Stephen Downes

The big surprise of my recent Africa trip was this: I could view videos from YouTube just fine even when logged on via a (slow and cranky) Vodacom wireless setup running 3G. What made this possible was the small Flash video files and the capacity of MX to stream them into the display. And what is also significant about the Flash videos is that they always work - none of those weird 'missing codec' errors - and they are multiplatform. This article captures all this and more, as it chronicles how Flash video developed and why. Via Amy Gahran, Steve Safran.