Happy New Year and reflections on 2007

I've been enjoying a well-deserved break and time off-line over Christmas, and neglected to post any "Christmas" message to my blog readers, so I thought I should at least post up a Happy New Year!

On a professional level, 2007 was another one for me that was full of potential and promise, and yet still didn't seem to get us as far down the road as we first thought. While we are undoubtedly further along the road to financial success from Flash Lite, no one could argue that it has "arrived" on the non-Japanese mobile scene. Sound like a familiar line from my new year refelctions from 2005, 2006? Things are changing though.

While Moket is still small enough to be flexible in business direction and focus, 2007 was a year where we certainly locked into a path more than in previous years. We expanded our team and studio equipment to have at the moment around 5-6 guys (developers, animators and designers) and moved into a larger office space. We bought a lot of phones! We saw our first games launched in the US, and have 4-5 new game titles in development for release in 2008. And perhaps the biggest gamble of all - we launched our mobile portal, "Club Moket".

I didn't travel as much in 2007 as in previous years, but was fortunate enough to again speak at MAX in Chicago and Carnegie Mellon University ETC in Pittsburgh, and spend some time in the US with my wife Tanya. I also preseneted at webDU in Sydney and for numeous webinars and usergroup meetings. All of this public activity has kept the Moket name out there and has been great for meeting some fantastic and incredibly talented people within the Adobe and mobile communities. I looked forward to more opportunities in 2008 and to meeting many more of you.

On a personal level, 2007 was a rollercoaster. Being a start-up company owner, work always influences your personal life in a big way. Moket has a personal cost attached to it as well as just the hours spent in the office, and during 2007 at times it's been very expensive! For me, family is everything and business is secondary in life and I always try and make sure that family is not suffering because of other pressures. That's easier said than done most of the time, and I'll need to be even more focused on this in the new year.

Lastly I just wanted to say a quick thank you to those who have helped in big ways in 2007. Much appreciation and thanks goes out to Tanya, Macca, Alessandro, SJ, Bill, Adam, James T, Thomas, Donny, James L, Anne-Marie, Peter, Dom, Sam, Brendan, Steve, Vincent, Geoff B, Adobe (Aust, San Fran) and to anyone who bought one of our games :)

Happy New Year - bring on 2008.

Moket launches "Cipher" on the Chumby

Today, Moket launched their latest mobile game title that has been Chumby-fied - Cipher.

Moket presents Cipher - a challenging memory game that isn't for the faint hearted. In a mix of classic Mastermind and memory-style gameplay, you must find the colours in the random code to complete each level. There are bonus tiles to help you beat the clock and to go further into this frenetic puzzle - but time is running out!

Cipher is also available for your mobile this Friday through Smashing Games.

Buy Club Moket Flash Lite content now from the desktop website

We've just launched and update to the Club Moket desktop website to allow customers to browse certain products and initiate the sales process from the desktop.

We've been spending a lot of time evaluating the early traffic coming to Club Moket (clubmoket.mobi), and have been looking at ways to make it easier for people to access the Flash Lite content we have available. One of the "restrictions" we have at the moment is not being able to represent the Flash Lite content AS Flash in the mobile browser, due to the overall lack of support for Flash Lite in the browser across the vast majority of handsets. This this is something we will look at again in the new year, but we decided that it was important to try and get across to the potential customers how cool the animations were so they could see that they were different to normal static wallpapers.

So we've created a system whereby for certain products on the Club Moket mobile site:

• we have Flash previews online
• there is a form for each product that allows you to provide your mobile number and receive a free SMS link to the purchase page for that product
• and also a Datamatrix barcode that can be scanned to get the same direct link

We're always looking for feedback, so please let us know what you think. This is just another example of Moket being extremely proactive in further the distribution and sales for Moket Content Network members and Flash Lite content in general.

Moket goes Jingle Bowls

We had the Moket Christmas party for the team this week at the Strike Bowling Bar here in Brisbane. Basically ten-pin bowling with a bar tab and catered food :) Loads of fun ... here are some pics from Dominic.

Moket games out now through Smashing Games

Good news for the Flash Lite community and mobile gamers - the Smashing Games catalogue has been launched on Verizon Wireless! There are many great games available now to over 18 million subscribers in North America, including our very own Dizzy Zub Zub and Cipher.

Moket has many more titles in the pipeline for the Smashing Games catalogue over the coming months, so watch this space for more news on our latest releases. In some cases, you'll also be able to play ported versions of the games on the Chumby - like the Chumby-fied Dizzy Zub Zub.

Well done to the Smashing team on getting this baby born. It's another piece of the puzzle for Flash Lite content making an impact on the mobile content industry and one that I know will do very well. For those Verizon customers out there - go and buy some Flash Lite gaming goodness and help feed starving independent Flash Lite game developers around the world :)

Fatal Phones Follow-up

Just following up a post that did the rounds a couple of weeks ago, on a suspected death from an exploding mobile phone.

Seems the real culprit here is not the humble Korean LG phone, but instead a co-worker who back over the guy with a mining excavator, and then tried to cover it up by burng the phone onto the dead guy's chest! Well, that'll do it to you every time, won't it?

So now the only tech fires we have to be worried about are exploding laptops ;)

New Flash Lite WRT Competiton

A new comp has just been started for members of the Yahoo Flash Lite Group by Riku at Nokia.

Simply develop a new Nokia WRT (S60 Web Runtime) widget that contains Flash Lite content, and post it to Nokia MOSH, and you can win for yourself a new N95 8GB handset. There's also an extra handset for the widget that grabs the judges' attention the most (how they determine that i have no idea - personal preference)

All you have to do is to use the instructions at the Forum Nokia Wiki.

You can take something you've made earlier or create some cool Flash Lite content and package it into a WRT widget, post it on MOSH and tag it as 'widget' before the end of this year and you're in!

The only requirements are that you have to have the legal rights to publish the Flash Lite content, and you must be a member of the Yahoo Flash Lite Group.

If you have any questions about te WRT, please send them to widget.support@nokia.com or comment on the Wiki page.

Boston UG presents eSeminar with Club Moket

The Boston MaD User Group is holding an eSeminar on December 13th at 5PM EST (check your local time).

Dale Rankine, CEO of Moket (that's me) will present Club Moket.

• Presenter, Dale Rankine, CEO of Moket
• Seminar URL available to UG members only - please join the Boston Adobe Mobile and Device User Group to participate to the eSeminar and be part of the User Group
• The members of the Boston MaD User Group will also have the chance to win a copy of an Adobe Software package of the value of $2100.

“Club Moket is a new direct-to-customer mobile sales portal featuring Flash Lite content. It is the retail channel for Moket and the popular Moket Content Network. Club Moket aims to provide compelling and creative Flash Lite content primarily to markets such as UK, Europe and South-East Asia, where customers have more open (and Flash Lite enabled) handsets (Nokia, Sony Ericsson) and flexible web-browsing capabilities.”

Dale Rankine is the CEO and founder of Moket, and will be demonstrating the portal as well as discussing the opportunities for Flash Lite designers and developers to sell through the channel. The Moket Content Network that feeds the Club Moket portal has been growing rapidly over the past months, and Dale will be able to share with you some feedback and observations on Flash Lite content in the market, and what designers and developers should be watching out for.

Upcoming Flash Lite eSeminars

Just some news on some upcoming eSeminars that are of interest:

• Flash Lite Video Capabilities for Mobile, presented by Giorgio Natili
• Flash Lite and Flex for mTourism, presented by Untravel Media CTO Ira Hochman and CEO Michael Epstein
  

Register your attendance here.

There is also an upcoming Boston UG eSeminar that we’ll send you some details on shortly.

Buy Flash Lite content now from Club Moket!

We've been working hard at Moket on delivering a new sales channel for Flash Lite content, and I'm happy to say that it has finally arrived!

