As I clean out my cube and pack away personal items one thing has become apparent - I've used/tested a lot of devices while here at Adobe.  As you can see there are over 70 devices on the table and about 15 more that are not pictured.  Everything including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, Dell, Panasonic, Sony, Dell, iRiver, etc...  Good news is these will go into the Adobe device library and will be available for team members to use for testing content and technologies.  Imagine what the pile of cables looks like - power, USB, and headphones.

After 4 years here at Adobe (and Macromedia) I wanted to let the community know that I’ve decided to move on to pursue a new opportunity at Nokia.  This is a professional career move on my part and was a difficult decision to make.  There are a lot of great things happening now with Flash Lite on mobile devices and you can expect exciting news for developers around mobile that Adobe will be announcing at MAX in a few weeks.

Having been involved with the mobile and devices group at Macromedia back when there were only a few million devices to soon almost 1 billion, it’s been a wild and exciting ride that I’m very proud to be a part of.  From early pre-release programs like “Sahti” (Flash Lite 1.1) to the recent launch of Flash Lite 3.1 and CS4, being able to work along side such dedicated and passionate people that helped to plan, engineer, test and market these products has been amazing.  Helping to grow our mobile developer community, raising the awareness of Adobe’s mobile initiatives and seeing the diverse range of mobile applications that have been created by individuals and brands from around the world has been a rewarding experience.

I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to be an evangelist for mobile and devices at Adobe and have done so many things to help grow and interact with the community.  If you’ve had a chance to meet me whether at a conference, at a social function, through email or on the phone, I thank each and every one of you for that experience.  Having traveled to the following cities and getting a local perspective on things from designers and developers has been so benneficial for me and Adobe to understand the needs of our communities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, New York City, Boston, Ft. Lauderdale, London, Helsinki, Barcelona, Bangalore, New Delhi, Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne, Bangkok, Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing and Hong Kong. When I look back at my travels and the people I’ve met, it really humbles me to know that I was part of something that’s special and continues to grow. 

My new position at Nokia will be Sr. Service Marketing Manager, Forum Nokia where I’ll be focusing globally on driving developer awareness around the services and sensor APIs that can be used across their platforms with various technologies.  I’ll also be involved with Nokia OVI, the Open Screen Project initiative and other consumer facing projects.  The great news is I’ll still be working with Adobe technologies as well as others technologies that developers and designers can use to create mobile experiences on Nokia devices.  So all of you that I've had the pleasure to work/interact with over the previous four years I'll still continue to work with but I'll be doing so by representing Nokia.

I will still keep this blog, as I’ve heard from developers that it has been a valuable resource for the community, and I plan on continuing to add posts but although not as frequently.  Going forward to stay up to date on the latest Adobe mobile news and developer information make sure you visit and bookmark Mark Doherty’s blog (flashmobileblog.com).  Mark is a very smart and passionate developer based in London, and is responsible for Adobe’s evangelism for mobile and devices in the EMEA region.  There’s also the Adobe mobile and devices developer center, as well as other Flash Lite community members who share ideas and their passion.  Make sure you also sign up for the mobile summit and the mobile fast pitch networking event at MAX North America so you can interact with other developers that are interested in mobile, as well as get a chance to talk to people from leading OEMs, operators and content aggregators.

My last day at Adobe will be this Friday (31 October) and in the following weeks I’ll be able to provide more details about my new position.  Some of you may have questions and if you do please leave a comment and I’ll answer them.

During the planning and development phases of CS4 I was able to help with the feature input and testing for some of the products, including Device Central. Recently Adobe gave some thank you gifts to internal team members and I was surprised and grateful to have received a very nice pen.  It has a good weight and it writes well with a constant smooth flow of ink.  Needless to say this is much better than the throwaway pens I normally use.

Often we spend our time thinking about how to create experiences for mobile phones using Flash and other technologies however have you ever wondered how a mobile phone network actually works?  It's not magic or science fiction, it's a lot of different parts working collectively to allow you to receive a call, send a messsage, call someone, get directions, etc...

There's an article I came across today that some of you might find interesting.  It goes into details on the hardware, infrastructure, and why things behave the way they do.  It's a good primer for getting into mobile.

This isn't related to mobile but for you designers out there I thought this was kind of cool.  It's a color IQ test and you drag and drop the color chips to arrange each row by hue and then when you're set you select the "score test" button and you'll get your score.  It's fun so try it out.

