Pocket Flash

Mike Chambers has posted his code from 360Flex to build a very simple WYSIWYG HTML editor, that shows the Apollo File and HTML API’s
Example Code for 360Flex Apollo Session

Christian Cantrells’ “Video : Apollo APIs Session from 360Flex” is available here
which shows lots of example apps and API’s in Apollo

If you are interested in any of those things, you MUST watch this video.

Does this mean I can now claim a Wiimote on my expenses?

I’m reaching fever pitch about Apollo,

Well the cat’s out of the bag about, ‘what’s in the box‘.

“On March 27, 2007, at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time, Adobe Systems will host a webcast of the official launch of Adobe® Creative Suite® 3, live from New York City. To participate, bookmark this page and join us back here on March 27. ”

At last the gap between Flash / Flash Lite developers and a professional .sis file has been bridged. Orison have just announce Swf2go, the all in one package that enables developers to create a .sis file from one application, including:

· Professional SIS Installer and SWF Launcher toolkit
· Supports versions 1.1, 2.0 and 2.1 of Adobe Flash Lite Player
· Supports Symbian S60 platform editions 1st, 2nd & 3rd
· Auto sign SIS installer with provided certificate
· Supports developer certificates
· Built-in Intelli-Launch Technology
o Automatically detects and starts SWF with the latest on-device Flash Lite player
o Shows an info-note with URL to download Flash Lite from adobe’s website, if Flash
Lite is not detected on user’s cellphone
o Allows to launch multiple Flash Lite applications simultaneously *
o Flicker free SWF launch
o Guaranteed launch with Flash Lite 1.1 (on S60 1st & 2nd Editions)
· Command-Line compiler support
· Supports build automation by XML project files
· Quick compile SWF2Go Project file with right-click context menu

Interestingly there is a place for a readme.txt file which could be substituted for a privacy statement required by symbian signing if you application uses and of the following features:

Bluetooth to connect to other Bluetooth-enabled devices
Sending SMS messages
Sending MMS messages
Making phone calls
Making a connection to the Internet
Allowing you to add or edit contacts
Reading existing information from your contacts database
Recording sounds using your phone’s microphone

Criteria CON-02 -
“Mode 1: Privacy Statement is displayed at the first ever launch of the application and after user confirmed the statement, it will not prompt again for subsequent runs.”

The app generates .sis for s60 1st 2nd and the all important 3rd edition, for Flash Lite 1.1, 2.0 and 2.1

Well that’s my guess anyway.

Why? here’s what happened today-

I read Alessandro Pace’s post about Device Central at Biskero.org and re-opened Device Central to do some mooching around (see screencast) I also noticed the welcome page has Flash, Illustrator and Photoshop icons to open new documents in each. When I clicked Flash I got this message.

A bit randomly I was looking at the new Adobe icons at John Nack’s site as I wanted to see the difference between the Flash and Flash Lite icons.

And finally I saw Richards post about Adobe’s viral marketing video ala youtube linked from this site ‘What’s in the box’

I my opinion the most likely six are listed below, judging by the colours on the side of the box in the video, and bit of common sense (I’ll miss you ‘freehand’, and ‘go live’…well I just never liked you)

- Photoshop
- Dreamweaver
- Illustrator
- In Design
- Fireworks
- Flash

I’m not 100% about fireworks, but as it’s a country mile better than image ready I reckon it’s likely to make it in their.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

A link to ‘Apollo for Adobe Flex Developers Pocket Guide’ was sent to me this morning, I started mooching through it and found a staggering amount of links to ‘page not found’. The one link that did work, lead me to Ryan Stewart’s article ‘Apollo public alpha coming in the next few weeks’. I’ve been looking forward to Apollo for a while as I’ve used mdm Zinc to create cross platform desktop apps from Flash for a few years, and although it’s fairly easy I can’t wait to see the Flash / Flex - Apollo workflow.

It’s official, Mobisite is being developed on Rails. In fact it’s being built on one of Media Temple’s shinny new Grid Containers

In short
Ruby on Rails Rocks
David Heinemeier Hansson is a legend in his own lifetime
(just don’t tell him I delevloped early parts of Mobisite in a live production environment… well you can’t pull a feed from a Rails app onto a mobile unless it’s on a server, I really had no choice)
Mobisite is mobile blogging, by mobile users, for mobile users.

“What is Flash Home and who is it for?
Flash Home is a solution for the creation, discovery, and delivery of rich, Flash based home screens across multiple devices. The solution benefits mobile operators and OEMs alike.
Sold as a white-label solution to mobile operators, Flash Home combines customizable home screens with live data services to provide subscribers with a personalized, engaging experience. Flash Home is easy to promote, discover, and use and provides operators with an opportunity to both extend their brand and generate new revenue opportunities.”

I always wondered how Adobe managed to receive incoming sms notification, and call logs when there is nothing in any of the Flash Lite 1.x and 2.x documents, shown in this MAX 2005 video (Day two mobile UI - Josh Ulm)

News from 3GSM is that Flash Lite 3.0 is on it’s merry way.

The main focus of the press release is video, with the .flv format in particular “delivered by the Adobe Flash Media Server”. You could speculate other potential opportunities, such as multiuser environments that would open up all kinds of intersting avenues for developers, though we’ll just have to wait and see.

Tomi T Ahonen does an amazing job on adding context to the shear volume of mobile phone users there are today. I’ve stripped out the list for those who fall asleep after reading more than ten words.

THE CAR AT 800 M
TELEPHONE 1.3 B
TV 1.5 B
CREDIT CARDS 1.4 B
PC 850 M
INTERNET 1.1 B
THE GOLIATH, MOBILE PHONES 2.7 B

For the Flash Lite developer, or anyone who has attempted to sell Flash Lite as a concept to any client, the crunch always comes when the client asks “so how many phones will this work on”. You see if you said 17, as it is today (or back in 2004 when it was 2 devices and only if they had T-mobiles newsExpress) then your client may loose interest fast, which has been the case on more than one occasion. But if you include that if they managed to get their content in front of just 1% of mobile phone users, then they would be looking at 27,000,000 units, then you can start to make some headway.

It’s this kind of information / ammunition that helps us educate clients about the position of Flash Lite content within the “mobile eco system”, so that they will be comfortable enough to allow you to take their brand / product onto mobile devices.