Moket games for sale at Voeveo

We've just uploaded some of our recent games to the Voeveo mobile portal for purchase and download. Games include old-timers such as Dizzy Zub Zub, Cipher and Jon Burgerman's Sausage Smackdown, along with some more recent ones like Trench Rocket and Palleggio. Most of these games are also available, or are making their way, to Nokia Download (in APAC and soon China and Europe). They're also going to emerge in Singapore shortly.

It's been interesting in the past few months seeing the success of App Store, and the subsequent news from Google and intimations by Microsoft towards their own "open markets". Surely this has to kick start the education process for many, many more mobile consumers on methods to simply engage with mobile content. It may also help to educate them with having to pay for content, but time will tell :)

Dizzy Zub Zub on Mobile Hotdog

Another one of our games, Dizzy Zub Zub (actually it's nearly our oldest one now!) has been added to the Mobile Hotdog web portal. Free to try before you buy! It joins Sausage Smackdown and Eat Them Alive and is also being pushed out onto Nokia Download. Upcoming titles also making their way to Nokia Download soon include Trench Rocket, Palleggio and one of our GoPets mini-games, Doogie Boogie.

SWF2JAR Packaing Tool Released for Project Capuchin SE Phones

Via Mark: Sony Ericsson have released their SWF2JAR packaging tool for Project Capuchin enabled phones. The recently released C905 is the first phone to support the platform.

Sony Ericsson's Project Capuchin technology is a Java ME API that bridges the Java ME and Adobe Flash Lite programming environments. The SWF2JAR tool is a tool for wrapping the SWF into a Java Midlet for distribution to supported Sony Ericsson devices.

Download it now from the Sony Ericsson Developer World site.

Updated FL Devices Spreadsheet

If you're looking for an up to date document for showing all Nokia, Sony Ericsson and BREW (Verizon Wireless) devices that have Flash Lite pre-installed in all of its flavours, Bill has just updated this on his blog and is available for download here.

Interesting to see that the BREW handsets have not changed in a long time. For me this is a major drawback of the current ecosystem in North America, as these devices are getting very old and doesn't really demonstrate a dynamic or growing market. I know there are several devices that are on the verge of being certified, so hopefully they might appear in Bill's next update. Qualcomm's recent announcement about further Flash Lite adoption should remove this problem of certifying handsets sometime midway through next year.

Introductory Flash Lite eSeminars

Adobe Pacific are running a series of eSeminars on Flash Lite, with yours truly speaking at each of them on various topics related to Flash Lite development and the wider ecosystem.

These are targeted as introductory sessions that don't get too heavy on code samples, but take a look at some of the features and aspects of Flash Lite, and how they relate to real world solutions or products.

This week's session was on Flash Lite and the Nokia Web Runtime (WRT) platform, and you can find the recording of that sessions here.

Here's the schedule for the upcoming eSeminars:

• July 9th - Adobe Flash Lite Widgets for the Chumby
• July 23rd - Reactive Mobile Content with Adobe Flash Lite
• Aug 6th - Persistent Data in Adobe Flash Lite
• Aug 20 - Tips and Tricks for Effective Adobe Flash Lite development

Each of the sessions can be accessed by visiting http://pacific.adobe.acrobat.com/mobile, and start at 2pm (AEST - +10 GMT).

Thanks to the local Adobe office for organising these, in amongst the other regular eSeminars that they run each week (up to about 7 per week now!)

Nokia buys out remaining Symbian shares

It's all over the mobile news feeds - Nokia have announced they will be buying the shares in Symbian that they don't already own, becoming their sole owner. Perhaps even bigger news is that they will turn over the IP to the Symbian Foundation to further develop the platform in an open source environment. This is massive news from a platform point of view, and obviously a move to keep Nokia/Symbian at the front of the oncoming surge from other "open source" mobile platforms.

In terms of impact to developers (and Flash developers in particular), Mark Doherty had this to say:

Building applications for this new platform will undoubtedly be much simpler, you can fully expect to develop a single code base and have that run on handsets globally from at least four manufacturers. SDK, documentation, sample code, forums and tech support will be free.

Interesting times ahead ...

New FL 3.0 Devices Released

Nokia have just released the new E66 and E71 device specifications, which include Flash Lite 3 (UPDATED: S60 3rd Edition FP1, so most likely standalone player, screensaver and browser).

