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MicroFilm wins Flash Lite Developer Challenge Grand Prize

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:40:00 +0000

MicroFilm has been outed. We (Paul Wilson and myself) are really happy and honoured that MicroFilm has been given some great public recognition by being awarded the Grand Prize in the Flash Lite Developer Challenge. Many thanks to all those involved.

Now that MicroFilm is out in the public arena I'll try and share some of the thinking and plans behind it over the coming weeks.

Our main goal, from MicroFilm's inception 2 years ago, has always been to get a great mobile video application out into the consumer's hands. That remains the case.

As always with mobile nothing is a s simple as it seems. We do however, have some innovative business models that we’re exploring to support its distribution.

We’re progressing to the next stage of our user testing of MicroFilm and opening it up to a wider audience so send an email to microfilm@ this website if you are interested in helping out!

MicroFilm nominated in the Flash Lite Developer Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:18:00 +0000

Pleased to announce that MicroFilm has been nominated in the category of infotainment for the Flash Lite Developer Challenge

MicroFilm is something that Paul Wilson and myself have actually been working on for sometime. I think the idea was originally forged back in 2007 just after Flash Lite 3.0 was released. Since then we have been slowly modelling and building our take on a dream application for mobile. Imagine you have a nice phone, an unlimited data plan and you love movies - MicroFilm is for you!

Here's a video of the application in action. BTW. This is a real app, not a hacked together prototype, its fed via Adobe Media Server and a fully functional backend providing all the social networking stuff.

MicroFilm Video

Don't forget to vote too if you think MicroFilm is deserving!

Vote Here

Flash at the BBC

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:37:00 +0000

The BBC are currently recruiting for contract Flash developers in various departments.

You will need to be a very good developer with great knowledge of AVM1 ;) But don't let that put you off, quite seriously some of the work at the BBC at the moment is in the realms of dream projects. If you fancy playing a part in the future of mainstream entertainment, where the user is not sat in front of a desktop computer then please forward a CV.

What makes a project quite often are the people. The people you'd be working with on a day to day basis are legends in their field so the opportunity is second to none.

All roles are based in the UK, however international applications are not out of the question if your English is near fluent and you don't mind living in the UK for a bit.

Send me an email at flashbbc@gmail.com.

Why native accessors are really bad in Flash Lite.

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:01:00 +0000

At work we were discussing what standards we should use for coding. Things like consistency in formatting, naming and having agreed ways of doing things obviously makes everything easier.

So we entered into the discussion of public variables versus native accessors versus custom functions. Here's what I mean when I refer to the different accessors:

native accessor:

public function get width():Numbe{return _width;};
public function set width(value:Number):Void{_width = value;};

public variable:

public var width:Number;

private variable:

private var width:Number;

custom accessor function:

public function getWidth():Number{return _width;};
public function setWidth(value:Number):Void{_width = value;};

The most compelling argument to use custom accessor functions is that public/private variables, and to a lesser extent native accessors, don't allow you to hide your implementation. This is fine and good, but we are using Flash Lite with a resource limited device. In this scenario best coding practice sometimes has to make way for best performance.

So we decided to do some tests to see what the overhead would be of accessing variables one way or another?

Speed Test results in ms, making 10000 gets and sets:

Custom function 2439
Public variable 2394
Private variable 2395
Native accessor 13450

Memory Test results for creating 10000 instances of each class (kb).

Custom function 6528
Public variable 6528
Private variable 6528
Native accessor 6532

In terms of memory, everything is exactly the same except for native accessors.

For performance, the results show that public/private variables were very slightly faster to access compared to custom functions. However, the massive suprise is that native accessors are more than 5 times slower than public/private variables or custom functions. This is truly shocking, and really could completely slow down your application if you used them extensively.

So in many ways our decision about what approach to take with accessors was made really easy; never, ever, use native accessors! The marginal difference between public/private variables and custom variables was deemed insignificant when compared with the benefits of hiding the implementation.