Recently I decided to clean out my work area and get rid of things that I no longer needed.  Some of these items were the boxes that mobile phones were packaged in and as you can see from the photo I had quite a lot - over 70.  All were for devices that support Flash and most were for Nokia devices and I also had some Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, Samsung, LG and Motorola.  Why do I have so many devices?  They're used by me and our team for testing Flash and Flash Lite content on, for evaluating the use of Flash for UI on some devices and to test our mobile run-times on.

Two of the leaning towers of boxes were taller than I am (6 feet) and as I continued to create more towers I had to make sure they were stacked correctly so they wouldn't fall over on me or someone walking by my cube ;o)

The good news is Adobe is a green company and employees are encouraged to recycle their garbage on a daily basis so I went ahead and separated the plastic packaging materials from the paper-based materials.  Most of what you see in the photo will end up being recycled and that's a good thing.

One take away for me after seeing all of these boxes is realizing that for something as small as a mobile phone, the actual packaging materials used is quite a lot.  Sure the box contains a device, battery, a charger, instruction manual and some times other items specific for that device.  Apple's done a good job of their product packaging - iPhone, iPod, etc... as to minimize the amount of materials being used and the physical space each box occupies.  Since most electronics are manufactured outside of the US and then brought into the country via cargo ship or semi-trucks, the more boxes that can be put into a cargo container means more product on store shelves.  I'd expect to see more electronics manufacturers start to use recycled materials for their packaging and to try and reduce the physical size of the box itself.

Just finished watching the keynote and having some tea with friends. Later today I'll be posting video from the keynote on my site - stay tuned.

Last night my blog was added to the Alltop mobile listings and is now listed amongst other sites like Engadget Mobile, Brighthand, Jan Chipchase, Moconews, the Mobile Gadgeteer and other high traffic mobile news sites.  Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for adding me.

Now anyone who's interested in mobile news will be able to view the latest Adobe mobile and community related news that I post on my blog.  I think this is good because it will help to create more awareness in the broader mobile community about what's going on with Flash Lite, Flash Cast and other Adobe technologies.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Alltop, it's a clever RSS feed aggregator that groups similar sites by category and then lists the five latest postings for each site.  Rolling over any of the headlines gives you a nice pop-up window that provides more text of the actual news item.  There are over 75 different categories available for you to choose from to quickly get the latest news.  There's nothing to subscribe to or download - just bookmark the page you're interested in and you're all set.  For more information about Alltop you can read about it here.

This afternoon I'll be heading to Las Vegas to attend CTIA and will be spending most of my time in meetings with partners, customers and new companies who are interested in our mobile solutions. If you're not familiar with CTIA it's one of the largest mobile centric conferences in the US and is held twice a year (spring and fall). Yes there will be an exhibit area and plenty of new things being shown by various companies so walking around should be fun.

I know there will be some Flash Lite developers attending and will try to meet up one of the evenings to hang out and catch-up on things. If you're going and would like to meet up leave a comment so we can figure something out.

On a side note I have some cool new things to share and will try to post those this week.

The New York Times has a good article that describes how various handset manufacturers are spending time to understand consumers trends for creating new mobile phones. LG, Nokia and others are mentioned and some of the ideas they come up are based on real world observations of how people actually use their phones. One of the points the author mentions is how most technology-savvy consumers buy new handsets every 9 months, compared to 18 months a few years ago. It's easy to see how the success of the Apple iPhone has changed the perceptions for consumers of what a mobile phone can be and it will be interesting to see what handset manufacturers come up with in the future.

Since late December I've been using Qik (pronounced quick) - a new mobile phone application that allows users to stream live video from their phones and all I can say is 'wow'. It's in alpha now and I've been fortunate enough to be one of the early testers. Qik is so easy to use and knowing that all I need to do to share live video is to press a few buttons and presto - it's live. You can think of it as a cross between YouTube and Twitter, at least that's how I've been describing it to people when I show them.

Examples
Here's a video I shot with my phone back in December while cycling across the golden gate bridge using the low quality setting and an EDGE network connection on at&t:



And here's a clip from Barcelona I recorded on Monday using the high quality setting using a 3G network in Europe:


Supported devices
Qik currently runs on Nokia S60 3rd edition or later devices and I have it running on my N95 8GB. Other devices include: N71, N73, N75, N76, N77, N80, N91, N92, N93i, N95, E50, E51, E61i, E65, E70m E90 Communicator, 3250, 5500, 5700 Xpress Music, 6110 Navigator, 6120 Classic, 6121 Classic, and 6290. Several new Nokia S60 devices were announced this week here at Mobile World Congress and I'm sure they will be able to support it as well. You can get more information about the features of Qik on their FAQ page.


