Pocket Flash

Did you know that you can have 3d planes floating around your screen?

Late last night I was playing around with the AIR - settings and changed ‘Window style’ to ‘Custom Chrome (transparent)’ and created my air app. My AIR app loads in images and slides them along the screen on a 3D Plane, here’s the results.

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

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.

I am now available on a freelance basis, for anyone needing a hand with their Flash Lite projects. I’ve got nearly three years experience with Flash Lite 1.1 and a fair bit of experience with 2.0 too. And I’m sure I’ll also be posting about 3.0, as soon as it’s in the public domain for us to get our hands on.

I know from being on the other side, what a nightmare it can be trying to find decent Flash Lite freelancers, so I thought I’d write this post and big myself up a bit.

There’s a couple of projects here:

http://www.pocketmarketing.net/demo/

Youtube video of Google’s CEO Eric Schindt schwiped straight from abduzeedo, check it here.

I think if Adobe can nail a realistic distribution model for Flash Lite apps that would enable developers to get content out there, then Flash developers (and by that I mean Flash, Flash Lite, Flex and AIR) can really define “web 3.0″ apps in the way Eric mentions in this video. I’ve always thought that Ruby on Rails and Flash (of any sort) make absolutely beautiful partnership for developing RIAs as Rails offers a low entry for such a powerful set of technologies.

On another, note Flash has always been synonymous with viral marketing and as I truly believe, Flash Lite one day find itself hand in hand with mobile and therefore viral marketing.

I’ve been playing around with WiiFlash and Papervision 3D for a little while, partly because they’re the coolest projects I’ve seen in quite a while, and partly as I may be able to squeeze both of them simultaneously into a very interesting project.

Papervision 3D now has a couple of components for Flash CS3 which make life a little easier, the API is written beautifully enough to be able to render things like this controllable X-wing with just a few lines of code. The integration of the WiiFlash API with Papervision 3D is a match made in heaven. The access to more obvious properties and methods like pitch, roll and rotation allows you to get a 3D object onto your screen in no time, but it’s the depth of the engine behind it all that really interests me. The more I play with the two technologies the more I want to see how far I can push them together and develop something truly interactive.

It’s no secret that I love multi-touch technology, it’s one of the few things I like about the iPhone. After playing with WiiFlash and Papervision 3D for a little while, it dawned on me that I could create a variant of a multi-touch system using multiple wiimotes. I could include gestural movements to perform commands similar to those in Microsofts’ Surface but have the ability to create 3D interactive environments that map your every movement rather than just tapping on a flat 2D (so to speak) screen.

I’ve been asked by the BBC to create a slideshow application for their 14 foot ‘Big Screens’, which is where my thoughts where when I came up with some of these ideas. Multi-touch is great, but it’s limited by size and by your own reach. How great would it be to stand in front of a 14 x 9 foot screen waving two wiimotes around, controlling all manner of interactive applications. Hopefully I’ll be able to let you know one day, for now here’s my first attempt at controlling a 3D X-wiing spining around at the flick of a wrist.

Well there goes my plans for today, get Apollo here now.

There are also a few sample Apollo applications that can be downloaded from Adobe Labs too.

Renaun Erickson has posted the keynotes from ApolloCamp

This pretty much sums up what I’ve been thinking since I watched Christopher Brichford’s Apollo presentation

“But the idea is that Apollo builds on tools and technology that is already out there and move it further into Desktop RIA and phones (Apollo, Flash list).
Interesting note about reasons for choosing WebKit as the HTML engine. It was small, had a mobile version, Nokia has ported it”

Surely it’s only a matter of time before we get to develop Apollo mobile apps?