• Youtube
• Google Maps
• Site Search
• Web Search
• Chrome / OS

So you see Flash is everywhere at Google and we’ve been working together for years to build upon this relationship.  Google joining the Open Screen Project may seem like a matter of course given our demo’s last year and given their investments in the Flash Platform.

In the past few months we’ve seen stellar device launches from HTC and Motorola using Android.  Those of you with beady eyes will also have spotted others from Sony Ericsson and “others” coming down the pipe soon.

I want ALL of them, but might stick to the Hero for now.

Oh, in case they’re watching.  Dear HTC, please fix the SSL certificates for Exchange email eh?

Google Team, welcome to the Open Screen Project

Over the past few years we have seen RIM devices expand out of the business user category to become a consumer platform.  Many of my friends now use the Curve for Facebook, messaging and surfing the web and they really love their phones.

That’s my guage on success:

1. Do my friends own them?
2. Does my mum know what a Blackberry is?

For developers the Blackberry platform currently provides a Java API and framework for easy application development.  There’s no arguing that the Java runtime has enabled some great applications, and as the App World expands we’ve seen some nice content start to come in.

Our OEM engagements seem much more rounded with RIM joining, a more complete story if you will.

]]> http://www.flashmobileblog.com/2009/10/05/rim-and-the-open-screen-project/feed/ 2 http://www.flashmobileblog.com/2009/07/29/fitc-mobile-toronto-with-sneaks/ http://www.flashmobileblog.com/2009/07/29/fitc-mobile-toronto-with-sneaks/#comments Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:00:50 +0000 Mark Doherty http://www.flashmobileblog.com/?p=529

This September I’m going to travel to Toronto to present at the FITC conference.  It’s set to be an exciting show with all of the major mobile platforms being supported including Android, Palm, Windows Mobile, Flash Lite, Blackberry, OpenGL ES and of course iPhone development.  There’s even going to be a session on SMS Applications, something that is probably a lot more interesting that you’d think!

Flash Sessions

• Martin Barclay & Robert Burdick from Nokia: Develop and Distribute for Nokia smartphones
• Scott Janousek: Practical Design and Development with Flash on Mobile Devices
• Scott Janousek: Leveraging Accelerometers on Mobile Devices
• Thomas Joos: Tips and Tricks for Flash Lite Optimization
• Weyert de Boer: Android for Flash Developers
• Mark Doherty: Flash Lite Distribution and the Open Screen Fund

So as you can see there are going to be a number of presentations on Flash topics.  In my session I’m going to probably break the rules and just sit and have a chat with everyone.  Distribution is a complex topic and one where many misunderstand where money is made.

On top of that I’ll also be showing off sneak peaks, so if you’re in the Toronto area and not coming to Adobe MAX then I suggest you start booking

Prices are very low at $209 and $89 for students.

Today at CTIA we announced that TI will join the Open Screen Project to help deliver optimised Adobe® Flash® Player and Adobe AIR® for their OMAP 3 platform targeting mobile phones and MID devices.

TI OMAP is a key platform in the mobile space, these chipsets power many of the worlds leading smartphone platforms including S60, the Palm Pre and the Samsung OMNIA range. It’s also used heavily the Archos platform that I described below enabling the Archos user base an unparalleled experience.

For developers this announcement means that you can expect the Flash Players of the future to work even better with modern devices, enabling you to create richer experiences. We’re constantly shifting to higher and higher resolutions and Flash will have to cope with HD video streams, so it’s essential to work with chipset vendors to ensure that Flash is not just part of the platform, but that it’s designed to work with it from the start.

We expect to release a beta of this new Flash Player later in the summer on many platforms. At the end of 2009 we ship to our Open Screen Project partners, and we expect to see the first devices in early 2010.

We have more of these types of announcements in the works of course

I’m here at the airport in San Francisco, shoulders breaking due to the sheer number of phones in my bag.  Today I’m carrying about 35 devices that I’ll be using over the next year.  They are from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, HTC, T-Mobile and Nokia and some of them are more special than others..

