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52-530: The CrunchPad project was started by Michael Arrington in July 2008, initially aiming for a US$ 200 tablet, and showed a first prototype (Prototype A) a month later. Beginning 2009, working Prototype B was introduced by the TechCrunch team led by Louis Monier, based on a 12 inch LCD screen, a VIA Nano CPU, Ubuntu Linux and a custom Webkit -based browser. The device was rapidly prototyped by Dynacept and

104-925: A cryptocurrency , rather than US dollars or Euros at the time. The fund has invested in more than 50 crypto startups. Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash ) is a discontinued multimedia software platform used for production of animations , rich internet applications , desktop applications , mobile apps , mobile games , and embedded web browser video players. Flash displays text, vector graphics , and raster graphics to provide animations, video games, and applications. It allows streaming of audio and video , and can capture mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera input. Artists may produce Flash graphics and animations using Adobe Animate (formerly known as Adobe Flash Professional). Software developers may produce applications and video games using Adobe Flash Builder , FlashDevelop, Flash Catalyst , or any text editor combined with

156-653: A non-disclosure agreement to view it in 2008. Adobe also created the Open Screen Project which removes licensing fees and opens data protocols for Flash. Adobe has also open-sourced many components relating to Flash. Adobe has not been willing to make complete source code of the Flash Player available for free software development and even though free and open source alternatives such as Shumway and Gnash have been built, they are no longer under active development. On May 1, 2008, Adobe announced

208-484: A "lite" version of the Flash authoring tool targeted to new users who only wanted to do a basic drawing, animation, and interactivity. The Basic product was eventually stopped. On December 3, 2005, Adobe Systems acquired Macromedia alongside its product line which included Flash, Dreamweaver , Director / Shockwave , Fireworks , and Authorware . In 2007, Adobe's first version release was Adobe Flash CS3 Professional ,

260-444: A central part of it. Disney Online used FutureSplash animations for their subscription-based service Disney's Daily Blast. Fox Broadcasting Company launched The Simpsons using FutureSplash. In December 1996, FutureSplash was acquired by Macromedia, and Macromedia re-branded and released FutureSplash Animator as Macromedia Flash 1.0 . Flash was a two-part system, a graphics and animation editor known as Macromedia Flash, and

312-472: A customized version of the Ubuntu distribution was compiled by Fusion Garage. After announcing Prototype B, there arose a desire for the tablet to come into production. Louis Monier worked closely with Fusion Garage as the team's lead designer. Initially in 2008, $ 200 was mentioned as the target price-point. In the first half of 2009, $ 300 was mentioned as more likely. By the end of July 2009, news stories said

364-463: A finished product later in the month. By late September 2009, the lack of publicity on the CrunchPad led Dan Frommer of The Business Insider to ask, in an article headline, "Where's The CrunchPad?" Apple and Microsoft were rumored to be working on new tablet computers, receiving more media coverage. In early October 2009, Popular Mechanics magazine recognized the CrunchPad with an award as one of

416-485: A fork of the Android operating system. In the founding July 21, 2008, manifesto "We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet For $ 200. Help Us Build It." Michael Arrington wrote: So let’s design it, build a few and then open source the specs so anyone can create them. If everything works well, we’d then open source the design and software and let anyone build one that wants to. No further commitments were made in 2009 about making

468-728: A growth of 3D content for product demonstrations and virtual tours. In 2007, YouTube offered videos in HTML5 format to support the iPhone and iPad , which did not support Flash Player. After a controversy with Apple , Adobe stopped developing Flash Player for Mobile, focusing its efforts on Adobe AIR applications and HTML5 animation. In 2015, Google introduced Google Swiffy , a tool that converted Flash animation to HTML5, which Google used to automatically convert Flash web ads for mobile devices. In 2016, Google discontinued Swiffy and its support. In 2015, YouTube switched to HTML5 technology on most devices by default; however, YouTube supported

520-662: A player known as Macromedia Flash Player. FutureSplash Animator was an animation tool originally developed for pen-based computing devices. Due to the small size of the FutureSplash Viewer , it was particularly suited for download on the Web. Macromedia distributed Flash Player as a free browser plugin in order to quickly gain market share. By 2005, more computers worldwide had Flash Player installed than any other Web media format, including Java , QuickTime , RealNetworks , and Windows Media Player . Macromedia upgraded

