Apple vs. Flash - can we peace them together?

The fight between two giants Apple and Adobe over Flash on the iPhone OS has all the trappings of a major industry rift. With its leader at the helm Apple is on the mission to destroy Flash from the horizons of modern world.

However, what might seen as a war between two old rivals, which battle takes its roots from early days of the Mac actually can harm to development of whole Internet future, especially mobile Internet. Flash, for all its flaws, is ubiquitous to the Web and essential to rich interaction on a huge number of sites. Were it not barred from the iPad and iPhone, it would be one of the shortest paths to creating rich Internet applications that run across multiple mobile platforms.

Many experts believe such technology dissection could lead to an Internet future of multiple, non-compatible platforms, which will hamper to the development and innovation.

The role of community

While the roots of this long-standing battle take its origins back 1989 when Adobe and Apple fought over scalable font technology, which Adobe jealously guarded the role of community and users of their technologies has never been such an important and deciding.

The Internet and Social Media have proved to be a great communication and leverage platform for people to speak out, to stand for their believes and to contribute or prevent things they favorite or disapprove. Latest presidential Election in US, and in Iran, earthquake in Haiti, rescue operation in Chile, and many other prove that we move closer and closer to community driven media, not corporations.

The recently coined term "social authority" gain significance. The community respond has seen many victories such as Facebook policy changes. So I wonder if the community power is already powerful enough to contribute to the peace between Apple and Adobe for the good of all!

By barring Flash from the most popular and exciting mobile devices in existence, Apple denies developers and users an opportunity to create and consume applications that can provide a consistent user experience across platforms. Moreover, this war might lead to further division between platforms and standards, which is not good for both developers and users.

InfoWorld already proposed its plan to reconcile the two. The four-point plan for peace could allow Flash on Apple's mobile devices. Here is its explanation. There are some others initiatives from conscious organizations. So, all we wonder if it has a chance to work? and how we can make it work?

Share your views, join LinkedIn discussion on this issue here

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The World's Best Presentation - SlideShare Contest

Slideshare has started a regular contest, “The World’s Best Presentation,” where lots of presentations around the globe will be competing for the bunch of good prizes. The contest is sponsored by 3M and there are some great prizes, including the 3M pocket projector and Macbook.

Prizes for World's Best Presentation Contest 2010 winners

1st Prize MacBook (worth $999) + 3M™ PocketProjector MP180
2nd Prize iPad (worth $499) + 3M™ PocketProjector MP180
3rd Prize iPod Touch (worth $229) + 3M™ PocketProjector MP180
6 Category Prizes iPod Shuffles (worth $49)

The contest uses a hybrid model of crowdsourcing – popular vote and then review by a panel of judges.

Guy Kawasaki is one of the best known authorities on presentations and social media.
David Armano is an expert on visual communication with several very popular presentations on SlideShare.
Carmine Gallo is the author of Presentations Secrets of Steve Jobs and Business week columnist on presentation & communication.
Jane Hart is the founder of Center for Learning and Performance technologies and an expert on social media in the educational space.
Beth Kanter - named by Fast Company Magazine as one of the most influential women in technology and one of Business Week’s "Voices of Innovation for Social Media."


To learn more about contest please click here

Now technology allows to work anywhere - but do we need it?

I always ask myself what does freedom mean? Does it mean do whatever you want to do, be whatever and whenever you want to be? well seems like today technology can help you to become more free.

Recent article "Technology allows digital nomads to work anywhere" by BBC tells the stories of those who chose to live on the road. Sharing their personal experiences most of them agrees that before they saw it differently. "People romanticise the lifestyle, thinking it is all on beaches and we gad about the globe, but it can be really challenging" - tells Lea Woodward who upped sticks three years ago for a life on the road.

First business aspect - "A lot of people are often so keen to hit the road and do the travel bit, that they forget the business aspect. It is really hard to cram everything in, including business, travel and sightseeing." Lea warns that being location independent can make it difficult to get a business going. Even with today's technologies when you are working on the road you do not have an office, you do not have a desk to sit at and you do not always know what the internet connection will be like.

But in this article I want to mention another aspect of this lifestyle. I always dreamed about opportunity to work from hammock lying on the sunny beach with laptop in one hand and glass of cold drink in another. But after having a chance to do so, even for couple of weeks I ascertained myself about irreality of such lifestyle. The matter is not even in the problems with your concentration and devotion as you should do business and relaxing simultaneously which is completely opposite by the nature. It's about the concept of life.

It is known that about 15 percent of population live near the sea, and those are considered to be the happiest among other, well is it? Here is my example to disprove it - recently I spent a holiday in Turkey when met some guys who actually live near the sea in Russia (Sochi). First it was strange to see them in Turkey, but it's another story, so back here, while we spent almost all holidays pleasing ourselves with the warm sea and sunny beaches they never showed up on the beach nor put their limb into the sea.

On my question - why you just don't go with us to swim? they replied "there is nothing interesting for us" - they were bored with sea. Hmm..and they're the happiest people on our planet - not for this time though I thought. In the end it turned out that on average they spent less time on sea during the year than other people who live far from sea.

I picked this story because sea resorts usually associated with holidays and relaxing time, surely those guys have so much other things to please themselves with, but I bet they were jealous of us taking pleasure from each precious day, exactly "precious" - this is the right word! It came to me that we appreciate something when it precious not abundant - recalling that famous phrase "anything, even the best not appreciated if it's in abundance" - agree?

That said I think our holidays is exactly that precious time that we work all other time for, as well as for our dreams, family, love ones etc. so it's better to have such an incentive which drives you to work hard to achieve your goal, to make someone happy to visit your favorite destination. Trying to combine those things you can deprive yourself of such a pleasant and precious time, so this time technology is not good, at least for me :) However, maybe I'm wrong!


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