One thing I've noticed about those flash things: they're quite small.
Hence a great way to publish animations with scientific papers on the
web (most journals have really restrictive file size limits, essentially
ruling animated GIFs out).
I'm more amazed by the number of sites presenting media in Flash.
Authoring side, the Flash 9 player for Linux performs brilliantly --
although so do RP for Linux, Xine and mPlayer plugin for handling other
web video.