572-630: Is an accepted version of this page J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970) is the American founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch , a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in America and elsewhere. Magazines such as Wired and Forbes have named Arrington one of the most powerful people on the Internet. In 2008, he

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624-556: Is at “its end of life” and the company will be exploring several new platforms that will not have backward compatibility. On December 19, 2011, rumors said that Fusion Garage will discontinue business and may be bankrupt. On January 9, 2012, Fusion Garage confirmed that the company had gone into liquidation owing creditors $ 40 million. On November 30, 2009, Arrington said the CrunchPad project had ended in disagreement between himself and Fusion Garage. On December 7, 2009, Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan said his company would release

676-575: Is now calling the "JooJoo", and that it will be available for pre-sale December 11, 2009 for $ 499 USD. On December 10, 2009 Michael Arrington / Techcrunch filed a lawsuit against Fusion Garage in Federal court. On February 1, 2010, Fusion Garage CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan announced that JooJoo pre-orders had increased following the debut of the Apple iPad, and that additional funding of $ 10 million had been obtained. He also announced that Fusion Garage

728-473: The Adobe AIR platform. The Flash Player was deprecated in 2017 and officially discontinued at the end of 2020 for all users outside mainland China, as well as non-enterprise users, with many web browsers and operating systems scheduled to remove the Flash Player software around the same time. Adobe continues to develop Adobe Animate, which supports web standards such as HTML5 instead of the Flash format. In

780-590: The Apache Flex SDK. End users view Flash content via Flash Player (for web browsers), Adobe AIR (for desktop or mobile apps ), or third-party players such as Scaleform (for video games). Adobe Flash Player (which is available on Microsoft Windows , macOS , and Linux ) enables end users to view Flash content using web browsers . Adobe Flash Lite enabled viewing Flash content on older smartphones , but since has been discontinued and superseded by Adobe AIR. The ActionScript programming language allows

832-555: The Open Screen Project , with the intent of providing a consistent application interface across devices such as personal computers, mobile devices , and consumer electronics . When the project was announced, seven goals were outlined: the abolition of licensing fees for Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR , the removal of restrictions on the use of the Shockwave Flash ( SWF ) and Flash Video (FLV) file formats ,

884-665: The Speedtest.net web service conducted over 9.0 billion speed tests with a utility built with Adobe Flash. In 2016, the service shifted to HTML5 due to the decreasing availability of Adobe Flash Player on PCs. Developers could create rich internet applications and browser plugin -based applets in ActionScript 3.0 programming language with IDEs , including Adobe Flash Builder, FlashDevelop and Powerflasher FDT . Flex applications were typically built using Flex frameworks such as PureMVC. Flash video games were popular on

936-548: The CrunchPad as the JooJoo, and that customers could preorder it on December 11, 2009, for 499 USD. On December 10, 2009, Arrington and Techcrunch filed a lawsuit against Fusion Garage in U.S. federal court , accusing the firm of fraud and deceit, misappropriation of business ideas, breach of fiduciary duty, unfair competition, and violations of the Lanham Act . On March 30, 2010, the lawsuit revealed that only 90 pre-orders for

988-399: The Flash system between 1996 and 1999 adding MovieClips, Actions (the precursor to ActionScript), Alpha transparency, and other features. As Flash matured, Macromedia's focus shifted from marketing it as a graphics and media tool to promoting it as a Web application platform, adding scripting and data access capabilities to the player while attempting to retain its small footprint. In 2000,

1040-473: The Flash timeline. Other features of Flash CS5 are a new text engine (TLF), new document templates, further improvement to inverse kinematics , new Deco tool effects, live FLV playback preview, and the code snippets panel. Adobe has taken steps to reduce or eliminate Flash licensing costs. For instance, the SWF file format documentation is provided free of charge after they relaxed the requirement of accepting

1092-468: The Flash-based video player for older web browsers and devices until 2017. After Flash 5 introduced ActionScript in 2000, developers combined the visual and programming capabilities of Flash to produce interactive experiences and applications for the Web. Such Web-based applications eventually became known as "Rich Internet Applications" and later "Rich Web Applications". In 2004, Macromedia Flex

