Thank you 2008 ... Goodnight!

As has been my custom for the past couple of years, I'm signing off 2008 with a final "wrap up" blog post here as I head off on holidays.

2008 has been a real roller-coaster of a year for myself and Moket. We've had a lot of highs, plenty of lows, and in between have continued to try and build a business around Flash on mobile devices. Some of the highlights for Moket this year have included:

• Developing a closer relationship Forum Nokia, and achieving recognition for many of our products through their various publications and initiatives
• Signing deals with Gambit Group and Paramount Pictures to develop Flash Lite content for their film properties
• Developing the Dojo Monkey series further, and signing up Kelly Chapman as producer for Dojo Monkey. 2009 will be the Year of the Monkey :)
• Seeing our Flash Lite content on sale in Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, India, Philippines, Mayalsia, Taiwan, Indonesia ... with more channels coming on stream in 2009

I want to give a particular shout to everyone who played on the Moket team this year - Michael Heydon, Jack Lee, James Lee, Hania Lee (James and Hania they got married this year too, crazy love birds!), Benjamin Drake, Xue Sen Wong, Anthony Cheung, David Smith, Dmitriy Logunkov, Jarrod Elvin, Sam Boss-Walker, Andrew Muller and Thomas Halmlyn-Harris.

I also had the pleasure of traveling a lot this year for various events - some were demoing Moket products and exhibiting Flash Lite content, and others were conducting Flash Lite training for Adobe. I certainly wracked up the frequent flyer miles in '08, and got to see some amazing places, met some amazing people, and overall helped to educate and engage with the mobile developer communities. The role call of 2008 destinations looks like this:

• MTV Asia with Dojo Monkey, Singapore (March)
  
• S60 Summit with Forum Nokia, Barcelona (May)
  
• Flash Lite Training, Paris (Aug)
  
• Flash Lite Training, Manila (Sept)
  
• Device Central CS4 Essential Training recording for Lynda.com, Ventura California (Sept)
• Nokia Games Summit, Rome (Oct)
• Adobe MAX Conference, San Francisco (Nov)
  

So what's in store for 2009? Your guess is as good as mine! One thing that's definitely happening is I'm spending the first part of the year writing a new Flash Lite 3.x training course for Adobe - bringing the current one up to date with everything that has changed over recent times (CS4, Mobile Packager, Distributable Player, etc) so that will be good fun.
 
Things certainly changed late this year with the Adobe re-organisation and loss of staff, and while the upshot out of all of it for mobile was very good, it will still be some time before the dust settles and we start to see the results coming through in action. Overall though, 2009 will see more Flash Lite devices ship (particularly touch screen devices) and more opporunities surface for developers building mobile apps and content with the Flash platform. Here's hoping that more of the mobile ecosystem in general also starts to engage with Flash for mobile, most likely through the Open Screen Project, and that the net result is more business for Flash developers working on non-PC devices.

I hope you all have a happy and safe Christmas, and you get to spend some holiday time with those that are close to you. So down tools, stop Twittering, only carry one mobile with you, forget about functions, classes and tweens, and just go and make some memories with family and friends.

Merry Christmas, and best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year!

New links to my presentation slides and recordings

2008 has been a bit of a year for presentations for me. Since about July, I have been doing a Flash Lite eSeminar for the Adobe Pacific office every 2 weeks. Also throw in 3 different titled sessions at MAX (not including Dojo Monkey on the last night!), webDU and about 3 other international summits/conferences, and I've started to accumulate quite a bit of material.

So I've created a new section further down on the right hand sidebar of my blog here called "Presentations and eSeminars", with links to the slides (as PDF), recordings, or both, from various sessions. I'm still tracking down may of the links, so I'll be adding to this over time. Just wanted to get it all in one place so that it's a little easier for people to find and reference. Hopefully the content covered will help people at various stages of their experience with Flash Lite.

And speaking of blog updates, I'm planning on migrating my blog across to a new server and possibly even a new blog platform over the Christmas holidays. If you experience any weirdness, please bear with me and stay tuned.

Now co-managing Mobile Monday Brisbane

Along with my good mate Chris Kettle (CEO of My247.mobi), and perhaps some others, I'll be taking on the co-management of the new Mobile Monday Brisbane chapter in 2009. We've had some small and informal meetings recently and are excited about the prospects for next year, and for the talent and knowledge in the mobile space that currently call Brisbane home. More to come, but if you're in Brisbane on the third-Monday of each month, then keep an eye on the blog here for details (or also on the currently-un-developed mobilemondaybrisbane.com site)

Some cool Adobe technology in the works

Couple of thingsI found while surfing around the interwebs this morning:

Adobe Stratus Service: Now appearing on Adobe Labs, Stratus is a beta technology for creating peer-to-peer connections between Flash 10 and AIR 1.5 players. Think Flash Media Server without shared objects, server-side scripting, etc - great for creating connected applications or even VOIP (apparently). Hmmm ... wonder if this could be part of FP10/AIR on mobile?

Adobe Creative Technologies Lab: Via Peter Elst - some cool R&D being done with manipulating (FLV?) video over at Adobe. This demo video shows "Interactive Video Object Manipulation" and was very impressive. Not that long ago, YouTube acquired a Silicon Valley start-up (name ecapes me at this time of the morning - need more coffee) that was building a video annotation service, that didn't look nearly half as cool as what they guys are experiementing with here.

Enjoy.

Today's Final eSeminar for 2008

Don't forget today at 2pm (Sydney time) I'll be presenting the final mobile eSeminar for 2008 - "Packaging Options for Flash Lite".

This series of eSeminars (stretching back to June this year!) is for beginners in the mobile scene who are perhaps coming across from Flash for web/desktop, or just new to Flash. We've covered topics relating to development, various Flash Lite content types, handset integration, tools for creating and testing content, and today we'll look at the concept of packaging your Flash Lite content into installable "packages" for distribution and deployment to devices.

And since we're getting into the Christmas spirit, there'll be a gift for all attendees!

See you there!

Win prizes at eSeminars this week

There's two eSeminars happening this week in the Flash mobile world.

1. Boston Flash Mobile Usergroup - Adobe Device Central CS4

November 24th, 2008 at 1pm US EST
Scott Janousek, CEO/Technical Director of Hooken Mobile , as he introduces some of the features new to Adobe Device Central CS4 and how to leverage the new Device Central SDK. All the details are here and you must be a member of the usergroup to participate.

** There's 2 DVD copies of the Lynda.com training course "Device Central CS4 Essential Training" being given away at the end of this session. Make sure you attend to win! **

2. Adobe Pacific eSeminar - Adobe Flash Lite and Nokia S40
Wednesday, November 26th, 2pm Australia ESDT
http://pacific.adobe.acrobat.com/mobile/
I'll be giving my regular fortnightly eSeminar, this time looking at how Flash Lite is implemented on the very popular Nokia Series 40 platform, what some of the issues are and also how you can package your content into the NFL file format for these devices.

Check your local times here for these sessions.

Adobe Mobile Packager and App Zone tutorial series on AdobeTV

Via Mark: Adobe TV now has a series of short video tutorials going through the new Adobe Mobile Packager and App Zone applications. Liz Myers is your presenter, and she's done a great job putting these together to show how easy it is for developers now to create these Windows Mobile and Symbian packages for their content, as well as the way the App Zone is installed and used by consumers. Check them out.

Download new mobile stuff from Adobe

via Scott: There's been a number of updates just released with regards to Flash Lite:

• Adobe Device Central 2.1 and Flash Lite 3.1 Updates
• Flash Lite 3.1 authoring update for Flash CS4

The version of the player that downloads over the air through the Flash Lite Distributable Player system is Flash Lite 3.1, so these updates are important to download. You can now also apply to join the private beta now for Flash Lite Distributable Player / Adobe Mobile Packager.

