Apr

29

I’ve been checking out the Blackberry Browser CDK the last two days and there are some strange things buried in there. First is the dual browser mode. It’s the same icon in the interface but depending on your data plan (using Blackberry Enterprise Server or not) the browser can convert HTML pages (not mobile optimized) into viewable content. So if you are using their server, the client can receive responses from the server that may or may not be valid WML or XHTML I am guessing. Kind of like small screen rendering technology in Opera, just done on the server-side rather than the client side. Not sure if I like this approach or not. I’m not one to care for client-side re-design, but the server-side implementation might have some good points. The normal mode of the browser can display WML, cHTML, and XHTML (not MP?). That is more than what I thought the devices could do before I started researching.

Next is support for SVG. I find this interesting. Embedded in with the browser is the Plazmic SVG Media Engine. This is one of the bigger SVG deployments that I know of. I am going to be looking for a 7230 or something on eBay to play with this. So more later once I see first hand how the implementation works. Looks like standard .SVG file types aren’t handled, instead requiring the .PME file type.

Other strange things of note. GIF file types are supported however they are converted to .PNG by the browser. Recompression to what extent is my question? I’ll have to check this out first hand as well and see how it is handled.

Look for more Blackberry posts in the future. I am interested in the platform. The Danger Sidekick didn’t do it for me. I kind of thought of Blackberry in the same regard but now that I am diving into it, and my compnay is deploying them, I may change my mind. They sure having a marketing push behind them. And the J2ME support is supposed to be pretty good from what I hear.

Apr

28

Well it is back. Rolling Stone has the line up for the Chicago shows. I’m there!!! What a great lineup. The Pixies are back. Weezer. Even Digable Planets! This sounds like the kind of show they put together the first few years. WOW is all I have to say. Time to figure out which day to go and order tickets.

Apr

20

Most of the commentary I have read the last few days has been in regards to the product lines and the two company cultures. I have a personal interest in how it is going to effect the growing momentum of establishing Flash as a mature run time for mobile devices. I found this comment today, regarding how Adobe may approach the pricing of the Flash player for mobile devices differently. I understand not jacking the price, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. It’s an interesting approach selling the runtime to the operators and handset manufacturers, considering it is completely free on the desktop. Macromedia has had some success as of late with the Nokia and Samsung deals. From what I have read, Adobe’s sales channels are greater than Macromedia, so I expect momentum to even speed up once Adobe is in control. This can mean only good things for more money being spent on furthering the technology.

Adobe is no newbie to the mobile devices industry. Prior to the merge, Adobe has been a major supporter of SVG-T. A mobile subset of SVG. SVG is a standards compliant vector graphics instruction schema written in XML. SVG-T isn’t widely used or even accepted here in the US, although Europe is a different story. I don’t know if the new Adobe will abandon SVG-T support in favor of compensation by adoption of Flash Lite or not. My guess is they’ll lose interest in supporting an open standard when you can create money from a product you own and has a bigger development pool already. Of course the last version of Flash Lite (1.1) had SVG-T support built in. So maybe a combination will happen, although I don’t see a good reason why at this point. I believe in standards, but not sure the reasons apply here. Maybe the IDE will give you the option of exporting to Flash Lite or SVG-T when targetting mobile devices. And the player will be the run time for both.

I have to admit, I had that sinking feeling as well when I first heard the news of the merger. Actually I thought it was an April Fools thing resurfacing. However, despite my initial feelings, I see this as a good thing for the Flash Lite opportunity. And I guess that is good for Flash overall as well.

It’s a weird thing this merge and the Macromedia brand going away. I’ve been using Flash since version 3 over 8 years ago. I’ve been using FreeHand for even longer. Hopefully in a year or so, the developer community will see the vision of the combined forces and the company will adopt the open culture of Macromedia and we’ll be comfortable knowing that it is still Macromedia, just a different name with greater sales channels.

Apr

15

Steve Jobs owns you?

April 15, 2005 | 7 Comments

CNET has an amusing article, here, talking about the record labels are starting to turn on Apple because they don’t want them to monopolize the digital music download market and be able to set all the rules. It’s funny some of the cheap shots they take at Steve Jobs. I remember back when Napster was popular and the buzz then was that record labels just don’t get it. Apparently they still don’t. They don’t understand pricing, other wise they would lower the price of CDs and try to compete with download services. $16 for a CD that costs 16 cents to make. Come on!

