Pocket Flash

Here’s one for you, if the iPhone syncs perfectly with you Mail account what’s going to happen when the new version of Mail arrives tomorrow with it’s new features, to-do and stickies/messages? Will the iPhone be getting a massive update? Is this the reason for the recent third party application wipeout update? who knows. Also I’m not sure how new this is, but there’s a lot of new iPhone related content on the Apple developers website.

I came across this service this morning, they’re in the news as they’ve just pulled an iPhone apart and installed in on their servers. Device Anywhere offer “Remote Access To Real Handsets In Live Networks” and even offer a 3 hour free trial (if only I had three hours spare. It’s a bit pricey for the average Joe developer, but I think it’s a really good idea especially if you used this alongside Adobe Device Central.

Look what I got in the post just before the weekend, an alpha prototype Chumby yay. After a weekend of playing around my head is spinning with ideas for widgets. Unfortunately half of which have already been developed, I think I’ll stick with the magic 8 ball idea first and make use of the motion sensors you can access via flash.

I’ve also had it in my mind to upload my 20Gb music collection and write an Air app that plays my music over the air (no pun intended) I’ve just had BE broadband pro installed so I have a 24mb line so speed shouldn’t be an issue. I can then also access my music from home too, without having to carry back and fourth. So what’s stopping my writing a Chumby widget that does the same? Well, time for one, but in theory there’s not a lot else. It would only be about 20-30 lines of PHP to spider the folder structure and write it into XML then you could have all the fun you like with a nice little UI. Unfortunately I have no idea how to rip get the album art from Amazon or even from iTunes, but the fact coverflow did it independently, before it was swallowed by Apple means it’s possibly right?

I’ve just nicked this straight from Alessandro (Biskero.org) though I’ve been on the Chumby site a bit over the past week or so.

Chumby’s now on sale $179.00

Available in three colours, Latte, Black and Pearl, this little-widget-running-wireless device is the first device to ship with Flash Lite 3.0. One of the things I love about this device is that it’s completely open to developers, from all angles

This is quite exciting news from the Herald Tribune, just as the iPhone is set to hit UK shelves on November 9th, just two weeks after the Release of the new OS X ‘Leopard’  (Oct 26th) personally I want one, even though there’s a long list of reasons why I shouldn’t (mainly no 3G and a poor camera resolution.) BUT the ability to either run OR develop third party apps would open up countless possibilities.

Personally I envisage iPhone developer tools to be something along the lines of Dashcode which “is everything you need to create great Dashboard widgets.” approach from Apple, as this about turn on third party apps seems to be forced on them rather than a strategy from the start. I can see them offering a low level Widget develpment path, rather than hardcore application development, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Okay I’ve banged on about this enough, it’s time for a show of hands.

Q1, If a service were available that would take your Flash Lite content (including a menu icon bitmap/vector) and return to you a fully tested Symbian Signed .sis file, would you be:

1. Very interested in this service, please contact me now
2. Interested in this service
3. Not interested
4. Are you mental, I can self-sign

Q2, Would you expect to pay

1. £10 - £50
2. £50- £100
3. £100 - £200
4. More than £200

Q3, If this service were available to you, which S60 edition would you most likely require:

1. 1st edition
2. 2nd edition
3. 3rd edition
4. 2nd and 3rd editions
5. All of the above

Q4, If a service were available that would deliver to you, a keyword and shortcode for example “TEXT ‘pocketflash’ to 60999″ which would then deliver your content Over-The-Air, would you be:

1. Very interested in this service, please contact me now
2. Interested in this service
3. More interested in this service if it could detect whether the end user had a version of Flash Lite
4. Not interested

I really should have posted this when I first watched it, but here you are a video taken from the Adobe Max conference, showing some new features for the new player. Notably there’s now a Z rotation property for sprites.

Check out this webinar of Director 11. One thing that really caught my attention was the “Aggressive Educational pricing” it looks like they are giving it away at $99, it’s almost worth signing up for a night class to get it for that price.

Apple’s new os will ship on the 26th October for just 85 bones (sterling) or 129 bucks in the US, with the eagerly awaited ‘Time Machine’ which will allow you to go back in time to rescue previous versions of files and folders on your mac (which could easily become the lazy man’s version control)

There’s been a lot of new technologies well blogged about on Adobe labs this week, as with every annual MAX week. However I haven’t seen this one on the blogasphere and it seems to have massive potential.

“‘Thermo’ is an upcoming Adobe product that makes it easy for designers to create rich Internet application UIs. Thermo allows designers to build on familiar workflows to visually create working applications that easily flow into production and development.”

This seems a leap and a bound from the Flex Component kit for Flash CS3, which allows Flash CS3 users to develop Flex components directly from Flash IDE.

Adobe Thermo