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1144-782: The Internet, with portals like Newgrounds , Kongregate , and Armor Games dedicated to hosting Flash-based games. Many Flash games were developed by individuals or groups of friends due to the simplicity of the software. Popular Flash games include Farmville , Alien Hominid , QWOP , Club Penguin , and Dofus . Adobe introduced various technologies to help build video games, including Adobe AIR (to release games for desktop or mobile platforms), Adobe Scout (to improve performance), CrossBridge (to convert C++-based games to run in Flash), and Stage3D (to support GPU-accelerated video games). 3D frameworks like Away3D and Flare3D simplified creation of 3D content for Flash. Adobe AIR allows

1196-496: The JooJoo had been placed before it began shipping. Kernel hacker Matthew Garrett filed a complaint with US Customs and Border Protection against Fusion Garage for copyright infringement, since the company shipped GPL software without making the required offer of source code. The issue was resolved in January 2011 when Fusion Garage started providing the required source code at their web site. Michael Arrington This

1248-591: The actual price when it would ship in November 2009 would be about $ 400, putting it in potential competition with netbooks and low-end laptops. The project generated some press and was mentioned in Washington Post and other media. In July 2009, it was reported that Arrington founded a company of 14 employees around the tablet (Crunchpad Inc.) in Singapore, and that there would be a public presentation of

1300-571: The board of directors at the startup Foldera, which was designing a software as a service organizational tool. He identifies as a libertarian , saying, "I just see government as this thing that stops us from doing things." In 2013, he was accused of physical abuse by an ex-girlfriend. Arrington sued the woman for defamation and she agreed to retract her accusations against him and apologize. Arrington rose to internet prominence with his Silicon Valley blog, TechCrunch . TechCrunch covers internet startups and news. In early September 2011, Arrington

1352-1090: The creation of Flash-based mobile games , which may be published to the Google Play and Apple app stores. Flash is also used to build interfaces and HUDs for 3D video games using Scaleform GFx , a technology that renders Flash content within non-Flash video games. Scaleform is supported by more than 10 major video game engines including Unreal Engine 3 , CryEngine , and PhyreEngine , and has been used to provide 3D interfaces for more than 150 major video game titles since its launch in 2003. Notable users of Flash include DHX Media Vancouver for productions including Pound Puppies , Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic , Fresh TV for Total Drama , Nelvana for 6teen and Clone High , Williams Street for Metalocalypse and Squidbillies , Nickelodeon Animation Studio for El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera , Starz Media for Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! , Ankama Animation for Wakfu: The Animated Series , among others. The precursor to Flash

1404-401: The design open and public, which would make it easier to add additional features such as a standard keyboard connector and increased storage. On November 30, 2009, Michael Arrington announced that the CrunchPad project was dead. Three days prior to the planned debut, Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan had informed him Fusion Garage would be proceeding to sell the pad alone. Arrington claims

1456-475: The developers he had chosen for the Crunchpad. The developers broke off from Arrington and released the device on their own but it received few sales, and the developers later went bankrupt. In November 2017, Michael Arrington announced he was starting a $ 100 million hedge fund. The fund would be denominated in the cryptocurrency XRP , also known as Ripple. It was reported to be the first fund denominated in

1508-490: The development of interactive animations, video games, web applications, desktop applications, and mobile applications. Programmers can implement Flash software using an IDE such as Adobe Animate, Adobe Flash Builder, Adobe Director , FlashDevelop, and Powerflasher FDT . Adobe AIR enables full-featured desktop and mobile applications to be developed with Flash and published for Windows , macOS , Android , iOS , Xbox One , PlayStation 4 , Wii U , and Nintendo Switch . Flash

1560-461: The device would support Adobe Flash at launch. On February 26, 2010, Fusion Garage announced a manufacturing delay of the JooJoo tablet, citing an issue fine tuning the touch sensitivity of the capacitive screen. JooJoo tablets are now to ship out on March 25, 2010, and all pre-order customers are to be provided with a free accessory to compensate for the delay. On November 11, 2010, Fusion Garage announced that Joojoo tablet at its current iteration

1612-741: The early 2000s, Flash was widely installed on desktop computers , and was often used to display interactive web pages and online games , and to play video and audio content. In 2005, YouTube was founded by former PayPal employees, and it used Adobe Flash Player as a means to display compressed video content on the web. Between 2000 and 2010, numerous businesses used Flash-based websites to launch new products, or to create interactive company portals. Notable users include Nike , Hewlett-Packard (more commonly known as HP), Nokia , General Electric , World Wildlife Fund , HBO , Cartoon Network , Disney , and Motorola . After Adobe introduced hardware-accelerated 3D for Flash ( Stage3D ), Flash websites saw