The E71 in particular is looking pretty slick, coming in at only 10mm thick.

webDU 2008 Wrap Up

Well, webDU has come and gone for another year, but I have a feeling that this year was different. I knew that numbers seemed to be up on previous years from discussion I had been having with Geoff and the Daemon team. These guys are first class event organisers, not to mention first class people, and I very much appreciate the work they do each year to run webDU. It just seemed to me that the number and enthusiasim of delegates, the quality of the sessions, and the overall vibe of the conference was on a higher level to previous years. It was great to be around - motivating, inspiring, and a lot of fun.

The content
As per ususal the main technologies were covered - Flash, Flex, AIR, Colf Fusion, Mobile, CSS, AJAX, JavaScript, 3D. I managed to see both keynotes (a rarity for Day 2 since the evening activities of Day 1 normally wipe out a lot of us for an early start the next day!) and both were great. Mike Downey and Greg Rewis had their schtick down pat for showing off AIR and some new features of Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks CS4. Tim Buntel on Day 2 had a great session on the next top 5 trends we'll see in web, and although remaining sceptical over timing (as we all have been really Tim), he did outline Mobile (Flash Lite, AIR Mobile) as a big trend to watch for in the coming years.


Some other sessions I attended was Mobile Web 2.0 with Gary Chan from Forum Nokia (talking on WRT and the opportunities for web developers on Nokia), Michael Wise and his crazy box of fun (hooking up Flash to Wii remotes, multi-touch surfaces, RFID and GPS), and Brian Chau on ActionScript 3.

Mobile
From a mobile point of view, I think we did ok (as well as Gary, I spoke on FLV and Flash Lite 3) for a web conference. This was my 5th webDU, and 4th as a speaker, and every year I speak on Flash Lite. I have a feeling that next year I will have some better opportunities to speak about, but for the main, I felt that we covered the mobile aspect pretty well considering that most people come to webDU for Flex, AIR, CF and Flash. There may be some photos circulating soon that show the extent that I went to in order to draw a crowd to my session - and that's all I'll say right now.

A shout out to Gary, Ung-Ping, Hawa, and the other nice lady on the Forum Nokia stand whose name embaressingly evades me at this moment (!) to say thank you for getting involved with webDU the way you did.

The fun
The "event" this year was a little bit more relaxed than the banquets of previous years. This year, we had the total run of a bowling/bar/laser tag/karaoke entertainment centre for the night. I will say that while my bowling score was pretty average, it was enough to snatch victory for me on the final frame :) A word of warning - playing laser tag with Darren Tracey and Mark Mandel can be hazardous to your health, if you are on the opposing team. The trading card game was a massive success and I look forward to seeing the concept trademarked, patented and rolled out for large licensing royalties at other "big technology conferences" by Kai and Minty ;) Well done boys.



We have the speaker party on tonight which always proves to be a lot of fun and a great time to hang out and get to talk with some really clever people in a very relaxed setting. I won't ever forget Mike Downey doing Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen at the karaoke machine one year, or watching Ted Patrick kick everyone's butt on Wii Tennis. Ahh, these are the memories :)

So for all of you who have always heard about webDU but have never made it, it's getting better every year so make sure that 2009 is the year you finally come to one of the best conferences in the world.

UPDATE: Just reading through my Google Reader this morning and found Alessandro has already spotted some of my webDU antics via Flashmagazine.

Adobe Online Creative Festival

A new concept in events has been launched today by the Adobe Pacific team - The Adobe Online Creative Festival is now open for registrations.



Taking place on July 1st, 2008 customers will be able to attend a virtual creative festival. Take a look at the box office - Sam and the team at Cyberbia have created a rich user experience for those registering, which really has set the bar for the event itself. So what will happen on July 1st in our virtual field of fun (from 11am - 4pm AEST) ...

• There will be two live stream, one Adobe presenters, one Adobe customer
• Pre recorded tips and tricks
• Gallery where customers can post their work
• Chat area where you can speak with the presenters
• Concessions stand with great buys, offers and free festival stuff
  

I'll be presenting an Adobe Live session at 11.45am called "Giving Your Mobile Real Personality".

All this creative chaos and no mud in sight! Visit www.adobeonlinefestival.com to register and for all the infomation you need.

Take a look, tell your customers about it - Get into the festival spirit - roam, chat, share and learn - all from the convenience of your own desk.

