Well, I have been lazy of late when it comes to blogging. There is lot of interesting stuff happening, but haven’t really had a chance to blog due to work and other commitments. But I thought I’d write a quick note about the FITC Mobile event coming up in Toronto. Our friends at the FITC have generously offered me a giveaway ticket to the Festival ($199 value). If you are interested, please contact me. The event is taking place on September 16-18 and focuses on all the cool stuff- Flash, Android, iPhone. ......continue reading

I am sure several of you saw a notice pop-up on your PC in the morning about the latest Flash update from Adobe ….. Yes, that’s right- Flash player 10.1 is now officially available. Adobe Flash player team’s blog lists all the enhancements in fairly detail. A look at comments also gives you a glimpse into joy and grievances of public. The thing about Flash is that it is so powerful that no matter how many enhancements you make to it, there will always be something else to do. Adobe’s team does deserve a big round of applause for releasing FP10.1 on schedule. ......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

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

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

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

Last week Microsoft announced release of Windows Mobile 6.5 that included Flash Lite 3 plug-in for Internet Explorer. At the same time, several new WinMo based phones were announced such as HTC Tilt2, Imagio and Pure.  With the addition of Flash, users can now view several web sites that are Flash enabled. (Of course the CPU/RAM limitation still comes in the picture, but all these are high end phones and hopefully will have a powerful CPU and should come with some sort of video acceleration. ......continue reading

I came accross this on Crunchgear. Sharp’s PC 71, Sharp’s new mini laptop, runs Ubuntu and supports Flash Lite 3.1. PC-Z1 has a tiny 5 inch screen and support XGA (1024 x 600) resolution. PC-Z1 apparatenly has performance similar to a PC and is designed for ‘cloud computing’. The device sports Thunderbird, Firefox and Flash Lite 3.1 among other applications. ......continue reading

Flash Lite has been popular among mobile users for wallpaper applications. Wallpapers are good for generating an ‘impression’ on the user. I don’t think anybody has figured out a way to monetize it successfully yet, but this one company I came accross who creates Custom Twitter Backgrounds may have something. These guys are trying to create a custom wallpaper for twitter that can be your business logo, message- whatever. What if everything was wallpapered? Twitter, Facebook, myspace- and if you were to use that on your every personal device such as cellphones, PC, laptop? Twitter is already being used by several businesses to market their product successfully. Add a wallpapered logo to that and make it portable accross devices, you now have a branding strategy in place! ......continue reading

Well- John Dowdell from Adobe left a comment on my earlier post that these are just rumors and I agree with that. The original report does not confirm the source and ‘Boy Genius Report’ itself is not a very reputable news source. So unfortunately we’ll have to sit and wait till Blackberry comes out with Flash! ......continue reading

I don’t know if this is just a rumor or if there is any truth to this. I came accross a report on Endgadget that talked about Blackberry adding ‘full’ flash support (I guess that means they’ll have Flash 10) to their browser.  The source they sight is ‘Boy Genius Report’ and I located the source here. It looks as though the actual devices touting Flash player will be available sometimes next year. ......continue reading