It is possible to justify the use of public variables in some cases. If you have a value object that is strictly read only and has no functionality, then there is nothing to hide in terms of implementation. The only difficulty here is how do you determine that a value object is read only? How do you guarantee that it will never have any functionality going forward?

XML and Flash Lite..... stuff of nightmares

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 23:39:00 +0000

XML has long plagued Flash Lite developers. It really is the stuff of nightmares, if you use XML you enter a world where nothing is what it seems. Your application lives or dies on the whim of Flash Lite and the XML document itself. If you are not careful you will find that the XML object is not cleared by Garbage Collection, scripts will reach the script timeout limit and stop processing silently, your application will fail.

After years of suffering here a few short notes on successful use of XML.

1. IdMap locks an XML object in memory. This is a bug. Here's the issue, with some XML files it is impossible to delete the XML object from memory because somehow the idMap holds a reference to the XML object itself. So before deleting an XML object you must first delete the XML.idMap property.

2. If you want to avoid the potential pitfalls of creating and then deleting XML objects, try just reusing the same XML object to process all your files.

3. Never do too much in a loop, this can cause the FL player to freak out and stop processing the loop, leaving you with an unfinished set of data. The timeout for loops on desktop is 15 seconds, on mobile this seems to be a lot less. This could be because OEMs have set it lower or it could just be because of poor implementations - who knows!

4. Don't forget the UI. Flash is single threaded so when you are executing code Flash must finish before it can render. This means your UI won't respond if actionscript is busy parsing an XML file.

5. onData() and onLoad() happen in the same frame. This means when an XML file is loaded it first creates the XML object via parseXML() then it calls onLoad() where you can walk through the DOM and access the nodes. The implication of this is that Flash has 2 heavy bits of processing to do in one frame, increasing the likelihood of a timeout. If timeouts are an issue you can overwrite the onData() event, call parseXML() and then call onLoad() in the next frame.

6. If you control the data you use then process it into something other than XML on the server or locally. XML objects occupy a lot of memory, name value pairs are much more efficient and you wont need to process them at all.

7. Test your XML loading needs at super speed in device central. So take your basic requirements for XML processing, create a new fla and set the FPS to 120. Do your loading operation 1000s of times and look at the memory. You'll get a good idea how good your memory handling is.

Nokia Sports Tracker, Unicef and lots of running

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:08:00 +0000

Just over a year ago I started my own get fit program by going to the gym on a regular basis. At the same time I discovered Nokia Sports Tracker and for the first time in my life I actually started running! Of course I used to play football lots and that involved running after a ball but this was running for the sake of running - something I'd always viewed as a masocistic activity. Nokia Sports Tracker actually gave me a geek reason to start running and from there I've actually started enjoying it.

So this weekend everything culminates in me running a half marathon for Unicef in the Royal Parks Half which plots a 20k route around the central London parks. Its nice to see Nokia are one of the key sponsors, although its a shame they don't seem to be tying Nokia Sports Tracker into the event more. It would be good to see them push Sports Tracker a little more as its a great tool and has been around for well over a year now. Although I have a few gripes with the current version, the core functionality of being able to track progress via GPS and then share this with a google maps mashup is great.

The Royal Parks Half starts this sunday at 10 am. If anyone wants to sponsor me and help out Unicef that would be great and really appreciated: http://www.justgiving.com/nickgerig

I'll be using Sports Tracker to track my progress live on race day - so you should be able to go here and see live tracking data.

the mobile soup

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:05:00 +0000

There's some great commentary on the mex blog about the state of operator and manufacturer consumer stances. You can read it here http://www.mobileuserexperience.com/?p=574

My take on this is that its all just part of the increasingly rapid shift in roles that is inevitable when a market is structured ineffectively. The whole web, mobile and other convergence is picking up pace. Operators and manufacturers have held all the cards for years and have failed spectacularly to produce any real consumer services.

