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.

A few days ago the team at Sony Ericsson released their first set of UI components for the Flash Player on mobile devices.  Written in AS2 and fully integrated with Adobe Flash Professional CS4.

Each of the controls are fully customizable use the Component inspector, enabling you to change the look and feel for your applications.  Everything from background colors to text values and icons are supported across the components, it’s ridiculously easy to make them fit with your apps look and feel.

The beta set includes 8 new components ready for you to use:

• Checkbox
• List – Single Row with Icon
• List – Two Rows with Icon
• Progress Indicator
• Push Button
• Radio Button
• Softkey Bar
• Wait Indicator

How to Get Started

Once you’ve downloaded the MXP file here, you can install the components by simply double clicking on the file.  The Adobe Extension Manager will install the files and add them to the Components Panel in Flash Professional, you can open it using the Window Menu within the tool.

As you see it’s then possible to start dragging the UI components onto the Stage here on the left, which in my case is set for a Sony Ericsson C905 device at 240×320.  By default the components come with a nice Sony Ericsson look and feel, and if you’re like me then a little help in the UI department always helps (as you’ll see later).

Using the component inspector (shown here in the middle) you can then start to customize the look and feel of the list.  Check out just how much you can configure the components simply by clicking a few options, it’s really very nice indeed.

Ok, so I said about that my design talents need some work but I’ve played around with the various options and come out all blue.  Additionally, since the list component is using live preview, you can see your items directly and the active scrollbar on the stage.

Of course you can configure these options with Actionscript too, which is pretty much required for anything other than static lists.  Yet for colors and sizes there’s a real value in having live preview components, particularly for the designers among you.

In the image above I’ve added a softkey menu to enable me to buy some Star Fruit, which is shown selected at the top.  Using the component inspector I can set each of the items too, and so disable items that may be unavailable.  I can also change their color for highlighted, selected and disabled items directly in the tool.

Now that I’ve completed my list I can add a simple shadow fill and the Wait Indicator component (in circle mode) to animate when the purchase is taking place.  Again it’s configurable so that I can make it fit in with my application, and of course control the spinning of the circle in Actionscript.

Then I’m ready to test in Device Central CS4 to ensure that everything looks great, before a bit of testing on the Sony Ericsson C905

Remember that it’s possible to begin using these components along with the extensive list of MXP files for Project Capuchin.  Targeting Capuchin devices enables you to deliver standalone applications that have full access to JavaME apis on the JP8 platform, there are seventeen devices already.

Don’t forget the PlayNow Arena available on 38 devices, 17 countries and 200million users!

Dale Rankine is one of the foremost experts in Adobe Flash technology for devices and owner of a successful mobile development company, Moket Pty.  As a certified training partner and long standing community evangelist, I’ve asked him to help produce a video tutorial series on Flash Lite technology.  Our goal is to help new and existing developers to work with our optimized Flash player for mobile phones and devices.

From the series I expect that viewers will learn how to use Adobe Device Central, discover how to construct a mobile interface and to work with multimedia including FLV.  We’ve tried to build out a set of topics that we get most questions on, things like video optimization, performance and the ‘basics’ such as object orientated programming and memory management.  The focus will remain on Flash Lite 3.x, although many of the APIs and features work everywhere.

The great news is that Dale has already begun publishing the videos over at our Vimeo channel, and soon we’ll push these up to Adobe TV too.  We might be able to take a couple of requests, so if you get asked the same question over and over again, then let’s hear about it!

Remember also to spread the word, embed the videos in your own blogs and drive the viewers to new content with the following banner…

• URL: http://vimeo.com/adobeflashlite
• RSS: http://vimeo.com/adobeflashlite/videos/rss
• Twitter: flashmobile

It’s almost that time again for the Adobe MAX Awards and we’re already taking submissions and your suggestions for the winners this year.  As always there will be a mobile category and you can click on the button above to make your suggestion.

Mobile service providers today are challenged to deliver easy-to-use applications that provide expressive and complex capabilities. Tapping into features such as location, touch and motion detection, high-speed networks and others, service providers are looking to appeal to increasingly sophisticated customers who rely on their devices to access and share information, participate in social networks, be entertained, and for work. Winning entries in this category will demonstrate how Adobe solutions are being used to raise the standard of interactivity and quality for mobile services, bringing indispensible new services that improve the daily lives of consumers.