FLV is your friend
You record/broadcast a live video stream from your phone and on the back end your video stream is converted to FLV and is viewable on the Qik.com web site. Once a user has an account on the Qik site then you can go into your profile page and get the URL for your recorded videos and then use then as you wish. If you're a Flash developer then you know what you can do with FLV... lots of cool things.

Features
Now granted depending on the speed of the network will depend on how "live" the video stream is. I've been testing various network connection speeds and can say even with and EDGE connection and quality set to low it will stream from my handset.

The Qik app has two settings for the quality of the streamed video: "optimize for" and "quality". Optimize for has two options: max quality and min delay. Since what I'm streaming isn't meant to be a live broadcast I keep this setting to max quality. For the quality setting there are three options: low, normal and high and have the corresponding recording resolutions (176x144, 320x240 and 640x480). If I'm connected via WiFi or 3G then I select the high setting, otherwise I'll select medium. Additional features include muting the audio and specifying the privacy to either public or private. One thing to note is if your video stream is more than the available bandwidth, Qik will buffer the stream and then send the bits out once there's bandwidth available.

Now see this
Given this new ability to instantly share what I'm seeing and hearing with others, I've added a video playback window in the upper right of my blog. This window will show the most recent video upload to Qik from my phone. Sometimes I'll be recording things that are work related and other times not. The point is I can now easily share my experiences with the rest of the world - thanks to Qik and I think that's cool.

Carry an extra battery for your phone if you're attending a conference or will be using it for an extended period of time. I can honestly say that this little piece of advice has saved me from embarrassing moments when demoing applications to people and the phone's battery is dead - not cool.

When you're at work or home, being able to plug your phone in to charge is second nature. However if you're walking around a show floor or in meetings you'll run into two problems: finding a power outlet and finding time to charge your phone.

I'm here in Barcelona and it's a little bit after 6am Sunday - needless to say jetlag isn't treating me well but today should be the last day of it. With tomorrow being the official start of the Mobile World Congress and over 60,000 attendees it will definitely be a busy and fun four days. Today our team will be running through final preparations for the show, ensuring our booth space and demo stations are set up and enjoying Barcelona before everyone is consumed with things.

One of the cool things about the show this year for me are all of the awesome demos that we'll be showing. For those of you who will be attending the show make sure you stop by. If you're unable to don't worry - I'll be posting more info about the various demos.


As for me I'll have 8 phones with me for demos, whether it's in our booth, in our meeting space with executives or out and about when talking to people. Which one of these is my favorite? Well they each have their pros and cons and I'm not going to say ;o)

You can bet I'll be walking around and checking out all of the new devices and services that will be shown this week. Definitely is going to be a great week here and I'll try to post as often as possible to share any new news about Adobe's mobile technologies.

I wanted to get some feedback from those of you who have or are in the process of thinking about making your Flash Lite content available to others. Today there are a few options available for distributing other types of mobile content and was wondering what your preferences were and why:

• Paid: end-users pay for your content via one of several mechanisms (direct billing, operator based). Content aggregators assist with distribution and billing. DRM may be required. Your revenue is a percentage of what the aggregator takes.
• Advertising subsidized: ads are inserted into your content and the content is distributed for free to end-users. Distribution is handled by aggregators or through other means (SMS campaigns for example). DRM may be required. Potential revenue is handled between developer and advertising company.
• Free: end-users can share and distribute your content. Distribution is handled by you or a third party. No DRM needed - viral awareness.

In addition to distribution options I'm interested to hear what's more important to you: getting your Flash Lite content out to market (increase your awareness) or making money (selling content).

Leave your comments here - thanks!

Here you go, a complete breakdown of the forecasted installed base of Flash Lite devices by region, country and version. The information in the PDF is extracted from the Strategy Analytics Flash-Enabled Handset Forecast from January 4, 2008 and provides metrics for the forecasted installed base of Flash Lite devices for the years 2007 and for 2008.

Developers, business owners and decision makers have been asking for this level of detail and we're glad to be able to share it. Six regions are covered: Americas, APAC (Asia Pacific), CALA (Central America/Latin America), Western Europe, Central Europe and Japan. Flash Lite versions include 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0.

