Every year, AIMIA release the Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index Report, giving valuable research and insight into the trends and behaviors of the Australia mobile customer base. At this years event, I’ll be one of the panelists that discusses the report in relation to specific areas of the industry.My focus of course is on mobile applications and my experience with the Appland team at VHA. A little about the event:

For the 6th year in a row AIMIA Mobile Industry Group will present the results of their annual survey looking at how Australians use their mobile phones. We’ll look at how things are changing in the mobile landscape and the impact of the iPhone. The special topic this year focused on mobile application usage. Some of the findings from the report showed:

• More people are on data plans – 47% of respondents have mobile data included in their monthly payment or pre-paid amount (up from 31% last year)
• Free applications are clearly the most popular – 41% of respondents had downloaded an application. 78% of these respondents who had downloaded an app had not paid any money to download the application

The event is on October 7th, 9.30am-12pm at KPMG Auditorium, Sydney.

Register now to book your place!

Not that long ago I posted some info about the Ovi App Wizard that Nokia had launched to help mobilise web content into Ovi Store compatible applications. One of the apps that I created with the wizard was for a site called Toy Tragic, and the Calling All Innovators competition has made the app one of the Top 10 finalists. Thanks Nokia!

To celebrate this achievement and to help with driving further usage of the app, Toy Tragic is running a competition for the month of August. Download the FREE Toy Tragic app before August 31st, and you’ll go into the draw to win an exclusive Wolverine Mighty Mugg! Offer is open to anyone who downloads the app, leaves a comment on the Ovi Store, and emails Toy Tragic with their details, so what are you waiting for! Full details here on Toy Tragic.

Winner is announced September 1st, 2010.

I’m very pleased to be speaking at the upcoming AIMIA Queensland event, “The Mechanics of Mobile Marketing” on June 17 in Brisbane. The afternoon seminar will be led by a number of speakers from different areas of the mobile market, all looking at how the smartphone/touch device explosion has, and can, impact business. Speakers are:

• Telco – See what Dale Rankine’s team at Vodafone Hutchison Australia recommend when building your mobile platform for device or mobile web.
• Agency – Brett Wiskar, Director of Speedwell eBusiness Solutions, development partner in the delivery of the highly successful Domino’s Pizza iPhone application.
• Publisher – Carl Poplett, Content Relationship Manager for News Digital Media, Australia’s largest news publisher across online and mobile, talks about the mobile explosion, News’ mobile platforms and the opportunities available for brands in the mobile space.

Space is limited so if you’re interested, register now.

It’s that time of year again, where web and digital designers, developers and business-types descend on Sydney for the annual webDU conference! I’ve posted about it many times before but now that it’s here, I wanted to point out some of the highlights I’m looking forward to over the next 2-3 days.

1. Seeing the “two Mikes” – Mike Chambers (Adobe) and Mike Downey (Microsoft) – back presenting at the sane conference again, although this time they’re speaking for different teams!). Mike D has a interesting session on game development on Friday afternoon
2. Catching up with many good friends from the industry, both from locally and overseas
3. Delivering my first webDU session in 6 years that’s NOT specifically about Flash!
4. Seeing if Greg Rewis has mellowed out at all after getting married
5. Seeing some Android action
6. The conference party, the after conference party, and the speaker party

For those of you going, I’ll see you all at Bondi Beach in the morning!

It’s conference season at the moment for geeks, and one of the best going around is of course Sydney’s own webDU. This is seriously one of the best conferences for the web and technology industries, and always delivers a high standard of content and entertainment

This will be my 7th webDU, and 6th as a speaker. This year I’ll be speaking about mobile marketplaces and the technologies that allow us to go to market quickly, and there’s some other great mobile content at the conference as well, including a great session from Rod Farmer and Oliver Weidlich.

I encourage you to get along to webDU this year – this time at a new venue at the famous Bondi Beach!

www.webdu.com.au

The 6th annual International Mobile Gaming Awards have opened their Call for Entries. The awards have some new categories this year, including:

• Grand Prix
• Excellence in Design
• Excellence in ConnectivityAward
• Excellence in Game Play Award
• Best Real World Game
• Best Casual Game Award (developed using Flash or Java)

You have until January 18th 2010 to submit your entries.

I’m back in the office this week adjusting to life after the 2009 Adobe MAX conference in LA, and coming to terms with everything that was announced and demoed. There was certainly the feeling that this year ended up being all about mobile, which has been promised in the past but never fully delivered on. I think this year though, some of the Flash mobile haters would even have to concede that things are looking pretty interesting for the space. Here’s some thoughts I’ve had since returning home from MAX on the mobile-related announcements and the future of Flash on devices …

Flash Player 10.1

The Flash Player 10.1 announcement was (I think) the most significant, for the simple fact that it filled in more pieces of the puzzle. I mean, what has been the most argued point by Flash devs for the past 5 years? “We don’t want to have to code for a different runtime, especially if it’s a backwards step”. How great is it then, that the new runtime for Flash devs and AS3 programmers will be targeting for desktops and the browser, is actually the one that was developed for mobile devices! The Flash platform has a lot to thank mobile for, and more specifically the Open Screen Project. It’s because of the work done by the Adobe engineers on the mobile space that all Flash devs will have a runtime that renders and performs so much better than previous versions.

