Over the weekend Verizon Wireless launched their branded version of Adobe Flash Cast, known as Dashboard, and it's now available as a pre-installed service on the new LG Chocolate 3 handset. Dashboard is a graphically rich portal powered by Adobe Flash Cast and delivers personalized multimedia information and entertainment services directly to the phone.


Accessing Dashboard is a one click launch experience and requires the user to press the up key on the 5 way navigation.  This brings up the home screen which consists of a vertical carousel that the user can press up or down to view the available channels and the center key (enter) to launch that channel.  By default there are a few basic channels:

• Mobile Web 2.0
• Search
• Get Channels
• VZW Showcase

Then there are additional channels currently available that users can add:

• News
• Business
• Comedy Central
• Community 
• Entertainment
• ESPN
• Fox Sports 
• Games 
• IGN Network
• MTV News
• Music 
• Sports 
• Weather

So why should this be of interest to Flash developers?  Well Verizon Wireless is looking to continually add new channels to the Dashboard line-up and there's a very strong and creative Flash community out there that can participate.  Flash Cast is similar to Flash Lite development: it's Flash Lite 1.1 with some new features for data syncing and development and testing is done with a new tool called Adobe Mobile AppBuilder.

There's an opportunity for companies and individual developers to create channels and make them available directly to Verizon Wireless subscribers.  We'll be updating our Adobe Mobile and Devices Developer Center Monday morning with more details on how to get started but in the mean time you can visit the Verizon Wireless Developer Center TheZon.

I'll be posting a more detailed review of Dashboard later this week but if you're interested in seeing it first hand just visit any Verizon Wireless store and check out the LG Chocolate 3.  Also if you have any additional questions you can leave a comment and I'll answer it.