New Flash Lite 3,0 Devices

The new Nokia 6600 slide , 6600 fold, and the 3600 slide Flash Lite 3.0 devices are up on Forum Nokia devices page. For those of you who haven't been there before, it's a great part of the FN site for checking on device specifications. I actually subscribe to the RSS feed so that new devices come into Google Reader when they hit the site (my tip of the week ;)

These are all a lot sexier than the original Nokia 6600 (one of the first colour screen phones I owned!).

In the wake of recent annoucements regarding an approach to fixing certain issues with Flash Lite 3.0 (see last post), it seems that the sooner it happens then better, with new devices rolling out now with more frequency.

Fixing Flash Lite 3

Didn't know it was broken? Well, depends on who you talk to I guess. Even back when FL 3 was in beta, there were discussions flying around to do with the new security model that Flash Lite was "inheriting" from Flash Player 8, and that essentially we would find that backwards compatibility for many FL apps would be broken. For a recently posted developer's perspective, read Ugur's post here.

The MaD team have always been listening and through Bill have announced that there are some fixes coming along shortly. Aaprt from potentially fixing the issue Flash Lite developers have had with Flash Lite 3, it demonstrates Adobe's ability to change as a result of the combined community voice. It takes a lot to change, especially in the mobile world where the device vendors control such a large part of the ecosystem, so this is not an insignificant announcement. Thanks Adobe and MaD team.

Sony Ericsson Adds Flash Support to Mobile Java

Via Vivek, a very interesting development on the Flash Lite front from Sony Ericsson.

Sony Ericsson today announced at its Developer World conference plans for a new technology that bridges Adobe Flash Lite and Java ME development platforms.

The technology, called Project Capuchin, allows Java ME applications to use Flash Lite as the front-end interface for mobile phone applications.

More importantly, it builds a connection between the phone's applications and Flash, something that the few phones able to run Flash don't do. Flash is just a display layer, not actually interactive with the phone.

So there's light at the end of the tunnel for those of us waiting for a solution to make Flash Lite apps on Sony Ericsson handsets a reailty. What I founf most interesting though was this comment:

David said the technology could "very likely" grow into an open source project so it is not limited to just Sony Ericsson phones.

Could this also solve the problem we have with packaging for Series 40? Time will tell, but announcements like these help me to believe that Flash Lite is maturing as a platform and mobile technology, and that things are (slowly) improving in the market.

Talk to the Flash Lite Guru on Forum Nokia

I have officially been elevated to "guru" status by Forum Nokia for their upcoming "Talk to the Guru" online discussion on Flash Lite.

Following on from my involvement with the Flash Lite Code Camps this month, I'll be on the Forum Nokia Flash Lite discussion forum on April 22nd at 3pm (Brisbane/+10 GMT) to talk all things Flash Lite, and probably with a particular focus on Nokia devices.

No hecklers thanks - you know who you are!

Moket featured on Forum Nokia and Games out on Nokia Download! Platform

All the attention that Nokia has been giving to Flash Lite lately has been great and has put the spotlight on many developers around the world. The plan was for WRT and Flash Lite to be a major focus for Nokia platforms in the first half of 2008, and they have certainly been following through those plans very well.

Ugur and the Kuneri guys have been written up already, and now it's Moket's turn in the Media and Games section with a great article on how our Flash Lite products have been supported by Nokia devices.

In the article, I mention an exciting new channel for Moket content that is launching in April - Moket games (and any that we can get through from the Moket Content Network) will be available through the "Try For Free" catalogue on the Nokia Download! client for S60 devices. We will be visible in APAC (including India) and Europe in the coming weeks, launching with 5 titles from our catalogue - Dizzy Zub Zub, Cipher, Polar Cap Blues, Jon Burgerman's Sausage Smackdown, and GRORBS.

Once they are live we'll make another announcement, but we're stoked that we have been able to secure this sales channel for Flash Lite games.

Adobe Mobile Gallery launches

Adobe launched their new Adobe Mobile Gallery today - a nice RIA for demonstrating the depth of Flash Lite products being produced around the world. We're pleased to have a number of Moket products in there, including our GoPets animations, the first Dojo Monkey game, and also our MoCarbon wallpapers. I'm also pleased to see many contributors to the Moket Content Network repesented in the gallery.