Club Moket (clubmoket.mobi on your phone browser) is, to our knowledge, the first off-deck mobile portal dedicated to selling Flash Lite content. We have launched first with our "Mokimations" catalogue, featuring animated wallpapers and screensavers. Q1-2 2008 will see games, applications and mobile video added to the service. We're really pushing out content that shows off the great visual nature of Flash, as well as handset interactivity (for clocks, random animations, MoCarbon products, etc)

Club Moket is available to most global mobile internet users, with payment for content managed via on-bill (SMS), PayPal or secure credit-debit card. The best option for you, depending on where you are and what relationship our billing gateway has with your carrier, will be the one/s offered to you (currently PayPal is upgrading their system so it is temporarily unavailable at the moment). Right now SMS is not an option for North American customers as out application is still being processed but you could still use your credit/debit card. However USA makes up a smaller customer base for something like Club Moket which is off-deck, so markets with customers on more open handsets (Nokia, Sony Ericsson) and with flexible web-browsing such as UK, Europe, Sth East Asia are where we are seeing the most demand.

This presents an entirely new and accessible channel for global customers, and one that we look forward to filling with great content from the wider FL community through the Moket Content Network. MCN partners will be receiving a Club Moket Toolkit to help promote the site and their content. The toolkit includes banners, SMS widgets (as seen on the right here) and also free SMS marketing tools to send out txt messages to their immediate circle of friends and networks.

If you would like to add some banners to your blogs, sites, etc to help get the word out, please email me. I hope that the FL community will get behind us and help promote what is I think one of the most open FL sales channels out there.

Fatal phones?

Seems that we shouldn't be worried about mobile phones giving us brain tumors - we should be more worried about them spontaneously combusting and fusing to our bodies ... ouch :(

Verizon Opens Up in 2008

Seems that "open" is the new mobile buzzword and everyone is getting in on it ... Verizon is the latest with the announcement today that they will open the deck to third-party apps and non-VZW handsets by the end of 2008.

Verizon Wireless today announced that it will provide customers the option to use, on its nationwide wireless network, wireless devices, software and applications not offered by the company. Verizon Wireless plans to have this new choice available to customers throughout the country by the end of 2008.

In early 2008, the company will publish the technical standards the development community will need to design products to interface with the Verizon Wireless network. Any device that meets the minimum technical standard will be activated on the network. Devices will be tested and approved in a $20 million state-of-the-art testing lab which received an additional investment this year to gear up for the anticipated new demand. Any application the customer chooses will be allowed on these devices.

Read on ...

Great knife, but does it support Flash Lite?

This new world-record breaking Swiss Army knife seems to do just about everything else ... why shouldn't I be able to play my Flash Lite games on it :) Read story here.

Moket in the press

Today, Moket appeared in an article in the leading Fairax Media newspapers (Sydney Morning Herald, The Age) relating to mobile gaming. "The Big Money in Mobile Gaming" looks at the emergence and growth of mobile gaming, and how Australia is already producing worthy titles for the various sections of the global market. Flash Lite (although wrongly spelt in the article!) gets a great mention as well ... "With most mobile phones now running flash, a massive new platform has emerged for videogame developers."

Read the article here.

First Moket game on the Chumby

Today Moket launched its first game on the Chumby - a ported version of one of its leading casual mobile games, "Dizzy Zub Zub".

This is one of many games that Moket is either porting from mobile or creating specifically for the Chumby. You can find "Dizzy" in the Games widget category on the Chumby site.

Stay tuned for more Chumby titles soon!

Chizen steps down as Adobe CEO

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced its Board of Directors has appointed current president and chief operating officer Shantanu Narayen as its president and chief executive officer, effective December 1, 2007. Narayen will also join Adobe’s Board of Directors at that time. Narayen replaces Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen, who will serve the remainder of his term on Adobe’s Board of Directors through the Spring of 2008 and continue in a strategic advisory capacity through the end of fiscal year 2008.

Read the full press release here

Don't Dream It's Over

For a few hours last night, Flash Lite and phones and business was the very last thing on my mind. Tanya and I went to see the newly reformed Crowded House perform at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, and as they always have done to me for the past 20 odd years, they had me from the opening bar.

The night actually started well even before the "Crowdies" took to the stage - some old friends of mine from my band days in Melbourne, Augie March, were the support band and they were unreal. They have just gotten so much better and Glen's songwriting is inspiring.

But then Neil Nick, Mark, Matt and some different guy up the back in place of Liam, came and took away any thoughts of there being anything else happening in the world apart from this gig. We got songs from all albums, including "Woodface" which is a sentimental favourite of mine. The new material blended with the old in a way that only a genius like Neil Finn can make happen.

He is my John Lennon.

Sony Ericsson S500i Flash Lite Themes

Bill has posted a short video demo of the new Sony Ericsson S500i's implementation of Flash Lite for Themes. Nice work Bill.

It's a pretty sweet phone if you haven't already checked it out. Some nice features which definitely enhance the "sexy" rating of the handset if nothing else (e.g. side lights that change colour with the themes, time of day, date, etc). But hey, it's another Flash Lite enabled handset on the market, so who's complaining?

Flash Lite 3.0 reaching Japan sooner rather than later

Via Scott J: some Flash Lite stats from DC following Adobe MAX Japan:

• 94% of docomo handsets are flash-enabled.
• The “i-menu” - docomo’s portal is full-flash. They get about 25-30M viewers per month, making it definitely the highest trafficked mobile site in the world.
• 30% of DoCoMo subsribers are on flat-rate data (KDDI is much higher, about 75% i recall)
• The profits for the voice business of docomo keep falling every year, while the profits for the data business go up every year.
• The data business gets increasingly profitable every year - by about 100 billion yen. They expect that record to be repeated again this year. (these numbers seem off the scale - 100 billion yen is like a billion dollars???)
• As the UI improves, usage goes up. Flashlite has been a big help in this, so flashlite has made them a lot of money.
• Two companies in the valley starting with “A” are really cool! “M” Companies in seattle are really lame
• i-channel is built on flashcast, and has got 13.8M subscribers inside of two years.
• i-channel is the opposite of their i-menu - its like the super-limited version for people who are overwhelmed by the choice on i-menu. You can pick from news, weather, sports…5 basic channels.

As we have done for years, we watch and hope that the success of Flash Lite in Japan flows through to the rest of the world! I'm more confident these days that it will, but those are some pretty impressive stats.

MCN looking for Christmas Flash Lite animations

Hey everyone. Down here at Moket, we’ve been working really hard on a new distribution opportunity that we’ll be announcing shortly through the Moket Content Network. Those of you at MAX this year would have gotten a very quick sneak peek.

And as part of this new service, and to also feed the multiple international distribution deals we have, we’re looking to aggregate the best Christmas themed Flash Lite animations for wallpapers and screensavers that we can find. Santa, elves reindeer, gifts, Christmas trees, decorations and lights – if it’s Christmas themed we’d love to see it!

This is for designers and developers who are already part of the MCN, and also for those of you who have never submitted anything before.Please email mcn@moket.com with your samples, or email me back with any questions you have.

Cheers!

Nokia pushes Creative Class Community and Flash Lite

Not sure if this is old blog-news, but Nokia have been pushing out some email marketing over the past couple of days and making mention of their "Creative Class" for Flash Lite developers working on the Nokia platforms.

Highlights a pretty decent resource for Flash Lite informaiton on the Forum Nokia site anyway.

Beta testers needed for Moket Chumby games

If you are a Chumby owner and would like to help out Moket by testing the games that we are porting from mobile to Chumby, then please email me (dale AT moket DOT com) with your Chumby account name so I can make you a Moket "Chum" and send you the games through to your channel. The games will be set as Private widgets until we launch.

Unpacking the new Chumby

Today was Chumby Day in the Moket office. As you can see from my previous posts (also my first attempts at posting pics from my N95 via Shozu) we've had a bit of fun with the new toy, and even have been busy porting our game catalogue for release as Chumby widgets (see below). Scott has also been having some fun with his new Chumby and has posted a fairly comprehensive list of features and info about now being able to get in line to buy the Chumby online through their website!

Unpacking the Chumby was a great experience so I thought I'd share with you the process and the cool packaging these guys have used.


