Adobe has just released the free Flash Media Playback player, and here’s where you can download it from. The media player allows you to publish videos and other media online in a matter of minutes,  with just a few lines of HTML.

“Adobe® Flash® Media Playback is a free, standard media player for the Adobe Flash Platform. It can be used by any website with only a few lines of HTML, enabling playback of video and other media in minutes. Its extensible plug-in architecture enables easy integration with content delivery networks (CDNs) and advertising platforms, as well as support for analytics and additional third-party services.”

Bloggers will be able to configure video content easier and business owners or enterprises can monetize video content and customize the media playback’s interface to blend in with the professional design of their brand and website. Find out more about all the features and benefits you can get from the Flash Media Playback .

“Starting out with an overview of design considerations as well as important optimization techniques so your content plays exceptional regardless of platform. Also, see how to …adjust content regardless of screen size as well as how to take advantage of specific functionality on devices such as mutitouch and acceleromenter capabilities as well as accessing the native keyboard.”

Use the following link 15 minutes before the session starts to join:  http://bit.ly/AskaCSPro_4 . Also, check out the event’s Facebook page to see who else is coming.

Millions of devices are expected to be shipped with Flash Player 10.1 for mobile devices, in the second half of this year. No wonder people at Adobe are so excited considering there are approximately 3.5 million Flash developers and designers that are working with Flash-based solutions.

The new release of Flash Player creates a whole new sandbox for these millions of designers and developers to create next-generation content, games, advertising and applications.

“We’ve already seen that those who have been using the new Flash Player on Android phones love it, and as devices start to ship with Flash during the rest of the year, those that don’t have Flash on their smart phones will wish they did”, said Narayen.

Well, we couldn’t agree more.

Flash Player is going 3D all the way.  And since this is a huge step for Adobe,  they’ve dedicated a session on October 27th titled Flash Player 3D future. This will be hosted by Flash Player engineer, Sebastian Marketsmueller at the Max 2010 event, in LA.

“Marketsmueller will eneveil exclusive new APIs and demos never showsn before, including some exclusive content you cannot miss as a Flash Platform developer.”

This is some exciting news and we love that, once again, the Flash engineers at Adobe take interactivity one step further. Check out Adobe’s MAX sessions here and join.

Paul Betlem wrote a comprehensive article about how much time was invested in memory optimization and performance to make sure that Flash Player 10.1 works as efficient as possible across different devices.

“The Flash Player team made a number of improvements to conserve resources, reduce power usage and extend battery life. For example, Flash Player can now automatically reduce the power consumption for content running in the background on a non-visible browser tab to improve performance when users are multitasking. In cases where audio is playing in the background, playback fidelity is maintained.”

Neil Trevett shows in a video the performance improvements of Flash Player 10.1 compared to Flash Player 10, pointing out to the GPU (NVIDIA’s ION chip) acceleration.

“Flash Player 10.1 is a real advance for Flash Player, actually much more than the ‘dot one’ would indicate,” he says.

Watch the video to find out more:

“Join this session to get the inside scoop on the best practices in optimizing web content for Flash Player 10.1. From simple graphical optimizations to advanced ActionScript tricks, you will be all set to create content ready to run on any kind of screen. “

To find out more about the webinars and register, click here.

A more reason to do so is the latest exciting news on Android mobiles:

“A new market survey has shown that Google’s Android OS has surged past Apple’s iPhone army for the first time in the US,”

says Gareth Beavis in an article on Techradar. For a more in depth reading, I suggest downloading this month’s issue of Flash&Flex magazine and checking out Lee Graham’s special report on Flash Player 10.1 on Android.

This past week we’ve kept you updated with the latest supporters of Flash and Flash Player 10.1. Here’s what made them decide:

•  98% of Internet connected PCs have Flash Player
•  85% of the top 100 websites use Flash Player (Alexa)
•  75% of web video is viewed using Flash Player (Comscore)
•  98% of enterprises rely on Flash Player (Forrester)
•  70% of web games are delivered using Flash Player (Evans Data Corp.)
•  3.5 million developers use the Flash Platform
•  19 of the top 20 device manufacturers worldwide have committed to  shipping Flash technology on their devices.

How about you? What made you decide to stick with Flash?

“It [Flash] is the only proprietary part of the Web we support!”

That’s what Jon von Tetzchner, co-founder of Opera, said at the Open Mobile Summit conference in London. Opera is known to be the most used browser for cellphone devices worldwide and the support of the company comes to prove Flash is here to stay. On Thursday, Alberto Torres, chief of Nokia’s solutions business unit, also stated that Nokia will support Flash as well.

Moreover, last week Time Warner and NBC Universal have also made public their support for Flash. The conclusion: Flash won’t be replace anytime soon.

Read more on this on Reuters and ZDNet.

Kevin Lynch declared in an article posted on the Adobe Featured Blogs that the general release will be in June 2010.

“We look forward to delivering Flash Player 10.1 for Android smartphones as a public preview at Google I/O in May, and then a general release in June. From that point on, an ever increasing number and variety of powerful, Flash-enabled devices will be arriving which we hope will provide a great landscape of choice.”

Mark Doherty, Flash Platform Evangelist, presented on Flashmobileblog.com a list of popular websites to prove how much the Flash player user experience on mobile devices has improved.  Sony Pictures, South Park Studios, and Warner Brothers are just some examples.

Do check out his latest post here to find out more about the improvements applied to Flash Player 10.1 regarding performance, integration and usability.