Of course there are regional differences, Operators in Japan have taken full advantage of their position and turned themselves into real service facilitators, so the consumer is happy - they don't buy just a handset they buy a specific service laden handset targeted at all their needs. In Europe and the US service standards are so low that operators have to rely upon manufacturer provided USPs to create some kind of crap marketing campaign. It can only become increasingly easy for manufacturers and software service providers to take over.

Recently we've seen 02 and Orange suddenly become broadband and portal providers. This is really reminicent of the early internet days where models like MSN, AOL, Lycos etc were the norm. This is almost like a last desperate act of saying look we really are service providers honest, look we do email, news, broadband,etc. I'd be really suprised if any of them pull this off in the longrun. Even if they do, I think they miss the point - all anyone ever wanted was to have great services on mobile phones.

So I understand its a strategic move to counter the invasion of the internet services provided by the Googles and Yahoos, and you can't just have a mobile presence thats true. But that's just delaying the inevitable, they cannot compete at this level and their history proves that. The real battle will be between the handset manufacturers and the internet giants. We've already seen Nokia in particular start to move into multiplatform software, creating the potential to compete with the likes of Google, Apple, etc.

I think the interesting move will be when an operator makes the move to being just a facilitator and helps consumers get the services they want. That's when we'll see some really great things happening on mobile - ultimately the consumer doesn't care who dominates as long as the end result is good, something we are still far from with mobile. When will Google buy a controlling stake in an operator I wonder? :)

Opera Mobile and Flash

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:57:00 +0000

Seems like Opera for mobile is now actually integrating some form of Flash within the browser. There was some tentative announcement back at the MWC that it would support Flash Lite 3, I guess this is the first step.

http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/

I think what Opera do is just hook into whatever 'player' is present on the device, so they implement a standard api. However, that can only really lead to a pretty fragmented implementation. Also not sure why its even worth implementing Flash Lite 2.1, flash player 7 is understandable for the video.

My first test with a Nokia N95 8Gb crashed the browser when it tried to access Flash content, but to be fair that has Flash Lite 3 which isn't listed in the tech spec- interesting to see if it works on any Flash video content (Flash 7 is listed as supported - I pressume for windows mobile).

open source cell database

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:30:00 +0000

Theres a few 'open' databases out there to find the location of a phone cell. None of them really inspire much confidence. Recently the big players have been showing off their own databases, for example google and yahoo who use cell id for user location services. So its about time that there was one global open database to rench away the money goggled control operators have over their cell data.

I've recently donated some extensive cell data to opencellid and hopefully it can expand as people try and build out location services. Theres also a few clients to download if you want to contribute.

BBC iPlayer moves on to Wii... what next?

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:01:00 +0000

Just read that the iPlayer is now moving onto Wii. Its great to see the BBC pushing it so aggressively. I wonder if its using Flash technology? If it is I imagine they'd have to upgrade the Flash Player to support on2, it would certainly make sense if they could because they get good enough DRM

So where will it go next? Having just got back from overtheair its clear the BBC love mobile and want to embrace it, but they have to be conscious of the mass market. Flash Lite 3 would be an easy port as they'd really just have to change the UI of their existing iPlayer, but the penetration is low at the moment. What other options are there that have a rich UI, DRM and a long term roadmap? Will be interesting to see just how far iPlayer penetrates mobile.

Update: I've just read an interesting post by Darren Waters that seems to confirm the iPlayer roadmap with Flash as a technology base and how that crosses over to consoles too. Looks like the Wii will be moving onto Flash 8 soon :)

MAD UK user group night

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:32:00 +0000

Tonight I'll be heading down to the Adobe Consulting offices where Mark Doherty will be showing a few of the Adobe hidden mobile gems, namely the European Flash Cast projects and some Flash Lite video.

If you're in London then I thoroughly recommend coming down. This will be a great opportunity to meet some of the EMEA mobile team, see some of the opportunities ahead and meet some of the Flash Lite community.

details are:

Date : 29th Feb, 2008

Time : 7pm - 9pm

Venue : At the Adobe Regents Park office
12 Park Crescent,
London,
W1B 1PH,
United Kingdom

UK MAD

Nokia Flash Lite 3 Memory Bonanza!