MAX Wrap

Where do I start?! What a massive week we've all just had. I'm in the airline lounge at the moment waiting to come home to my wife and kids which is is always the best part, but I've had little time to think about it up until now.

MAX 2008 I think will prove to be a turning point for the Flash mobile developer community. There was definitely a much greater interest in all things mobile this year, following major announcements such as Distributable Player, AppZone and Mobile Packager , AIR Mobile , FP10 , etc. We had good numbers in each of the three Device Central CS4 sessions I ran with Scott and James, and the Tips and Tricks panel (Alessandro, Scott, Darren and me) were always full. I know the other mobile sessions also enjoyed record numbers. There's just been so much movement forward over the last 12 months that has demonstrated once and for all that Adobe is serious about the mobile platform, and are going to be delivering various solutions that address (don't know about "solve" yet, but let's see) many of the issues that the dev community have been going on about for years now.

It was a great time for the mobile team and the dev community as well to spend some time together, forge new friendships and discuss new ways of working together. Thanks to Suzanne, Leisa, Kathy, Meredith, Mark, Peter and all the other mobile team members who encouraged, engaged with and promoted the mobile developers at the conference.

I think though that the final evening "Mobile Networking Party" may just go down in history as the most fun gathering of the Flash Lite community ever. I doubt many of the applications and ideas we demoed on the night got any "mind share" with the partners and attendees, but it was fun getting up and having a go ... Perhaps next year the party can be sponsored by monkeys (see Alessandro's photos to see why ).

And come one, we were all thinking it - how weird was it having Bill two stalls down from the Adobe booth, standing at the Nokia booth with his new Nokia shirt on?? I think though that anyone who thought that we might have seen the last of Bill in the Flash Lite world should have had their fears relieved - Bill will be a valuable asset to the Flash mobile platform in his role at Forum Nokia, and we can all be sure to see his hand in supporting the ecosystem where possible from the "other side of the fence" in the future. Thanks Bill, you're a better drummer than you realise ;)

So, next year MAX stays in California and moves to the City of Angels, Los Angeles. This year there was over 5000 attendees, spanning 3 venues and including probably about 10 after-program parties and events. What can expect in LA? I dare to dream about what we could find ourselves demonstrating on mobile devices with Flash.

MAX 2008 Progress Report

I don't have the energy to cover everything that has happened at MAX so far, mainly due to the fact that I've already done a full day training lab and 2 x 1.5 hour lab sessions ... with only 4 lab sessions left to deliver. No wonder I'm tired.

Highlights so far have included:

• Adobe Flash Lite Distributable Player announcement
• Demo of the whole Flash 10 player running on devices
• The amount of air time that the mobile platform got during the Day 1 keynote address with Kevin Lynch.
• Free t-shirt count at 5 ... and growing
•  Dinners out with Forum Nokia team and the mobile developer crew
• Making some great business connections in the mobile space

So much still to happen though over the next 2 days. Tonight is the Lynda.com author's dinner and then tomorrow night we have the Mobile Networking Pitch event where I have a few surprises planned :) Stay tuned.

Off to San Francisco for Adobe MAX 2008!

Well, one more sleep and then I'm off on the long haul to San Francisco for MAX 2008 - and I can't wait! There's so much happening there this year that I'm already at the point of locking down half hour blocks for meetings in between sessions, presentations, meals, parties and summits!

Here's a quick summary of what I'm most looking forward to:

• Meeting up with the mobile crew again - some old and some new friends
• Presenting my training and lab sessions (with some other great guys by the way) - Flash Lite: Developing and Distributing Mobile Applications , Deep Dive: Adobe Device Central CS4 and Twenty Tips and Tricks for Building Top-Performing Mobile Applications 
• The Mobile Summit and Networking events
• The Lynda.com Author's Dinner
• The Adobe Community Lounge and the Mobile and Devices Lounge
• Just talking generally about the Flash platform on mobile with other business leaders and guys who are doing cool stuff in their respective parts of the world

It's certainly going to be a jam packed week and I'll try and blog when I can, but if history is anything to go by, I'll be sitting here in my home office again in just over a week writing the follow up post :) Catch me on Twitter though if you want some micro-blogging coverage of MAX events and happenings.

And if you're at MAX and we haven't met, please come up and say hi!

Thoughts on cheap iPhone games

There's a great article on Pocket Gamer at the moment discussing the current situation over on the AppStore for iPhone games. As you know, the AppStore kicked off with a bang this year with the iPhone 3G, and really made a statement about distribution models for mobile. In my opinion, it really stood up competitors like Nokia Download for what it had achieved and how it worked for developers.

Now 4-6 months on, there's a trend on the AppStore which in reality is just reflecting what happens on a lot of "off-deck" content portals and channels - poor quality content is swamping the catalogue, and open pricing is leading to over-charging for rubbish and hurting sales of higher-priced, but top shelf, games.

The big game publishers I think are still going fine. Some have said in recent week s how they either underestimated the value of the channel, or reported higher than expected profits due to the AppStore, but it's going to be the mid-range publishers I think that will suffer the most.

Read the full article here , and post your comments back here if you'd like to take up the discussion or have some experience of your own with the AppStore that you'd like to share.

Internode launches Chumby in Australia

The Chumbosphere has just grown a little larger, with the launch today of the cool connected device here in Australia through Internode. They've built their own branded widget which I imagine will be possibly preloaded somehow, which streams news and internet radio. More locally-developed widgets are on the way ;) It's good to see Australia be one of the first outside the US to get the device, with Japan following very shortly. Chumby-on!

Pacific Flash Lite eSeminar this week - Flash Lite and Mobile Gaming

The next mobile eSeminar in my fortnightly series is coming up this Wednesday the 12th at 2pm (+10 GMT AEST, Sydney), and is titled "Adobe Flash Lite and Mobile Gaming".

As you can see from my recent posts, I've just returned from Rome, where I was demonstrating Moket's mobile game products at the 2008 Nokia Games Summit. I had the opportunity to speak to many of the world's leading game publishers (EA, Glu, Gameloft, Sega) about the market, their business, and Flash Lite - which provided some interesting insight.

In this eSeminar I'll be taking a look at what has been done to date with Flash Lite in the mobile gaming space across various devices, what has worked and what hasn't, and where I believe Flash Lite can go from here. Should be interesting!

Register to attend the eSeminar here, and remember you can watch all the previous eSeminar recordings at any time here, courtesy of Adobe Pacific.

New Flash Lite Penetration Numbers

Mark has released some numbers to the community from Strategy Analytics, looking at current and forecast numbers on Flash Lite device penetration in the global market. Some interesting stats there, particularly the rate that Japan is moving from Flash Lite 1.1 to 3.0. Gotta love that ecosystem :) Read more on Mark's blog here.

Device Central CS4 Essential Training now available on DVD

For those of you who like to have a box delivered to your door instead of just a login to a website, the course I authored and presented for Lynda.com, "Device Central CS4 Essential Training", is now available for purchase on DVD from their online store.

You can of course still access it as part of the Lynda.com Online Training Library on a subscription basis.

Flash Lite / Nokia Platform Services eSeminar Recording

Many in the Flash Lite community have been heartened by the recent announcements by Nokia surround their Platform Services, and the access to native device applications and layers through service APIs in Action Script.

Robert Burdick of Forum Nokia recently presented an online seminar on the topic of developing this new breed of Flash Lite application with Adobe CS4 tools for the S60 5th Ed platform (available on upcoming devices such as the 5800 XpressMusic "Tube").

The recording of the seminar is now available here (watch for the Dojo Monkey WRT widget on the desktop of Robert's demo phone!)

