Monthly Archive for July, 2008

40% of European gamers have Flash Lite

Published
by
MarkD
on July 29, 2008
in Flash Lite and Mobile Content
. 7 Comments

An interesting article was posted today by Stuart Dredge at PockGamerz.biz today following an interview with Alistair Hill of M:Metrics.

Some key pieces of information from Alistair regarding the gaming market in Europe and the US:

  • 13.5m UK users are browsing and downloading applications
  • 25-34 year-old women are the largest group of mobile games buyers
  • 27% of Europeans have Flash Lite capable handsets (compared to 15.5 per cent in the US)
  • Nokia’s N70 is the most popular gaming device
  • 70% of people who were purchasing games were under the age of 35

Stuart and Alastair both point out that despite huge numbers of people playing games, there are not as many purchases.  This could indicate a number of issues, piracy is one but what’s most likely is that users are playing pre-installed games.

What is completely clear is that users are happy to play but are not quite as happy to pay.  That is a clear signal that advertising or brand endorsement within the content is a likely track for the future.

So what is the recipe for the *perfect* mobile game?

  • Event, advertising or brand funded
  • Casual puzzle game like Suduko or Tetris
  • Targeting female and male audiences
  • DRM protected
  • Easily accessible in a branded store
  • Social features built in, sharing, high scores, levels etc

Let’s look at the Google generation statement, “People know how to plug their mobile into their computer, and they know how to go to Google and type in ‘free mobile games’”.  We already know this to be true, last week I read a forum question from an end user (it happens!) who wanted to know why a screensaver wouldn’t work on their phone.

Rather than focus on the copyright issues what I was surprised/shocked by was the response when I told the user that it had been removed.

User Nokia5700: “How could i know it was from Sony Ericsson? At MOSH you can even find FIFA for phones.. I just love it so much ”

There are three statements above:

  • How could I know that it should be paid for?
  • Everything else is free, so why not this?
  • I would pay for it, given the opportunity.

iPod, iPhone and Touch users have been in training for years at the school of iTunes.  That’s the secret behind the AppStore, everyone already knew how to use it and EVERYONE was clear that there would be a price.

Ok, ok some are free I hear you.. but you get the point!

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Wordpress Upgrades completed = new Features!

Published
by
MarkD
on July 26, 2008
in Industry News
. 3 Comments

It’s been a whole *cough* three days in the making but finally my blog is upgraded and working.  You’ll notice that the theme and wordpress versions have been upgraded by about four versions, yet it still looks the same!  Maybe some one can make me a new header image?!  Get the existing one here.

Still I have added the following features:

Front of House:

Mobile browsers - Mobile browsers will now get a much faster view using XHTML thanks to Wordpress.mobi.  iPhone/Touch’s Safari browser will get the full version due to their larger screens.

Share/Syndication - Your favourite sharing and syndications services are now supported using the icons at the bottom of each post.

Comments - You can now subscribe to comments that you have posted to be notified when they are updated.  There should be Avatar support too but I haven’t quite got to checking that, though I’m looking forward to seeing all the pretty photos :-)

PDF Export - You can now export posts in PDF9 format.

Ratings - You are now able to rate posts, I’m really interested in this feedback to help me improve.

Relative Dates - Instead of hard dates on comments you’ll now see “Today” and “Yesterday” etc.

Back end:

Fluency Admin - A new cleaner administration interface, so much easier to work with.

Wordpress 2.5.1 - Not quite the latest version but I’m tracking the K2 theme below for stability.

Spam Protection - Askimet and some others …

K2 Theme - What can I say, it’s clearly the best written Ajax powered wordpress theme in the business.

One Click Updater - Allows me to upgrade to new plugins and theme’s automagically.

Lightbox 2 - To allow me to manage images for small and large screens, as well as fast browsing.

Google Analytics - Helps me keep track of the visitors and most important downloads/articles.

Bango Mobile - Testing this to see if I can begin to track mobile browsers visiting the site.

In all you can see that there have been massive changes to my blog, some are still settling in and so I appreciate comments.  If you find any problems, cant use the mobile version or any of the new features break then do tell me!

Mark

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Capuchin releases - Packaging tool and Sony Ericsson C905

Published
by
MarkD
on July 25, 2008
in Devices, Flash Lite and Industry News
. 7 Comments

Sony Ericsson C905

Sony Ericsson have been doing a lot to update the look and feel of their site, what a great job particularly the mobile device Gallery.  Today saw the launch of the Capuchin Packaging Tool to add to the release of the first supported device the C905 which has received great reviews already.

The device includes a huge array of features including aGPS, WIFI and an 8.1MP camera.  I can tell I’m going to like it already due to my camera being stolen at Heathrow :-(

Update, here are some pictures taken 28th July and reduced in size by 50%:

My Office in LondonGardens at my Office

The Capuchin Tool is Windows only at this stage, simply install the exe file and this will place the relevant packaging piece into your chosen install path.  From there all you have to do is launch the little batch file.

Check it out..

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Flash Lite 1.1 and Flash Lite 2.0 Components

Published
by
MarkD
on July 19, 2008
in Devices, Flash Cast, Flash Lite and Mobile Content
. 0 Comments

n958gb.png

A few days ago our good friends at Forum Nokia released a basic set of components for Flash Lite 2.0 beginners.  They have included documentation and sample assets so that a user might change the look and feel for their own UI.  The memory requirements for the examples that I tried appear high for this level of functionality, but its a good start and they come with documentation.  Scott reminded me that Jesse Warden released a good component set for mobile devices some time ago called Shuriken, they are definately worth checking out.

With this is mind I dug around to find some other components that we have sitting around.  Happily our own Matt Snow from our Experience Design team was able to provide a set of Flash Lite 1.1 and Flash Lite 2.0 UI example components.  You can find them over in the example section, though as you might expect they are a little rough round the edges.

 GapperList  XDList  TileMenu

What will you get from them:

  • Discover how to create low memory yet rich components
  • List, Slider, Tile, NavModel and Gapper components for Flash Lite 2.x/3.x
  • Carousel, Menu, Story and scroll bars in Flash Lite 1.1
  • Key Handling for Flash Lite 1.1 and Flash Lite 2.x/3.x
  • Image Handling, loading and unloading etc (TileMenu)
  • Creating device UI and multi-screen applications (NavModel)

Unfortunately I don’t have time to polish these for installation and add documentation.  The majority of the components are extremely simple and not compiled so that you can freely edit them whilst retaining the size and memory benefits.  You can consider them free to use or change in your projects.

Future Thoughts

In time it would be great if these could be absorbed into a community effort to create components for mobile devices.  For that, I do have another set of mobile components and a mobile framework to hand that are more complex but unsupported.

Although extremely well documented and stable, the memory requirements from 1 year+ ago were such that it’s gathering dust.  We are now starting to see devices with the right levels of RAM (2mb+) and so it might be time to give it a go.

The following graphic is a basic RSS reader built in about 10 mins!

 FLIPRss

My question to you is:  If I was to hand these over, would you be willing to package, support and maintain them for everyone?

 

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