Jul

30

Typically when beta testing you sign a NDA and can’t talk about the beta or that you are even involved. Well Macromedia has decided to bend the rules a little and is letting us beta testers post a screen shot of Central in its current form (the one we are using to test with). Click here to see the screenshot. If you have not read the whitepaper on Central, give it a quick read. The application could mean a lot of things for Flash developers. Most of all, it may end the “skip intro” reputation Flash has. If we as a developer community aren’t careful it might actually start gaining respect amongst the development community as a full framework solution, closer to .NET and Java. Wouldn’t that be weird? Keep in mind it is in an infant stage so its not going to be as mature right out of the gate as .NET etc…

It’s already been posted that I will be speaking about what Central means for Mobile Devices at the MAX conference this fall. The mobile space is still young. There is not a clear winner in what to develop with regarding devices. There are a few solid solutions making their way to the top, such as BREW (using C++), Java (using J2ME), OPL on the Symbian platform, and of course VB and C++ (and soon .NET and C#) for Microsoft devices. I believe that Central can make some head way amongst these technologies. It won’t be the end all of course. There is no way that Central will be able to do everything that .NET does on a MS device, since both are written by MS. And Central won’t have the reach that Java does to the lower tier platforms that J2ME can run on. However, there are instances where an app does not need to completely integrate with the system and hardware and needs to be developed rapidly. In this case, Central should be a clear choice. User experience wise, Central should be able to outperform all of the existing technologies and really provide designers and developers a good solution for creating an experience on a device.

Companies are starting to take the device space seriously. Phones may already be outselling computers worldwide. Soon there should be more connected devices such as PDAs and phones than there are computers. Microsoft is ramping up employees in their mobile divisions. Symbian is gaining speed, and carriers are taking to BREW and figuring out how to make money off of data. The space is definetly growing. Macromedia is entering the market at the right time. Their numbers say that the mobile business unit is bringing in an impressive amount of revenue and it is only just the beginning. The device space is actually a fun space to be in right now.

Jul

21

I have had the MS Smartphone now for a full week. It took a little to get used to the ’switch’ going from my Pocket PC Phone Edition to the smaller one hand operation phone. The two are hard to compare. While commuting to the office, it was nice to have a smaller device for mostly all voice operations. However when traveling out of town I will be using my Pocket PC. When traveling and wanting to check email the Pocket PC is much nicer. The phone screen being small doesn’t work for email all that well. SMS is fine on the smaller screen. Voice and dialing is much easier on the Smartphone. Getting on T-Mobile’s GPRS network didn’t work right out of the box. With a little suggestion by Chris, I was able to manually add a connection setting and got connected.

The Smartphone OS does impress when it comes to data. Downloading over the air is very well thought out. After choosing a download file (.CAB) a confirmation screen appears so you are not accidentally downloading files and buring through money depending on your data plan with your carrier. After confirmation, a byte counter screen loads, showing the current progression of the download. Very cool! After the file is downloaded, an automatic install starts. Very cool again!

Pocket IE does support XHTML doc types. This is handy, but so far my experience is that WAP still makes more sense for Smartphones and one handed operation. The joystick works pretty well. Using the keypad as a navigation method is a little better. I am starting to develop some WAP content for the phone and will have it posted here as soon as it is in working condition. More to come in the next week.

Jul

14

tanager model from HTC

Today I received a ‘Tanager’ model of the Microsoft Smartphone from the manufacturer in Taiwan (HTC). I’m doing a bit of work for them and need to test some software on the platform. First impressions are great. The screen is really crisp and really bright. The integration of the soft keys into the OS is nice. The five way directional pad is nice as well. The volume is a little soft. Getting connected was no problem. I just swapped out my SIM card from my Pocket PC Phone Edition and connected right away to the T-Mobile (Voicestream) GSM/GPRS network. Radio receives a good signal.

I’ll be posting quite a bit here in the near future about my discoveries both as a consumer and as a developer. I will probably be posting quite a bit about the WAP capabilities of the flavor of Internet Explorer that comes on the phone. I haven’t dug in to it yet, but will be soon. Look for comparisons on support in regards to the Nokia Series 60 phones. Of course the biggest thing is going to be no J2ME, but we’ll have to see how Compact .NET shapes up. I may have a standalone game or two made here soon to post for other MS Smartphone users. If you have thoughts in regards to Series 60 vs. MS Smartphone, make a comment, I am weighing the platforms in my mind as well. I Need to order that 3650 soon.

Jul

2

Sorry for the dust the last few days, I’ve been trying to update my site and make it a little more organized. In the meantime, the agenda for Macromedia MAX has been posted. Looks like I will be speaking on Thursday. By the looks of the schedule there is some awesome stuff planned. Quite a few “behind the scenes” people from Macromedia will be speaking. Including some from the mobile group, including Troy Evans and Laurent Sellier. Both of which I hope I get the change to meet. Other regulars like Ben Forta will be there as well. I just finished reading a WAP book he wrote a couple years ago.

I’m pretty excited about going. MAX now replaces UCON and DevCon. I was involved in creating the Pocket PC Event Guide for the last DevCon. Don’t know if I will have the time to do one for MAX, or if someone else has been asked to do it this time. The infamous Bill Perry will be there speaking about Flash on Pocket PCs as well. There is a good amount of mobile device topics. The DevNet mobile section was just updated to contain more content. I’ve got some articles in the works, one is an update from Flash 5 to MX. I will be showing some new software, and quite a few new ‘Sometimes-Connected’ apps that I am currently working on. I may have some apps (maybe Flash maybe not) running on a Nokia 3650 and a Microsoft Smartphone. It’s a bit early, but if you are going to be there and want to see something specific let me know.

On another topic, Sam Wan, received a new Pocket PC with upgraded XScale chip and new Pocket PC 2003 (optimized for XScale finally). He has reported that the new chip set and OS in his Toshiba makes everything run very smoothly, including a Flash movie with multiple Flash Communication Server components. This is awesome news. There has been some rumblings that the component set released for Pocket PCs earlier was not working and that they really slowed down the devices. I am in the middle of writing a component set for use with Animated Today on Pocket PCs. In the process I have gotten much more intimate with Flash’s lack of handling of multiple HTTP requests very well. I plan to talk more about this at MAX. That’s it for now. Time to fix bugs.

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