Here's a sample of the level of detail included in this PDF:


We will be posting additional information on our mobile and devices developer center soon and I'll share that information once it's available.

Updated: I found a typo for the 2007 US total and have corrected the PDF. If you've downloaded the PDF before 7:10pm PST tonight then please download the zip file again - thanks.

It was nice to step away from work for several days and to reflect on everything that happened in 2007 for Flash on non-PC devices. The launch of CS3, Adobe Device Central, Flash Lite 3, Shockwave Minis having over 2 million game downloads on Verizon Wireless, Smashing Ideas launching their Smashing Games and Smashing Screens catalogs on Verizon Wireless, successful MAX events worldwide and over 300 million devices cumulatively shipped (as of June 30, 2007) just to name a few.

One of the biggest trends I noticed was the rapid growth and interest by designers and developers in Adobe's non-PC technologies. Most notably Flash Lite for mobile phones but there's still a lot of interest in Flash for consumer devices like the Sony PSP. The increased number of dedicated blogs, discussion forum posts and mail list activity tells me we're getting more awareness - not only from the existing Flash designer/developer base but from other non-PC developers such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson and others.

2008 looks to be even better and I'm excited about several things including more consumer electronic devices using Flash, creating more go-to-market opportunities for developers to sell their Flash Lite content, exploring packing solutions for mobile content, all of the exciting mobile phones that Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG and others will announce and ship, and of course seeing diverse Flash Lite content from around the world from developers who are successful and making money.

What are some things you're looking forward to this year?

Wishing you and your families the best during this holiday season and looking forward to 2008. I'll be taking some much needed vacation time during the holiday break and will be getting up to speed on AIR and trying some new stuff with Flash- when I'm not playing rock band ;o)

Being able to understand the different ways for designing for non-PC devices such as mobile phones and other consumer electronics is something that continues to evolve. One of the things that I try to do as a developer is to learn from others what's worked and things to avoid. The more knowledge and information I have the better I feel my applications and projects will be.

Over the past 2 weeks I've been reading and referencing "Designing for Small Screens" - a very good book that does an excellent job of explaining the complexities and nuances of small screen devices. You can think of small screen devices as being mobile phones, PDAs, navigation systems, MP3 players and game consoles. One of the great things is there's at least 2 devices in each of these categories that uses the Flash Player or Flash Lite (obviously there are more mobile phones). Even if you're not currently or planning on designing for small screens there are some good ideas in here that may assist you in your PC based designs.



The book does an excellent job of providing real world examples, best practices and exercises covering topics such as physical interaction, layout and color, text and icons, and design considerations. Over a dozen of the examples referenced were Flash Lite applications (T-Mobile News Express) and user interface (NTT DoCoMo iMode menu) among others. There were several things that I learned from the book and so far have improved some aspects of mobile content that I'm developing.

If you're at all interested in designing UIs or developing applications for small screen devices, I highly recommend you purchase this book. You can also check your local library to see if they have it available.

Adobe is looking to hire a full-time Flash Lite developer to add to our team to create demos and real-world applications. Location is flexible.

Here’s what we’re interested in:

• Experienced with Flash and Flash Lite (2 and 3), AS2/AS3, FLV, and Device Central
• Understanding of SMS/MMS, WAP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
• Working knowledge of Symbian, Windows Mobile, and BREW
• Understanding of handsets/carriers in the US/Europe/Asia markets is ideal

If you are interested, contact Rhett Woods for more information.

I'm a Windows laptop user but keep thinking about switching to a mac, maybe next year. So for me the Genius Bar at Apple stores was something that I never paid enough attention to, again because I'm not a mac user. Today that changed as I made my first visit to the Genius Bar and it left such a positive impression on me that I thought I'd share my experience.

It all started this morning with my iPhone. For some reason the bottom 1/4 of my screen would not respond to any touching. Powering off/on, restarting, using various applications - nothing changed. It got to a point that in the dialer I was unable to hit the call button. The entire horizontal area across the bottom simply became a dead spot- not cool.

So I called at&t and they told me to call Apple iPhone support. 5 minutes later I was talking to a rep at Apple and after explaining my situation he told me to go to an Apple store and talk to someone in the Genius Bar to get more help. So I hopped in my car and drove to downtown San Francisco and walked over to the Apple store there. Walked in and was immediately greeted by one of their new concierge people (wearing the blue shirts). I quickly explained what the problem was and he escorted me to an Apple store employee (Dan) who then took me upstairs to the Genius Bar. He talked to them and got me on their standby list to be helped. During this time I felt like a VIP but you know what, I was just some customer who came in with a problem with my iPhone and they treated me as a friend - amazing.