1. Inside the FedEx delivery carton was the entire package encased in bubble-wrap and a thin foam bag, secured with a Chumby sticker.


2. We found inside the foam wrapping a cool fabric draw-string bag (looks like hemp, but I doubt they could be sending that stuff through customs in some countries?), complete with a sewn Chumby label and swing tag showing what colour device lay inside (it was Classic Black for me).



3. Inside the cloth bag was all the goodies. The power source was inside a separate sewn bag. There was a blue fabric bag the held the Chumby Charms (you get a free Set One when you buyt the Chumby, then you can buy the other 4 sets separately). The charms are cool rubber characters from the Chumbosphere and also seen in the tutorial movie when you start the device. There's a nice manual printed on recycled paper and held in a frosted plastic sleeve. And of course ... ta da ... the Chumby device itself.



4. Not the best photo, but you can see there's a screen protector on the touchscreen, just as you get with a new mobile. It's also protecting the bevel around the screen, and when you peel that away there's a secondary protective film covering the screen.



5. This is my new Chumby (left) and the prototype device we have had for a while (right). You can see that the devices have become more tight and compact. They aren't as prone to squashing out of shape as the prototype. The old bend sensor has been replaced with a click switch which is far more responsive and definite in action. The speakers are around the back with the on/off, USB ports and power plug. The skin is leather with embossed Chumby logos (nice touch) and overall just feels more solid.

The guys have done a great job with this, and apart from a great gadget it's also the first commercial device shipping with Flash Lite 3! Scott will be presenting some aspects of the Chumby and FL3 at his upcoming Boston Flash Platform UG meeting.

So there you have it. We are now officially Chumbified :)

Chumby charms

What better way to dress up your Chumby than with some Chumby charms!

My new Chumby has arrived!

More to come on my new toy once I finish playing :) (not sure why my pic is upside down either, just in case you're about to email me!)

Casual games help reduce stress

Maybe for the players - certainly not for developers :) PopCap have done a stress test study to measure the effects of casual gaming on stress levels.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/63117,casual-games-help-reduce-stress.aspx

Developing Adobe Flash Lite 3 Applications for Nokia Devices

Bill Perry is delivery an upcoming webinar for Flash Lite 3 application development. Here are the details:

Wednesday, October 24, 20079:00 A.M. PDT

With more than 62 different Nokia models worldwide with Flash Lite pre-installed, the market opportunity for developing mobile Flash content is expanding, and you can be a part of it. The newest version of Flash Lite supports ActionScript 2.0 and introduces support for Flash Video (found on sites like YouTube) based on Flash Player 8. See Flash Lite 3 examples on the latest and greatest Nokia devices and learn how you can get started with Flash Lite development. This eSeminar will introduce you to the entire workflow for Flash Lite 3 development, from concept, to design, to determining addressable devices, to selling your content and getting paid. Learn how to create compelling content for multiple devices by using the integrated development environment of Adobe Creative Suite® 3 tools, including Flash, Device Central, Photoshop®, Premiere Pro®, and After Effects®.

By attending this session you will learn:

• The difference between Flash Lite 2.x and 3
• How to embed an FLV into your Flash Lite 3 application
• New security settings that you need to be aware of

Attend an eSeminar and you'll be entered to win a copy of Adobe Flash Professional CS3 or an iriver Clix.

Register here. Questions? Please send us an e-mail.

MAX Barcelona 2007 Flash Lite Mobile Guide

Paul Lamonby has made this new MAX Barcelona 2007 Flash Lite guide available for a free download - great work Paul.

Developed in Flash Lite 1.1 to work on all available handsets, the guide has quick and easy access to all sessions over the 4 days, with links to a conference center map and further details about each session. Dont worry if your phone clock is not set to Barcelona time, the guide will adjust to the local time to show you exactly what sessions are on whenever you need to know.

Photos from recent US trip

I've added some pics from my recent trip to the US for MAX on my Facebook site.

This is the first time I really have used Facebook for anything, and I must say that the photo upload and photo album management workflow was pretty cool and very quick. I am doing my best to avoid being sucked into another social networking black hole, but this at least has given me something useful.

Back in BrisVegas - thank you Chicago

A lot of my colleagues have already blogged their post-MAX conference posts, but mine is a little late. Mainly because after travelling for 20 hours to get home from Chicago, we arrived to find that 2 of our 3 daughters had chicken pox, and so the jet-lag recovery has not happened just yet! I'm feeling a bit better today though I must admit, but I think it's more the caffeine than anything else.

Well what can I say, MAX 2007 was fantastic for so many reasons, but mostly for the times spent just hanging out with other members of the Flash Lite community. The sessions were great, don't get me wrong, but these types of events tend to hinge on the social aspect of colleagues from around the world getting time to meet and find out more about each other. So, to Darren, Evan, Matt P, Alessandro, SJ, Mariam, Bill, Adam, Evan C, Keldon, PG Lover, "Sally" (see video for some explaination), Duane, Leo, Matt B, Greg, and the many, many others who made MAX a special event - thank you.

I must tell you though that the trip ended on a high - I visited a Star Wars exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Full of original movie props, models and costumes, I got see a whole stack of really cool Star Wars nerd stuff ... and ... got to meet Anthony Daniels in person (C-3PO) ... what a way to finish off a full-on 11 days in the US!

MAX'ing it up in Chicago

Well MAX has officially started today with myself, Alessandro and Mariam helping out James Talbot in his Flash Lite full-day training course. Got into Chicago yesterday with a quick flight from Pittsburgh (after surviving some nasty airport security ladies at Pittsburgh airport!) and got settled into our nice hotel room.

Spent last night hanging out with some of the visiting Flash Lite crew at one of the hotel restaurants, but still got an early night. Tanya left early this morning to go and visit some friends in Bloomington, and will also be singing at a church there before coming back to Chicago on Tuesday afternoon.

Got a big day today with the training session, then a couple of dinners/parties tonight and catching up with some Adobe guys. Phew .... going to be sleeping well tonight!!

Rockin in the USA

Well, after 3 days in the US, I'm finally starting to feel like being in the swing of things. We arrived on Wednesday morning (after leaving Brisbane on Wednesday morning) and got straight into hanging out in Hollywood and LA with my wife Tanya. We visited a musician friend of ours in Hollywood and tried to get over the jet lag as best as possible. What was also cool was that our hotel was smack bang in the middle of the movie studio precinct - we could see into the MGM lot from our balcony! But no stars were spotted ...


Thursday morning it was onto Pittsburgh, and after leaving the hotel at 8.30am, we arrived at 7.30pm local time - another different timezone! Hotel here has been cool - stayed up late watching The Office, and seeing ads for the new season of Heroes which hasn't started in Oz yet (way cool!). Today I delivered a presentation at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Centre. These kids are seriously talented, and are the game developers of the future for EA, Sony, etc. They actually all really got into Flash Lite, and many of the them came up to me to ask about taking existing Flash games of theirs onto mobile. Some even asked me if Moket was hiring ... maybe some developers for a future Moket USA office perhaps ?!

So I'm back at the hotel now, deciding whether or not to head off to the Pirates v Cardinals game down the road, or going down to the Hard Rock for dinner and getting an early night. Tomorrow morning is onto Chicago for MAX (finally) and hoping to meet up with some FL guys for a drink. MAX has also sold out this year now, so I'm expecting a pretty full-on next week or so, but it's going to be great.





More to come!

We're officially cool!

Moket has been named one of 2007's "Top 50 Cool Companies" by Australian Anthill Magazine (an Aussie business magazine dedicated to innovation, entrepreneurship and rapid business growth).

“Most business award programs are only interested in two little words: Revenue growth. Anthill is not simply about wealth creation. Of course, the ultimate goal is to make a profit, but never to profit at all cost. Cool companies are creative, fun loving and commercially astute. Moket joins a growing ‘alumni’ of cool companies, focused on innovation, entrepreneurship and business success through clever thinking.”

Read news article here.

Cool!

Moket releases "MoCarbon" brand of Flash Lite products

Moket has just released a range of innovative and educational mobile wallpaper products under the new "MoCarbon" brand name.