FP10.1 does NOT solve all of mobile’s fragmentation – this is something that comes with the territory and needs to be understood by Flash devs coming to the platform. There’s also the reality that it will still be a long time before there’s a large enough segment of the device ecosystem that has the FP10.1 runtime embedded, and therefore a segment of target devices that represent an investable market for those companies (be they app development, entertainment, consumer brands, etc) who would spend money on mobile. And this is why I think the “other” mobile announcement at MAX was important …

Flash Apps running on the iPhone

(Full announcement) Let me start by saying that there is a long way to go before what we saw demoed on stage and through the App Store with the current crop of Flash-developed iPhone apps becomes a fully-fledged product. Right now, the product known as “Notus” is working just enough to create some demos for some people who are working with un-releasable code bases and command-line-esque tools. What it looks like once we get to the stage of a checkbox in Flash CS5 “Publish Settings” that says “Export for ARM devices” or “Export for iPhone” is still being worked on.

But going on from my comment leading into this section, I think this solution is powerful for Flash devs because it’s a fact of life that what you can charge for an iPhone app is much higher than what you can pay for a Flash application for other mobile devices. And it’s not hard to understand why. Despite the obvious lack of marketshare compared with other leading smartphone manufacturers, the iPhone carries with it the force of “Steve’s Amazing and Unstoppable Magic Marketing Machine”, that has turned it into the device of choice for any brand that also wants to be cool by association. Can I make a game now and distribute to 100,000,000’s of Nokia devices and even monetize that through the Ovi Store? YES! But so many brands are investing in the device that only reaches tens of millions because they want to be “on the iPhone”. So, while FP10.1 is opening doors to every other open-minded smartphone manufacturer through the Open Screen Project, getting Flash apps to run on the iPhone is filling the gap and will allow developers and businesses to take advantage of the interest that Steve’s media machine has built up amongst their clients and provide solutions for that single device as well – all without having to retool.

That all being said however, I’m yet to be convinved that Adobe’s solution will be suited to all possibilities on the iPhone – perhaps it’ll best suited towards casual games and those that make up compents of marketing campaigns, more than data-intensive, location-aware applications? This will be answered in time, but for now I’m happy that Adobe have been proactive in this area and done everything that can. The rest, as always, will be left up to Cupertino.

The Flash Mobile Community

It’s fair to say that we were pretty thin on the ground this year. Many who have attended regularly in the past were missing through various acts of economic recession, relocation, or having moved into other areas of development in an attempt to make some decent money I had a few opportunities to speak at the conference, and while it was still around the Flash Lite player, I tried to inject a lot of enthusiasim for the mobile platform to indeed make it look like a fun place to work (sans karate suit this year). Certainly the announcements made that conversation very easy to start, and even made the discussion of the real mobile platform pain-points (those outside of Flash) quite interesting for most. But what is the state of our community? How does it reflect the opportunities in mobile for Adobe product users?

I have some concerns at the moment around the movement on the Flash mobile platform, and how this is affecting the small but dedicated community that has developed over the past 4-5 years. Given the realisation of a common runtime, Flash (Lite) mobile developers have some choices, which are probably based on how they’ve approached their association with Flash on devices so far (and here we thought that the main choices would be for current Flash devs jumping onto mobile!). Many Flash Lite devs don’t know As3. Many don’t come from a pure “coding” background, or would consider themselves application developers.

Put simply, we either have to adapt, or be left behind.

There is now an influx of developers to the mobile world that speak a different language to those that many of us have been speaking for the past several years, and to be honest have the capacity to carry with them a superiority complex where they believe themselves to be further down the evolutionary chain because they build with Flex or AIR or build native iPhone apps in their spare time. Not an uncommon scenario in the software world, and I’ll point out right now that I have no-one specific in mind here – I’m not out to tear anyone down here. But there are a lot of good people that have been working on the Flash mobile platform for many years that have enormous understanding of the mobile space from points-of-view other than what platform or toolset you’re using.

There is so much to learn about the mobile space that is not directly related to a runtime or specific technology, that the existing Flash mobile community has a lot to offer and can help make this transition a smooth, educational and ultimately growing experience. The Flash platform community needs to leverage this knowledge and experience that has been earned and learned through much blood, sweat and tears, and understand that just because they can publish to FP10.1 from Flash Builder and have the SWF technically run on desktop, web and mobile, it doesn’t mean that publishing for a mobile audience is the same.