Category- Specific Judging Criterion: Value delivered by mobile device application to corporations or individual users.

Device Profile Update #9 is now available on Adobe Device Central Online, and this is the final update of profiles for the CS3 version.  It includes the following profiles including some Sony Ericsson Capuchin enabled devices.

Updates to profiles will of course continue via the online library in Device Central CS4, and so if you haven’t upgraded now is a good time.  In Device Central CS4 there are numerous new features to make your working life easier:

• High-quality video for communicating ideas
• Improved video support and integration
• Organization of work for mobile projects
• Performance simulation and testing automation
• Easy upload of content to multiple locations
• Integration with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional, Photoshop® CS4, Illustrator® CS4, Dreamweaver® CS4, Adobe Premiere® Pro CS4, Adobe Captivate 4 and After Effects CS4

You can look at the full feature set and watch the videos here

As you know we’ve been working very hard on the next version of the Adobe Mobile Packager.  In fact a little harder than we anticipated as I’m sure you’ve noticed that I posted the sneak peek more than a couple of weeks ago.  Ultimately I wasn’t happy with some features including the Symbian and Windows Mobile signing workflows.  I think you’ll agree that the engineering team have done a wonderful job in making it easy to Create->Package->Sign->Distribute packages.

One of the features that cost some extra time was multi-byte support for install packages, which is a hard task.  Now, with the new Mobile Packager you can change your Application Name to use any accents and characters in any language.  This enables us to expand globally without restriction moving forward.

Symbian S60

With Mobile Packager 1.1, it has never been easier to get through SymbianSigned.  I have also been working with the Symbian Foundation to streamline their ingestion process and a new policy for the purchase of Publisher Ids.  The good news is that this has now been announced, and soon (2 months?) you’ll be able to purchase a Publisher Certificate cheaply, and with nothing more than a credit card.

Signing of SIS packages has been vastly improved and we’ve aligned with AIR packaging workflows from Flash Builder, it’s the same security after all.  No more tcp12p8.bat and multiple certificates, keys and passwords.  You can simply use your pfx file straight out of the browser, technically you may also use a p12 file from Firefox too.  If this sounds like Star Trek talk then don’t worry, just watch the 5min video

Windows Mobile

The downside is that Microsoft would not allow us to integrate a key component required for signing cab files called SignTool, a 74kb file.  Hopefully in the future Microsoft will see the value in helping the Flash community and provide easy access to the tools necessary for everyone to distribute on “Open OS” Windows Mobile devices.  For now though we won’t be stuck, as they say “there’s an app for that” with easy instructions in the tutorial.

OVI

With regards to OVI support, we continue to work with Nokia to enable support for the Distributable Player.  There are some minor hurdles to overcome but the focus is very much on getting OVI up and running, and I support that fully.

Tutorials

I think the tutorials were a huge success for the first version of the Packager 1.0.  Liz and I worked our socks off building out the content and this time round we’ve raised the bar, in the process we killed her hard drive, then her OS, she literally rang every corner of the globe.  So in compensation I urge you to go and watch all of them, there’s lots of valuable information condensed into no more than 30mins.

Spread the word about these tutorials, it will help us all to build on the knowledge (and pain) that we went through on this.

As we move forward you’ll notice new countries coming online for OTA distribution, we’ll see more devices and wider coverage for devices.  For example, we intend to enable all S60 3rd Edition devices for Flash Lite 3.1 giving you the choice on which devices to target.  Windows Mobile is somewhat more fragmented but our goal is to enable those devices also.

Of course all the pieces will go up on Adobe Labs, but they’ve been somewhat busy with Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst and Flex4.  So in lieu of that you can download the new Packager tool from here, and I’ll update the link afterwards.

