Nokia releases Flash Lite components
I can’t believe I missed that but a few weeks ago Nokia released a free set of Flash Lite components on Forum Nokia.
The set consists of a button component, contacts list component, list component, media data component, popup component and scrollbar component. They’re all very easy to use and also customizable.
Kudos to Nokia for releasing these! Flash on!
Google adds external resource indexing for Flash sites/apps
Exciting news resonated through the Twittersphere today as Google announced that they’ve now added the ability to index external resources for Flash sites and applications.
When your Flash based site or application loads content from another file (text, HTML, XML, script, another SWF, …) Google can now also index that external content.
While Ichabod – the headless Flash Player that Google uses to enable this – offers even more functionality than what Google offers today, this is obviously really exciting news. If you want to learn more about Ichabod, definitely check out Jim Corbet’s session from Max 2008.
Read more about Google’s implementation on Google’s Webmaster Central.
Flash on!
Update: According to Google’s blog, it seems that this is now limited to AS1 and AS2. I’m trying to find out more about that. Will keep you posted.
Update: Google confirmed that they also index AS3 based content. They also updated their blog post.
Making money with mobile apps outside Apple’s App Store
When I talk to developers about mobile application development, they all seem to think that Apple’s App Store is the only outlet where you can make money with mobile apps. Sure, Apple has done a terrific job making it easier for the consumer to buy and install apps on their iPhone but that doesn’t mean this is the only way. The iPhone market is also only a fraction of the total amount of mobile devices out there and people have been making money from mobile phone users for years now.
Here’s a little test. Turn on your television and tune in to any music channel. (Try to) Leave it on for half an hour and count the commercials for ringtone and application subscriptions you see. I’m pretty sure that after half an hour you’ve seen at least five for companies like the Ringtoneking, Jamster and Jamba. All of these (worldwide) providers allow users of just about any mobile phone to buy, download and install mobile applications. All it takes is a simple premium SMS that returns a download link. People have been doing this for years now and the Ringtonekings of this world are obviously making a ton of money from it.
Sure, it’s not the most ideal solution and again, Apple has done a fantastic job with the App Store. However, if these ringtone/app providers have been making money for so long, that means that people have been buying and installing ringtones, games and apps way before the iPhone was even conceived.
Conclusion: If you want to make money from mobile application development, why not do it for the broadest possible audience? And if you’ve made that choice, look in to Flash for mobile devices. It’s available on more than 400 650 (source: Device Central CS4) different mobile phones from just about all manufacturers including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, HTC, LG, …
Mobile for Flash Developers free eSeminar today
Atlantic Records have been working with AgencyNet on a fantastic multi-screen application called Fanbase. The team used Adobe AIR and the Flash Lite Distributable player to bring the application to consumers.
Working on Fanbase among others is David Brown, an extremely talented Flash developer. He’s been working with us for some time on the Distributable Player, and in fact his Bacardi application may well have been responsible for the new security model.
Today (Thursday, April 30, 2009 11:00 A.M. PST), David Brown from AgencyNet will host an eSeminar and uncover the key factors to consider when developing and deploying content to multiple devices with Adobe’s distributable player solution. Topics include Multilingual content, multiple input types, and consistent user experiences across screens.
mTwit progress update
I know, I know… everyone is doing Twitter clients these days. It’s the new “Hello World”! With this “Hello World”, I want to show the possibilities of the Flash Platform for mobile phones. I am building “mTwit”, the Twitter client for all recent Flash-enabled phones. I decided to publish it with our new distributable player. Right now, that gives me a potential install base of 27 million users… Now, if they all donate $1, that would make me very happy ;-)
Right… about the app now. I basically started from scratch after I found out that I completely over-architected the app and that I was stuck. After reading up on a few best practices, I decided to use the Feather Framework. Although I did need to tweak it quite a bit, this framework and its components are an excellent starting point. I am also building this application so that it automatically and optimally uses the available screen size. Below is a screenshot of the app running on a Nokia E71. You can see that the components automatically adapt to the wider screen size.
I also recorded a quick sneak peak of the current build of the application. I recorded this from a Nokia N95 and I hope that it gives you a bit of an idea on the performance.
The application is far from ready though. There’s still a lot to do, but I think I am making good progress. Some people thought I was going to release it today… Now don’t get me wrong… I do appreciate your enthusiasm! However, I don’t want to rush things. I want to make sure that everything works and that the user experience is just as good as other Twitter apps you may be using. So… stay tuned! I will update you on my blog when I have more…
mTwit sneak peak: Flash Lite Twitter client
Eating our own dog food is a big part of being an evangelist. I also like to challenge myself every now and then and so I started building a Flash Lite Twitter client that can run on most Flash Lite enabled phones.
This is just a quick sneak peak and it’s far from ready but I’ll update you on the progress through my blog. I don’t really have a deadline. However, the sneak peak you see here is the result of just 2 days of work so I should be able to finish it soon.
I hope Jonnie from DestroyToday doesn’t mind me using the DestroyTwitter color scheme. I really love how clean that design is and I’m trying to bring some of that to my mobile client.
Stay tuned!
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