Free Nokia phone on cover of teen magazine

Via AllAboutSymbian: Fancy an old (pink) Nokia 6630 for free? Just buy a copy of GirlTalk magazine and you get one stuck to the front cover! You even get some stick-on jewels to give it some bling! Now when Flash Lite enabled handsets start making it to this kind of saturation I'll be happy :)

Flash Lite Developers Toolkit on Forum Nokia

Faisal, Forum Nokia Champion and Lead App Developer over at Orison Technologies (home of SWF2GO) has added a Flash Lite Developers Toolkit to the Forum Nokia FL Wiki.

In this initial release of the toolkit, the following components are available:

• FPS-Meter v3 - Displays FPS (Frames Per Second) of last 10 frames.

• Mem-Meter v1 - Displays available free memory to Flash Lite application.

• Battery Meter v1 - Shows current battery level of mobile device.

• Signal Meter v1 - Shows current signal stregnth of mobile network.

The installation package will install two separate libraries. One for Flash Lite 1.x and another for Flash Lite 2.x & 3.x.

If you're new to Flash Lite development then this is a great resources to get you started working with these aspects of the device in relation to your content/applcication.

Dojo Monkey and Flash Lite in the press

Well, you can never say that Moket doesn't do it's fair share of giving positive media coverage when it comes to Flash Lite and Adobe products :)

The Australian media section has today published a nice article on our Dojo Monkey product and the work we're doing cross-platform with it, including Flash Lite.

Hopefully with all the things we have in the pipleline with Dojo Monkey, there's going to be a lot more coverage like this in the near future.

Upcoming Adobe Mobile eSeminars

There are a number of upcoming Adobe eSeminars related to mobile development which would be worthwhile checking out:

Getting Started with Flash Lite 3 and CS3
Presenter: Bill Perry
Monday, March 24, 2008
11:00 A.M. PDT

Flash Lite and Flex for Tourism
Presenters: Michael Epstein/Ira Hochman
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
11:00 A.M. PDT

Blood from a Stone: Flash Game Optimization on Low-end mobile devices
Presenter: Evan Kirchhoff
Thursday, March 27, 2008
1:00 P.M. PDT

Register for these sessions here

New Game on Chumby - GRORBS

We just released a new game for the Chumby called GRORBS. You'll also be seeing it soon in the Smashing Ideas catalogue in the US for Verizon customers. Check it out! Expect another announcement soon on where else you can buy GRORBS and other Moket games for your mobile ...

Flash Lite on 500m devices and on future Windows Mobile

Via Bill. Adobe has announced today that Flash Lite has now shipped on over half a billion devices, and with 150% growth over the past year they are on track to hit the 1 billion mark by 2010. This is an impressive number to trot out at your next business meeting when selling a Flash Lite option on your next mobile project. Backing it up with real numbers that the specific client can address can be a slightly different story, but overall it's another indicator that regardless of what the current climate is today, Flash Lite is only going to get bigger.

The other announcement is that Microsoft has licensed Flash Lite 3 and Reader LE for Internet Explorer Mobile on future versions of Windows Mobile, making the web experiences on these devices a hell of a lot more seamless than browsing the web on another popular device currently in the market!

Moket and Forum Nokia Deliver Flash Lite Code Camp

I'm very happy to be involved in this upcoming Flash Lite Code Camp with Forum Nokia - April 3rd 2008, Sydney.

Moket will be part of the one-day session aimed at educating mobile developers on Flash Lite development and how it integrates with Nokia's own roadmap for the platform. This roadmap includes Flash Lite and Nokia's own Web Run Time (WRT) platform for wrapping and distributing Flash Lite content as "widgets" for Series 60 handsets.

Adobe will also be present, delivering important business information regarding their Mobile & Devices platform and future plans.

The current agenda for the day is as follows:

• 9:30am : Registration
• 10:00am-10:30am : Forum Nokia, Flash Lite opportunity - Gary Chan
• 10:30am - 11:00am : Adobe's Mobile & Device Platform - Mark Blair
• 11:00am - 11:20am : Coffee Break
  
• 12:00am -12:30pm: Flash Lite in the Market - Dale Rankine, Moket
• 12:30pm -1:30pm : Lunch
• 1:00pm -3:30pm : Hands-on session with Flash Lite 3 - Dale Rankine
• 3:30pm -4:00pm: Wrap up + networking

For the afternoon hands-on session, I'll be working through developing a Flash Lite 3 video application, and then wrapping it with WRT for distribution.

