Adobe has gone one step further with Flash already in their beta release of version 10. There's a lot of integrations that have been inserted which make Flash a very impressive platform.

The is a huge battle between Microsoft (Silverlight), Adobe (AIR, Flex, and Flash), JavaScript, and Ruby on Rails for developers to choose as their platform. Adobe has definitely positioned itself back up on the podium with it's newest features.

Flash now has native support for 3D which enables developers to make 3D effects on 2D objects. The screenshot below shows 2D mobile phone images that have been placed in a circle, tilted and told to rotate.

There is also the features of the Pixel Bender which enables you to perform image processing effects and filters. Check out some of the photos in the Pixel Bender Gallery to see what Pixel Bender is capable of. It's like having Photoshop image effects right in Photoshop.

I encourage you to check out Adobe Labs about Flash 10 for further details on the next version of Flash 10.