Open Microphone Announcement Summary at MAX 2009!
It’s been just 7 short months since we launched our getMicrophone campaign, and Adobe has already responded with some exciting news. We are very excited to recognize the hard work by the Flash Player and AIR teams as we officially learned, here at MAX, that our feature request is being delivered. Here is a summary of getMicrophone announcements at MAX 2009:
1. Flash Player 10.1 WILL HAVE microphone access! According to a post by Justin Everett-Church (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/jchurch_flashplayer10.1.html), an API for accessing sound data coming from the microphone will be available in 10.1.
“New requests started coming in pretty quickly with great ideas for how the microphone data could be used to make entertainment, communication, and productivity applications. In Flash Player 10.1, you will now have access to the same sort of data that you get from MP3 files today—but coming from the microphone. For right now, this new API will be available on desktop computers only.”
2. The Flash to iPhone compiling solution in CS5 WILL NOT allow Microphone Access. According to the specs released for this long awaited ability, where Flash devs can easily build apps/games for the iPhone, we learn that Microphone Access is one of only a few features that didn’t make this port. Read more here: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Applications_for_iPhone
“As a general rule, Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR 2.0 APIs are available when developing content for the iPhone. However, there are a number of exceptions, including, but not limited to: Embedded HTML content (via webkit in Adobe AIR), RTMPE, Dynamically loading SWFs that contain ActionScript, PixelBender Filters, Microphone Access, Video Camera Access”
3. AIR 2.0 WILL HAVE Microphone Access — As we unofficially learned a few weeks ago around FOTB. This feature was not only made official at MAX 2009, but was also demonstrated during the day 1 keynote.
4. New Microphone access in Flash Player and AIR will be limited to mono — still no stereo. Due to a codec and architecture limitation with both Flash Player and AIR, the microphone access we now have will be mono only. getMicrophone will continue to lobby for this feature.
Together, as a community, we got it done. Thanks to all at Adobe for pushing this feature across. I’ve personally thanked a bunch of folks here at MAX responsible for this feature!
As these releases become public and available on labs.adobe.com, we’ll post links and ask for you to share your examples.
Badges to support the cause
Per your request to help the cause, Brendan Lee has posted these getMicrophone() badges for you to post!
You can collect them all and view cut & paste code here.
Please post and help us all getMicrophone()!
Official Flash Player Feature request for Open Microphone filed
At the behest of Justin Everett-Church, I have filed an official Adobe Flash Player Feature request for Microphone access. You can view the ‘bug’ and comment/vote on it here: http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-1766.
Justin confirmed that community support, such as getMicrophone.com, your votes and video posts can really help get this feature in sooner. Let’s get it done!
First support for open mic is ultimate!
Lee Brimelow of The Flash Blog has registered his support for the getmicrophone.com open mic initiative for Flash Player.
Lee is encouraging all developers interested to ‘chime in’ with their video response. We are so excited since Lee is definitely one of the guys out there that can ACTUALLY make this happen for all of us.
Help Lee help us. Tell Adobe why you want this!
Flash Open Mic Initiative
Watch and reply with your video on what you’d do with an Open Mic object in Flash.






