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!