Winner of the Caption Competition

Congratulations to William Gregoire who has been judged the winner of our recent caption competition. For his winning entry, William scores for himself a Lynda.com T-shirt along with 12  months of free access to the Lynda.com Online Training Library. William, you can now watch the entire Device Central CS4 Essential Training title, along with all the other new CS4 titles and Lynda.com catalogue. I hope you put it to good use :) Please ping me with your details so I can arrange to get your prizes out to you.

Thanks to Megan @ Lynda.com for the great prizes.

Nokia Games Summit Review, and some Moket announcements

Well, it's been an interesting time in Rome to say the least. Why? Well, for a few reasons.

I've been here demonstrating Moket's capabilities and Flash Lite games at the Nokia Games Summit. As you can imagine this type of event is mostly centered around platforms such as N-Gage, Java and Symbian. I was very pleased to get an invitation as a Flash Lite company, as I think it shows a shift in thinking towards the Flash mobile platform amongst device manufacturers and the industries that are built around them (such as mobile gaming).

I've had the chance to speak with representatives from EA, Glu, Gameloft, Digital Chocolate, Sega, I-Play, Nokia, and many other media and content developers. I quickly realised that most of my time was going to be spent in an education role - trying to help define the space that Flash Lite can exist in amongst these other technologies. We've long said that Flash Lite is not trying to be Java, but for some this is what I found to be the assumption as to what Flash Lite was trying to achieve, particularly in mobile gaming. I therefore had the pleasure of setting many people straight :) and showing them that Flash Lite does indeed present an opportunity for certain mobile experiences alongside these other platforms, and at a considerably smaller development cost.

What was great was to be able to demonstrate 2 new releases for Moket. One is our new Flash Lite casual game for Paramount Pictures - "Tropic Thunder Chopper Rescue". This is our first title under a new license  Moket has signed for Paramount Pictures mobile content, through our distribution partner Gambit Group. To be able to show a company like Paramount putting into the Flash mobile platform gave us some very good points and we sure spent them this week! Read more about our Paramount deal here on the Moket site.

The other great demo was the ported games we have created for the new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (or the "Tube"). We have been working with Nokia prior to launch of this great new touch screen device, to bring Flash Lite games from regular S60 and "keypad driven" devices to the touch screen paradigm. We were showing the touch-version of our popular action puzzle game "Trench Rocket", and are also now working on delivering this title, plus Cipher, to the Nokia Download platform for sale for new 5800 customers once the device starts shipping.

Lastly, I'll remember this week for enduring two of the worst storms in the last 50 years in Rome! I happened to be walking to the venue to set up our display, with my Forum Nokia colleague Ung-Ping Tian, when the first storm hit on Tuesday night. Walking through a foot of rushing water (we were walking up a steep road), furious lightning and dark, un-lit Roman roads, did not get me off on the right foot for the conference! We arrived at the venue soaked to the bone, and around an hour late, and cursing Goggle Maps for giving us a false impression of how far it was! The second storm hit the event party last night, destroying the marquee we were all having drinks in, smashing glasses and lights, overturning tables and forcing everyone to scamper back down into Castel Sant' Angelo, where the party was being held. Let's just say Mother Nature didn't want to be left out of a mobile gaming conference, and forced her way onto the guest list! Well done to the organisers though who handled a freak cyclone in the middle of their luxurious corporate event with style!

All up it's been a fantastic time here at the Summit. I've met a lot of great people from all aspects of the mobile and gaming communities and business, and am looking forward to continuing conversations and business opportunities with them over the coming months. Thank you to Nokia for inviting us and we hopefully will see you all there again next year!

In Rome for the Nokia Games Summit

Ciao from Roma! I'm here this week with Moket, demonstrating Flash Lite gaming at the Nokia Games Summit. I'm excited to be here, not just because I got to see the Colosseum, but because I get to take on the challenge of presenting the Flash Lite platform to a room of Java, Symbian and N-Gage developers! Plus my 'frequent flyer' balance is starting to look pretty good ...

Our pitch this week is all about the casual games market and Flash Lite's strength in creating "game snacks" and threading the web and mobile together - all within a powerful, efficient, cost effective and "ready to go" platform. And it's hard to argue that the Nokia ecosystem doesn't back that up with great Flash Lite support.

The Summit is being attended by about 250 delegates from mobile operators, technology companies, and just about every major games publisher. Moket is part of the "Game Lounge", which is an interactive area for delegates to come and get hands on experience with games and platforms from us and about 7 different companies. Thank you to Nokia for the invitation to participate - I'll be posting up some follow-up from the event when I get home next week.

Device Central CS4 Essential Training now available from Lynda.com

I'm happy to announce that the training I authored and presented for Lynda.com has just been made available - "Device Central CS4 Essential Training".

It's 2 hours of training that takes you through all aspects of the product and how it works in the real world of Flash mobile development. It looks at the new features in CS4 such as Snapshots, Video Presentations, Tasks and Automated Scripts, as well as the fundamentals of Device Libraries, Profiles and working with the various Panels. Great for developers getting into the mobile aspect of Adobe's tools, as well as those wanting a refresher on the new features of Device Central CS4.

There's a free sample chapter for you to check out at Lynda.com, and the full title is available to subscribers of their Online Training Library. Enjoy!

Club Moket on iPhone Web Apps Portal

It's been a good week here at Moket - thanks to everyone for their kind comments on the re-launch of our D2C portal, Club Moket. It's important that we keep trying to find new ways that Flash Lite content can reach the masses. There's many of us trying and Club Moket is just a small piece of the puzzle.

We noticed a spike in traffic to the Club Moket iPhone site - that's because it's now on the Apple's iPhone Web Apps Directory.

And if you're this way inclined, why not become a Facebook fan of Club Moket ... go on, you know you want to :)

Club Moket reincarnated and now on iPhone

Some of you may remember an initiative that Moket launched late 2007 called "Club Moket", which was an (ultimately ill-fated) mobile and web portal for Flash Lite content. I won't go into all of the specifics here as to why the sites were eventually suspended (if you catch me at MAX over a beer I'll be more than happy to share!) but cost was a big factor.

One of the larger costs we had was for the SMS billing solution, and making that available to as many customers around the world as possible. This is still a costly exercise for any direct-to-consumer portal, not to mention what you need to pay in order to market and drive traffic to one of these sites (unless you're a major brand).

For a little while now, Moket has been working with NZ-based mobile content web portal Voeveo as a distribution channel for Flash Lite content. There are many other developers as well who are on the site and I expect more to try it out in the future. It's a start-up site, but they have a fairly simple-to-use PayPal based payment system for purchasing content, and a decent content and device management system in place. And importantly for us, they support Flash Lite content :)

So ... based on a new "widget" from Voeveo, we decided to do a soft re-launch of the Club Moket site as another window into the content already hosted on Voeveo, and using their payment system. It's just gone live so check it out and let us know what you think.

And also in a sign of things to come for Moket, we've created an version of the site that has been optimised for the iPhone and is giving away free iPhone wallpapers. Viewing clubmoket.com on your iPhone will take you straight there, or else go to clubmoket.com/iphone (Note that in being optimised for iPhone, it won't look quite right on a desktop browser unless you're using Safari).

Please send any feedback, thoughts or generous offers of investment funding (because EVERYONE'S looking to invest in high risk ventures right now *cough*) to hello@clubmoket.com

Device Central CS4 SDK Now Available

Adobe Device Central CS4 has greatly improved over previous releases. One such area is the ability to extend the functionality of the application with custom Tasks that can be run on content from within the testing environment. The new Adobe Device Central CS4 SDK which was released for download today, gives you what you need to know in terms of building these custom Tasks using Extend Script and XML. Download the new SDK and begin familiarising yourself with this new feature set for Device Central.

