Fatal phones?

Seems that we shouldn't be worried about mobile phones giving us brain tumors - we should be more worried about them spontaneously combusting and fusing to our bodies ... ouch :(

Verizon Opens Up in 2008

Seems that "open" is the new mobile buzzword and everyone is getting in on it ... Verizon is the latest with the announcement today that they will open the deck to third-party apps and non-VZW handsets by the end of 2008.

Verizon Wireless today announced that it will provide customers the option to use, on its nationwide wireless network, wireless devices, software and applications not offered by the company. Verizon Wireless plans to have this new choice available to customers throughout the country by the end of 2008.

In early 2008, the company will publish the technical standards the development community will need to design products to interface with the Verizon Wireless network. Any device that meets the minimum technical standard will be activated on the network. Devices will be tested and approved in a $20 million state-of-the-art testing lab which received an additional investment this year to gear up for the anticipated new demand. Any application the customer chooses will be allowed on these devices.

Read on ...

Great knife, but does it support Flash Lite?

This new world-record breaking Swiss Army knife seems to do just about everything else ... why shouldn't I be able to play my Flash Lite games on it :) Read story here.

Moket in the press

Today, Moket appeared in an article in the leading Fairax Media newspapers (Sydney Morning Herald, The Age) relating to mobile gaming. "The Big Money in Mobile Gaming" looks at the emergence and growth of mobile gaming, and how Australia is already producing worthy titles for the various sections of the global market. Flash Lite (although wrongly spelt in the article!) gets a great mention as well ... "With most mobile phones now running flash, a massive new platform has emerged for videogame developers."

Read the article here.

First Moket game on the Chumby

Today Moket launched its first game on the Chumby - a ported version of one of its leading casual mobile games, "Dizzy Zub Zub".

This is one of many games that Moket is either porting from mobile or creating specifically for the Chumby. You can find "Dizzy" in the Games widget category on the Chumby site.

Stay tuned for more Chumby titles soon!

Chizen steps down as Adobe CEO

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced its Board of Directors has appointed current president and chief operating officer Shantanu Narayen as its president and chief executive officer, effective December 1, 2007. Narayen will also join Adobe’s Board of Directors at that time. Narayen replaces Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen, who will serve the remainder of his term on Adobe’s Board of Directors through the Spring of 2008 and continue in a strategic advisory capacity through the end of fiscal year 2008.

Read the full press release here

Don't Dream It's Over

For a few hours last night, Flash Lite and phones and business was the very last thing on my mind. Tanya and I went to see the newly reformed Crowded House perform at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, and as they always have done to me for the past 20 odd years, they had me from the opening bar.

The night actually started well even before the "Crowdies" took to the stage - some old friends of mine from my band days in Melbourne, Augie March, were the support band and they were unreal. They have just gotten so much better and Glen's songwriting is inspiring.

But then Neil Nick, Mark, Matt and some different guy up the back in place of Liam, came and took away any thoughts of there being anything else happening in the world apart from this gig. We got songs from all albums, including "Woodface" which is a sentimental favourite of mine. The new material blended with the old in a way that only a genius like Neil Finn can make happen.

He is my John Lennon.

Sony Ericsson S500i Flash Lite Themes

Bill has posted a short video demo of the new Sony Ericsson S500i's implementation of Flash Lite for Themes. Nice work Bill.

It's a pretty sweet phone if you haven't already checked it out. Some nice features which definitely enhance the "sexy" rating of the handset if nothing else (e.g. side lights that change colour with the themes, time of day, date, etc). But hey, it's another Flash Lite enabled handset on the market, so who's complaining?

Flash Lite 3.0 reaching Japan sooner rather than later

Via Scott J: some Flash Lite stats from DC following Adobe MAX Japan:

• 94% of docomo handsets are flash-enabled.
• The “i-menu” - docomo’s portal is full-flash. They get about 25-30M viewers per month, making it definitely the highest trafficked mobile site in the world.
• 30% of DoCoMo subsribers are on flat-rate data (KDDI is much higher, about 75% i recall)
• The profits for the voice business of docomo keep falling every year, while the profits for the data business go up every year.
• The data business gets increasingly profitable every year - by about 100 billion yen. They expect that record to be repeated again this year. (these numbers seem off the scale - 100 billion yen is like a billion dollars???)
• As the UI improves, usage goes up. Flashlite has been a big help in this, so flashlite has made them a lot of money.
• Two companies in the valley starting with “A” are really cool! “M” Companies in seattle are really lame
• i-channel is built on flashcast, and has got 13.8M subscribers inside of two years.
• i-channel is the opposite of their i-menu - its like the super-limited version for people who are overwhelmed by the choice on i-menu. You can pick from news, weather, sports…5 basic channels.

As we have done for years, we watch and hope that the success of Flash Lite in Japan flows through to the rest of the world! I'm more confident these days that it will, but those are some pretty impressive stats.

MCN looking for Christmas Flash Lite animations

Hey everyone. Down here at Moket, we’ve been working really hard on a new distribution opportunity that we’ll be announcing shortly through the Moket Content Network. Those of you at MAX this year would have gotten a very quick sneak peek.

And as part of this new service, and to also feed the multiple international distribution deals we have, we’re looking to aggregate the best Christmas themed Flash Lite animations for wallpapers and screensavers that we can find. Santa, elves reindeer, gifts, Christmas trees, decorations and lights – if it’s Christmas themed we’d love to see it!

This is for designers and developers who are already part of the MCN, and also for those of you who have never submitted anything before.Please email mcn@moket.com with your samples, or email me back with any questions you have.

Cheers!

Where is Adobe in Google's OMHA?

This week saw the big announcement from Google relating to the upcoming Google Phone, where they discussed the Open Mobile Handset Alliance. Basically it is the group of companies (set to grow I imagine over time) that are wolrking on solutions for the Google Phone's open hardware/software platform.

One noticeable name not on the list (noticeable to me anyway) is Adobe.

I would have thought that given the amount of time this whole Google Phone thing has been gearing up, and the prospect of a mobile device from one of the largest companies in the world (not to mention a seemingly more open platform to work with), that Adobe would have been all over this from the point of view of making sure that this thing is Flash/Flash Lite enabled.

I don't profess to have indepth knowledge of how Adobe's internal decisions are made at this level, because this is a much higher level than most Flash Lite developers generally appreciate. But I would hate it if next year at the MAX conference, people were walking around with their Google Phones and the MaD team were having to field the question, "so why doesn't it have Flash on it?" like they did this year with the iPhone.

Maybe they ARE all over it and just haven't formally announced anything yet - all of which is perfectly acceptable. It would have been nice though to see the red and white logo there at the time of the OMHA unveiling for some "market confidence".