Adobe has released the first beta of Flash 11, a major update of the rich media browser plug-in. A significant change in this version of Flash is the availability of 64-bit builds for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

The long-overdue delivery of 64-bit support is a major milestone for Adobe. The company first demonstrated an experimental 64-bit Flash plug-in prototype in 2008 and vowed to eventually deliver support for the x64 architecture across all of the major desktop operating systems. The plan had to take a backseat, however, as Adobe's focus shifted to other priorities. Improving Flash's performance and reliability on mobile devices has consumed much of the company's attention over the past year.

Adobe dropped its previous experimental 64-bit Flash plug-in roughly a year ago, citing the need for significant architectural changes. At the time, we joked that Flash's 64-bit support might finally land at about the same time as Duke Nukem Forever. It's sort of funny how that worked out. Unlike Duke's less-than-triumphant return, however, the new 64-bit Flash plugin actually lives up to its promise.

Linux users have typically had to rely on frameworks like nspluginwrapper to use the 32-bit Flash plug-in in a 64-bit browser. Due to native 64-bit support, the new beta version of the Flash plug-in can be used without a shim. We briefly tested it on Ubuntu 11.04 in the Firefox Web browser. In light of Adobe's controversial decision to discontinue Adobe AIR on the Linux platform, it's a bit surprising that it is treating the operating system as a first-class citizen with 64-bit support in Flash 11.

In addition to 64-bit support, the new plug-in also introduces the new Stage3D APIs—Adobe's Molehill project—which provides hardware-accelerated 3D rendering capabilities in the same vein as WebGL. The runtime has also gained improved JSON handling and some technical improvements that make garbage collection less intrusive. Another nice addition is support for H.264 encoding of real-time video streams captured from the user's camera—offering better compression for video chat and other similar kinds of applications.

The plug-in is available for download from Adobe's website in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Adobe warns, however, that the beta is still a work in progress and not intended for serious day-to-day use. I didn't encounter any serious problems during my brief test of the plugin. 

For more details, you can refer to the official announcement in the Adobe Flash Player Team blog.

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Don't look now, but music service Spotify will be available to US residents starting Thursday, July 14. The company announced its... planned announcement on Wednesday, saying that it would provide further details about its US offerings at 8am EDT on Thursday. The company is currently accepting requests for invitations on its website.

Spotify's streaming music and subscription service has long been popular among many of our friends in Europe since its launch in late 2008, and has been aiming for a US launch for nearly as long. (Our sister site Wired spoke highly about Spotify in 2009, describing it as "a magical version of iTunes in which you’ve already bought every song in the world.")

The holdup on the US launch has apparently been due to licensing concerns with the record labels—much of the Spotify-related news cycle over the last several months has been made up of rumors about Spotify signing deals with this label or the other. Even in Europe, Spotify has reportedly clashed a bit with the labels, which resulted in the company cutting back on some of its free music offerings due to supposed pressure from the music industry.

Now the day has finally come—or will come tomorrow, that is—for those in the US to find out why folks in Europe seem to love Spotify so much. Because Spotify chose not to actually announce the details when sending out its PR e-mails, however, no further information is yet available as to what may or may not be included in the service. Here's what's currently available in the UK though: Spotify's three tiers of free, unlimited, and premium muisc. The free tier lets you stream 10 hours of music per month with ads and play unlimited local music, while the the unlimited tier offers unlimited ad-free streams, and the premium tier offers all of that plus offline mode and access from your mobile phone. We can only assume that the service structure will be the same for US customers, but we'll have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out for sure.

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Netflix users who want both streaming content and DVDs delivered to their homes will now have to subscribe to two separate plans at $15.98 per month. Netflix announced the changes to its pricing structures on the company blog Tuesday, pointing out that there are now completely separate streaming-only and DVD-only plans, and none that include both. The changes go into effect in September for existing subscribers, or immediately for new Netflix members.

Netflix made a name for itself by offering unlimited DVDs delivered to subscribers' houses, but soon became popular for its instant streaming offerings that were rolled into the normal DVD plans. In November of 2010, the company finally decided to offer a streaming-only plan for $7.99 per month—$1 less than the previous streaming and one-DVD-at-a-time plan—with DVD plans as a $2 add-on. So, for unlimited streaming and one DVD at a time, users could still pay $9.99 per month to get both.

No longer is that the case, though. Now, there will be a $7.99 streaming-only plan and a $7.99 DVD-only plan, and if you want both, you'll have to subscribe to both. That's $5.99 more per month than the previous plan for similar features, or $71.88 more per year.

Netflix VP of marketing Jessie Becker wrote that the company had never intended to offer DVD-only plans until after the streaming-only plan went into effect. "Since then we have realized that there is still a very large continuing demand for DVDs both from our existing members as well as non-members," she wrote. "Given the long life we think DVDs by mail will have, treating DVDs as a $2 add on to our unlimited streaming plan neither makes great financial sense nor satisfies people who just want DVDs. Creating an unlimited DVDs by mail plan (no streaming) at our lowest price ever, $7.99, does make sense and will ensure a long life for our DVDs by mail offering."

