“Adobe is driving the next generation of video delivery by accelerating the fusion of TV and the Internet. With more control over playback, interactivity and branding, the move to Flash Player compatible video will help the BBC to engage audiences by delivering a seamless, instant-on Web video experience.”
-Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe

The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) will be utilizing Adobe Systems Inc.’s Flash software for its iPlayer streaming media service. The iPlayer will allow BBC viewers to download Beeb programs for up to 7 days. Then users will be able to watch the shows for about 30 days before the programs automatically deletes itself.

Ashley Highfield is best known for his contributions to the BBC’s digital strategy growth and the iPlayer. He was recently recognized as Silicon.com’s #5 in the Top 50 Agenda Setters after the Facebook founder and the Google, Apple, and Cisco CEOs.

The BBC iPlayer is available in the U.K. only and is currently compatible with just PCs, not Macs.  But the iPlayer should be available for the Mac by the end of the year.

Information Source:
[1] Adobe press release: BBC Enters a Strategic Relationship with Adobe to Enhance Accessibility of BBC iPlayer and bbc.co.uk

[Note: The combination of the Adobe logo and Virtual Ubiquity logo is not an official logo.  I put them together.]

“We were inspired by the way today’s youth spend their lives working and playing together online, and how this is influencing the way we all think about collaboration,” stated Rick Treitman, chief executive at Virtual Ubiquity. Through the acquisition, Adobe will also gain ownership of Buzzword, an online word processor product. Buzzword will be integrated into Air (Adobe Integrated Runtime) platform.

Buzzword was created using Adobe Flex and runs on Adobe Flash. When Buzzword gets integrated into Air, then the application will be available online and offline. “This inspiration resulted in an online word processor for the ‘Facebook generation’ that focuses on working together online without sacrificing quality,” added Treitman.

The acquisition financial details were undisclosed. Before acquisition, Adobe was an investor for Virtual Ubiquity.

“The infusion of capital from Adobe and other investors further validates the promise of our technology,” stated Kymberlee Weil, the President and a co-founder of introNetworks. “We’ll continue to expand our platform using the Adobe development environment and look forward to further increasing the value of our intellectual property portfolio.”

The amount of capital that Weil is referring to is the $2.7 million given by Adobe Systems Inc. Not only is Adobe an investor, but they are also a client.

The concept behind introNetworks’ enterprise software is to provide a solution to the problem of attendees lack of communication abilities before and after events.  It sounds like it is essentially a more classy and customizable version of evite.

Some of introNetworks clients include Starcom MediaVest Group, The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), Intel, The United Way, Dow Jones, Autodesk, Monster.com, and The Harvard Business School (HBS).  introNetworks is based in Santa Barbara, Calif.

“introNetworks is utilizing fundamental Adobe technologies in interesting ways, providing richer, more interactive experiences in online communities,” stated John Leckrone, the director of Venture Development at Adobe. “We’re pleased to be working with introNetworks as they continue to expand and evolve their technology platform.”

The company was also co-founded by Mark Sylvester and presented at the DEMO@15! conference.

Yesterday, Adobe Systems Inc. announced that they have acquired Scene7.  Adobe Systems Inc. is based in San Jose, Calif. and Scene7 is based in Novato, Calif.  The financial details were not disclosed, but Scene7 makes a great addition to Adobe’s current offerings.  Adobe completed a buy-out of Macromedia for $3.4 billion in 2005.

The Scene7 acquisition will be completed by the end of this month.  A majority of Scene7 employees will join the Adobe family.  Scene7 was previoulsy invested into by venture capital firms: Moore Capital Management, Hearst Interactive Media, Weston Presidio, and several others.

Scene7 creates software to enable companies to have rich media content on their websites.  “It took one day to implement, one day to customize, and one day to start seeing the ROI. There are very few other technologies that can make this claim and keep it,” stated Craig Davidson, a controller at PUMA in regards to Scene7 software.  Amazon.com uses Scene7 software for their Home section catalogs.

