I’ve often thought about the day that I would write this blog post, wondered what I would be feeling and how to sum up 5 eventful years in a single entry. Now that it’s here, I’m feeling relieved, excited, sad, anxious, privileged, and relaxed … what a combination!

In January 2010 I’ll be winding up the daily activity of my company Moket, after accepting an offer to take up a new position as Experience Architect at Vodafone Hutchison Australia.

The decision to re-enter the workforce after 9 years of running my own businesses (Moket + DRD Interactive) was of course not taken lightly. There were many contributing factors, and I won’t bore you with all of them, but instead pick out some of the more important ones.

Firstly, running your own business is hard, hard work. Especially if you’re out on the bleeding edge of something new, as Flash Lite was in 2004 when I started Moket. As many of you will appreciate, I’ve invested a huge amount of time, effort, cash and emotion into Moket and the various business models we pursued to try and monetize Flash Lite development in those early years. Working in a start-up takes a toll on you and also your family, and mine certainly rode the roller-coaster with me the whole way.

Trying to create a mobile ecosystem around an early technology like Flash Lite certainly had its challenges. Whether it was device penetration, industry support (or lack thereof in the pre-app-store days), player features or lack of synchronicity with the rest of the Flash Platform, there was always a hurdle that needed to be jumped. And of course we jumped over many of them, only to find more on the other side. This is true though of many start-up ventures and nothing to complain about really (cause it’s what you expect), but it was particularly true of Flash Lite. I look back on it now with Flash Player 10.1 on our doorstep, and wonder if I wasn’t 4-5 years too early – but hey, you always need early adopters!

While the Flash Lite train chugged along, my life also started to move into a new phase. My youngest daughter is starting school next year, making 3 kids at school and needing all the things that school-kids need. The time had come to re-evaluate the idea that Moket was started on (Flash mobile development), to see if the business still had something to offer, and to see if I was personally ready (along with my wife) to continue to commit to the burden of owning a business based on a platform that had not delivered what we had hoped. The answer, most importantly to the last question, was no. The time had come to look to see what I could achieve with a larger company, and using the experiences, skills, knowledge and contacts that I had developed throughout the life of Moket.

As you’ll appreciate, 2009 has not been a stellar year for switching jobs (losing them, yes, but starting new ones, no), especially when you’re coming out of running your own company for so long. After a fair amount of searching, praying, phone calls and emails, I’ve been able to secure a fantastic position that really takes advantage of (nearly) everything I’ve done with Moket, and pushes me into new directions as well.

My official title is Experience Architect at the newly merged Australian telco, Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA). The role however is a lot broader than the title suggests. I will be leading and managing a team of designers and developers, focused on creating and delivering innovative smartphone applications to customers. We will be focused initially on the iPhone, with Android, Blackberry and other platforms into the future. I’ll have the task of setting the vision and applications roadmap, strategic initiatives and performance measures.It’s like a small start-up venture inside of a corporate (however VHA feels like a start-up itself in many ways, only bigger!), so I’m very excited to be taking a senior role in the context of this new aspect of their business.

The position is also based in Sydney, so my family will be relocating in time for the kids to start at a new school. Quite the adventure for us all!

“But where is Flash?”, I hear you ask? Good question! I see Flash (FP10.1, Flex Mobile Framework, AIR) as playing a role with my new team – exactly what that role is I’m yet to determine! It could be with exploring the various ways in which we can use the unified Flash Platform to extend the reach of certain applications, or perhaps using it as a rapid prototyping tool for apps that will ultimately be built using native SDK’s … like I said, I’m not sure yet With that in mind though, I’ll certainly be staying “inside” the Flash mobile community and won’t be disappearing completely into the App Store just yet!

There are too may people to thank here, but I’ll be reaching out personally to those of you who have played a major role in Moket and my work in the Flash mobile community. My Moket email will remain active for some time, and I’m still on LinkedIn and Twitter for keeping in touch. I’ll also continue blogging and hopefully conference speaking where possible and appropriate, so not much will change from that perspective.

And finally … I wish all of you a very happy and safe Christmas, and all the best for the new year!

The Sony Ericsson X2 was announced a little while ago, and recently I’ve been fortunate enough to have been able to do some work on an early release version. It’s a nifty device – Windows Mobile 6.5, 800 x 480 touch display, and this feature called “Panels”.

Panels are applications that can assigned as the “homescreen” of the device, and have full interactivity with the hardware. They can be written as C++, HTML/JavaScript, OpenGL ES, Native Windows Mobile, JavaME, Capuchin or Flash Lite 3 applications, and can access features of the device OS such as launching applications (like Email, Messaging, Calendar, Settings) or reporting missed calls, calender events, unread emails or SMS. The “panelization”" of content is a very simple process once you’ve optimised the content for use on the homescreen, and essentially packages your content into a CAB file that is installed over ActivSync to your device.