There are in fact seven devices in my bag with Flash 10 working in the browser.  There’s an Android device from HTC, four HTC Touch Diamonds and two Nokia N85s.  You will have already heard that we showed a very early demo of Flash 10 at MAX in San Francisco; its amazing to see the level of excitement from the broader community around this announcement.

Many of you have been asking questions around time lines and technology, so let’s set some expectations:

• This does not spell the end of Flash technology optimized for non-PC devices (called Flash Lite)
• We will not be bringing Flash 10 and AS3 (browser plugin only) to devices until the end of 2009
• When this happens the numbers of devices in market will be low and expensive
• There is a huge amount of work still to be done
• Symbian, Android and Windows Mobile are going to have full web parity with Flash 10.
• iPhone is a closed platform gated by Apple and its up to them.

While we’ve made great progress with Flash 10 for mobile browsing it’s still a long way off.  Even when it does arrive we’ll still need to deliver AIR and enable standalone applications, for that we need to address many more devices.  As a way to get started early, at MAX San Francisco we announced the Flash Lite Distributable Player private beta program.  On mobile devices you can now distribute your applications, games and video content to Open OS mobile devices and install Flash when necessary; just like the desktop.  The solution comes in a few pieces:

Create: To create packages effectively you’ll need to update your Adobe Device Central to 2.1.  You can then test your applications categorized by screen resolution and platform.

Package: We created the Adobe Mobile Packager Beta to enable you to trigger the download of the latest Flash player for your devices.  Using the tool you can follow a simple process and build CAB or SIS files for open distribution.

Distribute: You told us that it was hard to do deals on your own that it would be great if Adobe helped seal the deal.  Well we’ve done just that and signed deals with Thumbplay and Zed which includes a standard developer agreement.  There will be a large number of devices supported at launch (some 30 devices) and an audience of over 11m users in Italy, Spain and the US.  Importantly these are hand-picked high value consumers that browse the web and consume content.

Discover: It was also very important to allow applications to sit side by side with native apps.  Customers out there were demanding a catalogue experience, free and open.  We created the Adobe AppZone a rich interactive catalog that presents aggregator and partner content.  It manages the installation and general management of applications and Flash versions.

Of course no new product would be good without a developer kit to get you up and running.  Well this time I decided that 100s of pages of docs was getting a bit tired, so it gives  me great pleasure to point you at the all new video tutorial series by Liz Myers.  For the past five weeks we’ve been working really hard together to create this series for Adobe TV and I hope we can do more in the future.  You’ll find the series broken down into bite-size chunks and hopefully you should be setup in 30mins.

Please spread the word about the Flash Lite Distributable Player, and get signed up here for the private beta.

Today the online magazine e-week published an interview with Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch.  In that he provided details about Creative Suite 4, Adobe’s work in the Open Source community, the Open Screen Project and our goals for multi-screen content.

“And that’s what we’ve done with  AIR on PCs. AIR is a way to deploy an application across OSes. And that’s  going great. We’ve had 35 million installs of AIR and we’re hoping for 100  million by the end of the year. Looks like we’re going to make it. And we’re  working to bring that same technology to mobile devices. And I think that  might be a trend toward a “mobile first” experience, which is really a  reversal of how people create applications.

Right now they create largely  using large screens and PCs and think about creating stuff that will be  displayed on large screens and PCs. And I think that need to change. In the  conception of creating that content we need to think about how that will work  in the constraints of a mobile device and then maybe how it will work on the  big screen. That’s a reversal of how people are thinking and I think it will  take a few years for it to happen.

But at Max that’s one of the things we will  encourage people to think about — to shift more to this mobile way of  thinking and then consider PCs. And that will be a change to our tooling over  time. Already we’re starting to do that with things like Device Central in  Creative Suite 4 where you can visualize your work across devices. But there’s going to be a lot more to do there.”

