May

27

When my wife and I had our son almost three years ago, of course the joke around the office is when he would start programming and tinkering with gadgets. He is starting to show a fondness for computers but it has just been games so far. Before long he’ll be asking for the next generation console instead of me 8-). So he isn’t coding yet, but thanks to Macromedia he can look the part (much to mom’s chagrin).


Flash comes in all sizes, Flash is mobile

He’ll be wearing this shirt on Father’s day. 8-)

May

25


I received a Nokia 6680 the other day. Beautiful phone, I was long overdue for a new Series 60 phone. The 6680 is the update to the 6630, I’ve been told. First impressions, it feels sturdy. The screen is amazing. The chrome looks very professional. I’m really digging it.

I am still getting familiar with it, but a couple of quick notices. First, you do not need a SIM card in the phone to boot it up and get to the interface and applications. This always bugged me about old Series 60. Secondly, the phone comes with a file manager and a way to increase the backlight timeout. These two things probably aren’t new to this phone, but the version of Series 60. That is probably old news. The camera takes very good looking pictures, although I haven’t send to my Mac and tried to really look at the quality or even print one out. I like the new quick launch bar on the home screen (Windows Mobile has this and it is very nice). Although I still think the home screen can be better designed and utilized more. There are a couple of more under-the-hood type things I’ve noticed too, buried deep in the settings. Haven’t tried the MP3 player yet, nor the voice commands. Will do that sometime later. I need to take a look at the new “Web” browser, used to be the “services” browser. I like the name change. That is probably old news as well.

More to come, but so far this Nokia 6680 rocks!

May

23

Macromedia has updated the supported devices section of their site. It’s more than a page now, it is a whole section. The pages list a lot more devices, including newer devices like the Nokia 6680. It was due for an update and it really received one. Thanks to Macromedia! It looks great.

As a new feature, there is a page that lists out the phones from the Japanese Operators. Another huge improvement is the listing of the Flash supported functionality of the phones. For example, not all phones will support using Flash Lite content as the wallpaper or a ringtone. Knowledge of the phones is a plus when developing Flash Lite content. Not as much as J2ME profiles, but knowing your target geographic location will help determine what the possibilities are. Looks like a lot of growth in the Asian-Pacific markets regarding Flash Lite. Can’t wait to see some of the content being generated there.

May

17

RCR Wireless has this story about 9 carriers joining together to create an initiative around deploying amber alerts via text messages. I was going to build a simple service that did this very thing about a year ago. My problem was getting the info from the states and/or government in a timely manner. Seems simple to do, have users opt-in with their wireless number, carrier, and state and when an Amber Alert is issued for that state broadcast to all users in the database (through email to SMS gateways). Glad to see the carriers taking this on. A perfect example of how mobiles are an excellent communication medium. Maybe even without opt-in, carriers can send these message according to government regulation and not charge the users for the text message. Most of the carriers already have mechanisms in place for sending a personalized text message to a user. I have no problem with them sending these to me regardless of if I opted-in or not. Can’t imagine others would either. Hopefully this gets put into place quickly.

May

17

As a follow up to my previous post about developing Web content for Blackberry devices, I ran across this new article from IBM on some general guidelines for developing Web content for mobile browsers. It’s an introductory level article, nothing very advanced, but if you are new to mobile devices its a good simple read.

I’m going to have some more Blackberry related posts in the next few days. I have a 7230 all set up now and am working with the browser to test some things out. I can see why people call these “crackberries.” The data plans for the devices are pretty good. I understand the addiction to email. The browser really isn’t all that bad as far as browsing content (WAP and XHTML). I have yet to play with J2ME on the device, but as soon as I finish my current project, I will be getting into it.

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