Mobile and Devices Cookbook (Beta)

Adobe have just launched a beta Mobile and Devices Cookbook - an online community-driven portal for sharing code "recipes" for Flash Lite. Great resource for newbie and experienced developers alike.

Mobile Events at MAX 08 in San Francisco

MAX 2008 is coming up fast, and there's no shortage of mobile-related sessions and events in San Francisco in November.

The Mobile Summit on November 16 is a great opportunity to hear what Adobe's mobile partners have to say about new opportunities in the mobile market for Flash Lite in the new year.Click here to register.

There are plenty of great sessions and labs to get along to during the conference itself. Click here for more info on mobile sessions at MAX, and I'm also doing a few this year:

•  Flash Lite: Developing and Distributing Mobile Applications (Full day training, Nov 16)
• Deep Dive: Adobe Device Central CS4
• Twenty Tips ans Tricks for Building Top-Performing Mobile Applications

And finally, there's a great Mobile Fast Pitching and Networking Party on the last night (Nov 19) where you can get a chance to pitch your mobile ideas to a panel of Adobe partners. Beers and appetizers included :) Click here to register.

Hope to see you at MAX in San Francisco this November!Ad

Moket releases SWF2NFL

I'm happy to announce a new tool that Moket has just released for the Flash Lite community - SWF2NFL.

Last month, Nokia announced the NFL (Nokia Flash Lite) file format - designed as a packaged file that can take Flash Lite content and make it appear as an installed application in the Gallery of Nokia S40 5th Edition devices. S40 up until now has been mostly about wallpapers and screensavers for Flash Lite developers, even though the devices are able to play standalone content. The problem was that there was no "installer" format like the SIS file for S60, and when a SWF was sent to an S40 phone, it treated it as an image and automatically downloaded it into the Gallery Images folder - not great if your SWF was a game or application.

So now with NFL, you can create a file that gets downloaded to the Gallery, and appears in the list with a custom icon and application name, rather than the SWF icon and the file name. You can also DRM the NFL file, thus protecting it from being further distributed from the device.

SWF2NFL is an Adobe AIR application that takes all of your SWF and secondary content files for your application (text, XML, etc), your custom icon, and creates the packaged NFL file for you. There's also a beta feature called the "Device Browser". You launch it from within SWF2NFL, and it shows you the Forum Nokia device specs pages of all NFL supported devices. It's in beta cause there might be a small issue with it when running on Windows for some reason - if you experience any problems, or indeed have any other feature requests, please send them to swf2nfl@moket.com.

Moket's doing business now with various aggregators and operators around the world with NFL packaged content, so if you have some games or apps that run well on S40 and you're interested in seeing what might be able to be done with them, please consider the Moket Content Network!

We're hoping that it brings more developers to the S40 platform and just helps out the developer community in a small way. Enjoy!

Becoming a Forum Nokia Champion

Thanks to Forum Nokia for the privilege of being inducted as a new Forum Nokia Champion. I'm joining the ranks of some very talented Flash Lite guys in the Champion program and hope that being involved here with them will continue to push Flash Lite to the front of the mobile development community. More on this when I start blogging over on the Champion website.

Caption Competition

Here's a snapshot from the live-video-section of my upcoming Lynda.com training title. I have no idea what I was doing, but want to open it up to readers to post their ideas for a caption. So leave a comment on this post (don't forget I get to read them before publishing them!) and the best caption idea will win something cool (just checking with some people as to what I can give away!) ... over to you

Living in America

I've been working in Ventura California for the past week, recording a new upcoming Flash-Lite training title for Lynda.com. It's been a lot of work, but I'm nearly at the end of it all. Which is great, cause when I arrived in the US I came down with a virus, and so I'm sounding a little croaky husky sultry on the recording and my voice doesn't have much left in it :)

Anyway, I just had a bit of a moment yesterday afternoon and I was driving back to the hotel from the studio. I felt like I was in a movie ... the sun setting over the Pacific (wrong way around from where I live), driving along palm-tree-lined-streets in California, a Lou Gramm song ("Just Between You and Me") playing on the 80's radio station - I was expecting to see Arnie (on his lunch break from the Governor's office) and Danny DeVito walking down the sidwalk in matching beige suits and hawaiian shirts ... it was great!

There's certainly a charm to this place which is great to experience (oh, and cheap Chuck Taylor Cons!), but I'm REALLY looking forward to getting home on the weekend and being back with the family. The Lynda.com guys thought have been great in making me feel very at home and looked after, and have helped me produce some good material. Thanks Max, Jen, Megan, Noah, Kali, and everyone else for helping me out this week.

Travel and Recent Events

It's been a little hard to keep on top of everything that's been happening lately, as I've been in the middle of a stretch of Flash Lite related travel.

I've just returned from a few days in Manila, where I was training developers in Flash Lite for the country's largest operator, Globe. This was part of a developer competition they had run and an attempt to start equipping the local developer community with the tools and knowledge they need to begin bringing Flash Lite applications and content to market. Many thanks to "Blue" and the G-Labs team for having me and looking after me while I was there, and also to the attendees of the courses for being great students. Manila turned it on weather-wise while I was there, with 1 typhoon passing by and another 2 waiting out to sea. The rain was so heavy on my second day of training that I had to stop frequently because I was having to shout over the noise of the storm outside! Many class members didn't make it that day either because of flooding and traffic chaos in Manila. I got a chance though to meet up with local FL developer Naz for a coffee and talk all things mobile and Flash. There's some seriously talented guys in the Philippines and I'm hoping we can collaborate with them on some upcoming Flash Lite work.

Next trip this week is to California for a week and half of time dedicated to a new Lynda.com training title. It's a Flash Lite related topic, but more details on that once we have some dates for release, etc.

Then in October I'll be demonstrating Moket's Flash Lite games at the 2008 Nokia Games Summit in Rome, and putting Flash Lite forward as a viable platform for developing mobile games. It'll be interesting to see what conversations I get into with a conference full of Java, Symbian and N-Gage developers!

I think the remainder of this year is going to be very exciting for Flash Lite developers. Moket has some interesting stuff to share over the next couple of months, and of course MAX is coming up in November. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen's recent keynote at CTIA (available now on You Tube thanks to Bill) also gave some insights into where Adobe are pushing Flash Lite and the Flash platform in general.

So stay tuned, and I'll try and post from some of these exoctic locations I'll be visiting over the next few months. And in case you're wondering, Moket only flys me economy class so I'm not the jet-setting executive that all this travel might lead you to believe! Although, with all the frequent flyer miles I'm accruing, I did get enough points on the Manila trip to get access to Singapore Airline's Gold Lounge ... free food and drinks and comfortable seats are what you want when you're about to get on an 8 hour midnight flight!

Moket games for sale at Voeveo

We've just uploaded some of our recent games to the Voeveo mobile portal for purchase and download. Games include old-timers such as Dizzy Zub Zub, Cipher and Jon Burgerman's Sausage Smackdown, along with some more recent ones like Trench Rocket and Palleggio. Most of these games are also available, or are making their way, to Nokia Download (in APAC and soon China and Europe). They're also going to emerge in Singapore shortly.

It's been interesting in the past few months seeing the success of App Store, and the subsequent news from Google and intimations by Microsoft towards their own "open markets". Surely this has to kick start the education process for many, many more mobile consumers on methods to simply engage with mobile content. It may also help to educate them with having to pay for content, but time will tell :)

Flash-less iPhone causes advertising to be pulled

Maybe it was a Flash developer, maybe a Java guy, or just a web-browsing Joe Bloggs, but it seems that someone has taken offence at Apple's claims that "all parts of the internet are on the iPhone".

