Thoughts, ideas, tips, musings, and pontifications (not necessarily in that order) by Ben Forta ...
NOTE: This is my personal blog, and the opinions and statements voiced here are my own.
I previously mentioned the BBC adopting AIR for widgets, but this little nugget in the paidContent story is worth highlighting:
"In October [the BBC] signed a technology deal with Adobe to adopt its Flash [for video]... finally axing Microsoft's WMV and Real's video formats in favour of embedded [Flash] video, causing video views to double."
I'm glad they've made this switch. With the increase in Mac sales, you'd have to be mad to only offer video in WMV or Real. WMP on a Mac is a joke, and I wouldn't let RealPlayer near any machine, Mac or PC.
similar to joe, I am also a heavy mac user and I think the switch to flash is a much better approach. to echo both Joe and Ben, I too would never install the real player on any machine.
I expect this was when the BBC's online division (run by ex-MicroSoft people) finally realized that things the BBC produces *must* be usable by everyone who pays for it (just like everyone can, in theory, build a TV receiver) and brought out an online Flash-based version of the previously Windows only '7 days catch up' iPlayer. In only a few months. For hardly any money. Compared to years and millions of pounds for the older system (which can't even stream, it was more like a fancy front end to someone elses P2P system).
As I said in the post about the BBC and AIR - I really now wont be taking bets on a Flash-streaming AIR-based desktop. Adobe's media player has already proved the platform.
http://www.forta.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&...
--- Ben
As I said in the post about the BBC and AIR - I really now wont be taking bets on a Flash-streaming AIR-based desktop. Adobe's media player has already proved the platform.