My most recent musical adventure was a concept built around “5″. 5 members, 5 shows, and a recording of 5 original songs. And it didn’t stop there! You can now buy The Five’s 5 track EP, “For Five Nights Only” in 5 different formats, sold as a package:

1. 7″ vinyl single – Side A (played at 45rpm with 3 songs)
2. 7″ vinyl single – Side B (played at 33rpm with 2 songs)
3. CD (played at 500rpm) with the original 5 tracks, plus a bonus 5 songs
4. Sheet music for unrecorded track “Murders and Burgers”
5. Digital downloads from sources such as  iTunes, or for free if you buy the package

There’s been some cool reviews as well recently which you can find at www.thefive.com.au. Check it out, support local Aussie music and think about bringing some of The Five home to your music collection!

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!

Does the label on these things read “Keep out of reach of children” ???

My wife and I (along with many others) have been supporting a children’s refuge in Tapachula, Mexico for a couple of years now, helping them to build a new house. Mission Mexico has around 50 orphaned, abused, abandoned and poverty-stricken children, from 16 month old babies through to teenagers. The wonderful people who run this refuge, Pam and Alan Skuse, are from my home state of Queensland, and have basically given up retirement to care for these children full-time.

Right now the house they are in is great apart from one major flaw – the roof. Tapachula, like most of southern Mexico, is very wet, and hot. It averages around 3000mm of rain each year, and 32 degC every day of the year. The roof on the refuge is not watertight and is not insulated, meaning these 50 kids plus adults are regularly flooded inside the house and go through extreme heat conditions.

My wife and some friends here in Australia are helping to raise the money needed to fix this roof – $25,000 AUD (around $20k US) by the end of August. There’s a number of initiatives we’re working on, but one that I have started for those particularly in business is www.letsfixtheroof.com. It’s just a simple one-page site that outlines the need, and gives you the details for making online donations (through an aid organisation called Global Development Group, also here in Australia). Moket has kicked in some money to start the ball rolling, and we’ve had some more support recently added, so we’re well on the way! Donating through this small campaign will get your logo on the donations section of the site – big or small, local or multi-national, $1 or $1000, as a way of saying thank you for your generosity.

If you, or someone that you have access to within your company (who writes the cheques!), is able to make a donation towards this cause, we would be most appreciative – and more importantly, the children at Mission Mexico will appreciate it as well. I know these are difficult times financially for many, but I believe for those of us living in relative abundance to some parts of the world, it’s a constant duty of ours to care for those less fortunate.

Please consider.

Something of interest to those of you who might read my other blog (www.toytragic.com) – the first teaser trailer for the upcoming Green Lantern animated feature film (straight to DVD mid 2009) – “Green Lantern: First Flight”.

Go Hal Jordan!

Some of you will know that my hobby outside of all things mobile, is collecting toys, comics and general items of pop culture. My dad doesn’t get it, my wife puts up with it and my kids are super jealous of what you can find in my man cave – but it’s fun Anyway, I’ve launched a new blog today that’ll be the outlet for some of my thoughts on being a grown up toy collector, as well as posts about items in my collection, product reviews and interviews with other toy geeks around the place.

It’s called Toy Tragic. Visit the website (has a custom iPhone template for iPhone and iPod browsers). Follow us on Twitter. Facebook and mobile applications coming. Enjoy!