Flash Lite 3 (and now 4) can be customized to support h.264 video but the license for h.264 needs to be purchased separately by OEMs. We often get questions on how much additional costs this is going to incur so I researched and here’s what I found.  H.264 has a different licensing structure for devices and internet users. For non PC type devices, h.264 licenses is free upto 100K units and it costs $0.2 per unit upto 5 million units and $0.1 per unit after 5 million units. They cap the royalty at $5M for 2009-2010. (This information is picked from here). ......continue reading

Skyfire, a browser technology that essentially is an example of successful cloud computing, has purchased a company called Kolbysoft. Kolbysoft makes a Webkit browser that runs on Android. The motive? To bring similar cloud computing technology to Android. Which will mean that Flash 10 among other latest browser technologies will be available on Android. ......continue reading

Google’s Android kernel will no longer be part of Linux kernel tree. What this means is that updates from Android will not be intergrated into Linux kernel and vice versa. Linux kernel is an open community and the developers are often posting fixes for security, new device drivers and utilities. The decision seems to have come from Linux community. Linux developer blog suggest that problem seems is with Android’s security model, and framebuffer driver infrastructure. This prevents several Android drivers and platform code from merging into the main kernel tree. The blogger also points that ‘no one seems to care about the Android tree’. ......continue reading

Well- everyone is waiting for Flash 10.1 and Flash 4 on embedded devices that support Actionscript 3 among other things. The official date for the release for either is not set yet, but we (Calsoft) have put together a plan for the OEMs looking to upgrade from Flash Lite 3. The goal is to simplify the process of migrating to newer version based on your requirements. The upgrade plan will allow you to migrate your earlier port to newer version with minimum cost and effort, and will provide with a certified player. I will post more information on this in coming days. Feel free to email with any questions in the meantime. ......continue reading

Adobe does a great job of maintaining a list of Flash enabled mobile/wireless devices, but there isn’t any such list for consumer devices. Originally I started keeping track of CE devices with Flash for my other blog flashliteonline.com where I was hoping to write about Flash Lite applications. But the CE market has been slow to evolve so there has been little to report on Flash Lite applications on such devices. With the addition of Flash Lite for Digital Home, I am hopeful that new devices will start emerging soon and I think this blog is a good place to maintain such list. The list is available on ‘Flash Enabled CE devices‘ page. If you know of any other devices that should be on the list, please comment or drop me a line at anand at joshimail dot net. I will update the list from time to time. ......continue reading

Lightblueoptics, a start-up company that makes a interactive display that converts any surface into touch screen is using Flash Lite for UI. Take a look at press releases from Elecronics Weekly and Geeksmack. They show pictures of of keyboard being projected onto any surface. The display works as any other keyboard and responds to touch as needed. The keyboard is projected using Flash Lite, an IR sensor senses the movement of your finger and the projection technology is based on holograph. The gadget is being demonstrated at CES. ......continue reading

My cousin kept asking me last week on how a website works and how he could have a website of his own. I told him that before anything else, he should choose a web host to host his site first. Without a web hosting provider, he can’t have a website up and running online. But choosing the right web host for your website could be a challenge sometimes. The thing that interests him with having his own website was the possibility of earning through it. But money, itself, is an issue since he is still in college and wouldn’t be able to afford any paid hosting. I personally host my website with 1and1 and generally I’ve been happy with them. But unfortunately, this was too expensive and not an option for my freeloader cousin. ......continue reading

Via youtube blog- Youtube has debuted a url shortner for videos. If you used http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdeioVndUhs in the past, you can now replace that by http://youtu.be/FdeioVndUhs. As the link contains the ID of the video, developers can do interesting things such as bring up thumbnails, embed the video directly, or track video usage in real-time. Comments on the blog post range from “Cool” to “what? if you think that something like http://youtu.be/VRqVkuH7BRQ is a short url, than you don’t know what a short url is.” You be the judge and decide if this has any use in developing the applications. ......continue reading

Moonlight, an open source version of Silverlight is launched by Novell. Moonlight 2.0 is compatible with Silverlight 2.0 and includes some features of Silverlight 3, such as support for Bitmap APIs, file dialogs, pluggable media pipeline.  Moonlight 2.0 also offers better streaming of multimedia content based on the quality of the user’s connections. Moonlight development now closely following Microsoft Silverlight release. Moonlight 3.0 alpha will be available in Q1/2010. ......continue reading

Smartphone really meant a cellphone with OS, a few applications and a keyboard. Remember the days of Palm Treo 270 and being happy about having one? Then Windows Mobile came, but the game totally changed when Apple jumped into the fray. iPhone almost instantly re-defined how ’smart’ phones could be. Smartphones of today have bigger screens, powerful CPUs, lots of RAM and storage. They come in all shapes and sizes, and one really has to review all the smartphone specs to find out whats the best match for them.  There are tonnes of applications running on different operating systems. All the different platforms (Blackberry, Windows, Palm, Android….) have their own pluses and minuses. The form factor, keyboard, hardware shortcuts…. the list goes on and on. ......continue reading

QNX (owned by Harman International now) has a port of Flash Lite available alongwith the OS distribution. QNX is based on Unix and their Car platform comes with Flash Lite. The company provides users with a reference implementation to Flash Lite for selected platforms such as Freescale. To facilitate the adaption, QNX has put together a fairly large consortium consisting of hardware, software and OEMs. The company also has a portal where application developers can post their applications which would then be downloaded by car drivers. ......continue reading

Fierce mobile citing sources from Tech Crunch is suggesting that google is getting ready to release Google branded phone. This phone apparently will be manufactured by LG or Samsung or such and will be sold under Google brand. CNN in the meanwhile is also reporting the same.  Apparently the technology is based on  Google’s recent acquisition of Gizmo5.  Google has not announced any official plans on their blog, but the motives could be very clear. Gizmo5’s technology allows one to make VoIP calls, works with Google voice and I am sure Google will use this in conjunction with its WiFi network in several cities. ......continue reading

Via youtube blog- “Starting next week, YouTube’s HD mode will add support for viewing videos in 720p or 1080p, depending on the resolution of the original source, up from our maximum output of 720p today.” Youtube is slowly trying to improve the quality of its content and already has XL (Extra Large) version. (Extra large version is meant for large screen and only has h.264 videos from what I’ve seen). A limited youtube content can be viewed outside of Flash, and I am sure h.264 is the preferred format for 1080P. Today, for mobile or embedded devices, one needs to develop a special player to support youtube if Flash Lite is not available. Flash 10.1, when available this playing field will be equal. May be devices with a tiny HD projectors will emerge then. ......continue reading

I came across this blog on Cultofmac.com. Here the author sites some unknown source from Reddit and says that Flash in its present form consumed significant battery on iPhone and was one of the reasons why Apple rejected it. The post has quite a bit of information on why Flash was rejected by Apple. Again I don’t know how much truth is to the story but you can read the post here. ......continue reading

Flash Lite 3 for digital home, is now available for TI platform. The port is optimized for h.264 video and AAC audio using TI Codec engine. This allows you to play Flash video in 30 fps at D1 resolution. The port allows for streaming content using HTTP and RTMP protocols.   We have kept the design modular so that the customers can potentially get the development kits from us and integrate their own libraries if they choose to.The port is tested on TI DaVinci DM 6446 processor and runs on Linux. Of course the port is done on Linux framebuffer as most of the embedded devices require a thin blitting layer. Please email me at anand at joshimail dot net for additional information. ......continue reading