Waited 15 minutes and then was able to speak to one of the knowledgeable Genius Bar reps. I showed her the problem on my iPhone and she then asked if I had everything backed up. "Yep, go ahead and do what you need to" I told her and then she reset my iPhone. After the reset it still was showing the dead spot behavior on the screen so she said "no problem, we'll swap this out with a new one." 10 minutes later she handed me my new iPhone (took out my SIM card and verified with at&t through iTunes that this was my new iPhone) and had me sign a receipt. Signed it and off I went with my new iPhone with the entire screen working, as it should ;o)

Got home, connected to my laptop and opened up iTunes. It connected to at&t to verify my device and asked me if I wanted to restore my settings and I said yes. About 10 minutes later my iPhone was ready to be synced so I synced my contacts, calendar, photos, video and music - this took about 30 minutes total (lots of music).

Guess what, in about 3 hours I went from having a semi-functioning iPhone to a brand new one with all of my settings and files the exact same way. Even my wallpaper, SMS messages, recent calls and voice messages are all there. The fact that this all worked and barely put a dent in my day is fantastic.

What I'm really impressed about is the level of service and attention to personal touch that the Apple store employees and Genius Bar team have. Now I know that if I did have a mac laptop that I would get the same, professional level of service. Honestly I can't think of too many other stores or brands that have that level of customer satisfaction. Kudos Apple!

Here's an interesting stat for mobile subscribers worldwide - it's over 3.5 billion and the number of new subscribers that sign up each minute is staggering:

• North America: 46 per minute
  
• Africa: 94 every minute
• Asia-Pacific: 388 every minute
  

If you visit the site you can roll over each region to get more details for active subscribers.

Several times a week I'm asked this question and currently I alternate between my Nokia N95 (US 3G version), iPhone, and a Sony Ericsson W910i. Each have their strengths and depending on my mood I'll switch between them depending if I'm going out with friends or traveling. Sometimes I'll use a thin Samsung phone (more details in another post).

This brings me to another question which is what type of mobile phone do you use? Leave a comment with the following info:

• phone model
• what you like
  
• one feature you can't live without
• what country you live in
  
• next phone you plan on purchasing and why

Given that I do a lot of presentations both internally and externally I've been looking for a device that would allow me to not be physically tied to my laptop to control my presentation slides. Being able to walk away from the podium or stage and advance my slides is important and I didn't want a solution that would be to complex or involved.


So 2 weeks ago I was given the Kensington Si600 Wireless Presenter with laser pointer to use while in Asia and I must say that it's fantastic. It's small and fits comfortably in the palm of my hand. Smaller the better since I travel often. There's a soft rubber covering on the back of the device and is powered by 2 AAA batteries.



To connect to your computer you remove this very small USB receiver that conveniently stores in the base of the device. When it's inserted into the device it turns it off, when you remove it then it automatically turns the device on and you can then use any of the four buttons.


There are four buttons: next slide, previous slide, blank screen and laser pointer. The laser pointer function is useful for drawing attention to specific areas of a slide while talking.

I've only used it with Powerpoint 2003 but assume it will work with any version of Powerpoint as well as Apple Keynote. So if you do a lot of presenting you may want to take a look at a wireless device like the Kensington Si600. There are other wireless presentation options out there and while I haven't had a chance to try them out I'm very happy with this Kensington device. Post any questions you have about the device and I'll answer them.

I'd like to introduce everyone to Mark Doherty who is the new evangelist for mobile and devices for EMEA and is based in London. Mark has a very thorough understanding of the complexities of mobile device software and first hand working knowledge of Flash Lite and Flash Cast. He's a great asset to our evangelism team and I'm really excited he and I are working together.

Besides being a really cool guy and easy to talk to, here's some additional information about Mark in his own words:

"I worked at Adobe for nearly four years as an engineer on platform integration for Symbian, BREW and Windows Mobile for our Flash Lite and Flash Cast products. Prior to my years with Adobe Mark worked with Mobile Innovation on the Nokia Series 90 platform and with Panasonic in R&D."

He has his own blog "Flashmobile Blog" which he'll be updating regularly and will be involved with a lot of upcoming mobile developer events in Europe that we're planing for 2008.

