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.