There have been many highlights during my time at the mobile helm, most notably working with my close friend Bill Perry and the growing mobile developer community back in 2007, and of course the incredible Evangelist team led by Ben Forta for the past four years.

Throughout these years together we’ve managed to deliver incredible advances in the Mobile and Devices industry, shipping over a Billion devices with Flash Lite and ultimately bringing Flash Player and AIR to mobile and the Digital Home.  Those achievements, despite having their respective flaws, have enabled some of the most incredible successes ever seen in the mobile content industry.  So while we have seen various people scoff at the cancellation of Flash Player on mobile, at least we tried.

The great news is that Adobe AIR and Flex continue to be wonderful solutions for mobile developers.  It has been incredible to see their transformation into key technologies for the ecosystem and I look forward to seeing them grow in the future.

I’d like to thank you all for being such a great community and supporting my efforts around the world over the years.  I’m really excited to see what the future holds, maybe I’ll have even bigger hair!

Mark

Adobe MAX 2011 was one of the most amazing events yet, certainly a personal favourite of mine and very well received by the over 5000 attendees.  This year we changed the event “pitch” considerably, from what was a standard product launch and partner expose, to a more focused and customer solution focused vision.

Nowhere was this more clear than in our keynote sessions across the first two days.  I noticed on Twitter that many of you were confused about the change from the norm, “Why is Flash not mentioned every 10 seconds” etc.  There are good reasons, let’s distill the event a little.

Everyone at the event, and to some extent at home, saw one of the most incredible performances on stage on day one.  Arriving at the venue we were all presented with a concrete backdrop, no Adobe or MAX logos – nothing.  We began the show with a Violinist on stage, followed by two amazing dancers who evolved into the backdrop to become part of a stunning display of digital art, animation, lighting and music.  During their performance the stage deconstructed, much to the surprise of everyone, while the dancers appeared to reconnect with one another and ultimately the audience.

A couple of MAX attendees recorded this video of the keynote, “I knew that wall was fake!”.  Of course the wall was a total of five 300 feet tall screens that wrapped around the entire theater, the projectors pushing 300 million pixels per second, that’s why it looked so real. The eagle-eyed among you will note that the spotlights on the walls, and therefore the dancers shadows, were not real either.

So in short, if you feel that you were short-changed because we didn’t talk about Flex or Flash enough, then it’s quite likely that you didn’t realize that Fonts, Digital Publishing, Analytics and Measurement and Web standards are also key to the success of our customers and therefore Adobe.

I hope that goes some way to explaining things.

You can catch the full keynote here.

We discovered today that Steve Jobs, one of the most iconic characters in our industry died today.  This is a really sad event that has resonated across the world, on my own Facebook feed I notice that even those of my friends who aren’t “techies” still recognise him and what he stood for.

At Adobe we’re all very saddened to hear this terrible news.  Only yesterday we saw Tim Cook, Apple’s new CEO, deliver the next iPhone and continue the legacy that Steve started and under what we know now to be horrendous difficulty.  This evening Serge, Michael, Piotr and myself were talking about how difficult it would be to present that keynote knowing that their friend was that ill.  Our hats are off to them all.  Their launch of the iPhone 4s was as ever appropriate, “4Steve”.

Here is my favourite Steve Jobs performance.

With AIR 3 we have new feature called Native Extensions, so I asked one of our great Engineering team called Meet Shah to look at this problem and see if we could expose native UI components within an AIR application.  It turns out that Native Extensions don’t just give us the capability to access APIs like Notifications and Bluetooth, but to actually present native UI within our apps.

The goal is to finish the Native Extension for Android, iOS, Playbook and Desktop platforms and then release the code.  Meet decided to follow the current (deprecated) AS3 API for Flash so that your existing applications will continue to work ongoing, great idea!

Yesterday we pushed out the first Release Candidate of AIR3 and Flash Player 11, and with that, we’ve outed another new feature of AIR – Native Extensions.  This represents a further opening up of the Flash Platform in that you will finally be able to add new features to the runtime.

History of Native Extensions

The origin of Native Extensions actually goes back all the way to Flash Lite in 2005 and were in fact part of my first engineering project at Adobe.  Back then we had the idea to enable a man machine interface (MMI) to the Flash Lite runtime to enable complete device interfaces to be built in Flash, the Samsung D600/D900, LG Prada, LG Cookie etc were the result of that effort .