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:09:00 +0000

As various other people have reported, the latest version of firmware for the N95 8Gb adds support for Flash Lite 3. Its great to see Flash Lite 3 getting out into the wild finally, and perhaps earlier than has been the case with other Flash Lite version changes.

So I have upgraded my N95 8Gb and have been playing around with the implementation of Flash Lite 3. There aren't many changes to the standalone player except for the available memory which has been increased massively!

In previous deployments of Flash Lite the total runtime memory available has ranged from 1024 to 2048 kb. The developer version of Flash Lite 3 released by Adobe for developers to test applications had a default memory allocation of 3296 kb. The in-built Flash Lite 2 player on the N95 has 2297 kb, so it was a nice suprise to see the Nokia implementation of Flash Lite 3 has a jaw dropping 16632 kb of runtime memory!!! Amazing! So now we can load and playback full length mp3 files, for example. Of course, I didn't trust the system reporting of available memory so I checked it quickly by loading and playing a 4mb mp3 file. It worked perfectly - remember this would normally use up 8mb of memory.

Not sure why there is such a difference - maybe its to do with the changes in the way memory is managed in the latest versions of Symbian 9.2?

Flash Lite 3 security

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:56:00 +0000

Since the Flash Lite 3 player was made available recently I have noticed developers aren't aware of the new security measures. So heres an attempt at summing them up.

The biggest change apart from FLV support is the new security model. Flash Lite 3 now has crossdomain security AND playback security which makes it the same as Flash Players 8+. There are several confusing aspects to this though because Flash Lite doesn't operate in the same context as a desktop computer.

If you are accessing anything remote from a local file then you will have to do the following:

Put a crossdomain.xml file on any server you are accessing. Or have a proxy script on one server and use that as a gateway to anything you want.

Publish your swf as having 'Network Access Only'. So File > Publish Settings > Local Playback security > change 'Access local files only' to 'Network Access Only'. If you don't do this then your swf won't even trigger the network connection dialog on the device, it will just die silently. Its important to note here that the default is local files only so ANY old content that uses a network connection will not work in Flash Lite 3 until you re-publish it with the correct settings.

Be aware that neither Device Central or the Flash IDE enforce the new security measures, so you won't realise any issues until you test on the device.

So now that the basic rules are there heres my take on how the desktop player settings transform themselves into a very different mobile context.

1. On the desktop you can launch a local swf in the browser and a user is given a warning so that they can 'trust' the file to connect remotely. In Flash Lite 3 the user will never get this prompt it will just die silently. This is probably a good thing.

2. On the desktop you can open a projector to playback a swf and this will automatically be 'trusted' and therefore have no local playback security restrictions, you can load local and remote data at the same time. On mobile its a bit different.

The Flash Lite standalone player on s60 is actually treated like a 'local' web browser on the desktop. On s60 the nearest equivalent to a desktop projector file is actually a Symbian application that launches a swf. So, you ask, how can a developer make an application that accesses local and remote data?

We don't know at the moment. But the OEM's should implement the ability to have swf files marked as 'trusted' in someway, maybe during an installation process. This would be similar to the way desktop Flash works in that if they are opened via a projector they are automatically trusted.

3. Shared Objects are not classed as local access. So you can at least save small amounts of data locally and access remote services (same as desktop I think).

4. If you really have to have local and remote access you could easily just have a local proxy program that dealt with all your network requests through it's local connection. This would be easy for data but perhaps a little more tricky media assets.

So there you have it. The new security settings are there to make the Flash Lite player as close as possible security wise to the desktop versions of Flash. The net result of the new security measures will mean more hoops to jump through for mobile developers. How much depends on how well the OEMs implement the Flash Lite 3 player.

