At the Adobe MAX conference/dog-and-pony show, Adobe revealed with much fanfare Flash Player 10.1. Why should this be of interest to the world of Java? Well, once 10.1 becomes something other than vapor sometime in 2010, it will run not only on desktop browsers, but on most major smartphones as well. And we’re not talking about some sort of stripped-down mobile version; Flash 10.1 will be full-on flash, running on palm-sized devices.Sound familiar? It’s the old write once, run anywhere dream of Java, one that never quite came to fruition when it came to mobile devices, with Java ME being just different enough from desktop Java to preclude real synergy. In fact, Flash and Java, though they have wildly different origins, have quite a bit in common, both being essentially cross-platform runtimes. Flash has virtually no presence in the lucrative server niche that Java carved out for itself during the dot-com era, but the now-ubiquitous Flash browser plug-in, which provides animation and simple applications to virtually everyone with a Web browser, is more or less what the initial vision of Java was in the mid-1990s. And Flash has always done a better job of integrating itself into the Web browser experience, and thus making itself a more transparent part of the Internet, than Java.Java’s attempt at a comeback in this space is JavaFX, which will have a mobile version as well that will supposedly be much closer to the desktop edition. But with a huge number of Flash developers already in the field, it may be a battle already lost. If Flash Player 10.1 ends up on millions of smartphones while JavaFX is still finding its bearings, it may end up with unsurmountable advantage. Even Adobe’s big miss in this space — it’s inability to convince Apple to allow a Flash plug-in on the iPhone — isn’t good news for Java, as the coveted phone is no more willing to accept a JVM. Software Development