Seems a complaint to the UK advertising standards board mentions the fact that it doesn't have Flash or Java, which are two key ingredients to the internet. And as a result, Apple have been forced to pull the ad. It would be interesting to know if the lodger of the complaint was a developer (who is probably watching the App Store downloads and wishing they could get a piece of that action), or a consumer who knows enough about browsing and interacting with the web to know that these two pieces of the "experience puzzle" really do run a hell of a lot of the web, despite what Apple are seemingly willing to admit. I suspect thought it was the former rather than the latter.

But, as Scott blogged recently, if recent patent filings are anything to go by, there is a future coming where this oversight could be rectified.

Photoshop.com Mobile Beta available in September

Via Bill: Adobe have announced a new Flash Lite consumer-orientated product for a number of Windows Mobile devices in the US - Photoshop.com Mobile.

Today we announced a new addition to the Photoshop.com family, Photoshop.com Mobile beta, which is a rich Adobe Flash based mobile application that offers camera phone users an easy way to upload, view, and share photos using their Photoshop.com account.  Photoshop.com Mobile runs in the background on the phone and allows consumers to take photos, send messages and run other applications while pictures are being uploaded to their Photoshop.com account. Photoshop.com Mobile is the mobile companion application for the new Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 and Adobe Photoshop.com.

Congrats to the mobile team at Adobe for delivering (what will be) a publicly-available Flash Lite application that demonstrates the power of the platform. And as BIll mentions, also quite interesting that there's a couple of Palm Treo devices thrown in there as well ...

Moket's own "Made in China"

It was brough to my attention over the weekend that Moket had become the target of the ultimate form of flattery some would say - having a product pirated by the Chinese.

A number of people in the Flash Lite community spotted what looked "kind of like" one of our MoCarbon Flash Lite wallpaper products on the Nokia Software Market. You be the judge though - Moket's original (designed by the talented Matt Pollitt) and the pirate rip-off version by Shanghai Jibiao Info Tech Co. Ltd. It's also popped up on a number of other "free mobile software portals" around the place.

Close but no cigar Shanhai Jibiao!

A number of people have asked me in recent times about piracy in the mobile market and what we do about it. The simple fact is that mobile "content" has such a short shelf life, that it's basically not economically viable to spend money on patents or trademarks for everything you release. Therefore, the idea is to release and make your revenue from the short "burst" of activity, and then let it join the "long tail" of available products (well, I could argue that 99% of mobile content is in the long tail already anyway). Of course if it was a larger mobile application or tool then of course you would be protecting it - but for wallpapers, screensavers and casual games, the cost of protection would nearly always be greater than the revenue from the single asset.

Anyway, with all that said, if you see any more dodgy versions of content that you know has been ripped off from someone else, it can be nice to drop them a line just to let them know. Thanks to Scott and Johnny for alerting me to the bizarro-Moket content out there already.

Who talks about mobile gaming in the sauna?

Over at N-Gage Insider, there are some new video interviews being posted up which some may find interesting, if not a little disturbing. Your N-Gage host Arnold Faber introduces us to "Sauna Talk", a new show that promises to deliver interviews with leading N-Gage platform experts, dressed in towels and relaxing in the sauna. First up is Miikka Skaffari, Head of Developer Product Management for N-Gage. What next, Symbian Babes? There are some Flash Lite panel sessions at MAX this year, maybe they should get the presenters to all do them from a hot tub? Err... maybe not.

My latest toys

No, I don't mean an iPhone or the Nokia N96 ... I mean TOYS. Recently I was at Singapore's Changi Airport waiting for a connecting flight on my way home, when I discovered a new toy shop with a great collection of one of my favourite "subjects" - Star Wars. In this collection was a newly released series of "Mighty Muggs" figures - large scale figurines made from recycled materials. These are seriously cool - there's a series from Star Wars and Marvel comics, and also a line of Indiana Jones characters coming soon. The shop in Singapore only had a few from the Star Wars range, plus Iron Man and Wolverine, so I picked up a Luke Skywalker (EpV edition with removable hand!) and a Lando Calrissian (I don't have any other Lando stuff, so this is my first one). And good news - I have two more trips that go through Singapore in the next couple of months, and the shop keeper said he'd have more of the series by then! I'm such a freakin' nerd sometimes.

Sun sheds light on GUI tool for mobiles

Interesting news regarding a new release from Sun for Java developers - a GUI toolkit for rapid development of Java mobile applications.

Here are some interesting quotes from the article (do they sound familiar at all?)

"By creating LWUIT, Sun is reaffirming its commitment to the mobile development community and by open sourcing the LWUIT code, we are enabling mobile developers to quickly and easily create rich, portable interfaces for their applications," declared Craig Gering, Sun's senior director of embedded Java software.

"This software will also help address the mobile industry's fragmentation issue by enabling developers to create a single interface that will work anywhere Java is found."

The future of Mobile, today: Harnessing the 4th Screen

The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) are presenting an event titled "The future of Mobile, today: Harnessing the 4th Screen". Come and see how leading innovative Brisbane companies are engaging locally, nationally and internationally in this space. You will hear from:

• Google Mobile (keynote)
• Locatrix (my good mates from the incubator where Moket has been housed)
• Moket (of course)
  
• my247.com.au
• Mercury Mobilty
• Liquid Interactive

Event Details
When: Thursday 28th August 2008
Where: Grant Thornton Brisbane - King George Square, Adelaide Street (entrance), Brisbane

Times:
9.30am Registration and Coffee
10:00am start
12.30pm end

Cost:
AIMIA Members, $50
Non-members, $100

Register now

Project Capuchin Webinar

A little late to post, but nevertheless ...

Join a one-hour online seminar and learn how Project Capuchin is empowering Flash Lite and Java ME developers to leverage their expertise to quickly and securely create highly engaging mobile content.

Bonjour

Just finding my feet in Paris after what seemed a very long flight and a tough first 24 hours of battling jet lag ... but feeling good now and starting to settle in. I'm here doing some Flash Lite 3 training for Adobe, and have about 20 students starting 3 days of hands on training tomorrow at the Adobe Paris offices. This trip is a little different in that I've been able to bring my wife Tanya along for the week, so I've got someone to share the experience with. It also means I'll have more photos with me in them because I have someone to take the photos other than myself!

Anyway, looking forward the class tomorrow and getting to meet some Flash Lite developers on this side of the world. While I'm here I'll also be giving an eSeminar for Adobe Pacific - "Persistent Data with Adobe Flash Lite". It'll be 6am here for a 2pm Connect meeting, so hopefully I'll be making sense :)

Dizzy Zub Zub on Mobile Hotdog

Another one of our games, Dizzy Zub Zub (actually it's nearly our oldest one now!) has been added to the Mobile Hotdog web portal. Free to try before you buy! It joins Sausage Smackdown and Eat Them Alive and is also being pushed out onto Nokia Download. Upcoming titles also making their way to Nokia Download soon include Trench Rocket, Palleggio and one of our GoPets mini-games, Doogie Boogie.

SWF2JAR Packaing Tool Released for Project Capuchin SE Phones

Via Mark: Sony Ericsson have released their SWF2JAR packaging tool for Project Capuchin enabled phones. The recently released C905 is the first phone to support the platform.

Sony Ericsson's Project Capuchin technology is a Java ME API that bridges the Java ME and Adobe Flash Lite programming environments. The SWF2JAR tool is a tool for wrapping the SWF into a Java Midlet for distribution to supported Sony Ericsson devices.

Download it now from the Sony Ericsson Developer World site.

Adobe Pacific eSeminars

Just thought I'd make another mention of the introductory Flash Lite eSeminars I'm doing with Adobe Pacific at the moment. You can go and check out the schedule of all seminars here as well as recordings of previous sessions here (Flash Lite sessions under "Creative"). The recordings normally go live here 1 week after the event, so in a week's time you'll find the recording of today's session which was "Reactive Mobile Content with Adobe Flash Lite".