These wallpapers are aimed at educating users about the wasted electricity, and associated additional carbon in the atmosphere, that comes from leaving their phone chargers plugged into the power socket when the phone does not require charging. They're also just cool animations for your mobile wallpaper.

The initial range of animations were created in conjunction with Matt Pollitt and the team at Outside Media. If you are interested in opportunities to be part of further creative MoCarbon projects, please drop me a line.

The wallpapers have already been licensed by international aggregators, and have been featured in some upcoming Adobe marketing including the new "Getting Started with Flash Lite" whitepaper released this week. You may have also seen some sneak peeks around Flashforward last week.

News article here MoCarbon website here

Polar Cap Blues from Moket

We've just completed a new game this week that will be available for download very shortly - Polar Cap Blues.

Having fallen on particularly hard times, these arctic animals don't have much more to hang on to. With each fearing the bitter trials of relocation, keep each animal on the ice for as long as possible. Watch out though, the ice is melting!You are in control of an artic animal who is clinging to the last bit of polar ice they have called home. Keep your character from sliding from the ice, avoiding the buffeting winds, and try and collect bonus ice cubes to keep your score up.

Watch this space for more announcements over the coming weeks regarding new content and applciations from Moket!

Agenda for MAX Mobile and Device Boot Camp

Adobe MAX 2007 Chicago is about one week away. This year in addition to the Flash Lite and Mobile sessions there will be a special session: The Mobile and Devices Boot Camp, on Wednesday 9AM-12:30PM. The managers of the seven Adobe Mobile and Devices User Group put together the event with some great content and presenters.

The idea behind the "MaD Boot Camp" is to allow anyone interested in Mobile and Flash Lite to ask questions and share their ideas. The format of the session will be pretty informal with presentations, discussions and Q/A. We think that it's going to be great and we invite anyone to join us and bring your Flash Lite content to show to others.

Here is the tentative Agenda:

• Mobile and Devices Boot Camp introduction
• Adobe Mobile and Devices User Group Introduction
• Show Cases
• Tools and integration
• Adobe MAX Awards Mobile and Devices finalists
• OEM: Nokia, Chumby
• Flash Lite content aggregators
• Adobe Mobile and Devices team
• Open Discussion forum
• Q/A

Hope to see you there!

The Mad Dash to MAX

With one week to go before I'm on a plane to the US, things are getting a bit hectic here!

Fortunately for me, with the winding down of web-development studio I don't have the "client" headaches I normally have when going away for an extended period of time like this. This will be one of the first times in 6 years where I won't be worry about who's website has crashed and trying to get it back online for the Aussie timezone :)

I'm also in the fortunate position of now having a growing team to leave behind (sorry guys, maybe next year!) to continue development of our next range of products. On that note, I'd like to welcome to the team our recent additions of James Lee (animator) and Sam Boss-Walker (Flash Lite/Flex/AS3 developer) . We also have 3 interns from Qantm College starting this week, so welcome Tegan, Tom and Jonathan.

Before I leave next week there are a couple product launches to announce or "hint" at, a couple of new game titles to complete and several more to start, new computers to set up, and some presentations to write.

I'm very much looking forward though to MAX and catching up again with the wider mobile / Flash Lite community. There are some larger efforts being put into mobile this year (e.g. MaD Boot Camp) which will gives us all a better sense of growth in the area of Flash Lite, and a chance to neet new guys being attracted to the platform. Honestly though a big part of the trip will be my wife and I just getting away from the kids for a little bit - we need a holiday!

Moket - an Adobe Case Study

Moket has been featured on Adobe.com in the Showcase section. It's a pleasure to be up there alongside some of the great Flash Lite related companies going around at the moment.

MAX Mobile Session Summary

MAX is only weeks away, so I wanted to remind everyone of the fantastic Flash Lite / Mobile sessions that are going to be available to conference goers. "Tickets still available!" as they say ...
Introduction to Flash Lite 2 (Training Day)
Sunday 30th Sept - 9.00am - 5pm
This session is a deep-diving workshop on developing Flash Lite content and applications. We'll begin with a general Flash Lite tutorial and then move on to more detailed information on how to develop content for mobile operators, including Verizon Wireless.

From Desktop to Mobile: New Revenue Opportunities
Monday 1st Oct - 11.30am
Wednesday 3rd Oct - 1.45pm
Learn how you can make money by selling your Flash Lite content through various mobile content aggregators worldwide. If you already know Flash, then you have the potential to create Flash Lite content and generate recurring revenue for your creativity and ideas. In this session, we'll explore the entire workflow for mobile content creation, from concept development and design to determining addressable devices, selling your content, and getting paid on a recurring basis.

Creating Flash Lite Multiplayer Games
Monday 1st Oct - 11.30am
Tuesday 2nd Oct - 1.30pm
The market for multiplayer games is growing. Learn how you can take your existing desktop Flash skills and leverage them to create multiplayer Flash Lite games using Flash Lite 2.1 and Flash Lite 3. You’ll learn the process involved in developing, testing, and deploying your multiplayer games to consumers worldwide.

XD: Designing Engaging Mobile Experiences
Monday 1st Oct - 2.00pm
Wednesday 3rd Oct - 3pm
This session will cover the guiding principles for designing engaging mobile experiences, an entirely new class of mobile services. Engaging mobile experiences put the user experience first. As a result, these experiences prioritize usability, offer new services, and deliver content instantaneously. More importantly, they build a powerful affinity with the user. They provide experiences that are expressive, memorable, and more desirable. Come learn the fundamental aspects of such experiences.

Creating Flash Cast Channels for Verizon Wireless
Monday 1st Oct - 2.00pm
Tuesday 2nd Oct - 9.15am
Be among the first to build and monetize Flash Cast channels for Verizon Wireless. Use Flash CS3 Professional to deliver compelling content to North America’s second largest mobile operator. Learn the process for creating and testing Flash Cast channels and how Verizon Wireless plans to enable a Flash Cast ecosystem in North America.

Flash Lite 3 Development.
Monday 1st Oct - 3.15pm
Tuesday 2nd Oct - 4.00pm
The newest version of Flash Lite introduces support for FLV and many other exciting new features. Learn how to create compelling content for multiple devices, from smart phones to consumer electronics devices. Be the first to see Flash Lite 3 demos on the latest and greatest handsets.

Mobile Workflows with Creative Suite 3 Web Premium
Monday 1st Oct - 3.15pm
Wednesday 3rd Oct - 10.30am
Discover how to create and reuse web content such as video and images for mobile devices using Adobe Device Central CS3, the all-new mobile authoring and device intelligence tool that’s integrated across Creative Suite 3. We'll touch on Flash CS3 Professional, Photoshop CS3, Dreamweaver CS3, and more. Learn tips and tricks to design, preview, and test engaging mobile content across various handsets.

20 Tricks to Improve Flash Lite Development
Tuesday 2nd Oct - 9.15am
Wednesday 3rd Oct - 1.45pm
Boost your efficiency and speed time to market with these 20 tips and tricks for improving Flash Lite development. Flash Lite experts will teach you how to optimize content, streamline workflows, and take full advantage of Adobe Device Central CS3, the new mobile authoring and device intelligence tool integrated across Adobe Creative Suite 3.

Flash Lite Success Story
Tuesday 2nd Oct - 2.45pm
Wednesday 3rd Oct - 4.15pm
Design Assembly, one of the top Flash Lite studios in Europe, has published several high-quality Flash Lite games enjoyed by consumers worldwide. Find out how this small company with a passion for Flash created a growing business on Flash Lite, and discover the many go-to-market opportunities available to Flash Lite developers.

Mobile and Devices Boot Camp
Wednesday 3rd Oct - 9.15am
Boot Camp provides a mixture of short presentations, workshops, and free-form coding. The Mobile and Devices User Group managers are planning an exciting and interesting three-hour collaborative session. Make sure to bring your laptop, your best questions, your most desired features, your coolest projects to share, and be ready to learn something new.

