Check out this interesting Flash app for doodling online, by Mario Klingemann at Quasimondo. I sense that it’s about exploring possibilities in Flash as much as anything. There’s a lot more to it than meets the eye at first.

When I watched the introduction of the iPad the other day, the first time my jaw dropped was when I saw ol’ Steve open up the New York Times site, showing an enormous blue box where flash content might otherwise have been. I thought “I can’t believe Steve Jobs is showing me this in 2010″.

My knee-jerk reaction was that this was a shortcoming in the device, but not because I necessarily think that Apple is obliged to make iPhone and iPad play nice with Flash. It’s that it will be perceived as a shortcoming by users who are not tech-savvy and know nothing about Apple’s decision to keep flash off iPhone & iPad OS. They will only know that their cool new iPad is not delivering 100% of the experience they no doubt expect.

A fascinating battle seems to be gaining momentum as mobile devices by Apple that do not run Flash gain a greater share of the browser experience. As undeniable as their popularity has been, it seems unthinkable that Flash alternatives will be explored/used on a large scale by developers as a response to Flash not running on what is still a small percentage of devices. I am not convinced, especially with Adobe’s 10.1 coming up. But John Gruber makes a good argument that Apple will not relent and allow Flash on iPhone & iPad OS, that this situation might instead deal a real blow to flash penetration in the surfing experience of the future. “Developers go where the users are.”

This Scobelizer post opines that Adobe had better have a good story to tell by the time SXSWi rolls around in just six weeks, and is also worth a read.

So what do you think? Will HTML 5 render Flash and Silverlight irrelevant?

Over at United Mindset Jonathan Campos has an excellent write-up on Adobe Flash Catalyst. As a developer he thinks of it as the missing visual editor for Flash Builder, as you can really edit and create within Flash Catalyst, and get the generated code to copy into your Flash Projects. He walks us through creating a new custom button with plenty of screen shots and generated code. Excellent short tutorial.

At Adobe MAX, Adobe is showcasing Flash applications for iPhone/iPod Touch, created with the new Flash Professional CS5. This is not a policy change from Apple though; developers can use the Flash developer tool to convert Flash applications into apps that work on iPhone without having to build iPhone apps.

Here is a nice tutorial on creating custom Flash Components with Actionscript 3.0 and XML, using Flickr image search to show images. On a related note, Digital Media Minute did a post a while ago about photo gallery components that still has relevance.

Flash developers have a lot more control in using and manipulating elements in Flash 8. Now you can directly manipulate bitmaps on the fly within Flash, and also control a movie clip’s transformations via its transform matrix. Here’s a long and lucid explanation of Flash 8’s transformation matrix, the Matrix class in Flash and the methods by which it manipulates matrices, and some of the math behind those operations if you’re interested.

Interested in trying a different Flash debugger? De MonsterDebugger is an open-source debugger for Adobe Flash, AIR, and a Flex debugger to boot. From De Monsters Design Studios, and built with Flex and AIR.

Hey, speaking of debugging, have you seen our very popular JavaScript debugging using Firebug screencast yet? You have? That’s terrific!

Google has just announced the Google Maps API for Flash.  This AS3 library will allow you to natively put Google Maps into your Flex or Flash apps without having to do any hacky-hack iFrame/div methods.  You can read the announcement on Google’s blog.

I’ve been wondering lately how many Flex/Flash developers we have on Vancouver Island.  I know there are a few here, here and a couple more here so there must be a fer more kicking around.  I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a Flex/Flash Users’ Group, but would only do so if there were enough interested developers.  If you’re interested send me an email (jim.rutherford[at]gmail.com) or leave a comment that includes your name and email address on this post.

So the iPhone is powerful enough to run Spore & Super Monkey Ball  but not powerful enough to run Flash or Flex applications?  Seems odd to me.