Who talks about mobile gaming in the sauna?

Over at N-Gage Insider, there are some new video interviews being posted up which some may find interesting, if not a little disturbing. Your N-Gage host Arnold Faber introduces us to "Sauna Talk", a new show that promises to deliver interviews with leading N-Gage platform experts, dressed in towels and relaxing in the sauna. First up is Miikka Skaffari, Head of Developer Product Management for N-Gage. What next, Symbian Babes? There are some Flash Lite panel sessions at MAX this year, maybe they should get the presenters to all do them from a hot tub? Err... maybe not.

My latest toys

No, I don't mean an iPhone or the Nokia N96 ... I mean TOYS. Recently I was at Singapore's Changi Airport waiting for a connecting flight on my way home, when I discovered a new toy shop with a great collection of one of my favourite "subjects" - Star Wars. In this collection was a newly released series of "Mighty Muggs" figures - large scale figurines made from recycled materials. These are seriously cool - there's a series from Star Wars and Marvel comics, and also a line of Indiana Jones characters coming soon. The shop in Singapore only had a few from the Star Wars range, plus Iron Man and Wolverine, so I picked up a Luke Skywalker (EpV edition with removable hand!) and a Lando Calrissian (I don't have any other Lando stuff, so this is my first one). And good news - I have two more trips that go through Singapore in the next couple of months, and the shop keeper said he'd have more of the series by then! I'm such a freakin' nerd sometimes.

Sun sheds light on GUI tool for mobiles

Interesting news regarding a new release from Sun for Java developers - a GUI toolkit for rapid development of Java mobile applications.

Here are some interesting quotes from the article (do they sound familiar at all?)

"By creating LWUIT, Sun is reaffirming its commitment to the mobile development community and by open sourcing the LWUIT code, we are enabling mobile developers to quickly and easily create rich, portable interfaces for their applications," declared Craig Gering, Sun's senior director of embedded Java software.

"This software will also help address the mobile industry's fragmentation issue by enabling developers to create a single interface that will work anywhere Java is found."

The future of Mobile, today: Harnessing the 4th Screen

The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) are presenting an event titled "The future of Mobile, today: Harnessing the 4th Screen". Come and see how leading innovative Brisbane companies are engaging locally, nationally and internationally in this space. You will hear from:

• Google Mobile (keynote)
• Locatrix (my good mates from the incubator where Moket has been housed)
• Moket (of course)
  
• my247.com.au
• Mercury Mobilty
• Liquid Interactive

Event Details
When: Thursday 28th August 2008
Where: Grant Thornton Brisbane - King George Square, Adelaide Street (entrance), Brisbane

Times:
9.30am Registration and Coffee
10:00am start
12.30pm end

Cost:
AIMIA Members, $50
Non-members, $100

Register now

Project Capuchin Webinar

A little late to post, but nevertheless ...

Join a one-hour online seminar and learn how Project Capuchin is empowering Flash Lite and Java ME developers to leverage their expertise to quickly and securely create highly engaging mobile content.

Bonjour

Just finding my feet in Paris after what seemed a very long flight and a tough first 24 hours of battling jet lag ... but feeling good now and starting to settle in. I'm here doing some Flash Lite 3 training for Adobe, and have about 20 students starting 3 days of hands on training tomorrow at the Adobe Paris offices. This trip is a little different in that I've been able to bring my wife Tanya along for the week, so I've got someone to share the experience with. It also means I'll have more photos with me in them because I have someone to take the photos other than myself!

Anyway, looking forward the class tomorrow and getting to meet some Flash Lite developers on this side of the world. While I'm here I'll also be giving an eSeminar for Adobe Pacific - "Persistent Data with Adobe Flash Lite". It'll be 6am here for a 2pm Connect meeting, so hopefully I'll be making sense :)

Dizzy Zub Zub on Mobile Hotdog

Another one of our games, Dizzy Zub Zub (actually it's nearly our oldest one now!) has been added to the Mobile Hotdog web portal. Free to try before you buy! It joins Sausage Smackdown and Eat Them Alive and is also being pushed out onto Nokia Download. Upcoming titles also making their way to Nokia Download soon include Trench Rocket, Palleggio and one of our GoPets mini-games, Doogie Boogie.

