flash

Adobe Systems this week issued three critical security updates designed to address vulnerabilities in its Flash Player, according to a security advisory issued by the company.

Adobe Flash Player 9.0.45.0, 8.0.34.0 and 7.0.69.0, as well as their earlier versions running on all platforms, are affected.

Users loading a malicious vector graphics file format (SWF) in their Flash Player may find attackers exploiting security flaws due to an input validation error in 9.0.45.0 and earlier versions, according to a security advisory by Secunia. Attackers, as a result, can gain … Read more

This morning King.com is launching its new user-generated casual games site, MyGame.com. The service combines some of the professionally made casual games offered on King.com alongside user-generated titles and those made by users with a Web-based game creation tool. Game creators who publish on MyGame.com can opt-in to a revenue-sharing program, which pays off ad clicks. The service is also promoting an advanced payment scheme similar to recording industry contracts that pays in advance to popular titles.

I had a go with MyGame's game creator yesterday, and had a good time with the three titles that are currently available for editing. Users can upload a picture either off their hard drive, or by using their Webcams. MyGame will do its best to map your face, as well as give you a quick and dirty cropping tool to fine-tune. You can then test the game to make any last-minute adjustments to your face.

Once done, users (even unregistered ones) get quick-sharing links, along with embed codes to put their creation on a blog or Web site, which I've done below. Users who decide to register with the service are given some extra power tools, like a stats manager, high-score list, and guest book.

I'm looking forward to seeing some of MyGame's future game offerings, along with some of the user-submitted content, although between Kongregate's recent inclusion of badges, and that oh-so-addicting McDonald's Flash game, MyGame must compete for my unfortunate lack of attention span. … Read more

Samsung announced this week that it has begun producing a 64GB flash drive for notebook computers.

Although 32GB flash drives have been on the market for several months, most users need more storage, especially in Vista-based notebooks. I think the new 64GB drives will find a much larger market.

Samsung didn't announce a price for the new drive, but 32GB drives have been selling for around $500 as an upgrade for a few notebook models from Dell and other OEMs. The new drives will probably decline to that price over the next several months.

Meanwhile, of course, conventional hard … Read more

We reported earlier on Cowon's announcement of their flash-based iAudio 7 MP3 player, and now we have the photos to prove it exists. We've heard directly from Cowon that the iAudio 7 will be available for purchase in the U.S. the first week of July. The product we received is still not the finished version, so we can't subject it to a real review yet. So far, it looks and behaves nearly identical to its microdrive predecessor, the iAudio 6. That's not such a bad thing, given what an outstanding player the iAudio 6 was. … Read more

Chumby, the snuggly hybrid of stuffed animal and widget device, will be introduced next month to a small group of beta testers willing to shell out $179.95. The device, which has been in private testing for the last 10 months, lets its owners add and access all sorts of Internet-enabled widgets, including weather information, sports scores, horoscopes, and even Flickr slide shows. The team plans to make it available to everyone else later in the year.

According to Chumby's creators, part of the launch delay has been due to the inclusion of video, which required getting Adobe's Flash Lite 3 … Read more

I doubt it will replace the CD anytime soon, but some record labels are experimenting with distributing music on portable USB flash drives. The latest in this occasional trend is The White Stripes, whose Icky Thump album is available in both traditional CD form as well as in a limited edition USB thumb drive format.

Now, the flash drive version sells for $57, well more than the $15 price tag of the CD. That means that only die-hard fans will likely buy the drive versions, which depict the band's Jack White and Meg White as Russian dolls. (Those who … Read more

YouTube's mobile site has been live and available as of a few days ago. The service offers a hand-picked selection of videos users can watch on their mobile devices. Users have access to just the bare essentials, such as running time, rating, and a link to a video's page with more details. There is, however, no community aspect--no user comments, ratings, or video responses--the kind of things that make YouTube so interesting. Also missing is a dedicated video uploader, as mobile users are still required to submit their mobile videos via MMS messaging.

Instead of running in Flash, … Read more

It's hard to believe, but there was actually a time when gold USB drives were a rare commodity. Now, it seems like a rare week when we don't see one. But that, of course, won't stop us from rolling another one out.

And how can we resist, given the bargains that are to be had these days? The latest model from Israel's E-Jewel, for example, is a 14k specimen that holds 4GB of data for a mere $2,000, according to Coolest-Gadgets. That's a third less than the $3,500 key we cited only a … Read more

Category: Publishing

Adobe's Flash was once shunned in the world of Web design, but it has since grown into a powerful and lightweight platform for delivering video and other media-rich pages to users on multiple computing platforms. Flash has two components, one is the authoring platform for developers, and the other is the Flash player plug-in, which lets users experience the Flash content in their browsers.

One of the most common uses of Flash on the Internet is by video-hosting sites like YouTube. These services encode their videos in Flash formats, and play them in customized video players. Users … Read more