My opinion here is that mobile is a controlled enough platform to not need the same security measures as desktop. The issue here is not with crossdomain but local playback security. Bringing Flash Lite closer to the desktop player is in itself pointless. There has to be some recognition of a 'projector' style application for Flash Lite 3 applications for this to work. The new local playback security settings make this now even more of a need.

I suppose one other scenario is that OEMs could also completely ignore the Flash Lite 3 security measures...... now there's an idea :)

realtime mobile ads

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:59:00 +0000

Just read a post from Bill about global mobile phone subscribers and the numbers are astounding. It reminded me of this admob application that shows realtime ad views from their worldwide network. Equally impressive stats but more interesting is just seeing the different locations and phones that people have. Also remember that these are people actually browsing - active users!

dealing with fscommand launch

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 10:27:00 +0000

If you've ever wanted to use Flash Lite to communicate with C++ then fscommand("Launch",application) is a very useful feature. Its purpose is to allow you to launch an application on the phone and pass in addional command line parameters if necessary. So you could for example launch the browser and pass in a web address. Thats a basic example and there are other ways of doing that with getURL(). The real value in the launch fscommand is that it allows you to launch your own C++ application in the background to support your Flash Lite application.

In a recent Flash Lite project where we needed to use fscommand("Launch",app)
we came up against a few issues when it came to s60 3rd edition phones. So heres a summary of things to consider when using fscommand("launch").

You will probably have to call fscommand("launch") from a button press as it needs to be a user initiated action.

For 3rd Edition phones, because of the way applications are accessed you do not give an actual path to the application. So if I wanted to open the browser I would just do the following:

fscommand("Launch", "browser.exe");

For 2nd Edition phones you have to give the full path to the executable file. So for example:

fscommand("launch", "z:\\system\\apps\\browser\\browser.app");

Passing in arguments works the same across s60 3rd and 2nd edtion devices by putting the arguments after the application. eg.

For 2nd edition: fscommand("launch", "z:\\system\\apps\\browser\\browser.app,http://bbc.co.uk");

For 3rd edition: fscommand("launch", "browser.exe,http://bbc.co.uk");

However we were unable to read the arguments for our custom application. So it maybe that because of the security of the 3rd edition only the native applications such as browser can accept incoming arguments?

When it comes 2 way communication between Flash Lite and other applications the more effective way to do this is by running a local server on the device and then using loadVariables or even XMLsocket to talk to the native app. Although theres no point having a local server listen out for FL calls if FL isn't even running. So fscommand is again crucial here as a the starting point of communication.

SMS projection

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 09:26:00 +0000

SMS projection (via Londonist) and courtesy of Troika who have been playing around in an artsy style with what will eventually be the future of device interaction. Probably a good 10 years before its time but short range projection of mobile content is the only way that devices can evolve beyond the small screen. And of course in the future why would you want to project a text message? I hate to think that SMS will still be a force in 10 years. But talk about projecting audio and images/video without the need for a physical projection surface (maybe digital paper to start with) thats the future :)

Checkout Troika's machine here. It does take the concept forward nicely, even if it is more like a form of attack/confrontation rather than interaction.

10 years of Flash gets a BBC write up

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:32:00 +0000

Just the simple fact that 10 years of Flash results in an article in the BBC technology section is a good tribute to what Flash has acheived over the years. Read the article here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6169853.stm

Flash Lite 2.1 for free

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 14:20:00 +0000

We'll this was probably the most asked for and argued over issue with Macromedia's Mobile policy. Finally the Adobe Flash Lite player will be available to developers without a price tag. That should bring the Flash Lite forum traffic down a bit :)

Further still - the 2.1 player will be available to END USERS for free if they already have Flash Lite on their phone. So that means you can point users with 3rd edition phones to the Adobe site to get the 2.1 player before they consume your content :)

This was an essential move I think because the mobile market place is hotting up (competition wise) and 1.1 just doesnt cut it. Waiting another 18 months for 2.1 to make it out there would have been very painful. Thank you Adobe.