Yeah, Steve figured it out, he knew that people didn’t want to pay a ridiculous amount for an entire CD plus the marketing content in the case that just sits on a shelf somewhere. He created the iPod so you could take what songs you like with you. He created iTunes so you could pick and choose. It’s impulsive and addictive and he figured it out first and all the record labels jumped on because it was better than just ignoring Napster and Kazaa. Now they are turning their back? Nice!

So now the savior is supposed to be the mobile industry. It’s funny, the argument against Apple is that they are really in it to sell hardware (iPods) and don’t care about making money for the record labels. But the carriers are just going to be in it to sell phones (granted they are subsidized) and generate data network usage fees. What’s the difference? If anything I would say that Apple has more of their interest at heart and is a much better (and proven) technology provider.

Regardless, here is my thought on the mobile industry trying to dupe iTunes/iPod.

Maybe one of the carriers can reproduce the iTunes Music Store. One of them. And I’m sure they’ll all try some form of DRM. Can’t have people passing around songs they bought via Bluetooth, that would cost the record companies way too much money. Give me a break. So what happens when I move and have to switch carriers, or I lose my phone. Do I get to take those songs I purchased, for outrageous fees and paid network fees on, with me? The answer will be no. So I can purchase music from iTunes and burn it to a CD to archive, because I’ve purchased it. But I can’t take music I purchased on my phone, because it will be locked to my phone or at least my carrier and whatever DRM schema they choose. I can probably back it up to a storage card, but it will still be locked to the carrier or phone. I can take a CD to another computer, but I can’t imagine I’ll be able to take a storage card to another phone and have the content work.

And all of this comes from stupid ringtones. Record companies are seeing the revenue generated for snippets of songs and wanting in one selling the whole song. Ringtones are something you buy and get sick of in a week. Buying an album is something you expect to be able to have for a long time. I don’t think record labels get this (nor will the carriers care). Without DRM its kind of a mute point. But it won’t be without some kind of DRM. Maybe the real monopoly is getting your DRM licensed to phone OEMs.

Microsoft has Play For Sure, and Apple has FairPlay. Apple says they don’t want to license (maybe they won’t have to). The Moto iTunes phone made sense. The phone could play FairPlay/iTunes songs. So instead of an iPod you use a phone. OK, converged device, bound to happen. MS is doing the same thing with Windows Media Player in the Smartphone OS. So my question is, does Apple make a smartphone OS with a iTunes player built in and license that to the phone OEMs? Or maybe skip the OEMs and just make the hardware themselves? So whether the music content is sync’d via a computer or purchased over the air, Apple is still the technology provider. Carriers get their network fee, Apple gets their OS purchased (and hopefully they’ll make hardware too) and the record labels get their per song fee. Record labels won’t just have Apple either, they can distribute the same with MS Music. Let the consumer decide which carrier and phone platform to choose.

So maybe Steve did figure it out first. Maybe he is not ignoring the phone market, but taking his time creating something that works for everyone. Maybe Apple is busy working on a way to enable the consumer, provide more distribution for the record labels, and provide a way for carriers to benefit from network traffic. Maybe Steve does own us? But if he has all that figured out, and can execute then maybe he does deserves to.

Apr

8

Lately I have been doing a Flash Lite project and while doing so have been looking into J2ME tools for the Mac so I can build a mirror of the Flash Lite project in J2ME for comparison. My IDE of choice at this point is Eclipse. So naturally I lean towards Craig’s EclipseME (although I can’t get it to install on my new PowerBook today for some reason). Today I ran across a press release on a blog about MPowerPlayer. I’ll have to give it a try as well.

Yesterday, I downloaded the source code for the Symbian Make SIS executable. I hate having to move files over to my PC just to do a make sis (to create a Symbian Installer). Once I get it working right I will post instructions for other OS X people that are interested. Maybe someone else has already done this?

Apr

5

I am trying to open a file this morning that I just saved last night. When doing so I am getting what looks like a memory error on OS X. It’s coming from Flash, but I have a feeling it means the file got corrupted somehow. I have a backup from a few days ago luckily.

The error says “There is not enough memory to open this scene. Your document is not damaged and may be safely saved. To increase available memory, close open documents or quit and use Get Info command in the Finder to allocate more memory to Flash.”