New viral Flash game for web and mobile

Moket has just launched a new viral Flash game (web+mobile) for Wotif.com called "Ruck-a-mole". It's just one of the many campaigns that you'll see starting to popup around the place based around the upcoming Rugby World Cup, but this one doesn't take itself too seriously.

There's a whole lot more that we could have done with it probably if we had more time (we only had 2 weeks to do it) but we're pretty happy with how it turned out. We wanted to try a few different angles on helping this go viral, so we added a quick link to post the game to your Facebook account, the mobile version, and a copy'n'paste HTML block for adding a banner to your site. So far we've had over 1000 plays in the first 24 hours.

From the mobile perspective, we wanted to try out some new frameworks Moket has been developing for game development, and see how easy it would be to port something from the browser to FLash Lite 2.0. In the end, we proably spent about 2-3 days on the mobile version, out of the 2 weeks we spent on the web version+database. Not bad I reckon. It's a good case study in approaches to cross-platform marketing for companies willing to go the extra mile and get more bang for their buck when using Flash.

Anyway, check out www.ruckamole.com

(in case you're trying to work it out, it's a whack-a-mole style game but with rugby playing moles popping up from a rugby field. And in rugby, you have this thing called a "ruck")

Moket featured in latest Adobe "Plugged In"

I've been very kindly featured in the latest Adobe (ANZ) "Plugged In" eNewsletter, talking about Moket and Flash Lite - click here for the online version. Thanks to Mark and the Sydney office for the support!

Is MOSH a bit dodge?

Recently Nokia launched the beta site for its new MOSH peer-to-peer mobile content sharing portal. I accepted the beta invite and logged in to have a look around. I actually found some other Flash Liters already in there, along with quite a large number of average punters. The first thing that struck me though was the potential for mobile content copyright infringement and licensing issues. Then Bryan mentioned it on his blog, and now MocoNews also runs with the same idea.

What do you think?

Moket office growing

I don't know about you, but I love going shopping for new computers. On one hand I get a little frustrated because my budget never extends to where I would like it to go, but then I just love the smell of a new laptop when you take it out for the first time ... I'm such a nerd!

We are expanding here at Moket - this week welcoming our new Flash developer Michael Heydon to the Moket team. Michael did an internship with Moket following on from graduating with a Bachelor of Multimedia from Qantm College here in Brisbane. Michael (or "Donny") has been working on our upcoming titles "Polar Cap" and "Cipher", and also has been thrown in the deep end with the development of a viral Flash game we're doing for both desktop and mobile. So, welcome aboard Donny!

New laptop for me, new desktops arriving for more developers next week ... now ... I just have to find a place for all these guys to sit!

Angel Investment Article

Recently I was interviewed for an article being written about the angel investment scene in Australia, with specific relation to my experiences with growing Moket. The article is for a section of our national broadcaster's website - the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). It may give some of you an insight into life as a start-up company - hard enough as it is most times without also working in an emerging technology such as Flash Lite :)

You can read the article here.

You'll notice that despite whatever hardship I described in the article, we are supremely optimistic about our future. The company motto at the moment is simply, "Onwards!".

My MAX travel is booked

Chicago here I come! Always feels a lot better once you have actually booked the flights when you're going somewhere big, and this afternoon we finally got it all sorted. Brisbane -> LA -> Pittsburgh (speaking at ETC) -> Chicago and home again, phew!!

Best of all, I'm bringing my beautiful wife Tanya along with me for the trip. It was our 10 year anniversary in July, and this is kind of our big trip together even though I'm working half the time :) Leaving the kids with our folks and heading off for 11 days of adventures (and conferences). **If anyone has a contact for getting Oprah tickets, I would be very interested in hearing from you!** My wife doesn't care about Flash or CS3 or anything else in Chicago ... except for Oprah :)

MAX + more speaking gigs in the US

As many of you may know I've been fortunate enough to be invited to speak again at this year's Adobe MAX conference in Chicago in October. Things are coming together for the session Alessandro and I are doing together, and also for the Mobile and Devices Boot Camp. If you haven't decided on going yet - get cracking and get yourself there!

To add to my speaking duties while in the US, I've been invited to deliver a session at Entertainment Technology Centre in Pittsburgh, part of the Carnegie Mellon University.

The Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University offers a two-year Masters of Entertainment Technology degree, jointly conferred by Carnegie Mellon University's College of Fine Arts and School of Computer Science. Carnegie Mellon is relatively unique among U.S. Universities in being able to offer this kind of degree, as we have both top-quality fine arts and top-quality technology programs.

ETC has a campus in Adelaide (Australia) as well, and Moket recently hosted a group of students and faculty at the Moket offices, giving them an insight into mobile gaming and Flash Lite. It was a great afternoon and met some very talented young game developer superstars of the future. I'm honored to be asked to come and give a repeat performance to the Pittsburgh student body, and to keep sharing the Moket / Flash Lite vision.

Oh, and they also introduced me to Tower of Goo - on par with Desktop Tower Defence as one of the more addicitive online games I've played!

Flash Lite Friday Digest #18

Marco has posted Flash Lite Friday Digest #18 ... enjoy.

The Mobile Papparazzi Busts iPhone Bill Perry

It seems Bill just can't shake the constant harassment he gets from the mobile papparazzi, snapped here in line waiting for his new iPhone - http://www.flickr.com/photos/bananablue/662069737/

Alessandro Nokia Champion of the Month

One of the brightest stars in the global Flash Lite community, Alessadro Pace, is currently featured on the Forum Nokia website as "Champion of the Month"! Nice pic mate ... "don't mess with me, I know Flash Lite."

Immediate opportunities for Flash Lite animations through the Moket Content Network

Over at Moket we've been "kicking some goals" as they say with regards to distribution of Flash Lite content. We now have an opportunity for designers and developers to submit content to the Moket Content Network for consideration in a global distribution deal.

You can read thr email I sent out about it here, but we're very excited to be able to provide an opportunity for Flash Lite guys to see their content out in the market. Right now we're needing animations that can be used for wallpapers, screensavers or animated ringtones. Games will become more of a focus in the coming months.

We've already been able to secure licensing for animations/wallpapers done by Jim and Matt in the first round of ordering which has been great.

So, if you're sitting on some Flash Lite animation content (or have some Flash content you think we can port to Flash Lite easily enough), then please let us know by email at mcn@moket.com.au

Where's Bill? Sign the petition!

Have you seen the homepage to MAX 2007 for Chicago? They have the random banners there with quotes and photos from some of the Adobe stars like Mike Chambers and Ben Forta.

But I want to know where's Bill Perry!?!?!

I think Bill would be great one one of those banners! I mean Mike Chambers doesn't even look happy to be there ... and Ben Forta has the same "Adobe glow" as he always does. Bill Perry should be the poster-boy for Mobile and Devices and should have his own homepage banner, simple as that!

So, sign the petition and we'll forward it to the Adobe MAX web team to see if we can get Bill added.

PS. Just so everyone knows, this is all just a bit of fun - I'm not cheesed off at MAX or anything like that:) But just look at Bill here ... c'mon ... he's front page material ;)

Flash Lite Group on LinkedIn

Alessandro setup a formal group for Flash Mobile and Device members over at linkedin.com. Great initative to connect Flash Lite professionals together and facilitate potential business. I don't know what it is, but there seems to have been a dramatic increase in traffic from people adding me to LinkedIn over recent months. I've been on the site for a long time but never actually used it much, but all this new activity might actually get me using the tool for what it was designed for!

Flash Lite Friday Digest #17

It's back and it's big! The Flash Lite Friday Digest has been reborn by Marco who brings us a compact view of Flash Lite related news from recent times. Nice work mate!

My gig at Adobe MAX 2007 in Chicago

The Adobe MAX 2007 site posted up the speakers last night and I'm happy to say that my name was on it. It's like getting picked for the basketball team all over again ... ahh the memories. Anyway, I'm going to be doing a new kind of session this year - tag team presenting with my mate Alessandro Pace of Biskero.org fame for a session called "20 Tricks to Improve Flash Lite Development". Should be a lot of fun!

The at-a-glance agenda has also been posted.