There's a whole range of really cool sessions on other product topics as well if you want to register and check them out at http://www.adobeeseminars.com.au/

Upcoming eSeminars (and other guest appearances :) are also listed on the right hands side of my blog now.

*UPDATE* Just to mention that these times are all based on Sydney AEST time (+10GMT).

Figures not great for Sony Ericsson

A report today with some figures today showing handset manufacturer Sony Ericsson in a spot of bother.

• Income over the quarter dropped by some 98 per cent, from AUD$534m to AUD$13
• Operating income fell by some 101 percent, while gross profit was down 29%

From a Flash Lite perspective, and for the 2000 employees of the company now facing the sack, here's hoping things turn around for them.

Adobe Ambassador-ship

Recently I was fortunate enough to be appointed as an Adobe Ambassador for the Pacific region, with a specific focus on my part in the mobile industry and experience with Flash for mobile devices. Sounds fancy ... here's what it means ...

An Adobe Ambassador is a recognised industry professional whom Adobe has approached to represent them in the Pacific region.

They are an expert of the Adobe tools. They understand the workflow, industry direction and key drivers of their field.

I'll probably pop up around a few more eSeminars and presentations from time to time, and am looking forward to being a closer part of the evangelism of Flash Lite in the Pacific region with the local Adobe team who are based out of Sydney.

iPhone as a gaming device - will Flash give it a shake?

OK don't worry, this isn't going to be another iPhone 3G hype posting, but just an observation. And jut so you know, while I'm not in queue out in the cold at the moment waiting to get one of the first new iPhones in Australia, I do plan on getting on and we have some plans for it ('nuff said).

An interesting note from the video that I've linked to above ... the reporter notices that when connected over 3G (at least here in Australia on Optus), there is a 10Mb download limit, which actually blocked the download of the game she was trying to get. WOuld have to do it over WiFi or through iTunes ... bit of a hiccup to choice while on the move IMO

This morning though I did download the new iTunes that includes App Store, the shopfront that allows developers to make their applications available for download (for free or for purchase). I know it's only been live for really a few hours, but one thing that struck me immediately was that both the Top 10 Apps, and Top 10 FREE Apps lists were comprised totally of games. At the time I writes this (cause I expect that list to change) the only "category" that is not "Games" is a sole application under the category of "Business", but I think that Bejeweled 2 may have slipped into the wrong category there!

There's been much debate in the gaming press over the past few months since the 3G device was announced, focused around the idea that the iPhone will actually revolutionize the handheld gaming market. This is because people see this is a truly "converged" device, and that the innovation of the touch screen + motion sensing will create more engaging games.

Of course the other argument is that the App Store is light years ahead of the distribution model that confronts most game publishers now when dealing with the mobile market. I was having lunch yesterday with a government rep for the electronic games industry in Queensland, and I was telling him that compared to the operator/aggregator/provider model (where there's so often more than one aggregator in the actual channel), selling direct through App Store for a 70% cut of the download price is like music to our ears.

I'm very keen to see though if the eventual support for Flash on the iPhone (I don't know anything - just my opinion that it WILL make it on there in some way in the not-so-distant future) can create experiences that sell next to games from EA, Gameloft, etc and capture some market share there. It's kind of like what we're waiting to see now on mobile - do people who have handsets that play Java and Flash Lite, and who download games, actually see the differences and embrace that? I think innovation of experience will play a big part in the success of game titles on the iPhone. That plus the fact that they are so easy to get!

So now that I've written this, I've actually gotten myself excited and want to go and join that queue :)

** UPDATE: As I predicted, those Top 10 lists have already started to diversify just a few hours later ... but I think my thoughts are still valid :)

Is innovation on the mobile platform dead?

I have been reading an interesting article this morning and would be interested to hear people's thoughts on the subject. Many of you will know that in the past I have, through various channels, been vocal about what I see as road blocks to Flash Lite taking hold in the mobile ecosystem as I know it can. But what about looking past just a particular platform (Flash Lite, Java, Symbian, etc) and looking at the mobile industry itself.

Ewan MacLeod over at SMSTextNews has written a somewhat bleak piece about what he sees as a failing of the mobile industry to foster innovation over the past 10 years or so. The title pretty much says it all - "Trapped in Mobile Hell - A Warning for Entrepreneurs".

It's certainly not an encouraging discourse, but from his point of view it's an honest assessment of where things are truly at. More to the point, it's an opinion about how much longer the mobile "phenomenon" will actually take to become the powerful platform that we all believe it is.

As a entreprenuer myself (having started a number of businesses now in the tech space) and being particularly entrenched now in the mobile space with Moket, it's pretty hard to argue that the past 4 years especially have been anything but very difficult and nothing like what we had "assumed" in our business modeling and projections. Is this, as Ewan says, the "reality" of the mobile business model, or are there business models that can be pursued that will in fact deliver rewards?

I don't expect any quick solutions, however I must say that within our own business, things have started to take on a different complexion over the past 6 months - for the better. While it's really no more difficult than what it has been to squeeze revenue from the industry business models we have to work with (the operator/aggregator/provider model for one is a real killer for revenue), there have been some shifts in attitude towards Flash Lite in particular that have made me more optimistic.

But the question remains - can real innovation occur in the mobile industry at a rate that will promote great new ideas, or does the mobile business itself kill start-ups? Over to you ...

New Mobile Job Site

There's a new job listing site up and running that targets mobile developer positions - mobiledevjobs.org

This is an initiative from Scott Janousek, in collaboration with Peter Elst and the new riajobs.org site. Great idea guys, looking forward to seeing the site populated with many cool opportunities for mobile developers around the world.

I've also added a dynamic listing of jobs from the site here on my blog (down a bit on the right under my Google Shared Items list) using their API for showing listings.

Updated FL Devices Spreadsheet

If you're looking for an up to date document for showing all Nokia, Sony Ericsson and BREW (Verizon Wireless) devices that have Flash Lite pre-installed in all of its flavours, Bill has just updated this on his blog and is available for download here.

Interesting to see that the BREW handsets have not changed in a long time. For me this is a major drawback of the current ecosystem in North America, as these devices are getting very old and doesn't really demonstrate a dynamic or growing market. I know there are several devices that are on the verge of being certified, so hopefully they might appear in Bill's next update. Qualcomm's recent announcement about further Flash Lite adoption should remove this problem of certifying handsets sometime midway through next year.

Introductory Flash Lite eSeminars

Adobe Pacific are running a series of eSeminars on Flash Lite, with yours truly speaking at each of them on various topics related to Flash Lite development and the wider ecosystem.

These are targeted as introductory sessions that don't get too heavy on code samples, but take a look at some of the features and aspects of Flash Lite, and how they relate to real world solutions or products.

This week's session was on Flash Lite and the Nokia Web Runtime (WRT) platform, and you can find the recording of that sessions here.

Here's the schedule for the upcoming eSeminars:

• July 9th - Adobe Flash Lite Widgets for the Chumby
• July 23rd - Reactive Mobile Content with Adobe Flash Lite
• Aug 6th - Persistent Data in Adobe Flash Lite
• Aug 20 - Tips and Tricks for Effective Adobe Flash Lite development

Each of the sessions can be accessed by visiting http://pacific.adobe.acrobat.com/mobile, and start at 2pm (AEST - +10 GMT).

Thanks to the local Adobe office for organising these, in amongst the other regular eSeminars that they run each week (up to about 7 per week now!)

Nokia buys out remaining Symbian shares

It's all over the mobile news feeds - Nokia have announced they will be buying the shares in Symbian that they don't already own, becoming their sole owner. Perhaps even bigger news is that they will turn over the IP to the Symbian Foundation to further develop the platform in an open source environment. This is massive news from a platform point of view, and obviously a move to keep Nokia/Symbian at the front of the oncoming surge from other "open source" mobile platforms.

