$200k – Adobe AIR App Challenge for Sony Tablets
Posted by Mark Doherty in Creative Suite 5, Flash Player, iphone, Mobile Content on July 12, 2011
This summer seems like one for Flash and Mobile, so it’s great to be able to tell you that Sony, one of our long term partners in mobile, are joining the Open Screen Project and will be a platinum sponsor of Adobe MAX in LA.
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
EU – Adobe Mobile Challenge
Posted by Mark Doherty in Android, Flash Player, iphone, Mobile Content, Palm, RIM on July 12, 2011
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
Geolocation Services
Posted by Mark Doherty in Flash Player on June 30, 2011
I’d like to re-share a library that I created for the Radar application last year, designed to provide assistance for Geolocation, reverse geocoding, local weather, place names and a utility for determining the Sunrise and Sunset for a given latitude and longitude.
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
Meet the Playbook – J’Burg and Dubai
Posted by Mark Doherty in Flash Player, Mobile Content on May 20, 2011
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 
AIR on Xoom Video & MOTODEV App Summit Tour
Posted by Mark Doherty in Android, Conference, Flash Player on April 5, 2011
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