I have one of the OLPC XO-1 units in my hands. When the backlight is on, it's still readable under very bright light such as sunlight and will look like the kindle's black & white.
When you turn the backlight to zero, it switches to ultra-lowpower hi-res black & white sunlight readable mode.
It's pretty neat and something I hope to see in all future devices.
3D is now creatively & being properly used on websites like http://ecodazoo.com
Unity3D is what's pushing the envelope for 3D on browsers right now, but once the clamored for Flash 3D acceleration tech goes out of beta (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flash/molehill) it'll be interesting to see how web evolves.
Flash's new peer-to-peer communication (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/cirrus/) capability is very exciting and it'll be interesting what other apps will pop up when developers start playing with it more (NSFW shenanigans aside, http://chatroulette.com is cool result of this technology)
I think you also don't understand the impact of Flash to gaming. With just the 62 million Farmville users alone, Flash is one of the biggest gaming platforms in the world and its impact and boon to amateur indie game development & creativity cannot be stated enough. With all the upcoming features, it'll be interesting to see what amateur & indie game developers without the capital of hundreds of thousands of dollars will be able to do, especially in the living room (via set top boxes + 3D/gamepad support) where barriers to entry to X-Box Live Arcade, Playstation Network & Wii Ware are very high.
Add to this that mobile is the current big push, so all of these are coming to your mobile web browsers and you won't have to always download and keep updating and reinstalling standalone native apps to be able to experience these things.
Do you also know how hard it is to port across platforms if you're an indie? With Flash/AIR, you can now deploy simultaneously to Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone/ iTouch/iPad (via Flash iOS Packager) & Blackberry Tab (and soon, Windows Mobile 7 + Meego) with minimal porting effort. Sure, native is still optimal in terms of performance & capabilities, but for content creators with limited resources, this is a godsend.
WebGL will probably be ready sooner than molehill, does the same thing. Ecodazoo is 2-3 years old. Browsers will also add video conferencing.
There is a lot of overlap. Advantage of sticking to browsers is better integration with everything else that exists in browsers.
Another thing going for browsers is economics. Google is interested in keeping the web alive and well, make sure websites load fast, visual extravaganza works fast. They'll prioritize that because their revenue depends on it. Adobe has different motivations, so they allowed visually intensive sites to run slow for years, didn't prioritize hardware acceleration. They get their money from selling tools, don't care about end users.
It will be interesting to watch, but I think Flash's development priorities are out of touch with what people do on computers.
Remember folks, Adobe makes money off the tools they sell, not Flash per se as the Flash Player and the license to integrate it in your mobile device are free.
If HTML5 is where it's at, it's where Adobe will go.
Actually, it looks like more of a new platform similar to OpenGL/DirectX than a 3D engine a la Unreal/Source/IdTech which Unity3D is closer to.
It's not a response to Unity3D, it's a feature that all of us Flash devs have been requesting for years as Shockwave/Director had it, and Flash had taken over its space/niche/functionality.
If you noticed, the demo was built with the Alternativa3D Flash 3D engine. You'd still need to combo with Flash 3D engines like Alternativa3D & Papervision3D to make your life bearable when building complex Flash 3D apps/games.
It would be totally awesome if Unity3D would export to Flash 3D/Molehill in the future! :D
I view Unity3D with it's web viewer as more of a platform than a 3D engine.
Here's a link to an art project built with Unity3D (it may take a while to load - I used Firebug's Net tab to make sure elements were still loading) which I think shows Unity3D is much more than just a 3D game engine and definitely a challenge to flash:
http://www.everyday3d.com/works/installation/colors/
I have one client for which I built an interactive 3D visualization system. The project used Papervision and after trying numerous techniques to minimize the load it took on slower computers we ended up having to make it a 2D system because flash couldn't display everything we wanted to show effectively (it's also possible my Papervision skills aren't up to par and a Papervision expert could make the project work, I still have a feeling the visualization would still need to be limited). Molehill would probably really help this project out.
After building the above system, I started seeing more and more information about Unity3D. If I was to start the project again today, I'm pretty sure I would look heavily into using Unity3D over Flash for the visualization system.
Just announced and demoed at this morning's Adobe Max 2010 keynote by CTO Kevin Lynch. Another big demo for Flash gaming/gamedev is native support for gamepads/joystick controllers.
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