If you're in the Sydney area or can get there, this is a fantastic opportunity to come and hear and learn from the experts, and to get hands-on experience with Flash Lite.

Register for the event here.

Confirmed as a speaker for webDU 2008

The 2008 webDU Conference is starting to take shape, and looks like being bigger and better than ever. And as has been my usual custom for the past 4 years, I've been honoured with a presentation spot.

This year my session is all about Flash Lite 3, and is (currently) titled "The not-so-ancient Art of Mobile FLash Video". I'm still working out the finer details of the session, but it'll be good to again fly the Flash mobile flag in the midst of stiff competition from AIR, Flex and Cold Fusion.

More to come as we get closer to the conference. If you're nearby Sydney arpund June 12-13, you need to make it a priority to come along to one of the most widely regarded web technology conferences.

Moket in Anthill Magazine games article

Anthill Magazine last year chose Moket to be in the Top 50 of their Cool Companies awards. This month, their latest issue also features Moket in their cover story relating to the electronic games industry here in Australia (the full article is available only in the actual mag or to online subscribers).

In it I discuss the growing trend in marketing budgets spanning cross-media platforms, and how Moket is capitalising on this with Flash. We're currently working on a new project for a client that is a web-based Flash game with a supporting mobile Flash Lite version. Moket in general will be seen working more in this "cross-platform" space in 2008, including what we have planned for the Dojo Monkey property.

Device Central Update #5 Available

Device Profile Update #5 is now available on Adobe Device Central Online. Stay on top of new Flash Lite devices from around the world by downloading CS3 Device Profile Update #5, released on February 16, 2008, as well as preceding device updates. This update features the first Flash Lite 3.0 devices available in the market.

Important! Before downloading Update #4, you must FIRST download and install the Flash® Lite™ 3 Update for Device Central CS3 and for Flash CS3 Professional (2 separate updates).

More FLash Lite enabled devices announced - First FL 3 phone?

I may have just beaten Alessandro to posting about some new Flash Lite enabled devices! Amazing!! Ahh, he's off enjoying MWC in Barcelona, so I don't feel too bad :) Checkout the nice new Nokia 3120 Classic with FL 2.1 (S40 5th Ed. FP1), 6210 Navigator (S60 3rd Ed. FP 2) listed as having 2.1 also, and the 6220 Classic (S60 3rd Ed. FP 2) - listed as having FL3.0!

Now a couple of things. Not sure that even though the 6210 and 6220 are both S60 3rd Ed. FP2 why one has FL2.1 and the other has FL3.0. Anyone?

Also, the picture for the 6220 Classic isn't the right phone! There is an old 6220 (S40 Dev Platfom 1) from 2003, so it seems the product numbering is on the way round the merry-go-round again :)

Anyway, bring them on!

Buy Club Moket Flash Lite content now from the desktop website

We've just launched and update to the Club Moket desktop website to allow customers to browse certain products and initiate the sales process from the desktop.

We've been spending a lot of time evaluating the early traffic coming to Club Moket (clubmoket.mobi), and have been looking at ways to make it easier for people to access the Flash Lite content we have available. One of the "restrictions" we have at the moment is not being able to represent the Flash Lite content AS Flash in the mobile browser, due to the overall lack of support for Flash Lite in the browser across the vast majority of handsets. This this is something we will look at again in the new year, but we decided that it was important to try and get across to the potential customers how cool the animations were so they could see that they were different to normal static wallpapers.

So we've created a system whereby for certain products on the Club Moket mobile site:

• we have Flash previews online
• there is a form for each product that allows you to provide your mobile number and receive a free SMS link to the purchase page for that product
• and also a Datamatrix barcode that can be scanned to get the same direct link

We're always looking for feedback, so please let us know what you think. This is just another example of Moket being extremely proactive in further the distribution and sales for Moket Content Network members and Flash Lite content in general.

Moket games out now through Smashing Games

Good news for the Flash Lite community and mobile gamers - the Smashing Games catalogue has been launched on Verizon Wireless! There are many great games available now to over 18 million subscribers in North America, including our very own Dizzy Zub Zub and Cipher.

Moket has many more titles in the pipeline for the Smashing Games catalogue over the coming months, so watch this space for more news on our latest releases. In some cases, you'll also be able to play ported versions of the games on the Chumby - like the Chumby-fied Dizzy Zub Zub.

