Archive for November, 2009
Distributable Player Beta ends
Posted by Mark Doherty in Distributable Player Solution, Flash Lite on November 17, 2009
As many of you heard in my recent e-seminar we have decided to stop work on the Distributable Player beta.
We didn’t take this decision lightly, and as many of you know this product has been my focus for a long time, so I’m a little sad to see it go. However in light of our new strategic direction here at Adobe, it is time to focus all of our attention on the goals of Open Screen Project, specifically with Flash Player 10.1.
The goals of the product were to:
- Enable the distribution of Flash Lite 3.1
- To open up opportunities for application distribution on S60/WM devices
- Provide a consistent platform for development as we work on Flash Player 10.1 and AIR
The solution was a success in many ways, we have had 135,000 downloads of the Mobile Packager to date. We learned a huge amount in building a complex tool and provided a footing for many of you to create mobile applications for the first time. My personal measure of success was that tens of thousands of developers and designers who were able to target mobile platforms for the first time, not to mention the great applications that were created.
Admittedly in some ways the product didn’t quite hit the mark, and we learned a lot from that. In fact the reasons that led us to create the Distributable Player now play a core part of the plan with our Open Screen Project partners. We are each playing a part to drive consistency, establish update mechanisms and enable wide distribution. Nokia has already established an OTA update mechanism for the Flash runtime, which is a great example of their commitment to the community.
Finally, some of you have asked for some guidance on applications that you had planned to launch. As you would expect we don’t intend to simply shut down the delivery mechanisms, so don’t panic.
What will happen to the product now:
- The server solution for device detection and player downloads will remain in place for 1 year (active until November 30, 2011).
- The Mobile Packager tool will be removed from Adobe Labs
- Our Labs pages and discussion Forum will be removed
- I will of course be working with some of you to enable your upcoming launches as planned
What Next?
Over the summer I have been learning all about Actionscript 3, creating my first AIR application with Flash Builder. My first application was to create a desktop interface for SWFPack.com , and a Mobile phone projector based on demofone.com for my presentations.
Additionally in the past few weeks I have also began work on my first iPhone application built with Flash Professional CS5. It’s an application that I hope we can all contribute to in time with video tutorials called “Flash Training for devices”. The first set of videos will come from Dale’s fantastic video series over on vimeo.com/adobeflashlite .
As we move through the quiet holiday period I would suggest investing in some AS3 books and training, or catching up on the Flash Player 10, Flex and AIR content available at tv.adobe.com . Investing your time now is a great way to ensure that you’re not left behind.
My best advice is the same that I follow myself:
- Set yourself achievable goals for learning this new language
- Create a sample project, one that you can get excited about and share
- Keep communicating your thoughts and experiences, we can all learn together
Here are some sneaks from my sample app to get you warmed up:
Adobe and RIM to simplify the delivery of rich content and applications
Posted by Mark Doherty in Conference, Devices, Flash Player, Industry News on November 9, 2009
Today our Open Screen Project partner RIM kicked off their annual Blackberry Developer Conference in San Francisco. This year we’re seeing a central theme from the conference and that’s Blackberry as a web platform, and announced more details around the support that you can expect for the Blackberry platform within the upcoming tools in Creative Suite 5.
This year Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen was there to talk about our upcoming support in Creative Suite 5 for the Blackberry platform. This builds on the vision for our joint collaboration in the Open Screen Project and the work we’re doing to get Flash Player 10.1 running in the Blackberry browser.
Today RIM & Adobe also announced that we’ll be optimizing Adobe AIR and the Flex Mobile Framework for the Blackberry platform , making RIM the first OEM to announce support for Adobe AIR and Flex Mobile.
From developers the most obvious integration point will be in Adobe Device Central CS5, which enables the easy development and testing of content for Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects and Fireworks CS5. These new tools aim to enable the production of content for use in Blackberry’s Java Plug-in for Eclipse, BlackBerryWidgets, and the BlackBerry Theme Studio tools. In fact the new Theme Studio supports Flash and Photoshop files through its handy import mechanism, so you can easily create themes alongside SVG support in Illustrator.
Additionally, for consumers we’re also going to enable use of our Photoshop Elements and Photoshop.com products for sharing and editing videos and photos taken on Blackberry phones.
(The BlackBerry Bold runs a 624Mhz Marvell CPU)
So let’s have a look at Blackberry in more detail to give us an idea of where the opportunities are. Recently we’ve seen the launch of Blackberry App World back in April, the addition of a new Widgets SDK, the Blackberry Theme Studio tools and of course the continued work on their Java platform for applications. These strides toward a more open web platform have enabled users to access rich Internet content like never before, and as you’ll see below; they love content.
From an addressable market view, Blackberry devices are sold in vast numbers in the US market. So let’s look at some key stats from Comscore on their behavior there, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised:
- 14.2m devices
- 50/50 male and female audience
- 25-34 age range
- 43% earn over $100k
- 64.7% of RIM users are browsing the Web
- More than half a million are using dating services
- 15% are interested in Tech news
- 20% are accessing Maps (they travel more than most users)
- 14% are downloading games (triple the norm!), with card, casino and arcade prevalence
- 20% have changed their theme or wallpapers, 3x higher than normal
- 1/4 are using online media storage / facebook etc
So on average a Blackberry user earns, spends, travels and browses the Internet about 3x more than users of other platforms. This makes them a high value target in your development of applications and services, and important customers for niche and business oriented content. With the Blackberry App World growing steadily (200,000 developers) in partnership with Verizon I can see a clear opportunity there with their joint customers, and one really nice feature is the $2.99 minimum price for a paid application!
You can watch the Keynote recording here, and yes it’s done with Silverlight for some reason 
Why not drop on over to www.adobe.com/go/blackberry to learn more and see some videos previewing the upcoming tooling integration announced today.
Creating Graphics Optimized for BlackBerry in Adobe Creative Suite
Further to the announcement of the alliance between Research In Motion and Adobe, this video illustrates the creation of graphical assets optimized for BlackBerry smartphones using Adobe Creative Suite. (6:17)
Building BlackBerry Widgets Using Adobe Dreamweaver
Further to the announcement of the alliance between Research In Motion and Adobe, this video illustrates the creation of a BlackBerry Widget using Adobe Dreamweaver, the industry-leading web content authoring tool. (2:38)
MAX Award winners QNX: Video
Posted by Mark Doherty in on November 6, 2009
I spotted this today on engadgetmobile.com, featuring the guys from QNX, Alcatel Lucent and Eric Snowden from Atlantic Records.
The LTE Connected Car is a platform for in-car entertainment, navigation, management and services. At MAX 2009 QNX won the mobile and devices award because of their excellence in working with the Flash Platform. Working with the geniuses at Alcatel Lucent QNX have enabled LTE connectivity (read: 4G) into the car to prep for a future of wireless networking at 100x the bandwith of 3G (100Mbps in theory).
It is by definition “mobile” but at the same time it’s much more, the platform interface is based on Flash Lite 3.1 running on the RTOS QNX platform with all manner of extensions for GPS, Bluetooth, video playback and even integration into the dashboard. I even spotted Chumby and Kabillion content built-in and QNX are looking for partners here.
Features:
* on-demand movies, streamed or downloaded
* access to personally recorded TV programs via cloud storage
* in-vehicle Internet radio and on-demand music stores
* multi-player online gaming
* social networking
* dynamically updateable navigation and location-based services
* GPS augmented by Google Maps’ point-of-interest indicators
Although no-one was brave enough to create the actual dashboard in Flash for safety reasons
Check out the video, and the extremely chirpy and fantastically named QNX CEO Dan Dodge.