The high-level messaging and practical implementation of that messaging from Adobe needs to empower and include Flash Lite developers who are “moving up” to a more powerful and broader Flash platform than what we’ve had, as well as educate and inspire those Flash developers who are “moving across” onto a new screen and into a new market with its own set of specific rules and intricacies.

What will MAX 2010 look like?*

Who knows!? It’ll be in LA again, so we’ll all be familiar with the local restuarants and bars at least I’m expecting that a lot of water will have passed under the bridge by this time next year; many Flash apps in the App Store and more of an idea of how they are performing amongst native iPhone apps, Flash CS5 with new versions Device Central and maybe mobile Flex frameworks will have changed the tooling landscape, and some new devices will have shipped with Flash Player 10.1.

It’s safe to say though that this next year will bring the most dramatic shifts for Flash mobile developers that we have experienced. It won’t be an easy year, but it will be full of exciting new challanges and opportunities that aren’t here now. Embrace it.

To see what you missed, head over to tv.adobe.com for session videos

I’d like to specifically thank these guys for making Adobe MAX 2009 a great trip for me – Darren, Mark, Bill, Max, Chris, Spaulds, Serge, Tomas, Alan, Manu, MNR, Evan, Luca, Marco, Andrew, Scott, Mark Hamill, the MAX Speaker Team, and Things From Another World who sold me some cool Hong Kong Phooey and Captain Caveman vynil toys

(*I have no idea of timings of actual products or anything, so this is all completely speculative)

Well Day 1 is done and so far it’s been a jam packed Adobe MAX conference. My session on Sunday for Flash Lite development was attended by a dedicated group and went pretty well overall. Thanks to all who attended, and to Darren for the audience assistance.

As you may have already heard, this morning’s keynote session was all about devices. Well, not ALL about it, but pretty much the key take always were certainly mobile, and in particular, Flash apps running on the iPhone. For some, the 20+ minutes of previews of James Cameron’s AVATAR film – in 3D on a 60 foot was the highlight, and was very impressive I have to admit.

But the big news in my world was Flash Player 10.1 for smartphones and multi-touch devices, and a new compiler-process for exporting from the next Adobe Flash CS5 to ARM processor-targeted, native iPhone applications.

THIS IS NOT FLASH RUNNING ON THE IPHONE, but Ahead of Time compilation, meaning that your app won’t be able to load SWF files after it launches – SWF’s are not supported on the iPhone. You can go and read more on the Adobe Labs website, sign up for the beta (planned for hopefully in the coming months) and also download some apps from the App Store that are already live. More resources:

• Applications for iPhone:Developer FAQ
• ADC Article: Developing for the Apple iPhone using Flash
• Adobe Flash CS5 Professional Beta

Needless to say most of the talk around the conference for the rest of the day (and night) revolved around Flash and iPhone, which I think was the main aim of the announcement this morning. Congrats to all the engineering guys, Adobe teams and launch content partners for getting things this far. I believe there’s some way to go, but this is all good steps in the right direction.

More on MAX to come …

Nokia have some sessions lined up at Adobe MAX next week to showcase what’s happening on their mobile platforms for Adobe Flash and web platform developers, and also to discuss opportunities such as the Open Screen Fund. The session on Nokia Web Runtime will be espeicially of interest I think to many developers outside the Flash platform, as there have been some great links made with web applications for Nokia devices and Adobe tools such as Dreaweaver (you should also consider that non-Flash-based AIR applications using HTML/JS/CSS aren’t all that too dissimilar to native Nokia Web Runtime widgets … ). Here are the sessions you should add to your agenda:

Building World-Class Multimedia Applications on Nokia Devices
2-3pm Monday 5 October
Room 404A
Presenter: Robert Burdick

Open Screen Project Fund: Fueling the Future of Flash Experiences
5-6 pm Monday 5 October
Room 503
Presenters: Bill Perry and Mark Doherty

Mobile Application Development with Nokia Web Runtime
1:30-2:30 Tuesday 6 October
Room 402A
Presenter: Michael Bierman

There’s also the Open Screen Project Fund Winner’s booth in the exhibit area, where you can see some demos of mobile apps that have been funded so far. Unfortunately our app has only just been funded, so no sneak peeks of Pocket Mogul just yet

Looking forward to meeting as many Flash mobile people as possible next week in LA!

If you’re going to be at Adobe MAX in a couple of weeks, then you’re in for some truly awesome geek-treats.

First off, it was somehow leaked this week that around 4000 attendees would be given a pair of 3D glasses to watch an exclusive snippet of James Cameron’s upcoming digital epic, Avatar (apparently, Adobe CS4 products were heavily used throughout production).

And this morning I woke to the news from Ben Forta, that none other than Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, would be co-hosting the Adobe MAX Awards! Well, I guess we will be in LA, so the movie-star treatment may justified

Oh, and I hear that as well as all this hoo-ha there’s a few conference sessions on as well that designers and developers might really like to get along to and check out …

Can we get our geek on any more than this!?