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1664-578: The first major version of ActionScript was developed, and released with Flash 5 . Actionscript 2.0 was released with Flash MX 2004 and supported object-oriented programming , improved UI components and other programming features. The last version of Flash released by Macromedia was Flash 8 , which focused on graphical upgrades such as filters (blur, drop shadow, etc.), blend modes (similar to Adobe Photoshop ), and advanced features for FLV video . Animator Flash 1 Flash 2 Flash 3 Flash 4 Flash 5 Flash MX (6) Flash MX 2004 (7) ActionScript 2.0

1716-437: The first version of Adobe Integrated Runtime (later re-branded as Adobe AIR ), a runtime engine that replaced Flash Player, and provided additional capabilities to the ActionScript 3.0 language to build desktop and mobile applications. With AIR, developers could access the file system (the user's files and folders), and connected devices such as a joystick, gamepad, and sensors for the first time. In 2011, Adobe Flash Player 11

1768-406: The intellectual property shared between both companies, so the product could not proceed legally. He said his side "will almost certainly be filing multiple lawsuits against Fusion Garage, and possibly Chandra and his shareholders as individuals, shortly". On December 7, 2009 - Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan announced that he is releasing what had been developed as the CrunchPad and which he

1820-552: The ninth major version of Flash. It introduced the ActionScript 3.0 programming language, which supported modern programming practices and enabled business applications to be developed with Flash. Adobe Flex Builder (built on Eclipse ) targeted the enterprise application development market, and was also released the same year. Flex Builder included the Flex SDK, a set of components that included charting, advanced UI, and data services ( Flex Data Services ). In 2008, Adobe released

1872-520: The potential for a vector-based web animation tool that might challenge Macromedia Shockwave technology. In 1995, FutureWave modified SmartSketch by adding frame-by-frame animation features and released this new product as FutureSplash Animator on Macintosh and PC. FutureWave approached Adobe Systems with an offer to sell them FutureSplash in 1995, but Adobe turned down the offer at that time. Microsoft wanted to create an "online TV network" ( MSN 2.0 ) and adopted FutureSplash animated content as

1924-551: The practice of law to join RealNames , which failed after raising $ 100 million. Arrington was co-founder of Achex, an internet payments company, which was sold to First Data Corp for US$ 32 million and is now the back end of Western Union online. "I made enough to buy a Porsche. Not much more," he said in 2007. His other entrepreneurial endeavors include co-founding Zip.ca and Pool.com, acting as chief operating officer for Razorgator, and founding Edgeio. He has also served on

1976-598: The primary authoring software for Flash content, to Adobe Animate to reflect its growing use for authoring HTML5 content in favor of Flash content. ActionScript 3.0 was released with this version, along with ActionScript Virtual Machine 2.0 (AVM2) for faster code execution and garbage collection New programming features included: strongly typed variables with type safety, runtime errors, improved events, display list instead of "depth" system, and many new classes (Socket, ByteArray, Loader, RegExp, etc.). AS3 allowed entire applications to be written in code, without needing

2028-537: The product will probably retail for US$ 300–400, likely subsidised by features that are sponsored but won't impact negatively on the user experience (similar to Firefox's search bar). On August 15, 2011, the successor to the JooJoo and a new smartphone were announced after a made-up company "TabCo" unveiled it was, in fact, Fusion Garage. The announcement included a tablet and smartphone named the Grid 10 (10.1 inch tablet) and The Grid 4 (4 inch smartphone), both running GridOS,

2080-404: The publishing of application programming interfaces for porting Flash to new devices, and the publishing of The Flash Cast protocol and Action Message Format (AMF), which let Flash applications receive information from remote databases. As of February 2009 , the specifications removing the restrictions on the use of SWF and FLV/F4V specs have been published. The Flash Cast protocol—now known as

2132-489: The tenth version of Flash, Adobe Flash CS4 . Flash 10 improved animation capabilities within the Flash editor, adding a motion editor panel (similar to Adobe After Effects ), inverse kinematics (bones), basic 3D object animation, object-based animation, and other text and graphics features. Flash Player 10 included an in-built 3D engine (without GPU acceleration) that allowed basic object transformations in 3D space (position, rotation, scaling). Also in 2008, Adobe released