SWF2JAR Packaing Tool Released for Project Capuchin SE Phones

Via Mark: Sony Ericsson have released their SWF2JAR packaging tool for Project Capuchin enabled phones. The recently released C905 is the first phone to support the platform.

Sony Ericsson's Project Capuchin technology is a Java ME API that bridges the Java ME and Adobe Flash Lite programming environments. The SWF2JAR tool is a tool for wrapping the SWF into a Java Midlet for distribution to supported Sony Ericsson devices.

Download it now from the Sony Ericsson Developer World site.

Adobe Pacific eSeminars

Just thought I'd make another mention of the introductory Flash Lite eSeminars I'm doing with Adobe Pacific at the moment. You can go and check out the schedule of all seminars here as well as recordings of previous sessions here (Flash Lite sessions under "Creative"). The recordings normally go live here 1 week after the event, so in a week's time you'll find the recording of today's session which was "Reactive Mobile Content with Adobe Flash Lite".

There's a whole range of really cool sessions on other product topics as well if you want to register and check them out at http://www.adobeeseminars.com.au/

Upcoming eSeminars (and other guest appearances :) are also listed on the right hands side of my blog now.

*UPDATE* Just to mention that these times are all based on Sydney AEST time (+10GMT).

Figures not great for Sony Ericsson

A report today with some figures today showing handset manufacturer Sony Ericsson in a spot of bother.

• Income over the quarter dropped by some 98 per cent, from AUD$534m to AUD$13
• Operating income fell by some 101 percent, while gross profit was down 29%

From a Flash Lite perspective, and for the 2000 employees of the company now facing the sack, here's hoping things turn around for them.

Adobe Ambassador-ship

Recently I was fortunate enough to be appointed as an Adobe Ambassador for the Pacific region, with a specific focus on my part in the mobile industry and experience with Flash for mobile devices. Sounds fancy ... here's what it means ...

An Adobe Ambassador is a recognised industry professional whom Adobe has approached to represent them in the Pacific region.

They are an expert of the Adobe tools. They understand the workflow, industry direction and key drivers of their field.

I'll probably pop up around a few more eSeminars and presentations from time to time, and am looking forward to being a closer part of the evangelism of Flash Lite in the Pacific region with the local Adobe team who are based out of Sydney.

iPhone as a gaming device - will Flash give it a shake?

OK don't worry, this isn't going to be another iPhone 3G hype posting, but just an observation. And jut so you know, while I'm not in queue out in the cold at the moment waiting to get one of the first new iPhones in Australia, I do plan on getting on and we have some plans for it ('nuff said).

An interesting note from the video that I've linked to above ... the reporter notices that when connected over 3G (at least here in Australia on Optus), there is a 10Mb download limit, which actually blocked the download of the game she was trying to get. WOuld have to do it over WiFi or through iTunes ... bit of a hiccup to choice while on the move IMO

This morning though I did download the new iTunes that includes App Store, the shopfront that allows developers to make their applications available for download (for free or for purchase). I know it's only been live for really a few hours, but one thing that struck me immediately was that both the Top 10 Apps, and Top 10 FREE Apps lists were comprised totally of games. At the time I writes this (cause I expect that list to change) the only "category" that is not "Games" is a sole application under the category of "Business", but I think that Bejeweled 2 may have slipped into the wrong category there!

There's been much debate in the gaming press over the past few months since the 3G device was announced, focused around the idea that the iPhone will actually revolutionize the handheld gaming market. This is because people see this is a truly "converged" device, and that the innovation of the touch screen + motion sensing will create more engaging games.