Read the release here

cell and shockwave link up

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 14:19:00 +0000

A few posts back I talked about the possible influx of content from Japan. So it was interesting to read via wirelesswatch that Cell have signed a distribution seal with Shockwave.com. who also funnily enough have a deal with Verizon for their Flash Lite based 'Shockwave Minis' arcade! In fact some of Cell's games are already part of the arcade, and you can play them here.

I think there are a couple of things that are actually bad about this though. Above all the Brew platform supports Flash Lite 2.1 and is capable of so much more than 1.1 based games built for in browser experiences. One button games have their place but its pretty limited. Flash Lite will be a lot more than that on the Brew platform as developers start to develop original games specifically for 2.1 not throwing existing content into the mix because its easy to do.

s60 usability error

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:41:00 +0000

s60 is by far the most usable and usability conscious platform for mobile. So when you spot something thats not usable I guess its worth mentioning. I doubt I'd have noticed it on any other mobile OS, but because its s60 it sticks out :)

Recreated in Flash below, click on the movie then use the arrow keys to go up and down.

location entertainment - where is it?

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:11:00 +0000

Location based games and applications SHOULD be a core part of mobile phone usage. In reality they are non existent. To be a bit clearer, I am not talking about LBS (Location Based Services), as in services that are available based on your location - e.g. I want my nearest restaurant or show me where I am on a map. I am talking about social applications, games, community built info applications etc. So what I think should be happening is that location technology should be driving new experiences and creating whole new ways of living - but at the moment location technology is only in some very limited cases helping us do existing things more efficiently - that's all.

I think there are several reasons for this.

Making any kind of location based service requires adherence to codes of conduct and/or legal obligations. This is of course a good thing - but it does complicate the development process, especially when every entity has a slightly different approach.

When looking to develop a location based app here are 2 options for location applications and games: GPS or cellid.

GPS is really in too much of a niche to develop casual applications even using something like Flash Lite. After all one of the core attractions of location based games/applications is ubiquity - anyone anywhere, not any geek with a GPS module in one pocket and a smartphone in the other. As smartphones such as the N95 start to become available this may change but it's still a niche market and doesn’t offer the promise of GPS people or friends based interaction.

So the only real option for location based stuff is using the cellid of the phone. There are 3 ways you can use the cellid of the phone to create location applications.

You can do this through an operator api. This involves you calling the operator api over http and getting back location info based on the requested telephone number. However this makes no sense in the ubiquity stakes because it is normally operator specific and therefore only useful to businesses looking to consume business wide services on the same network. I suppose you could do some operator specific stuff - such as games but it doesn't really connect strongly with the 'my friends' side of things.

So then you have to look to a few of the operator location api aggregators who interface with all of the operators within a given territory. So this is great, it offers all the functionality needed and it's in no way hardware dependent. However because it just feeds off the individual operator apis it is stupidly expensive and therefore not at all conducive to any kind of innovation. I can't remember the exact cost per hit but its something like 20p per hit and you have to have an expensive monthly rental setup too. So there is no room for experimentation and it rules out any kind of real-time movement application or game where the server is regularly pinged. You could maybe have an application that did a daily request or an on demand request, but this is not what is exciting about location based services - it does not expose the potential that mobile has!

So the third cell id based option (if money is an issue, which it is) is using raw cellid data. This involves using Java or something else to get the cell id. Once you have the number you then have to try and make sense of it. This is the hard part, there is no real logic behind cell ids, they are just a number identifying the base station. Operators don't publish any valuable information about their base stations (for obvious reasons) so there is no way of matching a cell id to a physical location. The only way to make sense of cell id is via open source initiatives that try and collate useful cell data (few examples below).

http://www.svgopen.org/2005/paperAbstracts/cell-lbs.html
http://www.cellspotting.com/webpages/cellspotting.html
http://gsmloc.org/

The issues with the open data sources are:

they could be open to abuse much more easily than pay for models.
the information is fragmented
the information is frequently inaccurate (not so if its GPS based but if it's by user input)
any cell data must come from the device over http - so a device must report its cellid over http to a server. This is not the same for an operator because they automatically log this data every time a phone enters a new cell. So even if there were databases full of accurate information there would be the cost of regular data traffic to consider.

