Still in Berkeley and leaving in few hours for Boston. Feels like I am closing the doors and looking at the weather outside and seeing the temperture that is expecting me in Boston, I am wondering !!
This past week was great! I met again great friends from all around the world, some from other planets, and made new ones. Put faces to emails, blogs and mobile content!!
As other speakers noted the sessions dedicated to Flash Lite were very well attended. There were very few Flash Lite developers/designers (we count it 1 or 2 per session), 2 or 3 mobile developers and the rest coming from web/design world. Which is good and at the same time they will need a lot of “mobile education” !! If you are one of those people without mobile experience I would suggest you to do the Flash Lite training.
From Adobe Mobile side we got several great news:
- Flash Lite distributable player: “The Flash Lite 3.1 Distributable Player is the first runtime provided by Adobe to developers for over-the-air distribution together with applications. Flash Lite 3.1 has the same functionalities as Flash Lite 3.0, such as support for Flash Player compatible video, with some enhancements including improved security model for SWF file access.”
- Adobe Mobile Packager: “The Adobe Mobile Packager is a desktop application to combine SWFs, a player version checker, an icon, and metadata into one installable file for user-friendly discovery on S60 and Windows Mobile devices. The resulting output file is recognizable by Symbian (.SIS) and Windows Mobile (.CAB) operating systems.”
- Adobe AppZone: “Adobe AppZone is the on-device catalog where consumers can discover Flash Lite applications from a Featured Application category and from aggregator partners, such as Thumbplay and Zed. Consumers can browse and launch downloaded Flash Lite apps in a visual and user-friendly way.”
You get started by:
Mobile content distribution options: “The distributable player solution provides new distribution opportunities, including direct-to-consumer and off-deck (or off-portal) options through aggregators for both free and paid content. Expose your application through Adobe AppZone and benefit from the marketing reach and billing services provided by new off-deck aggregator partners such as Thumbplay and Zed.”
I got to speak to Philippe from Zed and they are working hard to create a valuable content distribution opportunity for Flash Lite developers.
For developers and designer there are a couple of updates for Adobe CS4 that you need to download:
The distributable player (OTA) download) will be available for a number of handsets in 3 countries, US, Spain and Italy. This make sense since now Adobe needs to certify the Flash Lite player for each device and each country. Also the decision is based on the content aggregators pick and the number of people using these devices for accessing the internet with their mobile phones. A very important point here, people will need a data plan to be able to download the player so the decisions that Adobe made are based on several factors. They will roll out more devices in more countries after the initial launch. So be patient !!
Note: the OTA Flash Lite player will be installed in parallel to an existing one (if there is one) and will not replace it.
Also I got to follow most of the sessions on mobile and listen Nokia and Sony Ericsson showcasing their services API to access the sensors, GPS, contacts, calendar and so on from their phones. This looks a promising capability for Flash Lite developer for high end phone development.
The Mobile Summit was great event with presentations from Adobe, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Verizon, Thumbplay, Zed. We had the opportunity to see what they are working on and listen for content distribution opportunity by the 2 content aggregators.
But the blast for the Flash Lite community was the Mobile Networking Event. We had the opportunity to present our projects (12 in total) in front of many people at a bar with free drinks (so imagine the noise!!). A big thank goes to Suzanne from Adobe for organizing the event, it was the best event for the Flash Lite community ever !! Check the pictures here.
Guess who got the sign? !!
Adobe MAX Awards in the Mobile category went to Design Assembly.
On other fronts there were also other announcements for mobile, Flash 10 running in the browser on 3 different platforms. Google working with Adobe to get Flash on their Android handsets, hopefully is not only the browser. Nitro is another project based on Air mobile and connect it to back-end services.
Alessandro
PS. make sure you plan to attend next Adobe MAX 2009 in Los Angeles !!
PSS. I got two Sony Ericsson C905 which are Project Caphucin enabled.
PSSS. Last but not least we have an eSeminar tomorrow on Device Central CS4.
Great Post! Adobe App Store…. uh-oh