I'm going to be helping out James too with his pre-conference training day on Flash Lite 2. I did this last year too for James, and it was like running with the bulls - casue of the limited time and amount of content, he gets through the training like he's on speed, and everyone in the room (including his teaching assistants!) just have to hang on for the ride :) Love ya work Kim Chi.

Also at MAX this year, there are a number of product "boot camps" - basically they're like 3 hour birds-of-a-feather sessions that go into detail on various aspects of specific products. A lot of the mobile user group managers from around the world will be involved in the running of the Flash Lite / Mobile and Devices Boot Camp. This is a great initiative which will allow us to get some good visibility at a conference which will be dominated by AIR, Flex, PDF and LiveCycle.

Really looking forward to the end of Septemer :)

Is that a Transformer on our beach?

Here in Australia we've had some wild storms lately around the New South Wales coast. A couple of weeks ago a tanker ran aground north of Sydney and is still lodged on the sand at the moment ... or is it? Could there be more than meets the eye?

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21938472-2,00.html

MAX pre-conference training announced

The pre-conference training sessions for North America MAX 2007 have been announced on the MAX blog. They include sessions on:

• Unlocking Cross-Media Workflows
• Introduction to Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium (Windows Lab)
• Introduction to Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium (MAC Lab)
• Introduction to Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web
• Introduction to Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production
• LiveCycle ES: Building
• Flex 3: Integrating with ColdFusion
• Flex 3: Integration with Java
• Flex 3: Developing Rich Client Applications
• Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR): Bringing Rich Internet Applications to the Desktop
• What's New in ColdFusion 8
• Building ColdFusion Applications around Design Patterns
• Introduction to Flash Lite 2

Head to MAX 2007 registration to get on board!

Adobe MAX 2007 Registration for North America now open

Registrations are now being taken for Adobe MAX 2007 for North America. I can't believe that things are gearing up again - it seems like only last month that we were all hanging out in Vegas at the last conference! This year is looking like being a ripper - it's in a very cool town (Chicago), there's been some cool advances on the product front (think AIR, Flex 3, Flash Lite 3, all the CS3 stuff), and it's always fun when you get to catch up with people from all over the world.

I can tell you that there's going to be some cool mobile stuff happening as well (stay tuned) so there'll be plenty to get excited about for the Flash Lite'rs who can make it. Then of course there's Europe (Barcelona) and Japan (Tokyo) MAX in November as well!

Watch the Adobe MAX website for updates.

Adobe AIR (Apollo) is available on Labs

Well, Apollo has moved out of alpha and the new beta has a new name, presumably what it will now be called for release - Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime). AIR is now available for download from Adobe Labs and should continue to give developers tools to press claims for the desktop space. No more mention about how this might eventually cross onto the mobile space through.
Some quick eyes and wits on various lists have already pointed out that a) AIR is RIA backwards (oohhh spooky!), b) Adobe has moved into the holy grail of software sales, where they really do make money from selling "air".
Ahh IT professionals, so hillarious, so insightful. No wonder we spend too much time on Twitter and not enough time with real people :)

Total Training goes online

Total Training is launching an online service for its training resources. This is a great initative and one that I'm sure will see their range of products taken up by many more students. Don't forget for you mobile enthusiasts there's Flash Lite 2.x training up there that many people have already purchased and found very useful.

• Premium quality, in-depth videos, produced in high definition
• Online access to Adobe software training 24/7
• Extraordinary, beautiful interface packed with features

Read more here - http://www.totaltraining.com/landing/online.asp?c=blog&n=ttbz

Fever Animation signs content deal with Moket

We're happy to announce today that Fever Animation has signed a deal with Moket for the development of Flash Lite mobile content (including games and personalisation content) for their incredible short animated film, "FEVER".



We'd like to thank Charlie Griak and the team there for getting on board with Moket and we're really excited about the content we have planned for later this year. If you haven't heard of "FEVER" before, check out the website for the trailer and downloads.

More news to come as we announce the release of content and where you can find it. If you're interested in licensing and distribution, drop us a line. Moket has been actively developing relationships with film makers, designers, animators and the creative industry in general to uncover and license content that we feel will generate some very exciting and compelling Flash mobile content. It's all about bringing out content that leverages the abilities of Flash Lite and creating new experiences for mobile consumers.

Great mobile marketing site

I don't remember this site making it's way through the Flash Lite blogosphere, but if it has, my apologies for the repeat ... Here's a fantastic website dedicated to marketing something we all know and love, but in a way that no one would expect. Expertly developed in Flash, it's a perfect blend of video, interactivity, information and... ummm .... fashion?

http://www.greatpockets.com/

MS "Surface" reognises T-mobile handset

Take a look at this article on Microsoft's new table-top "Surface" computer with something heading towards the "Minority Report" interface we all loved. Click on the video link on the right to see a Reuters video, and watch right to the end. There you'll see a very short clip of someone putting their mobile down on the table-top, and right where they put it, a T-mobile "My Favs" menu opens up around the phone. Now whether it can REALLY do that or if it was just a "smoke and mirrors" demo thing, that's pretty cool.

Nokia N95 a sweet ride

This is far from a comprehensive review of the Nokia N95, but thought I had to say something about how great this phone seems to be! I received one today that we'll be using for a Flash Lite application we're developing, and it's a pretty darn sexy phone. The dual-direction sliding screen doesn't feel to weak as other slider phones have in the past, and the screen itself is great. Having the standard headphone jack - it's about freakin' time! I'll try and post some more feedback on the device as we get further into our project, but for any phone freak thinking about upgrading or getting into one of these, go for it.

Gone missing, but I'm still here.

it's been a while since my last post ... let's see, what have I been doing of late?

I got a Nintendo Wii over Easter ("for the kids") so there's been a lot of tennis and boxing going on at my place. I've been doing some investigation on possible mobile tie-in apps for the Wii, since the Wiimotes are using Bluetooth to connect up and transfer data, but let's be honest, I really got it to play games! Very addicitive and funny for people walking along my street who can see in my lounge room window I'm sure.

Moket has been very busy on some projects - new games and content, plus some applications for carriers which I'll post about soon (hopefully) when we can talk about things publically. One of our new games will be available in the US later on this month which we're really happy about.

We've got a new student intern working at Moket now as well. Michael Heydon (or "Donny to his mates") has been working with Moket on Flash Lite 2.x game development and soon we'll be getting him into some animation as well. Michael graduated from Qantm College here in Brisbane last year, and we're really excited to have him on board. Michael is here on our Intern program, which you can find more about here.

Well that's about all for the time being. You'll see a lot more news and posts in the coming months as I drag myself out of business and development team meetings, and back into the "marketing" side of my job :) Cheers.

Intern positions available at Moket

Moket is currently looking for enthusiastic Flash developers who would like to receive on-the-job training with Moket while earning themselves a share of revenue from the products they work on. The position would best suit current multimedia students, multimedia graduates or casual game developers. Moket has world-renowned Flash Lite trainers on staff who can provide interns with Flash Lite specific instruction, so they can learn from the best while working with one of the leading Flash Lite companies in the region. Products are now being developed for channel partners in the US, UK, Europe and Sth East Asia.

We're looking to build our local team, so currently the positions are available only for work carried out at Moket's offices in Brisbane, Australia. The positions are for between 2-3 days a week, depending on availability and skill set.

If you are local, or know someone local that would be interested, please go to www.moket.com.au/site/careers.cfm for more information.

Flash Cast is kicking butt and taking names

Via Bill. Seems there's been an explosion of activity in the Flash Cast world. The announcements from CTIA Wireless are coming thick and fast, and they're great news for the expanding Flash Lite ecosystem. DoCoMo have surpassed 10 million subscribers to their i-Channel service (which is Flash Cast rebranded) in just 18 months, which is a staggering number. Verizon have also broadened their Flash Lite involvement with the announcement to bring Flash Cast to North America. And finally, Chunghwa Telecom is going to bring Flash Cast to around 8 million subscribers in Taiwan.