As you can see this is a clear signal of our intent for multiple screens including mobile phones, consumer electronics, set-top boxes and of course desktop computers.  Innovation for web has, and always will be, the primary driver behind all that we do for the community.

If you haven’t already signed up for MAX and the mobile sessions then now is the time to get on board.

See the badge on the right hand side —>

Today we announced the Adobe Open Screen Project which is dedicated to ensuring a consistent rich Internet experience across a broad range of digital screens and form factors including mobile phones, consumer electronics, televisions and personal computers. This experience will be driven by Adobe Flash Player and in the future Adobe AIR and is meant to ensure that designers and developers can focus on the consumer experience and know their efforts will scale across different platforms and screens. Simply put the mission of the Open Screen Project is meant to enable a consistent runtime environment for designers and developers across desktops and devices.

Ryan Stewart has some great thoughts about what this means for the desktop space and below are my impressions of what this means for the non-PC space and developers.

Who’s involved
In order for the Open Screen Project to be successful we need the support of companies that believe in this unified vision of the future. These companies include leading chipset vendors, device manufacturers, operators and media companies – all intent to help deliver consistent rich internet applications across a broad range of devices and desktops. These are the initial companies that are involved with the project and we expect other companies will want to join.

• Adobe
• ARM
• BBC
• Chunghwa Telecom
• Cisco
• Intel
• LG Electronics
• Marvell
• Motorola
• MTV Networks
• NBC Universal
• Nokia
• NTT DoCoMo
• Qualcomm
• Samsung Electronics
• Sony Ericsson
• Toshiba
• Verizon Wireless

Flash and Adobe AIR to be Free
To support this project we will be opening access to more of our core technologies to help enable web innovation and include these initiatives:

• Removing restrictions on the use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
• Removing license fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free
• Publishing the Adobe Flash Cast protocol and AMF protocol for robust data services

What should mobile developers do
Keep on creating the types of experiences and content you already do for mobile phones using CS3, Device Central and other tools for development and testing. The key thing you should take away from the Open Screen Project is Adobe is committed to providing a consistent runtime across a wide range of devices including personal computers so continuing to build your skills now to develop Flash Lite applications will be part of the future growth opportunities for you and your clients as Flash and Adobe AIR are supported on non-PC devices. In short, learning how to build mobile experiences now will be your differentiator.

It’s true that today desktop developers can use Flex and Flash to create web content and Adobe AIR applications and mobile developers can use Flash CS3 to create Flash Lite content for supported handsets. In the near future desktop developers will be able to use their skills for creating Flash and Adobe AIR applications for more than just desktop PCs. What will improve will be the workflow and output options for Flash and Adobe AIR applications and for us that’s important – to ensure that designers and developers have the best tools so they can focus on the experience.

Types of non-PC devices
One of the main benefits to OSP is the ability for us to provide to designers and developers a runtime environment that works across a wide range of non-PC devices, in addition to the PC space. I use the term “non-PC” often but to give you some context these are some of the types of devices we’re looking to support in the future:

• mobile phones
• mobile Internet tablets (MIDs)
• set top boxes
• televisions

Over 1 billion devices by 2010 2009
We’ve updated our device forecast and expect that by 2009 there will be over 1 billion devices that will have shipped that support Flash technologies. Previously we stated that we would reach this number by 2010 – so this is more good news for the Open Screen Project and shows the explosive growth of Flash technologies in mobile phones. These are cummulative shipments, not the devices in peoples pockets.

Next steps
If you’re a desktop developer and have read this you’re probably starting to envision a very cool future where you’re able to extend your applications beyond just the desktop. Our take on it is that in the future you’ll be building your mobile applications first, and adding elements for the desktop, for me that’s the future. I’ve only touched on some of the high-level points here and there certainly will be more news coverage about this initiative over the next few days and weeks. If you have any questions about this please leave a comment here and I’ll answer them.

You can read more about the Open Screen Project here as well as an FAQ.