The feature later evolved to become part of an OEM runtime called Adobe Mobile Client which was integrated into the BREW MP Platform to enable low-end devices to be produced with advanced interfaces and at much lower cost.

More recently we started working on “StageCraft”, the code name for a project to bring AIR/Flash support to the TV ecosystem.  With the first iteration it was apparent that remote controls were all different, it would be impossible to create a completely consistent API for all of the various pieces of consumer electronics out there.  With that, Native Extensions were reborn and redesigned to enable OEMs to build these custom APIs with ease.

Which brings us to today’s announcement, the opening of the Native Extension feature for all to use.

What are Native Extensions for?

From a high level this feature enables you to:

• Achieve deeper integration with target devices
• Incorporate legacy native code in your applications
• Achieve maximum performance for critical code

As I see it, we built the Native Extension feature originally to enable access to platform or device specific features that don’t form part of the platform today.  Just to give you some context here, we always have debates about adding new features in the runtimes, many are community sourced, some OEM focused and some are internal like Flex etc.  Imagine what happens when the Acrobat, Photoshop and Runtime engineers are free to finish their pet projects

Here are some thoughts on deeper API possibilities for devices today:

• Notifications
• Gyroscope
• Bluetooth
• Advertising
• NFC / Payments
• USB Accessories
• Media FX/Encoding
• Text to Speech
• Contacts
• Calendar
• Alarms

Of course let’s not ignore the various possibilities that are now open for desktop developers that want to access provide new interfaces for legacy products.

The benefit is that now customers conversations shouldn’t end with “Can you support XX with AIR on XX platform?”, from this point on the answer will always be yes, assuming you have the technically capability to implement it, or can acquire the extension from someone who can.

Using a Native Extension

From Actionscript, the use of an already built Native Extension couldn’t be simpler.  In the example below you can see the first iteration of the Native Extension that I’ve been creating for Android Tablets with multiple displays.

            import flash.external.ExtensionContext;

            if(!extensionContext)
            {
                extensionContext = ExtensionContext.createExtensionContext("com.android.MultiDisplayInfo", "");
                return extensionContext.call("getInfo","getCount") as int; 
            }

Get Started

Today we’re announcing an exciting new Adobe AIR App Challenge for two upcoming Sony Tablet devices.  It’s available to those of you in Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, UK and USA.

There are lots of prizes ($200,000 USD) available for various categories of applications, as well as early access to the devices and Adobe AIR 3, and a paid-up trip to Adobe MAX for finalists.  All that and more for optimizing your applications for Sony’s new devices.

Let’s take a look at the devices..

Sony Tablet

Both tablets come with Sony quality design and hardware, most importantly, with incredible quality screens.  Each of the devices has a Tegra 2 chipset from NVIDIA and will be “PlayStation Certified”, so expect some of the best quality games seen on the 1st-gen PlayStation and Xperia PLAY smartphone.

The tablets will ship with Flash Player pre-installed, but interestingly the Sony Tablet devices will ship with a new Sony Web browser.  With that, we can expect better performance for Flash and browsing the web, compared to the stock browser.

The Sony Tablet S1 (codename) which has a stunning curved body designed to feel lighter in the hand, like when you fold a magazine.  It comes with a 9.4 inch display, so will be great for Entertainment and reading.  As many of you have heard me say, 10″ screens feel too big for my little Irish hands, so it’ll be interesting to see what it’s like.

Sony Tablet S2 (codename also) is quite different as it comes with two screens.  The underlying technical specs are identical between the devices, but this device is going to be great for building applications that long for unique interfaces that make use of the dual-screens.  I’ve got my sights set on a mixing deck idea, but it’s also going to be a nice way to play games; Battleship anyone?

The Challenge

Adobe and Sony are challenging developers and content publishers to build breakthrough mobile apps optimized for the Sony Tablet S1 and Sony Tablet S2.  We have a panel of some amazing judges, both Sony, Adobe and industry experts picking finalists and winners across four key categories.

Each category has a cash prize of $20,000 USD and promotion on the Sony Tablet devices, with a $100,000 USD Grand Prize awarded for the best overall application.

• Entertainment
• Lifestyle and Community
• Gaming
• Business and Productivity

Our team of judges will be reviewing applications throughout the process, and will look favourably at applications that span across different platforms.  Maybe your application works on Sony Vaio PCs, or Sony Televisions with GoogleTV?

If you get in early enough, before September 16th, you’ll have the chance to be one of the 10 MAX Award Finalists.  So get in early and you can get a free trip to Adobe MAX in LA!