“Scene7 has done a great job developing a sophisticated system that underpins the online delivery of high-fidelity imagery and dynamic assets,” stated John Loiacono, a senior VP of Creative Solutions at Adobe. “This acquisition will help Adobe build out a robust Internet infrastructure, allowing us to further develop Scene7’s brand-name customer list and accelerate the online availability of technologies relied on by millions of creatives worldwide.”
[source: official press release]

Paint.NET, a FREE photo editing software the competes directly with Photoshop, one of Adobe’s best-selling software products, has recently unleashed a new version of the software. The new version is called v3.0, is in Beta 3, and is now available for download.

Paint.NET was created using the C# and a small amount of C++ programming languages. Paint.NET has a simple to use interface and is similar to Photoshop. The source code behind Paint.NET is open and is available for download. At the beginning of the software development life cycle for the original Paint.NET, an undergraduate college senior initialized the design of the software and Microsoft served as a mentor with the idea of using Paint.NET to replace Microsoft Paint.

Before downloading the new version of Paint.NET, please note that the software no longer supports Windows 2000 and it will not install unless you are running Windows XP SP2 or newest. If you have Windows 2000, then you must install v2.72.

So what’s new in 3.0? Translations are more complete, especially German. Toolbar layout issues have been fixed. A clouds effect was added. Some extra hot keys were added. One of the best new features added is a Multiple Document Interface (MDI) that have tabs that show thumbnails for all opened images. The previous version of Paint.NET did not have this feature, so this is why I’m sure many people still stuck around with Photoshop. Now that this feature has been integrated, I could imagine more people to make the switch.

From a strategic standpoint, how worried should Adobe be over Paint.NET? I believe that so many people have been accustomed with Photoshop at this point and it is installed on every computer for major universities (from what I’ve noticed at University of Michigan and Michigan State University). I believe Paint.NET will capture more of a web-savvy audience that have limited budgets for graphic development. Photoshop is definitely an expensive software. However, since Adobe has acquired Macromedia, creator of Flash software, and Flash was one the biggest things of 2006, I doubt that Paint.NET would be their biggest concern right now… but I’m sure it will be soon enough.

Redwood City, CA based company, Bunchball is a a hub for Adobe Flash games similar to Atom Entertainment’s Shockwave.com. The two providers of the $2 million investment of Bunchball funding was Adobe Systems Inc. and San Francisco based, Granite Ventures.

Ballbunch provides multi-player Flash games for social networks, blogs, and other websites. And what attracted the investment was that these games are multi-player, a feature that could promote a deeper interaction between game lovers on these social networks such as MySpace.

Almost all of the games that I have seen on Ballbunch remind me of the “retro” games from the 80’s that I used to enjoy and could see myself enjoying once again with the Ballbunch game twists. N-blox Evil Edition is a 2 player Tetris style game where when you clear 2 or more lines from your game, it adds lines of blocks for your opponent to get rid of. Remember the boardgame, Battleship? You can now play the Ballbunch version of Battleship, Sea Battle online against an opponent.

Adobe and Granite Ventures have limited partnership under a company called Adobe Ventures. Chris Hollenbeck and John Leckrone are the partners working on the Ballbunch investment. The founders of Bunchball are Rajat Paharia and Sunil Singh.

[Article Source: VentureBeat]

MobiTV of Emeryville, CA has recently raised another $30 million as part of its Series C, according to GigaOM. On July 12, 2006, MobiTV had also raised $70 million from other investors led by Oak Investment Partners. The current $30 million in funding comes from corporations, Hearst Corporation and Adobe Systems. Throughout MobiTV’s inception in 1999, they have accumulated over $125 million.