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2184-417: The top 10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009, "the top 10 most brilliant gadgets, tools and toys that you can buy in 2009." Other organizations questioned the appropriateness of the award as the CrunchPad was not available for purchase at publication time. On the November 12, 2009, Gillmor Gang podcast, Michael Arrington announced the product is "steamrolling along", that rumors of high prices are untrue, and that

2236-469: Was SmartSketch, a product published by FutureWave Software in 1993. The company was founded by Charlie Jackson , Jonathan Gay , and Michelle Welsh. SmartSketch was a vector drawing application for pen computers running the PenPoint OS . When PenPoint failed in the marketplace, SmartSketch was ported to Microsoft Windows and Mac OS . As the Internet became more popular, FutureWave realized

2288-563: Was bought, in May 2013, by affiliates of Clearlake Capital for US$ 13 million. As a result of CrunchFund's investment, former BlueFly CEO Melissa Payner returned to BlueFly. In July 2008, Arrington started a project called the Crunchpad , over a year before the iPad was released. The Crunchpad was meant to be an affordable tablet computer that catered to a niche between desktop computers and laptops. However, disputes arose between Arrington and

2340-510: Was in the process of forming a partnership with a mobile phone manufacturer that would handle the production of the device. On February 3, 2010, Fusion Garage announced that the manufacturing of JooJoo tablets had begun as part of a new agreement with CSL Group. In exchange for absorbing manufacturing costs of the JooJoo, CSL Group would take a percentage of profits from the sale of the devices. CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan stated that JooJoo shipments would reach customers by late February, and that

2392-456: Was initially used to create fully-interactive websites, but this approach was phased out with the introduction of HTML5 . Instead, Flash found a niche as the dominant platform for online multimedia content, particularly for browser games . Following an open letter written by Steve Jobs in 2010 stating that he would not approve the use of Flash on Apple 's iOS devices due to numerous security flaws, use of Flash declined as Adobe transitioned to

2444-548: Was released with this version, enabling object-oriented programming but lacking the easier "Script assist" method of writing code. JavaScript for Flash (JSFL) allowed users to write scripts to automate tasks within the Flash editor. New programming features included: web services integration, MP3/FLV media playback components, XML data service components, data binding APIs, the Project Panel, V2 UI components, and Transition libraries. Flash 8 Macromedia Flash Basic 8,

2496-506: Was released, and specifically targeted the application development market. Flex introduced new user interface components, advanced data visualization components, data remoting, and a modern IDE (Flash Builder). Flex competed with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) and Microsoft Silverlight during its tenure. Flex was upgraded to support integration with remote data sources, using AMF , BlazeDS , Adobe LiveCycle , Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud , and others. Between 2006 and 2016,

2548-402: Was released, and with it the first version of Stage3D , allowing GPU-accelerated 3D rendering for Flash applications and games on desktop platforms such as Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X . Adobe further improved 3D capabilities from 2011 to 2013, adding support for 3D rendering on Android and iOS platforms, alpha-channels, compressed textures, texture atlases , and other features. Adobe AIR

2600-580: Was reported to be no longer employed by TechCrunch but associated with a new investment company, AOL Ventures. Within days, it was being reported that he was no longer associated with AOL Ventures. In October 2012, Arrington returned to writing for the Tech Crunch blog. In 2011, Arrington founded a venture capital firm called CrunchFund along with M. G. Siegler and Patrick Gallagher. In 2014, CrunchFund invested in BlueFly, an online retailer, which

2652-720: Was selected by TIME Magazine as one of the most influential people in the world. Born in Huntington Beach, California , Arrington grew up in Huntington Beach and Surrey , England. He attended the University of California, Berkeley for his freshman year and graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a major in economics . He went on to Stanford Law School and graduated in 1995. He practiced corporate and securities law at O'Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati . Arrington left

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2704-720: Was upgraded to support 64-bit computers, and to allow developers to add additional functionality to the AIR runtime using AIR Native Extensions (ANE). In May 2014, Adobe announced that Adobe AIR was used in over 100,000 unique applications and had over 1 billion installations logged worldwide. Adobe AIR was voted the Best Mobile Application Development product at the Consumer Electronics Show on two consecutive years (CES 2014 and CES 2015). In 2016, Adobe renamed Flash Professional,

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