Website translation made easy

Ever gotten a link to a site from a friend overseas only to find it's all in another language that you can't read? Happens to me all the time when dealing with the Asian mobile guys ... well ...

My mate Thomas at Flash-Mobile in Taiwan just put me onto this little tool which I think is great. It's called Mojolingo and will translate entire websites on the fly to Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese and English, and keep the session going as you browse through the site. A very handy tool indeed. Thanks Thomas!

Flash Lite links of the week: Flash Lite Friday Digest #5

Flash Lite Friday Digest is a condensed and organized set of links that help users to get a weekly overview on the Flash Lite mobile world ... and this week it's my turn to put it together. Yes I know for some it's probably still Thursday, but we get around the world a bit quicker down here in Australia ;)

• The upcoming Nokia 6136 is Flash Lite enabled for browsing.
• Protohaus showed some great explorations into Flash-based UI for mobile phones - or what Scott has successfully labelled as F.L.U.I (Flash Lite User Interface)
• The Nokia N91 support page went online.
• The CTIA Wireless conference has been running, with lots of Flash talk going on from Adobe and other mobile partners. Amongst other announcements, there was Nokia's debut of the Nokia 6126 Series 40 3rd Edition phone.
• Bryan Rieger from Mobile Moday Van posted his Flash Lite presentation from the April meeting.
• Marco posted an interesting article looking into creating Captivate mobile tutorials for Flash Lite 2.
• Moket's Flash Lite Training courses are taking registrations - first sessions are in Melbourne in May. Places are filling so hurry to book your spot!
• Nokia head office in Helsinki posted a new Flash Lite Job - Summer Trainee - Flash Lite Multimedia Application Demo Implementation.
• Nick Gerig gave us all an insight into some debugging / trace techniques for Flash Lite
• No, not nightmares ... but there were Flash Lite dreams happening over at the s60 User Experience blog.
• Alessandro posted on some more Verizon news - plans to use a FLUI for their new handsets. Also there's this cool video of a FLUI phone at CTIA.
• And finally, I just received an email from Noka saying the 3250 is available in Australia :) Guess who's going shopping after Easter holidays?

That's all from me. Have a great Easter!

Report shows mobile marketeers targeting under-10s

Interesting or disturbing ... guess it's the way you look at it. But a study by a Sydney university has found the age at which children are becoming first-time mobile users is dropping.

Now as a parent and a mobile-geek, I can see both sides of the coin here.

But when you really look at it, what does a 9 year old need a mobile phone for? If it's the need for a hand-held device that entertains, get them a LeapFrog or something - geez my 7 year old loves playing games on my iriver u10! A mate of mine has even used his Nokia N70 as a portable video unit for his kids - loading full quality (albeit well compressed) episodes of the Simpsons onto it!

It's very interesting to see how the marketing companies are pitching the phone really as an entertainment device only to this age segment. Then when the mobile-kids get into their teens, they start spending up to $600 / month on phone bills.

I don't mind young kids entertaining themselves with hand-held units / game devices, but perhaps the mobile phone ain't the device to do it. That's just Mr Dad talking.

Flash Lite finds a home in the US with Verizon

I know a million people will be blogging about this announcement, but hey the blogosphere is full or repetition anyway. What the Verizon deal means for companies like Moket is kind of two fold. Firstly, it means of course that there'll be more opportunities for content distribution into the US market, and wider audiences for Flash Lite content. Secondly though, it helps in our marketing of the our services and ideas, in the pitching we're doing for investment, and in the overall confidence of those supporting us (not to mention MY confidence!) It's a timely announcement and one that I'm sure will be widely discussed and held up as proof that the mobile space is progressively jumping onto the Flash Lite bandwagon.

Thank you Melbourne!

Just gotten back from Melbourne where I presented Moket and Flash Lite to the Mobile Monday Melbourne group - one of four MoMo meetings that looked at Flash Lite this month. Had a great time statying with some good friends of mine from when I lived in Melbourne with my band, and catching up on things that have happened around the place since I moved to Brisbane.

The MoMo meeting was excellent, with Keren and Tamia (no idea how to spell that really mate - sorry!) from OMG.tv doing a great job with organising it. The venue (Horse Bazzar -Digital Art Gallery Bar) is also top notch and very Melbourne. Am looking forward to being down there more often. We had some very good questions on the realities of Flash on mobiles, and some very positive feedback on the work we've done to date, and the possibilities for new styles of content with Flash. Keren also interviewed me for her podcast show, which you may be interested in (some have said I have a face for radio - but now for podcasting too it seems :)

I also met up with Alex Young from Mo-Style, who are about to release a public beta of their Pocket Charlie WAP community services. Keep ann eye out here for details as it would be something good to help them with.