One BSoD Per Child, in even the most remote regions of the globe

"Microsoft Joins Effort for Laptops for Children"

Steve Lohr, nytimes.com

"OLPC is a non-profit organization providing a means to an end—an end that sees children in even the most remote regions of the globe being given the opportunity to tap into their own potential, to be exposed to a whole world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive and saner world community."

OLPC Project, Mission Statement

"Your potential, our passion"

Microsoft Marketing Department

“The people who buy the machines are not the children who use them, but government officials in most cases, And those people are much more comfortable with Windows.”

Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC Project Founder

“We’ve stayed very pure."

Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC Project Founder

“Customers have come to us and said they really like the XO laptop and they would like to see Windows on it."

James Utzschneider, Developing Markets Unit Manager, Microsoft

"Stay green. Stay in the woods. Stay safe."

Karl Pilkington, on chameleons

"You can only talk rubbish if you're aware of knowledge."

Karl Pilkington, on knowledge

"I could eat a knob at night."

Karl Pilkington, on food

Flash Player gets 10 ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifnd some Google lovin' on top

Flash Player 10 is here!
Well on labs. Alpha. But it's faster and better, with 3D effects, custom filters and effects, advanced text layout, enhanced drawing api, visual performance improvements.
And there's some noise finally:

"In Flash Player 10 code named Astro the Sound object will have one more method which is designed to work together with the "samplesCallback" event handler. It will extract raw sound data from an existing sound asset. That means any mp3 file you have in the library or load externally can be accessed and processed."

Tinic Uro, Adobe Flash Player Engineer

W00t!
And Google just released the Google Maps Flash API. Get it here. About time guys!
Great news. Back to work.

Update: Ryan says that AIR is not supported by the Maps API. Star the issue to get things movin' faster.
Update: Keith thinks that version 10 is the best ever. He dislikes the recent focus on Flex and lights up his flash saber against the temptings of the flexd side.

open the screen and let the AIR come in...

Well I'm lost for words. Almost :)
Some years ago I decided that I should stick to Open Source Flash. As much as possible for the development tools / libs also. So I did an it worked just fine. The feeling was one of alienation from the mother ship but I told myself that big corporations are evil and Adobe is a big corporation.
Yet somehow, when it came to Adobe the reality seemed to farther more and more from the above logical result.
The success of their open source strategy regarding the Flash Platform is getting bigger with each new step they take. First there was Tamarin, then the Flex SDK and others, then the effort to make AIR truly cross platform and now The Open Screen Project

"to enable a consistent runtime environment – taking advantage of Adobe® Flash® Player and, in the future, Adobe AIR™ -- that will remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and consumer devices, including phones, mobile internet devices (MIDs), and set top boxes. The Open Screen Project will address potential technology fragmentation by allowing the runtime technology to be updated seamlessly over the air on mobile devices. The consistent runtime environment will provide optimal performance across a variety of operating systems and devices, and ultimately provide the best experience to consumers."

:O
Well my hat's off to you guys for proving me wrong!

Note: a good part of my new found enthusiasm towards the company and also the shortness of this post can be blamed on the mixture of PureMVC, Flex3 and AIR I'm high on right now. More details after milestone one ;)

I once heard

about a beer brewer who walked into a bar with beer and handed out mugs of good beer to everyone. On every mug of beer was a label with the recipe. In his hand he held a sign: “Free beer.”
[...]
Some beer drinkers, now drunk, decided that the brewer had scammed them into thinking they were getting free beer. They called him names, said his first sign was BS and decided to use the recipe and start a brewery anyway. The brewer, advised that his first sign wasn’t BS tried to deter them from making that mistake.

Adobe unveils it's AllDoBe long term strategy

March 18 2008, Adobe launches Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server. It integrates with AIR ( to read Adobe Media Player ) so you as broadcaster can protect your content even if it's not viewed online.

March 27 2008, Adobe launches Photoshop Express Public Beta. So you can edit your photos online. Just presets, no sliders.

March 30 2008, Adobe releases AIR alpha for Linux. So they can keep using the "anytime, anywhere and through any medium" punch line.

April 07 2008, Adobe aligns Mobile and Platform Operations. So you as content provider are able to deliver your content seamlessly across desktop and mobile platforms. Now that's "any medium"!

April 09 2008, Adobe launches new Online Adobe TV Programming. So as Adobe product users can watch Adobe videos about Adobe products. Why not?!

April 09 2008, Adobe launches the Adobe Media Player. So you can watch protected content from the content providers who bought the Flash Media Rights Management Server. That's fast ROI baby!

April 9 2008, Adobe releases the 9.0.124.0 update for the Flash Player. So it blocks high quality H.264 streamed content unless it recognizes the provider as Flash Media Server 3.0.1. As promised.

Adobe’s opportunities are enormous. We are performing exceptionally well against our strategy and the fundamental market forces driving our long-term outlook are as strong as ever. I’m thrilled with the strength, caliber and collective vision of the management team we have in place to take the company to the next level.

Shantanu Narayen, Adobe President and CEO

Hell yeah!