Adobe just released the numbers for Flash Player 9, update 3 (9.0.115) in addition to the major player versions. 61.8% penetration for 9.0.115 in 3 months is almost twice as fast as Flash Player has updated in the past.

It is really exciting news when you think that the majority of Flash Players are now taking advantage of multi-core support, and can view H.264 content.

Adobe Image Foundation Toolkit Prerelease 2 is now live on Adobe Labs. If you haven’t heard of it yet, the AIF toolkit is the tool for creating your own filters for use with Flash Player Astro. The most exciting part of the refresh are two Flash-specific enhancements.

The toolkit can now produce bytecode files (.hbc for now). While you can’t do much with them right now, these are the compiled files that Flash Player will use to render the pixel shader. The other enhancement is support for some new filter features that are going to be supported in Flash. While they were originally not allowed in the Flash profile, you can now use conditionals to make more complex filters than before.

To see some of the filters that have already been built by the community, take a look at the Hydra Gallery.

Adobe has released an update to Flash Player 9 today (9.0.124.0). This is the April 2008 security release that I blogged about earlier. This is primarily a security release to address certain issues and maintain the high confidence level that developers and end users have always had in Flash Player.

As I mentioned before, there are changes in this player that can impact existing content. For the full details, please read the updated article on the Adobe Developer Connection.

Content changes are frustrating and inconvenient. We’ve tried very hard to secure Flash Player in ways that reduce the impact to our customers. Whenever possible, we make choices that minimize the need to recompile or re-work an application. In all of the issues except “JavaScript:” placed in unusual network APIs there is an available solution that can be implemented outside the SWF, whether that is through a crossdomain.xml, an HTML parameter or an implicit call to a socket policy server.

Also, if you haven’t been to the Flash Player Download Center in a while, we just completed our re-design with this release. The new look is designed to make the experience of downloading Flash Player easier and more consistent with other Adobe technologies.

While CNN covers presidential campaigns, news about the Flash Player election is sadly being lost. Polls are open and candidates are sitting there hoping for your vote. Write-in candidates are already lurking in the back of your mind waiting to be added to race!

“What race is this?” you ask?

Today, Flash Player has joined Flex and Blaze DS as participants in Adobe’s public bug tracking system. While it may not actually be a real campaign, it is certainly inspired by the democratic process. In addition to searching for and reporting new issues, you can vote on issue that are important to you and influence the decisions of what goes into the next Flash Player.

As a product manager, the real treat for me though is the feature request section. If there is something you want from Flash Player, be it a small enhancement or a major new feature, you can enter a request on the site. It is product management GOLD to be able to have direct numbers on what the community wants and why (if you leave comments).

My job is to understand and anticipate your challenges and the sort of work that you want to do and work within Adobe to make the best product we can to serve your needs. Right now I do this through customer visits, talking to people at conferences, monitoring trends in the industry, and doing lots of other behind-the-scenes things. Most of this type of data is qualitative and has proven to be a successful methodology through the history of Flash. However, every time I can get my hands on some quantitative data like a vote count on a feature request it means that I can do a reality check and make sure that we are really going the direction the community needs us to go.

So, do Flash Player (and me) a favor and Vote early, vote often!