Tag Archives: google

Android catching up fast!

by Serge Jespers on 18. Feb, 2010 in mobile

Google is selling 60.000 Android devices every day. According to MobileCrunch, that works out to about 5.4 million handsets per quarter, or 21.9 million per year. And the rate is growing rapidly, according to Eric Schmidt who kicked off the Mobile World Live Keynote initiative yesterday.

Android is also not just about handsets anymore. I’ve seen a bunch of tablets running Android as well. The Android OS is free and open source and most of all… you’re in complete control of what you install on it and how you use the web on the device. Very soon you’ll be able to grab Flash Player 10.1 and AIR from the Android Market and install it on your Android device to not only get a full web experience in the device’s browser but also get the power of AIR for standalone applications.

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt talked about why this is important in his Mobile World Live Keynote while Eric Tseng (Senior Product Manager for Android) demoed Flash Player 10.1 on a Nexus One. He actually summed it up very nicely by saying: “The line is blurring between mobile phones and desktop computing… One of our main goals when we embarked on smartphones at Google was to really mirror the desktop web browsing experience – but for many of you and you know who you are – there’s been a critical component missing – Flash!“. But you don’t have to take my word for it… You can watch it here yourself!

I was telling a few colleagues earlier that I wish I could take a few weeks off and just build Flash/AIR apps for Android. Because now I can use the skills that I already know to create apps for these devices… Android really is the first mobile OS that can really compete with Apple’s mobile OS and the fact that it is going to have Flash Player and AIR very soon is just the cherry on top! Flash on!

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Day 2 with the Nexus One

by Serge Jespers on 10. Feb, 2010 in mobile

I promised to keep you up to date with how I get on with Google’s Nexus One. Today is actually already day three without using Apple’s phone and I’m still enjoying it. The only thing that I am really starting to miss is a decent mail client. This could potentially become a real problem.

The Nexus One has a decent mail client but it doesn’t support the certificates that our Exchange server uses. That means I have to rely on third party solutions and the only option available in the free Android Market is the Touchdown client. It works fine but the UI is just… well… let’s be kind and say that it doesn’t look that good. The mail client that I want to use (Moxier Mail) is not available as a free download and because there still is no official way to get paid apps in the Android Market in Belgium, I can’t buy it. I really dislike the UI on Touchdown… So much so that I find it horrible to use.

I really really hope I can solve this soon because I really need a decent Exchange client…

Other than that I am really happy with the Nexus One’s performance and its features. And having Flash in the Nexus One’s browser already changed the way I used the mobile web. Yesterday I heard about another act of violence/vandalism in Brussels and so I wanted to look up more info on the web. The article on the local news site I visited also had a video… Flash Video. I just hit the play button and watched the entire clip in the Nexus One. If I was still using Apple’s phone, I would have needed to take out my laptop to see the clip…

After watching that clip, I was curious to see how other Flash Video enabled sites would work. I opened up CNN.com, picked one of the news clips, hit play… and it immediately started playing. I also tried the BBC’s iPlayer and some other local news sites. They just worked… without the need for the publisher to republish their content in a different format. I just opened the browser, opened the exact same sites that I visit/use on my laptop and clicked “Play”. Now that’s a magical web experience!

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Wall Street Journal on Apple, Flash and more

by Serge Jespers on 10. Feb, 2010 in Industry

The Wall Street Journal just published an interesting article entitled “The Microsofting of Apple?” with their thoughts on Apple, Flash, Google and more. If you’re not subscribed to the WSJ, you can find the article on Ben Forta’s blog.

It’s refreshing to see the “old media’s” take on this… They surely make some interesting points.

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My first hours with the Nexus One

by Serge Jespers on 09. Feb, 2010 in devices, mobile

There’s no denying that Apple did a terrific job with the iPhone. After walking around with PDAs and smartphones, Apple really changed the market and it took a while for competitors to catch up. I honestly never thought I would think about replacing my iPhone any time soon. Even with all its obvious flaws… But today, a late Christmas gift arrived in the form of a Google Nexus One.

I had heard and read about it and really wanted to get my hands on one to see if it was really as fast and good as the reviews seemed to suggest. Today I finally got that chance and yes… the reviews are right. The Nexus One certainly feels very fast, the screen is gorgeous and the camera is a serious upgrade from my iPhone 3GS. It also feels a bit lighter than the iPhone and also looks thinner. The most obvious plus is that it has Flash Player 10.1. The same Flash Player that you are used to on your desktops and laptops will soon be available for your smartphone.

I’m going to try and not use my iPhone for a few days, a few weeks, … as long as I can. I have become pretty accustomed to using my iPhone for just about everything but I really do feel that the Nexus One may be a very good competitor.

Things I like so far:

  • It has Flash Player 10.1 therefore I finally have a full web-experience in the palm of my hand.
  • The camera. The quality really is better and it comes with an LED flash making the camera usable even in the dark.
  • Most of the apps I use daily (like Tripit or Twitter) are also available in the Android Market or have a decent alternative.
  • I love the fact that you can organize your home screens exactly like you want them.