Hutchison triggers 3G price war

I blogged about this a little while ago, but the reality is finally coming to our shores - capped mobile data plans. Thanks to Hutchison, the telco market here is going to go into a spin trying to compete with mobile data rates ... when someone's paying $15/Mb on Telstra, how will they feel when their mate is only paying $30/month for 1Gb on Hutshison?

The new 3 service, called X-Series, has three levels of flat-rate pricing
starting at $20 monthly for 500MB of data, followed by a $30 monthly 1GB plan
and finishing with a 2GB plan for $40 monthly.

Thank God!

C++ and Flash Lite

The Mobile and Devices User Group in Italy is holding the following face to face seminar. Speakers are Vassilis Legakis and Giorgio Natili.

• April 25th in Athens, Greece
• "C++ and Flash Lite" - http://www.makingwireless.it/?page_id=3

Outline of the seminar:

• Introduction to Symbian C++
• Major differences to classic C++ development
• Brief introduction to FlashLite
• FlashLite and the network
• FlashLite and external applications
• Integration between Flashlite and C++

If you're in the area, this would be well worth getting along to!

Flash Lite 2.1 Roadshow for the US

Adobe has organized a road show in several US cities to show Flash Lite 2.1 for Brew and the new mobile features of Adobe CS3. You can catch the guys from Adobe, Verizon, Qualcomm, Smashing Ideas and Atom Shockwave here:

• Wednesday, April 25th New York, NY
• Thursday, April 26th Boston, MA
• Tuesday, May 1st Chicago, IL
• Thursday, May 3rd Atlanta, GA
• Tuesday, May 8th Austin, TX
• Thursday, May 10th Seattle, WA
• Tuesday, May 15th San Francisco, CA
• Wednesday, May 16th San Diego, CA
• Thursday, May 17th Los Angeles, CA

The one-day seminar will highlights such as:

• How to monetize your Flash Lite 2.1 for BREW content
• Share best practices for developing Flash Lite for BREW content for Verizon Wireless
• Learn the ins and outs of Qualcomm’s BREW platform
• Learn to develop and test mobile content with Adobe Creative Suite 3 and Adobe Device Central CS3

View the agenda here and register here.

Release the CS3 Beast!

The Adobe CS3 software packages have been released with much fanfare and anticipation. It'll be in store starting from April, but today /tonight there gave been videocasts being broadcast all over the place to see the launch event first hand.

One of the cooler aspects for me is of course Device Central CS3 which forms a central piece of many of the new CS3 packages. See your content developed in Flash, Dreamweaver or Photoshop displayed and tested in context of over 200 devices (list updated quarterly as per current "Device Updates"). Flash Lite takes a big spotlight here and that's only a good thing.

And so begins what is the biggest software release undertaken by Adobe!

New Flash Lite Friday Digest #16

Darren over at Ludicrous Software has posted the latest Flash Lite Friday Digest of what's been happening around the Flash Lite community lately.

webDU Day Two and all done

So webDU is done for another year, and I can say that it was again a very successful conference. Geoff, Julie, Vanessa and the rest of the Daemon team should be very proud and their efforts are very much appreciated by all attendees, speakers and sponsors.

So Day Two started off not as dusty as previous years ... the previous evening was the annual conference banquet with it's regular highlights of great food, casual conversation amongst everyone and some fun entertainment. This year saw the Kath and Kim show come to webDU, and the two foxy ladies from Fountain Lakes did their level best to embarress as many of the visiting US Adobe folks as possible. Only problem was that when Kim tried to throw herself at who she thought was Tim Buntel, she instead had Andrew Spaulding (and don't tell me you didn't enjoy it Andrew!). They also thought that Ted Patrick was the Adobe guy with the dog who went everywhere ... James Talbot was beside me saying "Don't tell them it's me ... don't you say a word!".

The Microsoft party this year was handled by none other than our own Scott Barnes, who cut quite the dashing figure in his new MS Expression jacket. Free jackets and copies of Expression Web also sweetened the deal for many party goers ... but I think we all knew most were there for the drinks :)

But everyone pulled up very well I thought the next day, and the scond day keynote with Tim Buntel (ColdFusion Scorpio preview) and Ted Patrick (Flex). Sessions were also well attended, with Jesse showing off his awesome work on Flash Lite 2.x component framework called Shuriken. The day ended with a roundtable with all attendees and the Adobe guys doing their best to answer questions, but as always most of the answers involved a healthy dose of "no comment" :)

So, just the speaker party to go tonight before I head home on Sunday. It's been a great time this year and I was pleased to find so much positive energy for Moket and what we're trying to achieve. Most believe that Flash Lite WILL evetually fulfill the promises we've had over the past 2-3 years, and hopefully Moket is still well placed when it does.

So from webDU 2007 ... good night!

Well I'm just gettign back to my hotel room from Day One at webDU, and man, am I beat! I don't think I had fully recovered from full-day training on Day Zero, and this morning was full tilt back into it.

To start with, the keynote address was by Mike2 - sirs Downey and Chambers. Mike Downey was showing some of the cool things about Flash Player 9 and the new VM it has for running ActionScript3 at some insane speeds. He also showed some cool sites being based around Flash Video, and a sneek peek of Flash CS3, and then passed on to Mike Chambers who gave a 30 minute rundown and demo of Apollo. All good stuff especially since it's still in alpha!

My session on Flash Lite 2.1 was straight after the keynote, and for the first time at webDU I had practically a full room! That's what happens when you speak early on Day One! The session was ok, but I have vowed never to try and write code in a lives sesison like that again! It was all okay in the end, but I fluffed my way through some ActionScript for a small chat XML Socket client, and I think the audience was happy to see it all working at the end.

The rest of the day was spent catching up with colleagues and playing in the Wii room! Apparently I am naturally gifted with a killer serve in Wii Tennis :) Before the conference banquet kicked off for the evening, we had a WebJam event where people (myself included) got up and had 3 mins to demo or talk about something cool they had done. I showed our latest game called Dizzy Zub Zub, plus the new flight sim we're working on, which drew some nice applause from the crowd :)

I went to the annual Microsoft "can we buy your love" free drinks party after the banquet but had to bail early cause I was just fading very fast ... must get some sleep tonight to make it thorugh the next couple of days.

More notes tomorrow!

UPDATE: I kicked Jesse Warden's butt in Wii Tennis today, but it was payback time for Jester in Wii Boxing ... Moket bit the dust!

webDU Day One

Well I'm just gettign back to my hotel room from Day One at webDU, and man, am I beat! I don't think I had fully recovered from full-day training on Day Zero, and this morning was full tilt back into it.

To start with, the keynote address was by Mike2 - sirs Downey and Chambers. Mike Downey was showing some of the cool things about Flash Player 9 and the new VM it has for running ActionScript3 at some insane speeds. He also showed some cool sites being based around Flash Video, and a sneek peek of Flash CS3, and then passed on to Mike Chambers who gave a 30 minute rundown and demo of Apollo. All good stuff especially since it's still in alpha!

My session on Flash Lite 2.1 was straight after the keynote, and for the first time at webDU I had practically a full room! That's what happens when you speak early on Day One! The session was ok, but I have vowed never to try and write code in a lives sesison like that again! It was all okay in the end, but I fluffed my way through some ActionScript for a small chat XML Socket client, and I think the audience was happy to see it all working at the end.

The rest of the day was spent catching up with colleagues and playing in the Wii room! Apparently I am naturally gifted with a killer serve in Wii Tennis :) Before the conference banquet kicked off for the evening, we had a WebJam event where people (myself included) got up and had 3 mins to demo or talk about something cool they had done. I showed our latest game called Dizzy Zub Zub, plus the new flight sim we're working on, which drew some nice applause from the crowd :)

I went to the annual Microsoft "can we buy your love" free drinks party after the banquet but had to bail early cause I was just fading very fast ... must get some sleep tonight to make it thorugh the next couple of days.

More notes tomorrow!

UPDATE: I kicked Jesse Warden's butt in Wii Tennis today, but it was payback time for Jester in Wii Boxing ... Moket bit the dust!

