Pocket Flash

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.

WURFL integrates Flash Lite capabilities, taken from Biskero.org

“So… What is WURFL?
The WURFL is an XML configuration file which contains information about capabilities and features of many mobile devices.” WURFL

From £799 to £1,450 with memory up to 4GB and a hard drive up to 1TB, it’s going to be easier to justify than the 8-core 3.0GHz G5 Mac Pro I’ve been hankering after. And at least half the price.

Seven months ago I got really excited about the iPhone, I still am just not as much. I watched the keynotes and and like most of us drooled over the idea of a phone that might actually work the way you would imagine it to. However I did notice something that put me off, even then, no Flash plugin icon. At the time I guessed as much as Mr Jobs seemed to dodge the question when asked directly stating that youtube would be available. Well a lot of time has passed, enough time to re-encode the whole of youtube to Quicktime anyway. And enough time for Adobes‘ Bill Perry to stand in a 12 hour line for his very own iPhone, before finding out the hard way that there’s no support for Flash.

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.

We’ve all had mobiles for a few years now, even my mum in her 50’s sends me regular text messages. We know where the letter ‘g’ or ‘k’ is going to be without looking. So how on earth did this happen? Who thought it would be a good idea to completely throw out the standard alphanumeric keypad layout that’s been used on mobile phones for over two decades and replace it with this. I actually really liked the phone, I found the touchscreen a bit quirky, but very responsive and more importantly accurate. It’s a shame that LG spent so long getting the touchscreen technology right, only to make finding someone in your contacts list such an absolute nightmare that you go back to your old phone and sell it on eBay.

Sir Alan Sugar has sold Amstrad to BSKYB today for £125 million, personally netting a cool £35m for his 27.9% of the companies shares. Before the deal, 75% of Amstrads’ revenue came from making set-top-boxes for BSkyB.

This in the same week as Sony announce a deal with BSKYB to deliver a video download service for the PSP which will be available to those in UK and Ireland. This is to be part of their multiplatform ‘Anytime‘ service, which allows Sky subscribers to watch shows on-demand, already available on 3G mobile phones in addition to PC’s and of course TV.

This must be a bit of a stick in the eye to BT who signed a four year deal with Sony this May to offer “video calls, voice calls and messaging” through the Sony PSP, as BT Vision competes directly with Sky and their tv-on-demand /anytime service. Surely BT must be pig sick having to watch this service go to Sky.

FUILauncher released for Windows Mobile

“You’ll need Windows Mobile 5.0 or 6, Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP1, and the Adobe Flash Lite 2.1 player to run FUILauncher.”

Take a look at the install instructions:

FUIServer.EXE - The http server .NET application that handles interfacing with the device
Launcher.SWF - The primary SWF file for the launcher
IconConfig.EXE - The icon configuration helper application
settings.xml - An XML configuration file that stores user settings, icon configuration, etc
WALLPAPER - A folder containing a number of .PNG wallpaper files
LAUNCHERICONS - A folder containing a number of 60×60 pixel .PNG icons for the launcher
license.txt - Just some legal stuff so other people can’t claim ownership of the app

Is it me or is there ever going to be a simple way to get Flash Lite apps onto phones, don’t get me started on .sis

Link from Macworld

And Already on the front page of Apple.com Coming in at £1,264.612 or $2,499.00 for a base model of two 2.0Ghz Dual-Core Intel, you’d have to add another £909.367 or $1797 for the two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon.

And that’s not too mention the additional 15gb of RAM you can now stick in the over-sized cheese grater, OR the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB, Stereo 3D (2 x dual-link DVI) and let’s face it, if you’re going all balls in why not add a few extra drives for when you really need those 3 terabytes of space.

You can now max out the configuration at a price of around £8,761.196 or $17,313.00 which is about the same as you’d pay for a half decent second hand car

I’ve been thinking about upgrading my G4 PowerBook to a G5, and now I’m dumbstruck as to idea of an 8 core beast. That thing could bend light.