flash

Coming to a Flash video near you: high definition

Adobe Systems intends to add support for a video compression standard that will bring high-definition video to Flash-based streaming content on the Web.

The company on Tuesday announced the release of a beta version of its Flash Player, code-named Moviestar, that adds support for H.264, the video compression portion of the MPEG 4 standard.

The updated Flash Player also will be able to take advantage of hardware acceleration in most PCs' graphics cards and is optimized for dual-core processors, said Mark Randall, chief strategist for dynamic media at Adobe. It will support HE-AAC version 2, a more efficient audio … Read more

A safe for your flash drive

Corsair is apparently the kind of company we can relate to: a paranoid one. Although it's made a name for itself in high-speed technologies, some of its recent products seem more focused on security and survival than anything else. (Witness the seemingly indestructible "Flash Survivor" USB key.)

The company continues that theme in its latest offering, the "Flash Padlock," which expands the secure USB concept with a numeric keypad that can be programmed to your own five-digit code. It locks automatically when disconnected, according to OhGizmo, an it won't even be acknowledged by the … Read more

Can't come up with any awesome ideas? Here, try this

Ever wish you could come up with the next big thing? The Directors' Bureau's Idea Generator can help you out. It's a Flash app that will tell you how to make a million dollars by randomly choosing a set of words that comprise a potential "idea."

Let's overlook the fact that I wound up with "erotic rubber appliance." Then I re-spun and was given "scary paper book." Okay, now I think we're getting somewhere.

(Via Core77)

Cowon announces 16GB iAudio7

Our recent Editors' Choice MP3 player might be getting a significant boost in storage capacity. A press release on Cowon's Korean Web site lays out the details for a 16GB version of the iAudio 7, as well as a version of the Cowon D2 that's been beefed up to 8GB and is capable of using 8GB SD expansion cards. No word yet on pricing or availability in the United States. Along with Creative's announcement of its 16GB Zen V Plus last week, there's a good chance that 16GB players will be filling the shelves for the … Read more

Coming soon: The solid state server and TVs with auto-rewind

Flash memory makers have taken over cell phones and MP3 players and want to start moving into notebooks. So what's next on the colonization roadmap?

Servers, says Frankie Roohparvar, vice president of NAND development at Micron Technologies. Server makers are looking at ways of replacing drives in servers.

"That is the area where they (the hard drive industry) are weakest next," he said over a lunch meeting.

It sounds weird initially. Servers typically come with large drives, and flash memory costs around 10 times as much as space on drives, when you look at it from a … Read more

Trivia question: What company commissioned the first memory cards?

Flash memory cards, along with digital cameras, sounded the death knell for traditional film cameras and dealt a serious blow to companies like Kodak and Fuji that depended on that industry.

So it's ironic that Kodak was one of the two companies that commissioned the CompactFlash card. (Canon was the other.) The format, coined in 1994, was the first successful flash card. Kodak had made a digital camera but the storage device inside of it made the camera big and bulky. The company, along with Canon, then commissioned SanDisk to come up with something smaller. The CompactFlash card was … Read more

A new entrant to the universal-memory contest--Grandis

Santa Clara, Calif.--A universal form of computer memory that can replace all of the different breeds of chips in computers and electronics today--MRAM, Spintronics, ovonics, Zettacore, silicon nanocrystals--has been a holy grail for component monkeys for a long, long time. Donovan sang about it, I think.

Several solutions have been proposed, but each one has failed to become a solution to everyone's memory needs for every application.

The latest entrant is Grandis, which has developed a magnetic type of memory chip called Spin-Transfer Torque RAM (STT-RAM to his friends). Grandis has made samples and chips based on its … Read more

iTunes gets widgets

Music widgets from iLike have been showing up on Facebook in the past few months, and other social bookmarking services for music have proven to be equally popular. Taking a page from this trend, Apple appears to have jumped into the game with a new set of customizable widgets that let you show off your musical tastes to everyone.

This release coincides with this week's debut of iLife '08, which, as we mentioned, includes an updated version of iWeb that's widget-friendly. Anyone can put these in their blog or Web site, assuming they've got an iTunes music store account and have been either purchasing or rating music tracks.

Below is an example from my test library. The widget in question is showing off my favorites. There are also widgets to show off your purchases, as well as any reviews you've written on the iTunes music store.

Update: Looks like this thing is having some kinks displaying information. Until it's been worked out, I've put it after the jump to speed things up on the front page. You can still find some workable examples on Apple's My iTunes page.

… Read more

Eight (and a half) free Web music players

If you're the sort of Web surfer who hangs out on social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook or someone who frequents MP3 blogs, you've surely seen and used one of the free Flash audio players in this article. All of the Web-based apps below let you add a functional music player to your home page or blog with no muss and very little fuss.

In this article, I am focusing on Web software that lets you create custom playlists with specific songs that you want to include. I also include Last.fm (the half in my count) because I love it, but its embeddable player works by offering a personal radio station based on your musical preferences. The music is fantastic, but you can't pick specific songs to add to your playlist.

I have compiled my own mixes using all of these players at a new blog. (I even used MyFlashFetish twice!) Go to MP3 Playlist Overload on Blogger to listen to some of my favorite music and try out the Flash players. I'm sure that there are lots of other free, embeddable music players online, so please tell me about your favorites in the comments.… Read more