The good news (apart from all of that so far) is that the PlayNow Arena “app store” for Sony Ericsson will be soon featuring a category for Panels, so developers can monetize these homescreen applications. One that I hope makes it into PlayNow is the “Punky Panel” that I’ve developed (pictured above), and later in October I’ll be doing a video on the development process of creating the application using Flash Lite 3.

I’m very happy to announce that Moket has secured funding from the Open Screen Fund, to further development of one of our mobile games in the works, currently titled “Pocket Mogul”. The game will be using several of Nokia’s S60 Platform Services for Flash Lite, and will be initially designed for s60 5th Edition touch-screen devices (screenshot for demo only – not the final game) before being ported to any supported key-based and other devices.

I’ll be releasing some more details on the game itself in the coming weeks, particularly once my Adobe MAX commitments are wrapped up, but at this stage I’d like to thank Nokia and Adobe for coming on board with the project. I’m looking forward to being able to bring to market something a little different for Flash Lite games, and it’s always great to be supported during the creation of original IP. Stay tuned!

A little while back I suggested that I would try and be forthcoming with our sales numbers through Ovi so that the Flash development community could see what was happening behind the scenes with us on this new sales channel. This certainly wasn’t to say that I thought Moket’s content would be the biggest selling through the store (far from it) but I thought it would be helpful since we have been in the Ovi Store from the start.

As some of you will know, Ovi’s reporting screens were removed for quote some time while they were “fixed”, and have just become available again over the weekend. Here’s what I can show you now in terms of how things have been progressing for us:

Now I know these numbers aren’t changing the world (Mills, that’s for you), but you can clearly see a big gap between the top 2 selling items and the rest. Why? Is it because they’re better games? No. Do they have better position on the deck? In a way, yes. You see, we have Cipher and GRORBS available for Nokia’s touch-screen devices (S60 5th Ed) as well as S60 3rd Ed key-based devices, and I’ve made it clear before that there’s a strong skew towards the touch screen devices (or at least there has been) on the Ovi store because the default device that was used to filter the visible content was the 5800 XpressMusic . Currently if I go to the Ovi Store, the default device is a Nokia E71, but don’t get me started about why this also isn’t a great option (they’ve taken off the S40 device they had there for some reason which escapes me at the moment).

So I think it’s fair to say that during the first couple of months selling on Ovi, you would have been doing better if your content was available on a 5800 XpressMusic or N97. Other than that, I’m not sure the numbers for us have been all that much to write home about, as they say.

Geographically it’s very interesting, as I think the top selling regions (and correct me if I’m wrong) were amongst some of the early adopters of the 5800 XpressMusic, so there are conceivably more of these touch devices in those markets (however like I said, I may be wrong). I certainly can’t think of too many other reasons as to why we’re doing comparatively well in Russia

Still, it’s early days for Ovi. There’s been a lot happening behind the scenes, responding to issues that the team knows are there, and tweaking things to try and improve the experience. I think there’s a fair way to go however, and certainly a lot of the changes we’re seeing or wanting should have happened prior to flipping the switch on this. But looking forward, I think for Flash developers this still represents an important platform to be on, and one that I’m sure will continue to mature as time goes on.

And remember if you DO have Flash content published on Ovi Store, you can have it listed on OviFlash.com to hopefully increase some awareness (and who knows, maybe sales?!) of your content.

Ovi hasn’t even been live for a week, but I’m noticing an interesting trend already in sales numbers from Moket’s own content. If you’ve read my previous blog, you’ll know that I feel there are some issues particularly with browsing the Ovi desktop website that are preventing consumers from having the best experience.

One of those issues is that by default, the website assumes you have the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music device, and only shows you content for that device. If you deep link into a particular product’s page that isn’t supported on the 5800 (or other S60 5th Ed phones), then the content appears as though it has been removed. Also, there’s not as much content available for s60 5th Ed phones, so there doesn’t look to be as much content overall in the store.

Going on our publisher record, here are devices download stats for the past 7 days (since Ovi launch):

Our game “Cipher” is so far the only asset visible in the Ovi Store that is a touch-version for S60 5th Ed (I say “so far” because we have another one, “GRORBS” approved through QA which is awaiting the final push into the live system). As you can see, Cipher is by far the most downloaded since launch. Could this be because when you go to the Ovi store by default, this is the only on of our games actually visible? Interesting to note too that that “Unknown” device category is the most tracked, which I assume is when you select “Any Mobile” as the device by which the site filters content.