In terms of impact to developers (and Flash developers in particular), Mark Doherty had this to say:

Building applications for this new platform will undoubtedly be much simpler, you can fully expect to develop a single code base and have that run on handsets globally from at least four manufacturers. SDK, documentation, sample code, forums and tech support will be free.

Interesting times ahead ...

All too easy

For all you geeks out there who like to bust a move ...

Because one dancing Stormtrooper wasn't enough, here is the final dance-off of the Star Wars stars from Disney's Star Wars Celebration 2008. Watch the whole thing or, if you're impatinet, skip ahead to 3:14. Words fail me.

iPhone Parody Video

Via Debashish Paul ... pretty funny

New FL 3.0 Devices Released

Nokia have just released the new E66 and E71 device specifications, which include Flash Lite 3 (UPDATED: S60 3rd Edition FP1, so most likely standalone player, screensaver and browser).

The E71 in particular is looking pretty slick, coming in at only 10mm thick.

webDU photos and trading cards

Andrew Muller has posted some great pics from webDU this year, including shots of each of the trading cards in the playing deck of the experimental social game that took the conference by storm :)

As was the case with many of the conference delegates, Andrew found it hard to trade his cards away, and even went to the extent of getting each of them signed by the person they represented.

By the way, for some reason in a moment of weakness I traded my Julie Steadman to Adam Lehman so if you happen to have a spare Julie in your post-conference stuff, I'd be happy to trade you a Tim Buntel, Greg Rewis, Kai Konig, Geoff Bowers or even a rare Dale Rankine :) Email or Twitter me!

webDU 2008 Wrap Up

Well, webDU has come and gone for another year, but I have a feeling that this year was different. I knew that numbers seemed to be up on previous years from discussion I had been having with Geoff and the Daemon team. These guys are first class event organisers, not to mention first class people, and I very much appreciate the work they do each year to run webDU. It just seemed to me that the number and enthusiasim of delegates, the quality of the sessions, and the overall vibe of the conference was on a higher level to previous years. It was great to be around - motivating, inspiring, and a lot of fun.

The content
As per ususal the main technologies were covered - Flash, Flex, AIR, Colf Fusion, Mobile, CSS, AJAX, JavaScript, 3D. I managed to see both keynotes (a rarity for Day 2 since the evening activities of Day 1 normally wipe out a lot of us for an early start the next day!) and both were great. Mike Downey and Greg Rewis had their schtick down pat for showing off AIR and some new features of Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks CS4. Tim Buntel on Day 2 had a great session on the next top 5 trends we'll see in web, and although remaining sceptical over timing (as we all have been really Tim), he did outline Mobile (Flash Lite, AIR Mobile) as a big trend to watch for in the coming years.


Some other sessions I attended was Mobile Web 2.0 with Gary Chan from Forum Nokia (talking on WRT and the opportunities for web developers on Nokia), Michael Wise and his crazy box of fun (hooking up Flash to Wii remotes, multi-touch surfaces, RFID and GPS), and Brian Chau on ActionScript 3.

Mobile
From a mobile point of view, I think we did ok (as well as Gary, I spoke on FLV and Flash Lite 3) for a web conference. This was my 5th webDU, and 4th as a speaker, and every year I speak on Flash Lite. I have a feeling that next year I will have some better opportunities to speak about, but for the main, I felt that we covered the mobile aspect pretty well considering that most people come to webDU for Flex, AIR, CF and Flash. There may be some photos circulating soon that show the extent that I went to in order to draw a crowd to my session - and that's all I'll say right now.

A shout out to Gary, Ung-Ping, Hawa, and the other nice lady on the Forum Nokia stand whose name embaressingly evades me at this moment (!) to say thank you for getting involved with webDU the way you did.

The fun
The "event" this year was a little bit more relaxed than the banquets of previous years. This year, we had the total run of a bowling/bar/laser tag/karaoke entertainment centre for the night. I will say that while my bowling score was pretty average, it was enough to snatch victory for me on the final frame :) A word of warning - playing laser tag with Darren Tracey and Mark Mandel can be hazardous to your health, if you are on the opposing team. The trading card game was a massive success and I look forward to seeing the concept trademarked, patented and rolled out for large licensing royalties at other "big technology conferences" by Kai and Minty ;) Well done boys.



We have the speaker party on tonight which always proves to be a lot of fun and a great time to hang out and get to talk with some really clever people in a very relaxed setting. I won't ever forget Mike Downey doing Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen at the karaoke machine one year, or watching Ted Patrick kick everyone's butt on Wii Tennis. Ahh, these are the memories :)

So for all of you who have always heard about webDU but have never made it, it's getting better every year so make sure that 2009 is the year you finally come to one of the best conferences in the world.

UPDATE: Just reading through my Google Reader this morning and found Alessandro has already spotted some of my webDU antics via Flashmagazine.

Adobe Online Creative Festival

A new concept in events has been launched today by the Adobe Pacific team - The Adobe Online Creative Festival is now open for registrations.



Taking place on July 1st, 2008 customers will be able to attend a virtual creative festival. Take a look at the box office - Sam and the team at Cyberbia have created a rich user experience for those registering, which really has set the bar for the event itself. So what will happen on July 1st in our virtual field of fun (from 11am - 4pm AEST) ...

• There will be two live stream, one Adobe presenters, one Adobe customer
• Pre recorded tips and tricks
• Gallery where customers can post their work
• Chat area where you can speak with the presenters
• Concessions stand with great buys, offers and free festival stuff
  

I'll be presenting an Adobe Live session at 11.45am called "Giving Your Mobile Real Personality".

All this creative chaos and no mud in sight! Visit www.adobeonlinefestival.com to register and for all the infomation you need.

Take a look, tell your customers about it - Get into the festival spirit - roam, chat, share and learn - all from the convenience of your own desk.

Where did that week go?

As is the way with these things, you always plan to blog more often than you actually do! I'm back home in Brisbane now after a whirlwind trip to Barcelona, and still trying to shake the remaining jet lag. The S60 Summit was a great time and very worthwhile from many points of view.

Some of the highlights included:

• Meeting other developers like the guys from Kuneri, FieldSystem, MSCorp and Mark Caunter
  
• Chatting with Mark and Matt from Adobe and getting to meet a bunch of Forum Nokia guys from Asia, Europe and America.
  
• Thinking of ways to dispose of the S60 remote control car (it was right next to the Moket stand and I had to listen this thing for 2 days solid!)
• Virtual grafiti on a vintage Volvo - powered by Flash
• Demo'ing Moket products to a bunch of people who didn't know much about Flash on mobile devices.
• Getting lost on the Metro and trying to communicate with a ticket office guy who didn't speak English.
  

I've got a bunch of people to follow up now that I'm back, and hopefully some of these new contacts will result in some new Flash Lite business for Moket in the coming months.

Next on the agenda is preparing for webDU next week! The fun never stops :)

Hola from S60 Summit

Well that's not completely true .. the conference starts properly tomorrow but I'm here in Barcelona getting ready. I love travelling to new places and getting my expectations of what it will be like completely thrown out the window! Very different to what I imagined, but it's a great city. Did the quick tour of the city yesterday (photos here) and was blown away by the Gaudi buildings - he was a genuis to be sure to have been able to design such weird and wonderful architecture.

Anyway, I'll have more to report on work stuff tomorrow. This afternoon I'm doing a video interview with Nokia (along with the other developers here) about the applications and products we make, and then the fun begins with a Forum Nokia dinner tonight.

Nokia Web Kit Rewards

Right now if you sign up on the Forum Nokia APAC site, you can also enter the Forum Nokia Developer Program Promotion!

