A deep dive into digital marketing

Apple and Flash – the saga continues

Posted by Chris under Adobe, Apple, Browsers, Flash, Microsoft, Mobile, Technology, iPhone

Apple hasn’t supported Flash in the past for what seems to be a couple of reasons, depending on which “side” you are on.

1. Take away the closed app ecosystem – Since Flash has evolved from just being a animation player into a full on platform that can run its own Apps, allowing flash would let application developers to get their software onto the iPhone/iPad. Just build them in flash, put in to a webpage and it’s all go. This would take business away from the App Store and possibly let publishers distribute other content such as music, video’s and movies.
2. It’s a resource hog – flash, even coded well can use a large about of CPU resources (see above). This can affect battery life and speed two key things on a mobile device.
3. Cost to Apple – Apple would need to license flash from Adobe (as Microsoft did)  with Flash lite and reader.

All in all I believe it’s about control, Steve Jobs has proven that time and time again that we wants to control the ecosystem and you have to play within his rules. Flash doesn’t do that.

So what does that mean to development. Flash isn’t going away from Mac’s. It’s too entrenched on the Mac platform for it to disappear but in the controlled environment of the iTunes store it’s different.

But let’s first look at the penetration of iPhones, which is still small. Of all mobile phones in the US, 11% are smart phones and of that 21% are iPhones.  Sure when we add iTouch in there it goes up but it’s still small.

When we talk about mobile we have three things that we (Draftfcb) think mobile should do:

Bite Sized: Mobile offerings need to be conceived as small.

Relevant: Mobile offerings need to address an immediate need.

Disposable: Mobile offerings need to be easy to leave behind.

This helps form the strategy and creative thinking and you don’t need flash to do these things. However it also means that what you create for your web (read that computer or larger screen) experience should probably be different from what you do for mobile. It means that we should create experience specific platforms so while flash could be appropriate technology to use on the web it may not be needed on mobile. And you probably want to create a different experience in mobile anyway.

Look at some of the great mobile apps. UrbanSpoon for example, the website and iPhone app are reflective of “where” you are when you access their content. The website giving you deep and rich content while the app asks you a couple of easy “questions” and then suggest what restaurant to go to.

So in summary a couple of key things:

1. Flash won’t disappear from the Mac
2. Flash may come to the iPad if users revolt as it’s built for web surfing but doesn’t support Flash  -
3. This may bring it to the iPhone/iTouch
4. When we develop for users that may access our experience (site) from multiple-devices we should think about what that unique experience should be.

Shake it up baby

Posted by Chris under Advertising, Flash

A good friend of mine just sent this advert for Wii that’s running on YouTube. Check it out. And more here on Adrants blog.

First blush, wow how the heck did they do this. Second look, ahh it’s one big flash file.

Next thought, very cool they made it look like a YouTube page, I wonder if it all works. Drat it doesn’t. So points for keeping the traditional functionality look but a ding for not actually making it work.

Still kudos for the work and to Google/YouTube for letting them do it.

You’ll see it first on Hulu.

Posted by Chris under Broadband, Flash, TV

As first reported (or first I saw it) by TechCrunch and also on the Hulu blog, you’ll be able to see many of the fall premier shows first on Hulu. As the announced today, Tuesday that its Fall Premiere Lineup, which over the next seven weeks, will be the place to find season premieres of Prison Break, Bones, House, Heroes, The Office and 30 Rock.

To further build hype for Hulu (and the new shows), Hulu  will have the season debuts of Knight Rider, Lipstick Jungle, Chuck, Life and 30 Rock a full week before they’re broadcast on TV.

In what I see as a very smart move the networks have decided to take a plunge into changing their business model a bit and embrace the online space a bit more.

And if you are really Jonesing for your fall TV, get a full lineup of Hulu coverage over the next seven weeks, head over to its Fall Premiere Lineup page.

Today’s time waster and great online advertising

Posted by Chris under Advertising, Flash, I wish I'd thought of that

How can you resist yearbook yourself. Check it out here but as you are playing note that hey this is also advertising. The links go to actual stores in an actual mall. Seeming done by Taubman a property investment/mgmt. company, not only is this super fun to play with but what a great way to get the word out about your stores.

Kudos!

i Heart Wordle

Posted by Chris under Adobe, Flash, Social Networking, Technology

Have you played with Wordle, please please do so. It’s a great toy site that generates word clouds from either text you provide, RSS feed or site you direct it it. When Wordle bring in the text to create the cloud it gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

Once created you can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. Once created you can save them “forever” in the Wordle gallery to share, print or screenshot like I did on the left.

Flash Files can now be indexed

Posted by Chris under Adobe, Browsers, Firefox, Flash, Google, Search Engines, Yahoo

Thanks Russ and Adam for notes (via email and twitter) on adobe’s recent announcement regarding technology for search engines to index flash. Interestingly it’s an application for the search engines that acts like a virtual user going through each application/website and actually goes through the runtime of each flash application.

Hmmm, no comment from me yet on what impact lots of spiders hitting flash sites may have, that and I’m wondering how it will show up in search logs. As in “wow our site traffic is way up,” “no that’s just the adobe virtual flash user indexing our site.”

However this is an exciting announcement given how much of Element79’s client work (and own site) is flash, that and helping promote an even better reason to build in Flex/Flash.

I’m speaking at Google’s Chicago office today so I’ll have to ask Jim Lecinski what he thinks about this as well as Aaron Goldman (resolution media) who will be there as well.

Bring on SEO for flash!