With this new investment, MobiTV plans on expanding their services and increasing a customer base. Hearst Corporation is a major player in media investments. For example, on the Hearst Corporation homepage, there is press release entitled, “Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Hearst Corporation Lead $30M Series C Financing for Fast Growing Free Directory Assistance Provider Jingle Networks” from October 23, 2006. And we all know that Adobe Flash is being heavily used by video sharing conglomerates YouTube, Soapbox, and Google Video. So this is a clear-cut choice of investment for both Hearst and Adobe.

MobiTV offers services for cellphones, Palm products, Windows Mobile devices, and laptops. What is MobiTV? According to the About Us page on the MobiTV website:
MobiTV, Inc. is the first mobile television and digital radio service provider for cellular, WiFi and broadband enabled devices worldwide. The MobiTV® service is available in the US through Sprint, Cingular, Alltel; in the United Kingdom through 3 and Orange UK; and to Canadian customers through Bell Canada, Rogers and TELUS Mobility; and other regional carriers around the world.

MobiTV was founded by Dr. Phillip Alveda and Paul Scanlan. Alveda (current CEO and Chairman of MobiTV) was also the founding CEO and CTO of The MicroDisplay Corporation and was also a developer of spacecraft software systems and hardware at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Scanlan (COO of MobiTV) was a previous Executive VP and Managing Partner with Enterprise IG.

Today Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) has acquired Serious Magic Inc.â„¢. Serious Magic Inc. is a developer of video editing software such as Ovationâ„¢, Visual Communicator, DV Rack, and ULTRAâ„¢ 2 . Serious Magic is also the creator of Vlog It!â„¢ Vlog It!â„¢ enables users to create video messages and easily and them to blogs.

Adobe® plans on streamlining Serious Magic products into the Adobe line of video software family which includes Adobe® Premiere. “The huge momentum behind Flash® Video, which is powering everything from online TV shows to YouTube and MySpace, is turbo-charging Adobe’s video business,” stated John Loiacono, the Senior VP of the Creative Solutions Business Unit at Adobe. “The purchase of Serious Magic accelerates our vision to make, not just video but all dynamic media, an even more ubiquitous communications vehicle, whether you’re delivering content for the broadcast market, over the web or on mobile devices [source].”

Serious Magic™ is a privately held company based in Folsom, CA and Adobe Systems Inc. is a San Jose, CA based company. Adobe® had acquired Macromedia in December 2005. MSN Soapbox and Google Video also utilize Macromedia Flash® technology.

Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) have included tools in their new software to facilitate the blogging experience. Adobe Systems has released Contribute® 4 and Microsoft plans to oust Frontpage with new software called Expression.

Contribute® 4 will allow “content authors can post and publish content to multiple websites and blogs from a single application or publish directly from within Microsoft Office applications. And because Contribute 4 works seamlessly with Macromedia® Dreamweaver® from Adobe, website integrity is not compromised — even when multiple authors update content across the site [Contribute® homepage].” Contribute® also allows blogger admins to set permission levels for its various users such as Edit and Publish powers. Oh! And one more thing! Currently, Contribute® supports blog publishers Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, but does not support Windows Live Spaces (Coincidence? Who knows? All we know is that Adobe isn’t too happy with Microsoft right now).

Microsoft Corp is moving forward in their web journey and has left Frontpage behind at the rest area to leave an empty seat for hitchhiker, Microsoft Expression®. Expression is currently in Beta and allows testers to download the “Community Technology Preview” [here]. Expression® looks similar to Dreamweaver® but has a wider array of features. There is a more detailed review of the software on [NewsFactor Network].

Adobe Contribute® 4 costs $149.00 or $79.00 for an upgrade, but the Microsoft Expression software release date has not been announced yet. One of the interesting concepts between the competition of Microsoft and Adobe is that both companies are interdependent. Adobe/Macromedia creates Dreamweaver® and Flash® which allows the importing of Microsoft Office documents and Microsoft’s [Zune website] and upcoming Soapbox video service depends on Flash®. Seems like a love-hate relationship between both companies, eh?