adobe

Almost four years ago I swapped out my fancy lad IT job in New York City for a 100 percent DIY lifestyle in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. The only problem was that I didn't have any building skills. Fortunately, I came across an advertisement for Smartflix: A DVD-rental service sorta like Netflix except all the videos are how-tos. The library covers everything from how to silkscreen a t-shirt to building energy efficient homes. At only $10 per disc rental (a few are more) and over 6,200 titles this service saved my DIY life. Follow the jump to check out my favorite titles.

Adobe has announced that it will be lifting licensing fees for Flash to developers working on mobile applications as part of its new Open Screen Project. The goal is to bring more rich content to phones across a standardized platform. Flash is already ubiquitous in Web browsers, so the available content on the net is mature and widespread. Currently, phones use a disparate variety of software to power video and games; rarely has the feedback been overwhelmingly positive about a mobile experience with either kind of media.

Youre on vacation. You have your digital camera and you plug it into your friends laptop to upload a few pics to your favorite photo sharing site. Youd love to make a few quick adjustments before you publish, but your friends computer has no good image editing software. Enter Adobe Photoshop Express online. Through their revamped Flash 9 player, Abobe has created a scaled-back and easy-to-use version of Photoshop which runs entirely in your Web browser. Best of all, its free.

This past Monday, Adobe launched its AIR software, which aims to merge the sometimes-disparate worlds of the Internet and a user's PC. You might think of AIR as a much more sophisticated and versatile PointCast, the mid-90s screensaver that used push technology to deliver news and stock quotes to a user's desktop. It's not a perfect comparison—AIR is platform and not an application—but it's a good starting point for understanding the concept.