Next they announced AIR 1.5, which ships now with Flash 10 adding the new text engine, pixel blender, 3d capabilities to the desktop. They demo’d a New York Times app that dynamically renders text in multiple column layouts adapting to any screen resolution. AIR 1.5 also ships with the latest version on WebKit and squirrelfish, making all JavaScript executions at least 50% faster than the previous build.

Following, they showed a few demos of Flash 10 capabilities, which I’ve seen before, just as an audio mixer, 3d audio visualization, pixel blender effects on real time videos… Which preceded the announcement that MLB now uses Flash to stream all their games, completing a sports monopoly of the NHL, NFL, MLB, NBA, …
As part of how AIR is being used nowadays, Adobe invited Maria Shriver to talk about the California Museum applications. I found that a poor choice, mostly before most attendees are from out of town, don’t know Maria, and even the locals, don’t really seem to care.

Kevin Lynch mentioned that they are targeting 100MM AIR installs after just one year, thought they’re a little far, having now about 25MM.

An Adobe engineer demo’d Tour de Flex, a demo app with component browsing, code, examples, and over 200 API implementations with full source code… amazing piece of application, useful for every Flex developer for sure (http://flex.org/tour)

Nigel Pegg takes the stage and talks about Cocomo, which was introduced last year. Cocomo is social applications with Flex using Flex components and API hosted by Adobe hosted services. It pretty much allows you to build Adobe ConnectNow with Flex components, and it’s available today at Adobe Labs.
Kevin then announced Adobe Wave, a social notification service in your desktop… so the idea is that it hooks up to every social network and aggregates all notifications. Although I see the value as teen agers stopped using email and rely mainly in social networks messaging, I don’t see why Adobe had to build this… doesn’t really belong.

Main announcement of the night, Kevin shows and demo’d a full Flash Player 10 install on multiple phones such as Nokia, Samsung, the Android G1, and even the iPhone. Lynch was browsing full Flash sites, youtube, video, audio, and all from a mobile phone running a full unmodified flash site.

For full Adobe coverage check out http://adobe.com/go/keynote

The day started with a keynote from Jonathan Klein, President of CNN/US. John said that CNN embraces innovation, new technologies, new techniques, new trends, and urges all their employees to try new ideas. They have been using user generated content to get faster stories, they have a political blog aggregator that became the largest in the country, they have a program where an expert follows twitter feeds and answers questions and concerns online, in real time, they have a talk show where the host podcasts during commercials, linking the tv air experience with online / web experience. Another twitter fact is that CNN took 4 minutes to cover a recent earthquake in LA, whereas someone tweet it in 30 seconds. They also started providing more data for the next gen during the elections, especially seen during the debates; under the assumption that the younger gen can multitask and consume multiple feeds of information concurrently, they added the analysts’ opinions and scores during debates on side panels, as well as real time undecided voters conversions. Another link between air and web is John King’s touch screen; after the success of the John playing with the screen, they uploaded an interactive version to their site allowing anyone to play with it, just like on tv.

Overall, really interesting to see how traditional channels such as CNN is realizing and acknowledging the need to move towards digital channels, add social elements, and leverage user generated content.

Next, Geoff Ramsey, CEO for eMarketer, took over for 15 minutes to give us his seven strategies for surviving the downturn. In summary, the entire strategy is move media dollars from traditional to digital; it’s cheaper, more measurable, and provides better returns. 70% of marketers said they will cut budget for traditional ads, 30% said they already did … at the same time digital ad spend grew 17% in 2008, and it’s expected to continue to grow with double digits in 2009 … even if it only grows 9 or 10%, it’s better than negative numbers such as traditional media spend.

There were a few boring panels that I won’t mention, so I started talking to exhibitors and companies I found interesting. I will post more details later, but great new products by VeriSign, Akamai, Izea, and IdeaLaunch.

I tried to watch the TV 3.0 panel, but I really couldn’t stand it. What is up with the 3.0 buzzwords? Does anyone even know what 3.0 represents? I bet the panelists can’t even answer what would be the difference between TV 2.0 and 3.0 …. if we can even say 3.0 is here. For our readers, TV 2.0 includes P2PTV, HDTV, IPTV, Streaming Video, and mobile TV.

So what is TV 3.0?

“The first I heard of it (TV 3.0) was when I was invited to this panel”, responded Michael Steib, the director of TV Ads at Google (I appreciate his acknowledgement of the made-up buzz word). In TV 3.0 there is a proliferation of channels, people are watching TV in different places (online, DVR, etc) and at different times. Connecting advertisers and audiences as people start to watch TV in new and different times and places.

Here is the billion dollar question: will TV networks be able to make up the ad revenue lost from the shift away from traditional TV? People will watch 400 billion hours on their TV and watch 10 million hours of online video – online is still a small segment. For networks to stay afloat, they need to either increase the # of ads 4x versus what they are showing now, or increase the effectiveness. The solution? Technology: it can be used in 2 ways to help solve this problem. The first is better targeting, and the second is by using technologies to improve the effectiveness of the interaction or ad that is served (ie. rich media).

Stay tuned for Ad:Tech NY 2008 - Day 2.

Panel 1: Emerging trends of Mobile Technology (by Rob Gonda and experts TBD)

iPhone 2.0, Android, Flash Lite 3.0, Streaming Video, Electronic Wallets, … Mobile technology is growing rapidly and becoming an intrinsic part of consumer mentality. Hear the experts discuss the role of mobile in today’s lifestyle, discuss emerging technology, and predict national and international trends.

Panel 2: Rich Internet Applications Death Match (by Rob Gonda, Adobe, Microsoft)

Entertaining and informative event where evangelists from industry top players try to defend their products in a competitive death match. Flash, Silverlight, Ajax, AIR, Gears, Curl, WPF, many familiar names, but which one is the best solution for your particular needs? This intense event will reveal the answer.

Panel 3: YourOn.TV - How to Battle Mainstream Media (by Freddie Laker, Adobe, Justin.TV, LonelyGRL inventors)
Online entertainment is changing- online broadcasting tools are allowing everyday people to produce high quality content and distribute it with tools beyond YouTube like Adobe Media Player. Learn from the creators of famous internet content, the new internet celebrities, and the makers of the tools making it possible to compete against mainstream broadcasters. Leading internet celebrities will be available to answer a wide range of questions.

Sapient submitted a total of 14 sessions, creating for the first time a huge presence on this event. I also wrote the content of the RIA+SOA and the RIA Security panels.

Feedback, comments, and suggestions more than welcome. Hope to see you there.