Mobile Packager 1.1 – English

Mobile Packager 1.1 – Italian

Mobile Packager 1.1 – Spanish

As some of you have noticed Nokia have begun the process of updating the Flash Lite 3.0 player to our latest version Flash Lite 3.1. There are a number of benefits with this update but in all this brings the Nokia 5800 all the way up to Flash 9 support (AS2 only), some features are outlined below:

• Flash Lite 3.1 builds on our support for web browsability
• 92% of the top 500 sites (plus a few strategic ones)
• HTML Text coloring, <img> tag support in text fields
• Streaming audio support
• Much more memory
• It adds new support for hardware acceleration for graphics (hardware dependant)
• Bitmap data is also now exposed
• Security Model and obviously version, is now aligned with the Distributable Player
• Various bug fixes to enhance extensions for packaged applications

This update is a huge step forward because it signifies the beginning of Open Screen Project commitments to keep the Flash Player up-to-date.  It’s also the first time that this has been tried out from an OEM and so there were a few glitches, notably:

• SetSoftKey FSCommand support broke
• The Flash version string included a new character “AFL” instead of “FL”
• Security Model wasn’t entirely fixed

In all for all the features added I think that this isn’t so bad, and I can say that Nokia will update FL3.1 and release this new version soon.  So if you were in the Day1 gold rush then I suggest hitting update in a week or so.

*NEW – More soon on this*

• Flash Lite 3.1 also provides support for Flash Remoting
• HTTPS and AMF support

As for the Flash Remoting features I’m wildly excited about this, and I’m working to produce a simple demo.

Update: Unfortunately Remoting doesn’t work on S60 however I’m informed that this should work on WM6 devices, so feel free to give it a try!

The Flash Lite Developer Challenge is closing in 4 days 7 Hours, so I hope you’re finalising your submissions.  Remember that we’re looking for a number of different things including innovation, user experience, commercial viability and best use of Flash Lite features.

I can’t wait to see the entries

I have some great news on our Distributable Player availability and our plans to scale the solution.  For the past couple of weeks I’ve been working with some of you to test the download of Flash Lite 3.1 over-the-air in your home countries.  That process has gone pretty well and collectively we’re confident that our solution can now scale quickly, we plan to add countries in batches of eight on a monthly basis.

We have added support for the player download in the following countries (I tried to enable the Flash version of this but WordPress is having none of it):

We’ve also been working hard on device certification and accelerating that program by adding the most popular S60 and Windows Mobile devices.  The list is now 31 strong and will grow continually at speed.

S60 Devices

1. Nokia N78
2. Nokia E65
3. Nokia N95 8GB
4. Nokia N95
5. Nokia N73
6. Nokia N81
7. Nokia 6120 Classic
8. Nokia E51
9. Nokia N81 8GB
10. Nokia E71
11. Nokia N96
12. Nokia N82

Windows Mobile Devices

1. HTC-Pro S621(Same as T-Mobile Dash)
2. HTC S740
3. HTC Touch Cruise P3650
4. HTC Touch Diamond
5. HTC Touch P3452
6. HTC TyTN II P4551
7. Motorola Q
8. Motorola Q9c
9. Motorola Q9h (CDMA)
10. Motorola Q9m
11. Motorola Q Norman (same as Moto Q 9h(GSM))
12. Palm Treo 700w
13. Palm Treo 750
14. Palm Treo Pro
15. Samsung SGH-i607 BlackJack I
16. Samsung SGH-i617 BlackJack II
17. Samsung SGH-i780
18. T-Mobile Shadow
19. T-Mobile Wing

The Mobile Packager 1.1 release is now out on private pre-release with a few select developers to get some feedback before launch.  Last week the reigning packaging queen Liz Myers signed her first SIS and CAB files using the new tool.

Exciting times!

For example Flash Platform for the Digital Home is how we refer to the optimized Flash Player that runs on set-top boxes.  Under the hood it’s Flash Lite 3.1, but that’s a Flash Player optimized for TVs, get it?  You’ll notice that in the coming months I’ll be referring to Flash Lite as Flash Player across the board, and you should too.

To be clear though Flash Lite is still the name of the product.

So today we announced that one of our key products Flex Builder will be renamed Flash Builder in the next release.  It makes a lot of sense when you consider Flash Catalyst is on the way and we need a way to tie them together, they both rely on the same open source Flex SDK.

In terms of workflow you could create your assets in Photoshop, use Flash Catalyst to turn these assets into a interactive experience.  Then in Flash Builder you tie up the underlying functionality and hook up the data services etc.

Flex doesn’t disappear as a brand, you still call yourself a Flex Developer because you’re using the open source Flex SDK.  The only difference is that you do your development in Flash Builder.

So that’s all clear then, but Serge has a nice post on this.