So to summarise - what a mess! There needs to be some shifting from the operators. Whilst it's quite expensive technology to setup and maintain - I think it makes sense that there is a business tier and a consumer tier to pricing. Not only does the business pricing already justify the infrastructure, but the potential mass market of a low price consumer tier would pay for itself and help define the new genre of data applications that operators are so desperate to have. What would be ideal? Well how about a European cross operator aggregator with a unified privacy policy/procedure, they could even aggregate wifi info when that starts to take over :)

Symbian Smartphone Show Application

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:06:00 +0000

For anyone who couldn't make it to the show and missed the Flash Lite based Symbian Smartphone Show 2006 guide we (Flash Cell) built for Symbian.

Now that the show is over the Symbian website will probably stop offering it as a download, so if anyone is interested in downloading it you can get it here. There are 3 different versions, s40, s60 3rd edition and also s60 2nd edition. The 2nd edition version is the Teleca powered Flash Lite solution, which maybe of interest in light of the recent Teleca and Adobe announcement.

Symbian Smartphone show round up

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 21:45:00 +0000

So the SPS has come to end. I was down there on both days for a few hours to checkout the general buzz. Its not a massive show, but a very focused one and its always good to check out the latest devices. I managed to get my hands on the Samsung SGH i520 which is running the s60 3rd edtion FP1 and includes Flash Lite 2.0, so I bluetoothed across a few FL2 swfs to checkout the performance - seems pretty good. There was also an LG phone powered by the new s60 platform, great to see Nokia's implementation of Flash Lite going beyond Nokia! What happened to the LG licensing deal and the rollout of Flash Lite phones I wonder?

There was quite a lot of promotion of the new s60 fp1 as you'd expect, including bits of documentation about Flash Lite 2.0 on the Forum Nokia stand. In all there was a definately a more visible presence for Flash Lite from the previous year. People actually know what you are referring to these days when you say Flash Lite, rather than it being interpreted as the camera flash light :)

It was also good to see a few other Flash people there too.

Duck ... Flash Lite content coming this way from Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 20:37:00 +0000

Just listened to an intersting podcast about a Japanese Flash Lite content company called Cell who were at CTIA showcasing their games catalogue of over 400! The guy being interviewed was obviously well versed in mobile conferences outside of Japan because one of the first things he asks the interviewer is "Do you know Flash Lite?" The interviewer resonds "yeah ....Flash based games right?" So clearly the interviewer doesn't know Flash Lite .... such a classic opening to a conversation about Flash Lite, I have lost count of the amount of times I have experienced that opening sequence :)

So whats interesting about all this is that while many early adopters of Flash Lite outside of Japan have looked on with envy at the market penetration of Flash Lite over there, content producers in Japan have just been building away. Not only does the Japanese market offer a great market base, the performance of Flash Lite on the handsets is also way superior - 30 fps is not a problem.

So the success of Flash Lite in Japan is unquestionable and the net result of that is that there are lots of good sized content creation and distribution companies who specialise almost exclusively in Flash Lite. But the market is now totally saturated. Recently when I spoke to a top distributor in Japan they told me they were only interested in 3g content as opposed to 2.5g and that translated as music and manga, not wallpapers, screensavers or games!

I guess it comes as no surprise then that companies with lots of assets and production power will start to look outside Japan. Cell say they have 400+ games and a production line that produces 12 games a week. Now, these are obviously pretty impressive figures even for the casual genre that Flash Lite fits into. However the key question I think for Japanese content creators looking overseas is what percentage of their catalogue is culturally exportable. Porting their content to English version should be easy enough but will consumers 'get' a lot of the content the way Japanese consumers have?