Touchdown at webDU

webDU is officially underway for me. I got the red-eye out of Brisbane this morning at 5.30am to get down to Sydney in time for the Day Zero training course I was running for Flash Lite. Got to meet up with James and Kai again which was cool, and gave 6 or so guys a total deep-end experience in Flash Lite 2,x development :) I think they're heads are still spinning, and I'm just catching up to the fact as to how little sleep I got last night! Off to the annual ANZ User Group Managers meeting tonight to catch up some more ... keynote tomorrow is Apolllo with Mike Chambers and Mie Downey (always a hoot), then my FL session first up. Rock on!

New CS3 Icons

Via John Nack. This little carousel has been produced by Lee at The Flash Blog, showing all the newly designed icons for Adobe CS3 and related products. John also has the "icon colour wheel" that shows the whole suite. Personally, I actually liked the old circular ones that Macromedia had for Studio 8 better. These don't jump out at me like something from a creative company should. I don't know ... what do you think?

Total Training Flash Lite DVD Excerpts on Adobe.com

Adobe.com have posted some excerpts from my recently released training DVD - Total Training for Adobe Flash Lite 2.1 : Creating Mobile Applications. You can find the tutorials in the Flash Lite Dev Centre.

You can watch video samples from the "Handling Device Keypress Events" section, featuring topics like:

• Adding ActionScript 2.0 to control soft keys
• Creating a global key listener
• Defining key functions
• Changing visual content on key events

Enjoy!

Article on Wharton - Steve Jobs' Most Recent Vision for the Future: A World without DRM

An interesting article over at Wharton on the debate that Steve Jobs has brought attention to - to DRM or not to DRM. While related mainly to music, I think it's relevant for Flash Lite / mobile content developers who encounter this in their business. Is it the shadow of the "free for all" web being cast over an industry (mobile /.electronic content) that has pretty much been locked down and user-pays from the start? Time will tell ...

FlexBox is Open

FlexBox is a new set of Flex components and place where other community-generated components can be added. You can search through the list of components and in most cases see a sample of the component in action on someone's site (ususally the author of the component). Pretty cool resource for the Flex community.

ActionScript.IT Mobile Game Comp Winners

The winners from the Mobile Game Contest are in, and we seem some familiar faces in the Flash Lite category:

1st. - Evan Green for "Ping 520"
2nd. - Luciano Ayres for "Bone Smashers"
3rd. - Evan Green for "Flow Panic"

For the J2ME category, the winners were:

1st. - Eric Feng for "SuperKake"
2nd. - Pasi Kainiemi for "Climberman"
3rd. - Romeo Kollar for "Block Fusion"

Flash Lite Competition Now Closed

The Flash Lite Application contest is now closed and the winners will be announced the second week of March. Good luck to all those who entered - there was certainly a rush of entries at the last minute so us judges have a lot of work ahead of us!

Builder.AU article on the Aussie mobile scene - featuring Moket

There's a new article on Builder.AU that looks at the current (and future) trends and technologies in the Australian mobile landscape - The Mobile Future. I was interviewed for the article to give a perspective on Flash Lite and where Moket fits into the scene here.

Also an interesting read is the Australian Mobile Development Landscape which looks at some of the big players here and where mobile is headed.

Despite what many people think, we're not all that far behind things down here in Oz!

webDU fast approaching

I'm sure there'll be some more posting from me as we get closer to the event, but I just wanted to start the ball rolling by bringing the upcoming webDU 2007 conference in Sydney to your attention. This the fifth (or sixth!?) webDU and it keeps getting better every single time.

If you're in the area, or don't mind a long haul flight, there is an amazing spread of speakers from all over the world, including Australia, New Zealand, US, UK and the Netherlands. Topics being covered include Flash, Flex, Cold Fusion, Web2.0, CSS, Flash Lite, Apollo, Acrobat , CMS and many more. It really is a very well rounded presentation of what's going on out there right now - and not just from Adobe.

On the Flash Lite front, myself and Jesse Warden will be presenting sessions, plus I'll be giving a Day Zero full day training session on Flash Lite 2.1. Another Flash Lite'r, Weyert de Boer is presenting a session called "Leveraging the Apollo Runtime".

This year Moket is also a Bronze Sponsor of the conference, which I'm very happy about. This will be my fourth conference, and third as a presenter. It's a great thing to be associated with something so highly regarded in the developer community, and to have that association grow over time. I'm also very happy that my session is on Day One this year ... in past years the Microsoft open-bar on the first night has left attendees a little "muddle headed" the next day :)

I'll be posting regularly from the conference of course, but if you're keen then tickets are still available and going fast.

Moket Site Update

I've just done a quick freshen up on the Moket site, with some screen shots from a couple of new games we're launching shortly - Dizzy Zub Zub and Wire3. Gotta get rid of that headshot of me though with something a bit cooler!

Flash Lite Comp Reminder

The deadline for the Flash Lite competition we're running in conjunction with other mobile user groups is coming up at the end of Feb. We're starting to get more entries now that it's getting close, so make sure you get your entry in soon! Full details are here.

Porting J2ME to Flash Lite

Mariam from Indiagames has a new article on Adobe Mobile Dev Cente, all about porting J2ME content to Flash Lite. Indiagames have a large catalogue of Java content, and in her article, Mariam talks about a real world example of her team porting some of that to Flash Lite. Well worth a read.

Touchscreen from hell

via Wayne ... this may have made it's way around the blogosphere before, I seem to remember someone talking about the interface from Minority Report becoming a reality, but thought it would be worth posting about. This is like the upcoming iPhone Multi-Touch touchscreen interface on steroids ...

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid271543545/bctid422563006

200 Million devices and counting

Adobe say that 200 million devices have shipped now with Flash Lite, and there are now 300 device models out there.

That's a lot of phones ... getting to some kind of level now where the numbers start to stack up for clients. Noice.

New Flash Lite News

'Tis the season for new announcements! Don't you love it when a big conference rolls around and all the big boys who have been saving up their fireworks let them all out of the bag. Well 3GSM has started with a bang, with the announcemnt first of Flash Lite 3. The new release is centered around the support for FLV - Flash Video. This means that your FL content will be ableto work in with Flash Media Server and other streaming services, plus leverage the massive amount of FLV content that is in the market these days (anyone heard of a little site called YouTube?).

Flash Home is the other "product" that was unveiled - a customisable Flash Lite home screen for your device. This is a white label product that is pitched for carriers, MVNO's, etc. Some of the key features are:

• Flexible, data-enabled home screens
• On-device catalog for easy discovery, preview, and management of home screens
• Support for rich media, including FLV files, text, audio, and vector graphics
• Over-the-air updates of branded user interfaces
• Extensible architecture
• Powerful mobile authoring capabilities

I'm sure there'll be more coming soon! Stay tuned party people ...

The Google Monster

Google has reported more than a billion dollars in profit in the final quarter of 2006, beating the market's high expectations for the superstar internet search engine.

If anyone had doubts that another tech boom was on it's way, perhapd they should think again. In fact maybe it's already here? The big boys just keep getting bigger ... maybe this time the bubble won't burst so dramatically.

Read article here

Some new Flash Lite sites and blogs

Some new Flash Lite sites popping up around the place :

• Indian Mobile and Devices Usergroup - IndiMaD
• Mariam Dholkawala from Indiagames has a new blog
• Dimitri in Russia has a new Flash Lite related blog

New music for a great cause

For those that don't know, prior to getting involved with Flash and everything, I was a professional drummer. My wife Tanya is also a singer (that's how we met) and we've kept the rock'n'roll dream alive over the years by continuing to do shows and recording. This week we're releasing her latest 6-track EP called "Braver Than You Think You Are", and have launched her new site at www.tanyagordon.com. Our good mate Caleb James has done a fantastic job in producing this collection of songs - we're really happy with how they came out.

All the money we make through CD sales are being donated to a children's refuge in Tapachula (Mexico), called Mission Mexico. We've started a campaign site at www.tapachula07.com where you can read more about the project, so if you want to buy a CD then you'll know it's going to a great cause. You can also make direct online donations to the project if you want to.