Now, movie lovers will really have to decide whether the DVD option is worth the extra money—when it was only a $2 add-on, it was easy to toss in, but an extra $8 might be harder to swallow. Netflix's streaming library is growing at a much faster rate now, but the best movies are still usually limited to DVD on Netflix for quite a while before they become stream-able.

Meanwhile, Amazon continues to add more titles to its own streaming library tied to Amazon Prime, and Amazon's service is still cheaper than Netflix's streaming-only service by about $17 per year. Amazon, however, doesn't offer any sort of DVD rental option like Netflix, so Netflix may still have the widest overall appeal, even with the subscription price increases.

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Facebook held a special media event on Wednesday to introduce "awesome" new Facebook features. It turns out the company unveiled improvements to Facebook Chat, including a new group chatting feature and, in partnership with Skype, the ability to make video calls. While the improvements are welcome—numerous other services such as AIM, iChat, Windows Live, and Yahoo have had similar features for some time—they are also far from the promised "awesome."

The staff in the Ars Orbiting HQ took the new features for a spin, and shortcomings were immediately obvious. While the service is based on Skype's technology, you can't make video calls with other Skype users. Video chats are only two-way, so no chatting among groups like in Google+'s new "hangout" feature. And text chat is stuck in the browser while video chats launch in a separate window that remains on top of all other windows, making it difficult to access other work while chatting.

However, Facebook's massive user base could make the new features useful, especially for those that don't heavily rely on other, more entrenched services like AIM or Skype. Here are some of the thoughts bandied about our in-orbit water cooler this afternoon.

June brought the first result of Mozilla's new Rapid Release strategy for Firefox. Firefox 4, just three months old, was superceded by the all-new but not-too-different Firefox 5. Firefox's market growth was all but ended by the release of Chrome, and Mozilla is hoping that by adopting a similar release schedule to Google, it will be able to reignite the growth of its user base.

If things continue down their current path, Amazon's affiliate program will eventually go extinct in the US. Late Wednesday, California joined the growing list of states attempting to collect sales tax from online retailers like Amazon in an effort to help close the state's vast budget deficit. Amazon, in typical fashion, has aggressively pushed back, warning its California-based affiliates that they'll have their revenue streams cut off as of September 30 if the law ends up being enacted.

California's new law, signed by Governor Jerry Brown on Wednesday, requires online retailers to collect sales tax even if they have no physical presence in the state. How does that work when federal law states they have to have a brick-and-mortar store to qualify? Like the many other states before it, California counts Amazon affiliates who reside in California as a "physical presence." So, if Joe Blow runs a personal blog with affiliate links to Amazon products (you know, to make a few bucks on the side), he is effectively "selling" Amazon products and making money from them via his home in California.

Hold onto your hats: Congress has finally discovered Skype. The US House of Representatives Committee on Administration announced on Tuesday that its WiFi network officially supports the use of Skype and ooVoo, which is meant to enable Congress members and staffers to video conference with constituents while saving money on travel costs. The agreement has apparently been in the works for months, and has now come to fruition after smoothing out the House's security concerns.

“During a time when Congress must do more with less, we believe that these low-cost, real-time communication tools will be an effective way to inform and solicit feedback from constituents," Committee on House Administration Chairman Dan Lungren (R-CA) and House Technology Operations Team Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said in a statement. "We thank the CAO for ensuring that Members and staff can utilize these services while maintaining the necessary level of IT security within the House network, and look forward to identifying additional technological solutions to communication and transparency roadblocks.”

According to the Skype Blog, lawmakers will use Skype to hold meetings with those who can't travel to the Congressional office, participate in virtual town meetings, and "collaborate more effectively with other Members on important legislative efforts."

As far as security goes, Skype says that each Congressional office will be able to configure its own settings with a Skype Manager account, and reassures us that no one will be Skype-spying on the Congressional offices without their permission: "Skype software allows people to accept or block a contact, and it never 'answers' a call unless instructed to do so by the user. In other words, Skype video calls are initiated only when users at all ends of the call make the affirmative choice to enable video calling."

ooVoo went into slightly more detail about the process that led to the agreement. "ooVoo is making available to House Members our Professional version which offers cloud-based SSL data encryption," ooVoo spokesperson Bryan Brown told Ars via e-mail. "Over a period of months, the House Technology Operations team reviewed ooVoo's architecture and security throughout the process. The team understood the cloud-driven nature of ooVoo as a differentiator in terms of security and user experience."

In a way, it's surprising that Congress members couldn't previously use videoconferencing services to communicate with constituents—after all, many already use e-mail to do so—but security was the main concern that held back the adoption of more feature-rich technologies. Chaffetz had previously told The Hill that the Technology Operations Team was worried about broadcasting classified items and wanted to ensure that the cameras couldn't be remotely activated. According to Lungren, however, those concerns have been resolved and all members and staff will need to accept "House-specific agreements" in order to "maximize protection" for all involved.

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