One of the reasons Cell have 400+ games is because Flash Lite content is quick to build and quick and easy to consume. Also dont forget that Flash Lite games in Japan are entirely browser based. So in the interview when they say 200,000 downloads a day I would guess thats actually 200000 hits per day. Of course you can save browser games locally but the point should be made the consumption model is so much more appetising and free flowing when compared to games consumption in Europe or elsewhere.

So the key point to all this is that Japanese content providers face the same big hurdle that Western content providers do when trying to get into Japan - there are massive cultural differences. I think is so much more relevant to Flash Lite than other technologies because its such an expressive technology and the content is so low brow (almost viral like - see internet viral campaigns) that it absorbs a lot of cultural influence. So take the example of Playstation games - these are big budget games that feed off raw gamer needs, no frills, they are not culturally influenced. A lot of Flash Lite content has a cultural context.

I look forward to seeing how well Japanese content providers do in shifting content in the newer markets! If they select the right products, there are still a few significant technological differences between Japan and non-Japan in Flash Lite implementation. Only titles that can work with less processing power, can adapt or justify the different input methods, can find a identity graphically and have a cultural context will make it. See one such example below.

Flash Lite Friday Digest #10

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Gerig) — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 12:26:00 +0000

Its FlashLite Friday Digest time again, and this week I have the honour to write FlashLite Friday Digest No. 10. Its several weeks since the last digest and lots has been happening in the Flash Lite world.

The biggest news of the digest has to be the announcement and presentation of Flash Lite 2.1 for BREW at the Brew 2006 conference. The basic info is that Flash Lite 2.1 for BREW will be out on a public beta on the 3rd of July and later in the summer developers will be able to distribute their content based on the Flash Lite 2.1 profile through Verizon. There are 2 really nice improvements in Flash Lite 2.1 - xml sockets and inline text. These 2 key features make FL 2.1 a much more capable competitor of other mobile technologies.

See the Adobe Brew developer center for more info!

The videos from the conference are also available online now, see Bill's blog for the links

The Flash IDE received its 3rd device profile update this month so be sure to download all the new devices from here

Flash Lite instructor training has been announced for the US, its a 3 day course and is free! More info here

There have been some nice new phones shipping in the last few weeks too. Most noticeably the new Nokia series 40 phones are now available Nokia 6125, 6131 and 6234 (vodafone exclusive). Also a few new Sony Ericsson phones that *should* support Flash Lite : W300, M600, W700i. The M600 is particularly interesting because its the first Symbian UIQ 3 phone to be released by Sony Ericsson and the first UIQ phone that has Flash Lite pre-installed. NB .Information based on Sony Ericsson website.

Nokia released a new theme studio 2.1 for series 40 phones. It allows swfs to be part of a s40 theme and integrated into wallpapers, screensavers and possibly more UI elements. I haven't had the chance to check it out yet and the documentation isn't 100% clear on where you can and can't use swfs. (via: bemobil).

Nokia have been very active over the last month in engaging with Flash Lite and have produced the kind of documents developers really need to see. Last month they released the Flash Lite Visual Guide as well as the Flash Lite global ecosystem documentation. A few days ago they announced a whole new Forum Nokia section called Forum Nokia Blogs and have a dedicated Flash tag.

In the world of the Adobe website there are a few new developer articles available:

Converting Flash Content to Flash Lite 1.1 Jae Young Chae (May 30, 2006)

Tips for Developing Flash Games for the iRiver U10 Sung-Hee Park (June 5, 2006)

Creating iRiver U10 Games for Beginners Eung Kim (June 12, 2006)

Also Mike has an upcoming seminar this wednesday (June 21, 2006 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM US/Eastern) about the Flash Lite 2.0 media playback API, be sure to register your interest here

If you you never made it to the Flash Mobile Day, as is the case for most of us, then you'll be pleased to see that the presentations are now available online here.(via: biskero).

That's about all the major Flash Lite news there is! The archive of FlashLite Friday Digest can be found here :
http://casario.blogs.com/mmworld/flash_lite_friday/index.html