On OS X there is no need to allocate more memory the OS does this for you. That is why I am guessing the file is corrupt. I’ve searched to see if anyone else has posted on this and the results keep coming back about errors with flash drives and OS X.

Has anyone seen this error and if so can the file be retrieved in some way. I tried duplicating the file and renaming it, but the new file ran into the same error. Help?

Update: I did find this, unfortunately I am loading almost everything externally. I think I might have a few PNGs inside the FLA, but I don’t see how I am going to change them now. I can’t even open the file. This is not a compile time error, this is simply a result of me double clicking the FLA and trying to open the IDE.

Update2: I got it! I opened a FLA (from a completely unrelated project), and saved it. Then opened a new document. Left it open and then did a open on the FLA I was having problems with. I got the error message about four times, each time I just kept clicking OK and eventually it opened. No idea, why or how. But I got it! Mental note: save more backups and use CVS daily.

Apr

2

Looks like Macromedia has announced a new Flash for Mobile contest. This time it is aimed at the Pocket PC. Flash on the Pocket PC uses the Flash 6 player. If you skipped the Flash Lite contest because of the player and Flash 4 syntax, you have no excuses for this contest. Great Plasma TV up for grabs. Deadline isn’t until June. Rock on!

Apr

1

I remember sitting in a lab at Purdue using Yahoo to search the Web back around 1995 or so. At that time Yahoo was the only way to search through the index of the internet. Obviously things have changed since then. The volume of the internet has grown exponentially. The Web is clearly different than it was then, and search is a complete different thing.

Mobile search seems to be taking form lately, granted its kind of like Yahoo was in 1995. The early problem with mobile search seems to be the differentiating of local search and searching the Web. Google launched their local search (beta) a while ago, but they did it in a new innovative way. Instead of pulling up Google in the browser installed on your phone, you send a Googlebot a SMS (text) message containing your search terms. It then responds via SMS with the results. I like this approach. To me it feels more like Google is communicating with me on my one off local search. Where as in the browser, I feel like the search should perform like Google does on my PowerBook by searching the Web and returning results of sites. If I am searching for a pizza place on my phone, more than likely I want their phone number, not their Web site. Of course I could be different than the norm.

The other day I see that Google has launched Google Mobile search for mobile phones as well. This is different from the above, in that it is in the browser of the phone and does work the same as on the desktop. It searches the Web and returns results. Answers.com just did the same thing. The idea is basically to reformat the Web search page to fit inside a small screen browser window. Easy to do for most. Detecting the different devices isn’t too hard either with a little research and understanding (however this could become a full time staff position with the growing number of devices).

Here is the problem with re-skinning the search engine pages to fit into the small screen browser รข?? the results. The results are the same as the desktop results. Meaning I search for “Nokia 6260″ on my PowerBook and on one of my phones and I get the same results. Herein lies the problem, the results link to sites that are built/formatted/designed for the desktop. So clicking/tapping a result link on my phone is going to take me to some site that I can not use. Mobile Web search is currently broken!

I can hear people saying that the browser should have the ability to reformat the site. I don’t buy into that. Design exists for a reason. Web site designers apply a science in designing sites for the real estate available. Browsers that reformat the content of a page break the design. I don’t use small screen rendering for this reason. Not to mention it creates an inferiority thing between phones and desktops.

If all sites deployed detection and served up various versions of device specific sites this could be a non-issue but this science doesn’t really exist as of yet. I do detection for a number of devices on this domain, but I in no way support all mobile devices. This may fall into a standards issue, I am not entirely sure. A lot of smart people are going to have to think through the implementations. I saw that Tim Berners-Lee commented the other day about design and how it effects internet use on mobile devices. I have a feeling we are going to get into a browser war again amongst the Opera’s, Nokia’s, NetFront’s, Microsoft’s of the world.

I have been working on some mobile portal/search stuff for a while now and I’m still trying to figure out the best approach. The “semantic web” plays into this nicely but there is so much non-XML content out there. It’s hard to wrap one’s head around it all. However, I think with the search engines getting involved we’ll start to see some progress. Again, its like 1995 and Yahoo has come a long long way since then. I think mobile search will do the same, possibly at faster rate even. Yahoo may even lead the charge.

There is so much to think about and discuss regarding internet useage on a mobile device. Lots of technologies, players, content etc… It’s going to be fun to be a part of.

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