I’m going to try and be as transparent as I can with the Ovi experience as I think it’s a) important for developers to understand the realitites of these types of platforms, and b) important to highlight where improvements can be made in what is arguably one of the more imortant opportunities to come around for Flash mobile developers so far.

There’s certainly been some “interesting” press around the launch of Nokia’s Ovi Store in the past 24 hours. Some good, some not so good. Unfortunately I think  the “soft launch” Nokia were planning opened a little “harder” than expected and some early experiences of Ovi have perhaps not been as favorable as they could have been. Nevertheless, Ovi is here and represents a great opportunity for Flash mobile developers in the long term.

Over on Gamasutra at the moment, there’s a (sponsored) feature on the various gaming experiences that can be found on Ovi, covering Flash, Java, Symbian and N-Gage. Moket’s soccer-skills game “Palleggio” is featured as an example of Flash Lite games on Ovi.

I’m looking for people who would be interested in contributing to the greater good and being participants in a short interview/survey for a project I’m working on. Questions are based on what you get out of developer portals/forums/help centres, how you use them and what you’d like to see more of.

I’m looking for people in the following categories:

• Flash developers (AIR, Flex, Flash for web) with little/no mobile experience
• Mobile developers (iPhone, Java, etc) with little/no Flash experience, or who at least don’t use Flash as a regular tool

If you feel like you fall into either of these categories, and have 15-20 minutes to spare chatting with me on the phone in the week starting May 11th, then please drop me a line (dale at moket dot com) ASAP. Your help will be greatly appreciated and publically acknowledged (i.e. there’s no money involved!).

Moket has had a very healthy relationship with Nokia right from the ealry years of Flash Lite, and I was pleased to extend this with our joining the Forum Nokia Launchpad program. Launchpad is a program that aims to give developers and companies further access to Nokia knowledge, expertise and business development opportunities.

This all comes off the back of Moket being added to the Innovation Series last year, and becoming a Premium Publisher for the Ovi store in 2009. We’re hoping that Launchpad will continue to build and strengthen the Flash mobile ecosystem, with the net result being more market opportunities for everyone.

***UPDATED - Seems that I should have read the documentation more closely, but it seems that Ovi at this time does not support the sale of Flash mobile personalisation content, but just the standard JPG, GIF, PNG and SVG image formats instead. Funny that in our conversations with Ovi and Nokia, and through the application process, no one pulled us up on this when we were asking to sell Flash mobile wallpapers as well as applications and games? Anyway, we’ll sell the static content we have in the meantime, and hope that the Ovi system expands to accommodate Flash mobile personalisation in the future (although for the life of me I honestly can’t work out why this isn’t the case right from the start!?) ***

For those of you who haven’t heard, Nokia’s new Ovi “app store” will be launching in May, giving developers of Flash, Symbian, Java and WRT applications a new global distribution channel to 10’s of millions of devices (estimated 400 million by the end of 2010). Moket, along with many other Flash mobile developers that we know, have been accepted as publishers for the initial intake of application/game content. However, we’ve also become a Premium Publisher which means that we can also sell mobile personalisation content.

Some may be wondering why selling wallpapers would come under a “premium status” and selling full blown applications and games is the easier option. Good question I guess My guess (and it’s just a guess – am prepared to be given more info from a Nokia person if they would like to comment) is that Nokia want to be seen competing on the “app store” front first and foremost. This means a good QA system and a steady stream of targeted applications and games at various price points. These are not the types of content that are generally “mass produced”.

On the other hand, personalisation content is much more common with a huge gap in what is “good” and what is “not so good”, if you know what I mean Nokia would be wanting to keep a tighter grip on what kind of content they populate the store with, to avoid it becoming another over-stocked portal with a million “hot babes” or “glowing skull” wallpapers!

Anyway, you can watch a recent Nokia webinar from Bill Perry to learn more about Publish to Ovi, and stay tuned for the launch in early May.

I’ve been asked to come along as the Guest Speaker at the next event for Pitch Club in Brisbane on March 26th. Pitch Club provides an opportunity for 9 ventures (+ 1 drawn on the night) to step into the ring. Business owners can ‘pitch’ their idea for 90 seconds to a crowd of investors, business angels, VCs and other entrepreneur enthusiasts (and a few more minutes if the crowd vote them through to Finals).

I’ll be sharing my experiences with Moket over the past 4 years – both success stories and failures. I’m hoping to pass on some tips to other early-stage entrepreneurs and those looking to begin down the path of the technology start-up (but be warned … I am far from the ‘font of all knowledge’ and certainly don’t have all the answers!).

Visit the Pitch Club website for more details and to register your attendance.