• 1st Prize - N95 8GB
• 2nd Prize - Nokia 6110
• 3rd Prize - Nokia 5610

Click here to find out more information.

See Nokia Web Run-Time at webDU 2008

As part of the always-awesome webDU conference this year, I'm very pleased to see Nokia not just sponsoring the event (which is great on its own), but also presenting on their WRT (Web Run-Time) technology. WRT can of course contain Flash Lite content, becasue essentially is a browser-based experience, and Flash Lite has long been able to be viewed through the S60 browser. But WRT is ultimately based on HTML, Javascript and CSS to create installable widgets for the S60 platform.

Gary Chan from Nokia will be presenting "Beyond Browsing - Web 2.0 goes Mobile" and showing web developers the opportunities to extend their reach into mobile widgets on the WRT platform by using their existing skills.

And as part of my session ("The Not-so Ancient Art of Mobile Flash Video") I might even get time to show the Flash Lite 3.0 video app we build incorporate into a WRT widget.

Moket at S60 Summit, Barcelona

I'll be travelling this weekend to Barcelona where I'll be attending the S60 Summit next week, along with many other mobile industry players. I'll be going to demonstrate some of Moket's Flash Lite applications on the Nokia stand in the expo pavilion. If you're at the Summit then please drop by to say hello! I know Ugur and the guys from Kuneri will also be there showcasing their products.

It's my first time in Barcelona (and Spain) and I'm really looking forward to it. Will be blogging more info and pics, so stay tuned!

Moket games on Mobile Hotdog

Moket have launched a new partnership with Mobile Hotdog (based out of Asia) with a couple of games being made available on their website - Eat Them Alive and Jon Burgerman's Sausage Smackdown. Both games are available on a (limited) free trial basis before you can purchase the game.

If you are interested in the Moket Content Network evaluating and potentially distributing your own games through this channel, please let me know.

New Flash Lite 3,0 Devices

The new Nokia 6600 slide , 6600 fold, and the 3600 slide Flash Lite 3.0 devices are up on Forum Nokia devices page. For those of you who haven't been there before, it's a great part of the FN site for checking on device specifications. I actually subscribe to the RSS feed so that new devices come into Google Reader when they hit the site (my tip of the week ;)

These are all a lot sexier than the original Nokia 6600 (one of the first colour screen phones I owned!).

In the wake of recent annoucements regarding an approach to fixing certain issues with Flash Lite 3.0 (see last post), it seems that the sooner it happens then better, with new devices rolling out now with more frequency.

Fixing Flash Lite 3

Didn't know it was broken? Well, depends on who you talk to I guess. Even back when FL 3 was in beta, there were discussions flying around to do with the new security model that Flash Lite was "inheriting" from Flash Player 8, and that essentially we would find that backwards compatibility for many FL apps would be broken. For a recently posted developer's perspective, read Ugur's post here.

The MaD team have always been listening and through Bill have announced that there are some fixes coming along shortly. Aaprt from potentially fixing the issue Flash Lite developers have had with Flash Lite 3, it demonstrates Adobe's ability to change as a result of the combined community voice. It takes a lot to change, especially in the mobile world where the device vendors control such a large part of the ecosystem, so this is not an insignificant announcement. Thanks Adobe and MaD team.

Sony Ericsson Adds Flash Support to Mobile Java

Via Vivek, a very interesting development on the Flash Lite front from Sony Ericsson.

Sony Ericsson today announced at its Developer World conference plans for a new technology that bridges Adobe Flash Lite and Java ME development platforms.

The technology, called Project Capuchin, allows Java ME applications to use Flash Lite as the front-end interface for mobile phone applications.

More importantly, it builds a connection between the phone's applications and Flash, something that the few phones able to run Flash don't do. Flash is just a display layer, not actually interactive with the phone.

So there's light at the end of the tunnel for those of us waiting for a solution to make Flash Lite apps on Sony Ericsson handsets a reailty. What I founf most interesting though was this comment:

David said the technology could "very likely" grow into an open source project so it is not limited to just Sony Ericsson phones.

Could this also solve the problem we have with packaging for Series 40? Time will tell, but announcements like these help me to believe that Flash Lite is maturing as a platform and mobile technology, and that things are (slowly) improving in the market.

Talk to the Flash Lite Guru on Forum Nokia

I have officially been elevated to "guru" status by Forum Nokia for their upcoming "Talk to the Guru" online discussion on Flash Lite.

Following on from my involvement with the Flash Lite Code Camps this month, I'll be on the Forum Nokia Flash Lite discussion forum on April 22nd at 3pm (Brisbane/+10 GMT) to talk all things Flash Lite, and probably with a particular focus on Nokia devices.

No hecklers thanks - you know who you are!

Polar Cap Blues available now on Smashing Games

Moket's Polar Cap Blues is now available on Smashing Games (available in North America on Verizon Wireless) and is currently in the Spotlight section.

If you're on Verizon Wireless, follow these steps:

• Select "Get it Now" on your Verizon Wireless "Get it Now" enabled handset
• Select Get Fun and Games
• Select Get New
• Select Select Verizon Exclusives
• Select Smashing Games
• Polar Cap Blues can be found in Spotlight, New and Arcade.

While you're there, why not also download Cipher or Dizzy Zub Zub, and do your bit to keeping Moket game developers paying the rent :)

Moket featured on Forum Nokia and Games out on Nokia Download! Platform

All the attention that Nokia has been giving to Flash Lite lately has been great and has put the spotlight on many developers around the world. The plan was for WRT and Flash Lite to be a major focus for Nokia platforms in the first half of 2008, and they have certainly been following through those plans very well.

Ugur and the Kuneri guys have been written up already, and now it's Moket's turn in the Media and Games section with a great article on how our Flash Lite products have been supported by Nokia devices.

In the article, I mention an exciting new channel for Moket content that is launching in April - Moket games (and any that we can get through from the Moket Content Network) will be available through the "Try For Free" catalogue on the Nokia Download! client for S60 devices. We will be visible in APAC (including India) and Europe in the coming weeks, launching with 5 titles from our catalogue - Dizzy Zub Zub, Cipher, Polar Cap Blues, Jon Burgerman's Sausage Smackdown, and GRORBS.

Once they are live we'll make another announcement, but we're stoked that we have been able to secure this sales channel for Flash Lite games.

Adobe Mobile Gallery launches

Adobe launched their new Adobe Mobile Gallery today - a nice RIA for demonstrating the depth of Flash Lite products being produced around the world. We're pleased to have a number of Moket products in there, including our GoPets animations, the first Dojo Monkey game, and also our MoCarbon wallpapers. I'm also pleased to see many contributors to the Moket Content Network repesented in the gallery.

Free Nokia phone on cover of teen magazine

Via AllAboutSymbian: Fancy an old (pink) Nokia 6630 for free? Just buy a copy of GirlTalk magazine and you get one stuck to the front cover! You even get some stick-on jewels to give it some bling! Now when Flash Lite enabled handsets start making it to this kind of saturation I'll be happy :)

Flash Lite Developers Toolkit on Forum Nokia

Faisal, Forum Nokia Champion and Lead App Developer over at Orison Technologies (home of SWF2GO) has added a Flash Lite Developers Toolkit to the Forum Nokia FL Wiki.

In this initial release of the toolkit, the following components are available:

• FPS-Meter v3 - Displays FPS (Frames Per Second) of last 10 frames.

• Mem-Meter v1 - Displays available free memory to Flash Lite application.

• Battery Meter v1 - Shows current battery level of mobile device.

• Signal Meter v1 - Shows current signal stregnth of mobile network.

The installation package will install two separate libraries. One for Flash Lite 1.x and another for Flash Lite 2.x & 3.x.

If you're new to Flash Lite development then this is a great resources to get you started working with these aspects of the device in relation to your content/applcication.