Of course the other argument is that the App Store is light years ahead of the distribution model that confronts most game publishers now when dealing with the mobile market. I was having lunch yesterday with a government rep for the electronic games industry in Queensland, and I was telling him that compared to the operator/aggregator/provider model (where there's so often more than one aggregator in the actual channel), selling direct through App Store for a 70% cut of the download price is like music to our ears.

I'm very keen to see though if the eventual support for Flash on the iPhone (I don't know anything - just my opinion that it WILL make it on there in some way in the not-so-distant future) can create experiences that sell next to games from EA, Gameloft, etc and capture some market share there. It's kind of like what we're waiting to see now on mobile - do people who have handsets that play Java and Flash Lite, and who download games, actually see the differences and embrace that? I think innovation of experience will play a big part in the success of game titles on the iPhone. That plus the fact that they are so easy to get!

So now that I've written this, I've actually gotten myself excited and want to go and join that queue :)

** UPDATE: As I predicted, those Top 10 lists have already started to diversify just a few hours later ... but I think my thoughts are still valid :)

Is innovation on the mobile platform dead?

I have been reading an interesting article this morning and would be interested to hear people's thoughts on the subject. Many of you will know that in the past I have, through various channels, been vocal about what I see as road blocks to Flash Lite taking hold in the mobile ecosystem as I know it can. But what about looking past just a particular platform (Flash Lite, Java, Symbian, etc) and looking at the mobile industry itself.

Ewan MacLeod over at SMSTextNews has written a somewhat bleak piece about what he sees as a failing of the mobile industry to foster innovation over the past 10 years or so. The title pretty much says it all - "Trapped in Mobile Hell - A Warning for Entrepreneurs".

It's certainly not an encouraging discourse, but from his point of view it's an honest assessment of where things are truly at. More to the point, it's an opinion about how much longer the mobile "phenomenon" will actually take to become the powerful platform that we all believe it is.

As a entreprenuer myself (having started a number of businesses now in the tech space) and being particularly entrenched now in the mobile space with Moket, it's pretty hard to argue that the past 4 years especially have been anything but very difficult and nothing like what we had "assumed" in our business modeling and projections. Is this, as Ewan says, the "reality" of the mobile business model, or are there business models that can be pursued that will in fact deliver rewards?

I don't expect any quick solutions, however I must say that within our own business, things have started to take on a different complexion over the past 6 months - for the better. While it's really no more difficult than what it has been to squeeze revenue from the industry business models we have to work with (the operator/aggregator/provider model for one is a real killer for revenue), there have been some shifts in attitude towards Flash Lite in particular that have made me more optimistic.

But the question remains - can real innovation occur in the mobile industry at a rate that will promote great new ideas, or does the mobile business itself kill start-ups? Over to you ...

New Mobile Job Site

There's a new job listing site up and running that targets mobile developer positions - mobiledevjobs.org

This is an initiative from Scott Janousek, in collaboration with Peter Elst and the new riajobs.org site. Great idea guys, looking forward to seeing the site populated with many cool opportunities for mobile developers around the world.

I've also added a dynamic listing of jobs from the site here on my blog (down a bit on the right under my Google Shared Items list) using their API for showing listings.

Updated FL Devices Spreadsheet

If you're looking for an up to date document for showing all Nokia, Sony Ericsson and BREW (Verizon Wireless) devices that have Flash Lite pre-installed in all of its flavours, Bill has just updated this on his blog and is available for download here.

Interesting to see that the BREW handsets have not changed in a long time. For me this is a major drawback of the current ecosystem in North America, as these devices are getting very old and doesn't really demonstrate a dynamic or growing market. I know there are several devices that are on the verge of being certified, so hopefully they might appear in Bill's next update. Qualcomm's recent announcement about further Flash Lite adoption should remove this problem of certifying handsets sometime midway through next year.