Things I don’t like:

  • The Android Market is not fully available in Belgium. Therefore I only have access to free apps. This will potentially become a real problem for me and it sorta already is. The Exchange client that I want to use is not a free app and therefore I can’t download and install it. I hope I can find a workaround soon because this is a serious deal-breaker… If you happen to know a workaround, I’d love to hear it.
  • Are there really only 5 home screens? I currently use 9 screens on my iPhone… This may become a problem although you do have access to all your apps in the application menu. I guess it’s just a different way of launching the apps.

I’ll keep you updated on how I get on with the Nexus One, on which sites I visit/use that I couldn’t before and on any Flash development experiments I may have time for in the next days/weeks. Stay tuned ;-)

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10 leading CEOs discuss the Open Screen Project and Flash

by Serge Jespers on 06. Oct, 2009 in open screen project

CEOs from ARM, Broadcom, DoCoMo, Google, HTC, Motorola, NVIDIA, Palm, QUALCOMM, and RIM talk about how they’re bringing Flash Platform technologies to their devices and platforms as part of the Open Screen Project and why they think it’s important to have Flash on their devices and platforms.

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Google adds external resource indexing for Flash sites/apps

by Serge Jespers on 19. Jun, 2009 in Flash

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.

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SEO for Flash works

by Serge Jespers on 18. Mar, 2009 in Flash

seoflash.jpgSEO for Flash based sites and/or applications has always been a hot topic. Depending on the source you’ll very hear different opinions. That’s exactly why Belgian based agency Nascom did their own test a few weeks back. They came to the conclusion that Google can index Flash. You can read more about their test and their findings on their blog.

If you want to find out more about SEO for Flash, you should also check out our recently launched SEO Technology Center. While Adobe and the leading search engines are making significant strides in making SWF content more searchable, you can take additional steps now to improve your search ranking positions further.

The SEO Technology Center helps explain what the challenges are and provides practical steps, examples, and best practices that you can follow to overcome them.

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Weekly blend – the one with the MP4 watch, Google, massive screens, Apple netbook, pirates and opening sequences

by Serge Jespers on 20. Dec, 2008 in Weekly blend

watches-1Tell Time, Snap Photos with Thanko MP4 Video Watch
Looks like the watch that Tim Buntel used during the MAX keynotes

mosttrustedGoogle off list of 20 most trusted companies
Title says it all

videoart120 (36.5 meters) Feet of Video Art
Final Exams at NYU’s Big Screens Class

macnetbookMacworld to bring netbook?
I wouldn’t mind an Apple Netbook but don’t think it’s going to happen

piratesHow to successfully guilt-trip software pirates
We should also add a similar message to our software ;-)

movieopenings30 Unforgettable Movie Opening Sequences
Lots of inspirational stuff here

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Weekly blend is back: The Photoshop-AJAX-Analytics-iPhone-AIR edition

by Serge Jespers on 25. Oct, 2008 in Weekly blend

A couple of weeks ago at Flash On The Beach, someone Paras Sheth asked why I dropped the “Weekly blend” posts. I promised him that I would pick them back up and so here’s the first one. Instead of going for a weekly theme, I decided to just post links to cool sites or articles that I come across every week. Hope you enjoy it.

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SEO for Flash based RIA’s just became a lot easier

by Serge Jespers on 01. Jul, 2008 in News, RIA

Update: Google also published a FAQ on this topic

Search engine optimization has always been sort of a nightmare for RIA developers. SEO is always the first things clients ask about these days. And it’s not just a problem with Flash-based rich Internet applications (RIAs). AJAX-based applications have the exact same issues. Just yesterday, I heard of an interactive agency having to really persuade a client that it’s Flash-based site would get picked up by search engines if they did it right. Workarounds like using SWFobject in combination with SWFaddress are pretty common. But you still don’t get the everything indexed. This method basically means creating a hidden HTML version of your site. While this also gives you additional benefits for accessibility and mobile browsers, this is pretty cumbersome to do.

Today we are teaming up with search industry leaders to dramatically improve search results of dynamic Web content and RIAs. Adobe is providing an optimized Flash Player to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines. This will provide more relevant automatic search rankings of the millions of RIAs and other dynamic content that run in the Flash Player. Moving forward, RIA developers and rich Web content producers won’t need to amend existing and future content to make it searchable — they can be confident it can now be found by users around the globe.

Improved search of SWF content will provide immediate benefits to companies leveraging Adobe Flash software. Without additional changes to content, developers can continue to provide experiences that are only possible with Adobe Flash technology, without the trade-off of a loss in search indexing. It will also positively affect the Search Engine Optimization community who will develop best practices for building content and RIAs utilizing Adobe Flash technologies, and enhance the ability to find and monetize SWF content.

I’m sure most of you know that static text in SWF was already being indexed by search engines but with this new technology, all your content is being indexed — including dynamically loaded data and different states in your application — without having to change anything!

More info:
Adobe Devnet
Ted Patrick
Ryan Stewart
TechChrunch
InsideRIA

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