Mark will be focusing on the Adobe mobile community in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and I will be focusing on the Americas, APAC and Japan.

Last night my HD decided it was done cooperating and decided to let me know by making this annoying noise of crunching and ticking. A few seconds later and the lovely blue screen appeared. Hoping that not all was lost and it was just a random thing I restarted and heard the same noise again. "Unable to detect HDD" appeared on screen and I knew right then that I was not going to get in and recover any of my files.

Fortunately I had done a backup on Friday so most of my files are residing on an external HD and I now need to wait until IS replaces and setups my HD for my old laptop. It's a Lenovo ThinkPad and some of my friends keep telling me to switch to a mac. I've been thinking about it but because some of the mobile software I use is only PC based I'm not sure if I want to run both Windows and OS X on a mac system. For now I'll stick with my PC.

I'm hoping by this Wednesday my HD will be replaced because I'm leaving on Thursday for Barcelona - where I'll be speaking next week at MAX Europe about Flash Lite 3 Development.

So for the next few days I may not be posting anything on my site as I try to get things fixed and organized.

I wanted to say 'thanks' to everyone I met at MAX last week in Chicago. It was a great event and I enjoyed the time spent with the mobile developers as well as the 3 hour mobile boot camp last Wednesday. The keynote and sneak peek sessions were cool and seeing some of the new tools and technologies Adobe is working on are remarkable.

There are a lot of really exciting ideas and projects being worked on within the community - from SWX to mobile frameworks to content aggregation. It's a real great time to be involved with mobile as I feel (and I believe others do) that it's in the early stages and can only get better.

For those of you that I met personally at MAX I will follow-up via email this week, once I resolve some computer issues I'm having...

Chances are you've heard about the Chumby, if not you can read about it here. The Chumby is an always on WiFi connected Flash Lite enabled device that allows a user to get the latest information displayed to them via Flash widgets. Information such as gossip, photos, RSS feeds, news, weather, you name it.

Let's say you're a Flash or Flash Lite developer and you want to start creating your own Flash widgets for the Chumby - now you can. The Chumby team is looking for new developers and if you're interested you can contact them directly.

I've been using a prototype Chumby since late last year and just got an updated Chumby that is a bit better in terms of construction and features. It's a pretty cool device and the great thing about it is any Flash or Flash Lite developer can create their own unique Flash widget - either for their own personal use or for other Chumby users to download and install.

The International Mobile Gaming Awards is now accepting mobile games up until 6:00 PM Central European Time 24 September, 2007. You can read the contest rules and regulations and submit your game here when you're ready.

If you've developed or are developing Flash Lite games then here's a chance for you to get recognition and a nice prize if you're game is selected as the winner of the casual game category. So what are the prizes? How about $5,000 USD for the best casual game- not bad.

Some of the sponsors for this years awards are Adobe, Movida, Nokia, AMD, Bella de Mai, Nvidia and Qualcomm.

The winners will be announced on 13th February during the IMGA Awards Ceremony in Barcelona, Spain.

For the next 3 days I'll be having a blast at the Coachella Music Festival where I'll have a chance to listen and see over 100 bands perform, while trying to stay cool and hydrated in the sunny 100 degree heat during the day. This is my second time going to Coachella and the great things about the festival are the ability to walk around and check out different bands, meet other people that share similar music interests and most important to have a good time.

Also, I'll be on vacation until the 9th of May so you won't see any new postings or updates from me until then. I'm sure over the next 2 weeks the Flash Lite community will be sharing ideas and posting new things so make sure you check out their sites for that type of information.

I'm now here in Orlando, Florida today and tomorrow attending the CTIA conference where I'll be meeting with some companies and checking out the show floor. Lots of people here (surprise) and the usual issues with internet connectivity and finding a power outlet. Hopefully there will be some cool new devices and services announced and will try to cover them today/tomorrow.

As you've probably seen in other blog posts there's a lot of excitement today around the announcement of Adobe Creative Suite 3 and Adobe Device Central CS3. I'll be posting some additional information this week regarding Device Central CS3 so stay tuned.

We're looking for a developer relations person for Adobe's mobile and devices team to cover all of the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa). You can download the job description here (PDF).

Some important things to mention:
- this position will be based in London or Germany
- candidate must have experience with developing Flash Lite applications
- understanding the mobile ecosystem is important
- ability to clearly communicate effectively to customers and partners

If you're interested please send your resume or C.V. here.

