Adobe today announced that beta versions of Adobe Flash player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2 are now available from Adobe Labs for Windows, Mac and Linux operating system. Flash Player 10.1 is also available for x86-based netbooks and will be available for smartphones and other Internet connected devices in 2010.

The Flash 10.1 is the first consistent browser runtime release of the Open Screen Project and it offers HTTP streaming coupled with content protection powered by Adobe Flash Access 2.0. The Flash player also supports hardware decoding of H.264 video on Windows PC via GPU acceleration. This feature is not available on Mac or Linux.

The AIR 2 offers developers more reliable and feature-rich applications in the desktop context, and developers can easily add AIR 2 functionality to update current AIR 1.0 applications. New AIR 2 features include enhanced support or mass storage devices and native application processes, as well as peer-to-peer ad UDP networking.

The beta versions of Adobe AIR 2 and Adobe Flash Player 10.1 are available immediately as free downloads from Adobe Labs.