news and daily information delivery service launched in Japan in 2005, more than eight million mobile phone subscribers have signed up for the service. Subscribers receive five base channels for content—including news, weather, entertainment reports, sports and horoscopes—and are alerted to new channel updates via the standby screens of their mobile phone. In addition, third-party developers can also offer additional value-added content to enhance the breadth of available content for the user. “Today, more than 200 million Flash Lite™ enabled mobile devices have shipped and Adobe continues to focus on ensuring that mobile content delivery is ever more integrated across its flagship creative products,” said Mike Bergeron, vice president for business development, Mobile and Devices at Adobe. “Flash developers worldwide now see the delivery of mobile content as an essential part of their future business plans and partnering with innovators like Telenor will open new markets for engaging Flash content.”
Page 2 of 2
Telenor Sweden and Adobe Partner to Deliver Mobile Content Services
Telenor’s trials will begin in Sweden this month followed by in-depth focus groups. A commercial launch is expected in the fall of 2007.About TelenorIn Sweden, Telenor is a leading total supplier of communication services such as mobile, fixed telephony and data services. With a focus on the customer, Telenor is able to offer its services to private individuals and companies alike. Telenor is also represented by the Brendbandsbolaget, djuice, Glocalnet and Canal Digital.Telenor is one of the largest Stock Exchange listed companies in Norway with sales for 2005 of NOK 68.9 billion. The number of employees at the end of 2005 was approximately 27,600, of which 16,700 were outside of Norway. Telenor is a market leader in Norway within the areas of telecommunication, data services and media distribution and has significant international activities, in particular within the area of mobile communication. Telenor is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (TEL) and on Nasdaq in New York (TELN).About Adobe Systems IncorporatedAdobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information – anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.###© 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Flash, FlashCast and Flash Lite are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press/Analyst Contacts
Stefan Offermann
Adobe Systems Incorporated
408-536-4023
sofferma@adobe.comElisabeth Petersson
Telenor
+46 709 61 42 07
elisabeth.petersson@telenor.comTelenor Sweden and Adobe Partner to Deliver Mobile Content ServicesBranded Content Channels Bring Engaging Mobile Experiences to Telenor CustomersSAN JOSE, Calif. — Feb. 12, 2007 — At the 3GSM World Congress, Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) and Telenor (Nasdaq:TELN) announced a partnership to deliver Adobe FlashCast™ in Sweden. Telenor will conduct the first trial in Europe, joining several operators across the globe now testing FlashCast, a flexible client-server solution that effectively delivers rich and engaging data experiences to mobile phones. Trial users will be able to access specific channels dedicated to weather, news, and entertainment.Designed to solve many of the limitations of today’s mobile data services, FlashCast impacts the entire mobile ecosystem by expediting and simplifying the delivery of mobile content. It not only enables pioneering, mobile network operators like Telenor to differentiate their brands in the fiercely competitive wireless market, it also helps to establish recurring revenue streams by increasing data adoption and usage. Similarly, it enables content developers and handset manufactures to create and deliver more dynamic applications.“FlashCast makes it easy for users to discover personalized content, from gathering news and traffic conditions to gambling or booking a round of golf,” said Michael Bergman responsible for New Business at Telenor Sweden. “This is of growing importance to our subscribers as the market for mobile content services continues to intensify.”For innovative operators like Telenor, the remarkable success of NTT DoCoMo’s FlashCast application is a great example. Since the i-channel™ news and daily information delivery service launched in Japan in 2005, more than eight million mobile phone subscribers have signed up for the service. Subscribers receive five base channels for content—including news, weather, entertainment reports, sports and horoscopes—and are alerted to new channel updates via the standby screens of their mobile phone. In addition, third-party developers can also offer additional value-added content to enhance the breadth of available content for the user. “Today, more than 200 million Flash Lite™ enabled mobile devices have shipped and Adobe continues to focus on ensuring that mobile content delivery is ever more integrated across its flagship creative products,” said Mike Bergeron, vice president for business development, Mobile and Devices at Adobe. “Flash developers worldwide now see the delivery of mobile content as an essential part of their future business plans and partnering with innovators like Telenor will open new markets for engaging Flash content.”
Page 2 of 2
Telenor Sweden and Adobe Partner to Deliver Mobile Content Services
Telenor’s trials will begin in Sweden this month followed by in-depth focus groups. A commercial launch is expected in the fall of 2007.About TelenorIn Sweden, Telenor is a leading total supplier of communication services such as mobile, fixed telephony and data services. With a focus on the customer, Telenor is able to offer its services to private individuals and companies alike. Telenor is also represented by the Brendbandsbolaget, djuice, Glocalnet and Canal Digital.Telenor is one of the largest Stock Exchange listed companies in Norway with sales for 2005 of NOK 68.9 billion. The number of employees at the end of 2005 was approximately 27,600, of which 16,700 were outside of Norway. Telenor is a market leader in Norway within the areas of telecommunication, data services and media distribution and has significant international activities, in particular within the area of mobile communication. Telenor is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (TEL) and on Nasdaq in New York (TELN).About Adobe Systems IncorporatedAdobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information – anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.###© 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Flash, FlashCast and Flash Lite are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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