Here's something that I discovered this morning here in Beijing, when I go to www.blogger.com and login it redirects me to my main screen but guess what - it's in Japanese.



I don't know Japanese and can't read the characters but was able to use Bablefish to translate certain works and pages to help me navigate around. So after some translation I was able to find the language preferences option and set it to English. Now it's displaying correctly, or at least in a language I understand ;o)



Not sure why this happened but I'm glad I was able to get it resolved.

Well it's about 10am Saturday and I'm here at the San Francisco International Terminal waiting for my flight to Beijing, China. I'll be there for the next 2 weeks for business as well as meeting with several content publishers, Flash Lite developers and other customers. Given this is my first time to China I'm really excited about getting some sight seeing in on the weekends, especially the Great Wall of China and the Forbidden City.

It's a 12+ hour non-stop flight and I'm looking forward to catching up on things from the past few weeks. These included posting some highlights from 2 recent conferences: 3GSM (Barcelona) and the Game Developer Conference (San Francisco). Look for some additional posts over the next few days.

It's my first day back to work here at Adobe from the holiday break and besides quite a number of emails that I'm catching up on, I'm really looking forward to 2007. This is going to be a great year for mobile and devices in general - the convergence of consumer needs in new devices and the way in which we interact and use our mobile phones will continue to evolve. I already have a short list of new handsets that I want to use and develop for, one of them being the Nokia N95.

As for new years resolutions, one of mine is to post more frequently and to share tips and ideas that developers will benefit from. From handsets to consumer devices like the Sony PSP, Nintento Wii, Sony PS3 and others - there's a lot of potential for Flash developers to be expressive on even more digital screens.

If you're a Blogger user you may have noticed that Blogger beta is no longer beta and is available to any existing Blogger user to upgrade to for free. Over the past few weeks I've noticed that they were offering a beta of an updated Blogger software but I decided to wait until it was officially released.

Upgrading to the new version was as simple as 1-2-3. All I needed to do was select the "update" button, login with my Google account and wait for Blogger to update my blog (including all of my archived pages and site settings). It took about 25 minutes but now it's all done.

At first glance it's a bit faster when navigating around and there are some new options like comments validation and tagging posts which will prove handy.

OK, back to some new Photoshop CS3 mobile content creation samples to post ;o)

It's not uncommon for a consumer in other regions of the world outside of the US (especially in Asia and Europe) to buy an "unlocked" handset. Unlocked refers to a handset that is not tied to a particular service provider's network. What's the advantage of this? Well if you're interested in a particular GSM handset that your service provider doesn't offer, then you can buy that handset, drop your SIM card into and use it.

It's what I do, using my Cingular SIM card but testing between 6-8 different devices daily. The nice thing is all of the GSM handsets I have are unlocked which allows me to use the handsets here in the US and when I travel abroad. For example during my most recent trip, I was able to use my Nokia N73 in Taipei, Singapore, Bangkok and Seoul using my same US number - very nice.

There's a great article on the Business Week web site that came out today that describes this new trend here in the US and what it may end up meaning for service providers here as well as meeting consumer demand for newer and more innovative handsets. The article focuses on Nokia and Motorola handsets but there's also a mention of Sony Ericsson and the idea that the much rumored iPhone will be unlocked.

When I was traveling through Seoul back in mid-Nov for the MAX Korea conference, I came across this autonomous robot at the Seoul airport when I was leaving.

My impression was it was meant to be an airport greeter for departing passengers and to provide real-time information about flights, locations and amenities via an interactive touchscreen interface. Couldn't tell if it was done in Flash or not but it was nicely done. It was helpful and did provide the information I was looking for even though I already had a good idea of where I needed to go.

Overall it was pretty cool and what I noticed was that some kids would come right up to it and start talking and touching it's screen, however older people would make an effort to avoid it by walking around. Given that Korea is so far ahead of the US in terms of technology, I don't expect to see a robot greeter in the San Francisco airport any time soon - too bad.

update: because of bandwidth issues by my provider I had to remove the direct video on my site and instead point to the original video on YouTube.

We're getting ready to revamp our mobile and devices developer center to make it more accessible and relevant and I wanted to ask those of you who use the site what you would change? Do you want more articles, sample files, easier navigation, frequency of updates - let us know.

Leave your comments and we'll be sure to add them to our list.

