Check out the new Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst on labs.adobe.com

WINDOWS USERS – you need to pass in flashcommand the flashapp attribute with the uri to your flash.exe like

You can download the code at http://code.google.com/p/flashanttasks/.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project name="FlashAntTasks" basedir="." default="Open in Browser">
 
    <description>
        simple example build file
    </description>
 
    <!-- os specific properties -->
    <property name="os" value="${os.name}"/>
    <echo message="Using ${os.name}.properties"/>
    <property file="${os.name}.properties"/>
 
	<!-- Include the Flash Ant Tasks Jar here, also make sure you 
                reference the FlashAntTasks.properties file which is 
                bundled in the jar file -->
    <taskdef resource="FlashAntTasks.properties" classpath="lib/FlashAntTasks.jar"/>
 
	<!-- Project Specific Properties -->
	<property name="html.filename" value="index_full.html" />
	<property name="local.path" value="${basedir}/wwwroot//${html.filename}" />
 
        <!-- make sure to reference the fla dir and your output dir -->
	<property name="fla.dir" value="${basedir}/flash" />
	<property name="swf.output.dir" value="${basedir}/wwwroot/assets/swfs" />
 
 
	<!-- TARGETS -->
	<target name="Compile Additional Swfs">
		<flashcommand >
			<movie export="true" source="${fla.dir}/site.fla" output="${swf.output.dir}/site.swf" />
			<movie export="true" source="${fla.dir}/shared.fla" output="${swf.output.dir}/shared.swf" />
		</flashcommand>
	</target>
 
	<target name="Compile Shell" depends="Compile Additional Swfs">
		<flashcommand >
			<movie export="true" source="${fla.dir}/shell.fla" output="${swf.output.dir}/shell.swf" />
		</flashcommand>
	</target>
 
	<target name="Windows Example" depends="Compile Additional Swfs">
                      <!-- WINDOWS USERS: flashapp attribute is required -->
		<flashcommand flashapp="c:\\Program files\\Adobe\\Flash.exe">
			<movie test="true" source="${fla.dir}/shell.fla" output="${swf.output.dir}/shell.swf" />
		</flashcommand>
	</target>
 
	<target name="Compile Shell" depends="Compile Additional Swfs">
		<flashcommand >
			<movie export="true" source="${fla.dir}/shell.fla" output="${swf.output.dir}/shell.swf" />
		</flashcommand>
	</target>
 
 
	 <!-- Open in local browser -->
	<target name="Open in Browser" depends="Compile Shell">
		<exec executable="open">
			<arg line="-a ${browser} ${local.path}" />
		</exec>
	</target>
 
</project>

http://theflashblog.com/?p=480

Anyway my peoples.  Happy turkey day.

Merapi is a bridge between applications written in Java and those running in and created for Adobe AIR™ (Adobe Integrated Runtime™). 
Merapi has been designed to run on a user’s machine, along with an Adobe AIR™application and providea direct bridge between the Adobe AIR™ framework and Java, exposing the power and overall calabilities of the user’s operating system, including 3rd party hardware devices.

With a light weight and straightforward API, developers can leverage the OS by writing Java companion applications for their AIR™ applications. Java programs treat Merapi as a bridge to the running Adobe AIR™ application and vice-versa. 

Developers can build their Flex, Flash and AJAX applications for Adobe AIR™, and use Merapi to make them do things that AIR just can’t do by itself.

The Merapi project team, is proud to announce that the private alpha release has been completed and is available to select members of the Flex/AIR/Java community. We’ve had a lot of interest and have been contacted by a variety of individuals who have expressed interest in joining our efforts.

But it was soooo worth it.

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/

• Animation
  1. Support for animating custom data points
  2. Object Animation support (animating structs)
• Deep Zoom
  1. New XML-based file format
  2. MultiScaleTileSource to wire up your own images and get the Deep Zoom experience
  3. Better notifications when sub-images enter the view
• Controls
  1. Customize the look and feel of controls using Visual State Manager. Interactive control templates were never so easy.
  2. Some base controls are now part of the core platform, rather than packaged into apps. Say hello to smaller app sizes.
  3. Calendar now supports multi-selection and blackout dates
  4. New TabControl
  5. Control properties changes (Background, Tooltip, FontFamily, FontSize…)
  6. DataGrid improvements: auto size, reorder, sort, performance and more
• TextBox
  1. IME Level 3 input support
  2. Text wrapping and multiline selection highlighting in textbox
  3. Scrolling and clipboard support
  4. Document level navigation keys
• Improvements in error handling, reporting
• Parser and Property system
  1. DependencyProperty.Register/RegisterAttached now supports PropertyMetadata
  2. New DependencyObject.ClearValue
  3. Visual tree helper
• Data-binding
  1. Per binding level validation
  2. Support for element syntax for binding markup extensions
  3. Binding to attached properties
  4. ItemsControl extensibility (OnItemsChanged method)
  5. Fallback in value conversion (Binding.UnsetValue)
• Input
  1. Support for limited keyboard input in Full Screen mode (arrow, tab, enter, home, end, pageup/pagedown, space). I’ve seen more than a few requests for this on the forums.
  2. Managed APIs for Inking and stylus input
• Networking and Data
  1. Cross Domain support in Sockets
  2. Cross Domain security enhancements
  3. HttpWebRequest and WebClient callable from background threads
  4. Upload support in WebClient
  5. Isolated Storage: default size increased to 1MB and new ability to change quota with user consent. Also a new management UI.
  6. Duplex communications (“push” from server to Silverlight client with no need to “poll” for data)
  7. LINQ -to- JSON serialization
  8. Significantly improved SOAP interop
  9. “Add New Item” template in Visual Studio for “Silverlight-enabled WCF Service”
  10. ADO.NET Data Services support
• UIAutomation and Accessibility support in the platform
• Media
  1. Platform support for Adaptive Streaming (also referred to by people as multi bitrate), the ability for Silverlight to switch between media depending on network and CPU conditions
  2. Content protection with PlayReady DRM and Windows DRM
  3. Basic server-side playlist (SSPL) support
• Localization
  1. Changes to localized application model. You now create one xap per locale, instead of one monolithic multilingual app
  2. Expanded localization languages of runtime and SDK
  3. Japanese SDK Installer and documentation (July 10)
• Several changes to make API and behavior more compatible with WPF
• Tools
  1. Beta 1 projects will be automatically ported to Beta 2
  2. Remote debugging for VB on the Mac
• CLR
  1. A new developer-oriented runtime package with debugging binaries, localized strings, docs etc.
  2. Support for OS fallback logic for resources
  3. CurrentCulture and CurrentUICulture isolation to AppDomain level
• DLR
  1. Performance improvements
  2. Various new DLR and IronPython 2.0 Beta 2 language features
  3. Various new IronRuby features