Flash Player 9 update 3
Flash Player Update 3 Beta 1 (build 9.0.60.120) is now available for download at Adobe Labs. 371 bugs were fixed since update 2, but that’s just the start. Adobe has more to please. Tinic Uro has the definitive post about this (though he doesn’t mention the ‘Flash Player Cache’ feature like Emmy Huang).

The improvements are mostly performance related. Flash Player now embraces multiple core CPUs, DirectX on Windows, OpenGL on OSX, hardware scaling of video!… There’s also MIP map support for all bitmaps (which should increase performance and somewhat the memory usage), mipmaps are generally used for 3D textures…

AIR (Apollo)
Adobe Integrated Runtime, AIR, formerly Apollo, beta 1 is also now available at Adobe Labs. A lot of new features and Flex 3 now has more support for AIR.

I must say I think the code name Apollo was way better than AIR. Now people will say ‘Adobe AIR’ meaning ‘Adobe Adobe Integrated Runtime’ and ‘Adobe IR’ doesn’t even look good. Air is everywhere, essential to life, it’s not heavy, it’s transparent, – but it also doesn’t have any value, so I really didn’t like the new name.

Flex 3
Both the free SDK and Flex Builder 3 beta 1 are now also available at Adobe Labs. What’s more, now the bug base is open to public and also Flex 3 nightly builds are available.

Lots of great features. My favorite is Flash Player’s ability to cache the Flex framework. Ted Patrick always has great Flex coverage, so visit his blog to learn more.