If you live in Seattle or the surrounding area you can register for the first Flash Mobile Day - co sponsored by Adobe and Nokia. This is a one day event being held next Thursday (25 May) and there will be people from Adobe, Nokia and Smashing Ideas presenting a variety of topics that you may find interesting.

I wanted to share with you the good news that we now have separate forums for developers to discuss Flash Lite devlopment based on handset manufacturer. As new handsets are released this year with Flash technologies pre-installed and opportunities for developers to sell their content become finalized, developers will have specific questions about developing Flash Lite content for different manufacturers.

To enable the community to both quickly find information that's relevant to what they're working on and to discuss ideas with other developers about the same handset manufacturer, the Adobe mobile and devices forums are now divided into these sections:

• Flash Lite: Nokia (for discussion about Flash Lite on Nokia handsets)
• Flash Lite: Sony Ericsson (for discussion about Flash Lite on Sony Ericsson handsets)
• Flash Lite: Samsung (for discussion about Flash Lite on Samsung handsets)
• Flash Lite: Japan (for discussion about Flash Lite on handsets available in Japan)
• Flash Lite 2 Development (for discussion about Flash Lite 2 development)
• Flash Handhelds (for discussion about Flash on PDA devices)
• FlashCast (for discussion about FlashCast)
• Flash Player SDK (for discussion about Flash technologies on consumer electronic devices)

These are free forums and you can search for any topic you're interested in. If you currently use these forums then you now have more choices, if you haven't yet and are interested in Flash technologies for mobile devices and consumer electronics take a look around.

Adobe has just launched an interactive video piece "Engage with Flash" that highlights the proliferation of Flash on mobile phones and consumer electronic devices.

It includes seven scenarios which demonstrate the many ways a user can interact with Flash enabled devices on a daily basis…using everything from a phone to a car to a TV and more.

Check it out.

It's been a few weeks since we released the preview release of Flash Lite 2 for Flash Professional 8 and I'm interested to see what you (developers) have created.

If you've created any type of Flash Lite 2 content please email me and let me know.

Also we'll be making some new sample files and tutorials available soon for both developers who are new to creating mobile Flash content as well as those of you who are looking for more technical examples.

I came across this short article today dicussing today's consumer experience with trying to purchase, locate and use content on mobile phones. I can attest to this first hand by purchasing a few ringtones and games on several devices and not having a clear indication of how to access the content once I purchased it.

As someone who's more knowledgable about mobile devices then the average consumer I had an idea of where to find the content but shouldn't it be easily discoverable by everyone?

This will continue to be a problem as more and more features and services are added to handsets. However I'm optimistic that in the near future we'll start to see some consumer oriented solutions that take's the guessing game out of finding and using mobile content.

If you're a current Flash Lite developer or interested in becoming one I've got some exciting news for you. Forum Nokia is sponsoring their Series60 3rd Edition challenge for developers to submit their content into one of four categories, one of them being Flash:

• Enterprise applications
• Location aware applications and services
• Mobile Music applications
• Applications using Macromedia Flash

The first place prize for each of the four categories is 25,000 Euros in addition to some othere really cool benefits. You can read more about the specific Flash portion of the contest here and the full competition details over at Forum Nokia.

For the Flash Category you can enter any application that would follow into one of the following genres: gaming, media and entertainment, tutorials and interactive help, personal, enterprise, productivity, experimental or other.

Here are the important dates:

• December 15th: registration ends
• March 31, 2006: deadline for submissions
  
• April 28, 2006: finalists announced (5 per category)
  

You're probably wondering what you need to participate:

• Flash Professional 8 (to create your Flash Lite content)
• Flash Lite 1.1 CDK (to help you understand best practices)
• Supported handset (to test your content on)
  
• Flash Lite 1.1 player (for testing content on your handset)
• Register by December 15th for the competition
  

So what does 25,000 Euros convert to (approximately)...

• 29,000 USD (US Dollars)
  
• 16,800 GBP (Great Britain Pounds)
  
• 49,000 SGD (Singapore Dollars)
• 3.4 million JPY (Japanese Yen)
• 227,000 HKD (Hong Kong Dollars)
  
• 40,000 AUD (Australia Dollars)
• 1.3 million INR (Indian Rupees)
• 1.2 million THB (Thailand Bhat)
• 63,000 BRL (Brazilian Reais)
  

Good luck to everyone and remember to read the details of the challenge for more information. Remember to register by December 15th - you have until March 31st to submit your final content. If you have any questions you can leave a comment and I'll reply.