Well done to the Smashing team on getting this baby born. It's another piece of the puzzle for Flash Lite content making an impact on the mobile content industry and one that I know will do very well. For those Verizon customers out there - go and buy some Flash Lite gaming goodness and help feed starving independent Flash Lite game developers around the world :)

New Flash Lite WRT Competiton

A new comp has just been started for members of the Yahoo Flash Lite Group by Riku at Nokia.

Simply develop a new Nokia WRT (S60 Web Runtime) widget that contains Flash Lite content, and post it to Nokia MOSH, and you can win for yourself a new N95 8GB handset. There's also an extra handset for the widget that grabs the judges' attention the most (how they determine that i have no idea - personal preference)

All you have to do is to use the instructions at the Forum Nokia Wiki.

You can take something you've made earlier or create some cool Flash Lite content and package it into a WRT widget, post it on MOSH and tag it as 'widget' before the end of this year and you're in!

The only requirements are that you have to have the legal rights to publish the Flash Lite content, and you must be a member of the Yahoo Flash Lite Group.

If you have any questions about te WRT, please send them to widget.support@nokia.com or comment on the Wiki page.

Boston UG presents eSeminar with Club Moket

The Boston MaD User Group is holding an eSeminar on December 13th at 5PM EST (check your local time).

Dale Rankine, CEO of Moket (that's me) will present Club Moket.

• Presenter, Dale Rankine, CEO of Moket
• Seminar URL available to UG members only - please join the Boston Adobe Mobile and Device User Group to participate to the eSeminar and be part of the User Group
• The members of the Boston MaD User Group will also have the chance to win a copy of an Adobe Software package of the value of $2100.

“Club Moket is a new direct-to-customer mobile sales portal featuring Flash Lite content. It is the retail channel for Moket and the popular Moket Content Network. Club Moket aims to provide compelling and creative Flash Lite content primarily to markets such as UK, Europe and South-East Asia, where customers have more open (and Flash Lite enabled) handsets (Nokia, Sony Ericsson) and flexible web-browsing capabilities.”

Dale Rankine is the CEO and founder of Moket, and will be demonstrating the portal as well as discussing the opportunities for Flash Lite designers and developers to sell through the channel. The Moket Content Network that feeds the Club Moket portal has been growing rapidly over the past months, and Dale will be able to share with you some feedback and observations on Flash Lite content in the market, and what designers and developers should be watching out for.

Buy Flash Lite content now from Club Moket!

We've been working hard at Moket on delivering a new sales channel for Flash Lite content, and I'm happy to say that it has finally arrived!

Club Moket (clubmoket.mobi on your phone browser) is, to our knowledge, the first off-deck mobile portal dedicated to selling Flash Lite content. We have launched first with our "Mokimations" catalogue, featuring animated wallpapers and screensavers. Q1-2 2008 will see games, applications and mobile video added to the service. We're really pushing out content that shows off the great visual nature of Flash, as well as handset interactivity (for clocks, random animations, MoCarbon products, etc)

Club Moket is available to most global mobile internet users, with payment for content managed via on-bill (SMS), PayPal or secure credit-debit card. The best option for you, depending on where you are and what relationship our billing gateway has with your carrier, will be the one/s offered to you (currently PayPal is upgrading their system so it is temporarily unavailable at the moment). Right now SMS is not an option for North American customers as out application is still being processed but you could still use your credit/debit card. However USA makes up a smaller customer base for something like Club Moket which is off-deck, so markets with customers on more open handsets (Nokia, Sony Ericsson) and with flexible web-browsing such as UK, Europe, Sth East Asia are where we are seeing the most demand.

This presents an entirely new and accessible channel for global customers, and one that we look forward to filling with great content from the wider FL community through the Moket Content Network. MCN partners will be receiving a Club Moket Toolkit to help promote the site and their content. The toolkit includes banners, SMS widgets (as seen on the right here) and also free SMS marketing tools to send out txt messages to their immediate circle of friends and networks.

If you would like to add some banners to your blogs, sites, etc to help get the word out, please email me. I hope that the FL community will get behind us and help promote what is I think one of the most open FL sales channels out there.

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!

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.

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".

Nokia pushes Creative Class Community and Flash Lite

Not sure if this is old blog-news, but Nokia have been pushing out some email marketing over the past couple of days and making mention of their "Creative Class" for Flash Lite developers working on the Nokia platforms.

Highlights a pretty decent resource for Flash Lite informaiton on the Forum Nokia site anyway.