To say there was a buzz in the air when more than 300 people crowded into the registration room for the Showcase Conference in Derry last Thursday would be something of an understatement. The palpable energy remained for much of the day, fuelled by demonstrations and workshops involving some of the most inspiring and convincing digital media specialists Ireland has to offer.

The conference was organised to provide a forum for discussion and demonstration around cloud, mobile and web-based software applications and certainly achieved its goal of celebrating innovation and entrepreneurship. The delegates were fed and watered throughout the day by the conference partners Microsoft and Derry City Council, who also provided a £2000 laptop for the most impressive demonstration. This was won by Newsrupt who launched Qluso, an online app allowing editors to bid for exclusive stories from freelance journalists.

The demonstrations represented a broad range of sectors including medical innovation, transport and hospitality, social media /networking, recruitment and education, to name but a few. These were short slots allowing start-ups, academics and entrepreneurs to show how their applications work and outline plans for development before answering questions from the audience - usually focusing on how money might be generated.

While the demonstrations took place in the main room, workshops and panel sessions on the creative industries, mobile apps and cloud computing were held by industry experts including representatives from Dell, Microsoft and the University of Ulster. Relevant and interesting discussions included the future of print media and the benefits of using various types of software.(open source vs commercial)

All in all it was a fantastic day, not just because of the open bar after the final presentation (thanks, Microsoft!) or the number of delegates who had travelled from all corners of the country and beyond, but because the day was a demonstration of the sheer energy and enthusiasm driving digital technology and development in Northern Ireland. Yet another reminder that this is an exciting time and place to be!

The Showcase demonstrations were streamed live and videos will be available soon on the Showcase website.

Apple and Adobe are at loggerheads again over apples decision not to include Flash in the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Steve Jobs, co-founder and chief executive of Apple was pretty damming in his memo "Thoughts on Flash" where he publically wanted to dispel any thoughts that Apple were are trying to close off protect the App Store.

Instead he has made it clear that the reasoning behind this is a business driven decision based on security and performance. Steve indeed redirects this criticism at Abobe and let it be known that Apple invested heavily in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years.

He continues "Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member."

Firstly there was battery life: "Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained."

Secondly: "Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which popup menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?"

Flash was "designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers... Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash Web sites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices".

We should keep an eye on this battle which I am sure will rumble on a lot further, depending on whoever come out on top could determine the future of web and mobile app design