In addition, $10,000 USD will be awarded for the following applications:

• Most Innovative Application
• MAX Public Favorite – awarded by community vote

The top 80 finalists in the contest will get pre-release access to the devices for a 4 week period, the Adobe AIR 3 runtime, and access to the very latest tooling to complete your application.  You’ll be on the leading edge of Flash development and innovation.

Adobe AIR 3 Beta

You will use Adobe AIR 3 Desktop Beta, released soon for the desktop to optimize your applications for both devices.  So you can start to consider how your existing or new applications would make use of the dual screen, be as novel as you like!  (cough, mixing desk, cough)

For the Sony Tablet S2 you will use the upcoming Native Extension feature in AIR 3, one of the most exciting features in the upcoming release of the platform.  Native Extensions give us an easy way to optimize applications for dual screens, that’s because we can now access any API on a host Operating System!

All applications should support both the Sony Tablet S1 and S2.

Key Diary Dates

• Sept 16: Deadline for MAX Showcase App prizes
• Oct 1-5: MAX Public Favorite Vote & MAX Showcase App winners attend Adobe MAX
• Oct 10: Deadline for Entries
• Nov 11: Final App Submission for Finalists to the Android Market
• Nov 17: Winners Announced

Submit your app or app project now at airappchallenge.com

This summer we’re running an Adobe Mobile Challenge for developers, designers and agencies around the EU territory.  What’s really exciting is that you’ll get the chance to win a trip, including flight and hotel, to Adobe MAX in LA this October.  We even have a few copies of Creative Suite 5.5 and Flash Builder Premium 4.5.1 for runners up, so lots of you will have a chance to win big.

We’re looking for applications that reach across different mobile platforms and that are published widely, on the Apple AppStore, Android Market and of course the Blackberry AppWorld for the PlayBook.

You’re application can be a game or branded content, anything goes really as long as your application is available in each store by the deadline below. Here’s my colleague Michael Chaize to tell you more, with his cool French accent..

DEADLINE:  September 1

The reason for the library was not to create a wrapper over the already fantastic AIR API in Actionscript, but to provide a fallback. Following alot of testing with the Radar app, it became clear that quite often there were be occasions when a given mobile phone wouldn’t return a location in a decent timeframe. Further, to get the application working correctly on the desktop requires a method for locating the desktop.

Importantly, I’ve designed the API to use various methods of detection seamlessly. It will fallback from GPS to IP Lookup and even uses HTML if the SWF happens to be in a browser. So all you need to do is implement a simple interface and a GeoServices object.

You can see it in action here:

DOWNLOAD

It has been a while since I have had time to update you all on the amazing traction that we’re seeing for AIR across devices.  I’ve spent a week touring with Motorola and next up it’s RIM, for Meet the Playbook.

I know that many of you have already attended the Western Europe events, and given the cool apps that are starting to pop up on the App World, it was certainly worth the effort!  The whole Evangelist team have Playbooks now, and we’re working on our own apps to show off the platform.

Check out the video, incredible performance.  Laughing in the face of HD video..

Next up, I’ll be joining Sanyu Kiruluta and the rest of the RIM team in Johannesburg and Dubai.  These are two of the most exciting dates on the calendar for this half of the year.

Hopefully I’ll see you there, in the baking 40 degree heat

Last Friday an unsuspecting Fedex delivery arrived with a Xoom tablet, the first Android 3.0 device from Motorola.  Terry Ryan, a fellow Evangelist at Adobe and I will be going on tour with Motorola starting next week joining the MOTODEV App Summit tour.

We’ll be traveling to some of our favourite cities and helping attendees to get started with Adobe technology for Motorola devices.  I know that Terry and I are going to cover a number of different topics including, Flash, AIR, Flex and Livecycle Collaboration Services.  I’m also planning on showing some new Digital Home applications, hopefully to get you thinking about how tablets like the Xoom are being used in the home.

I hope you to see some of you around on the tour and I know Terry and I are very much looking forward to it.  Here are some of the key dates and I’ll be presenting and attending all of those in red:

• April 11th – Berlin, Germany
• April 15th – London, UK
• April 26th – Beijing, China
• April 29th – Shanghai, China
• May 2nd – Seoul, Korea
• TBD – Sao Paulo, Brasil
• TBD – Buenos Aires, Argentina
• May 25th – Mexico City, Mexico

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