AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Business Week

Chelsea Clinton was put off the other day when a student asked her about the Monica Lewinsky affair at a campaign rally. I know because I was surfing the Net and caught a video of it on The Washington Post’s Web site. After that, I replayed a few American Idol moments on YouTube (GOOG), then logged on to Hulu.com to watch a movie.

What kind of software enables these Web sites to dish up all that video without a hitch? Hint: It isn’t Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Media Player. Nor is it some industrial-strength combination of Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes and Quicktime. It’s Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash, an underappreciated program that delivers most of the streaming video on the Web.

Flash isn’t itself a media player, but now Adobe wants to use it as the basis for one, which will be available for download in early April. The Adobe Media Player will pull together Hollywood content and selected videos from thousands of Web sites. The service is free, and you won’t have to worry about getting sued by an irate movie studio—the Adobe player follows whatever rules the content owner sets for streaming and downloading. …more…