Following immediately after the popular Project Capuchin Webinar Sony Ericsson have now published a set of Capuchin APIs, some really great reference applications and a tutorial to get you started.  Get them here.

Project Capuchin:

Is a Java ME API which makes it possible for Java to launch a Flash Lite application on enabled mobile devices using a Java host application. Flash can communicate with the rich APIs provided to Java using standard DataRequest and ExtendedEvent objects.  You can being to use the API set from Sony Ericsson and build on them as a community.

As an example the following Java function accepts DataRequest, determines the request type and then returns latitude and longitude strings.  The call to complete() calls the waiting onLoad function in the DataRequest object.

The most basic usage the Flash API in Flash looks like this where handleGetGPS is called when onLoad fires.

When using classes there are much better ways to handle DataRequests safely particularly where classes are bound to MovieClip instances such as lists or components.  For example I tend to wrap DataRequests in a DataProvider object which handles the scoping and event broadcasts as well as DataRequests.

You can find an example of this DeviceDataProvider wrapper class in my example section, note that coment “CPU and memory efficiency” which is a compiler hack

Also in the example section is a re-written version of the same class to handle networking and RSS Feeds.

Adobe MAX 2008 is only a few months away and I hope that all of you find the time to attend in San Francisco, Milan or Tokyo.

As part of the event we host the MAX Awards ceremony and I’d like to extend the opportunity for you to nominate individuals or companies.  There is a specific category for “Mobility and Devices” and you can also select a region.

Nominations can be for applications, services and experiences that you have seen over the past year.

If you haven’t been to the MAX 2008 site, be sure to have a look at the fantastic sessions.

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!

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

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%:

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..

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.

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!

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

Today Symbian announced that Nokia have become the majority owner and has given away the worlds most popular smartphone platform to the Symbian Foundation.  In the same announcement Motorola, Sony Ericsson and NTT Docomo who are joint owners of UIQ and MOAPS have announced that they will contribute their platform to form a new open platform for manufacturers.

In all Symbian, S60, UIQ, MOAPS and all the little variants in between will now become one totally unified platform for mobile devices.

Nokia’s announcement alone is a huge move, not only have they contributed the most successful smartphone platform but cemented their commitment to open platforms.  They already have their fully open Maemo linux platform and recently acquired Trolltech’s QT.

So what does this mean for developers?

Firstly its not going to happen tomorrow, at the very earliest this will take until 2009 to really start.  The Symbian Foundation will likely begin to integrate the various platforms together into a unified view, so I’m guessing we’ll not see this on devices for at least two years.  Importantly however a Flash porting layers in the platform will be delivered to Foundation partners.

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.

It looks like the new platform will be based off S60 3rd Edition (think N95) but will have UIQ touch features and MOAPs service features integrated.  Backwards compatibility is a big problem and I’m glad to hear that they are committed to maintaining this to ensure investment is still high.

The timeline states that the platform will ship in the second half of 2009 to OEMs.  Devices will be certified compatible with the platform to ensure that developers are catered for.

I’m quite sure that Adobe will become a member very soon!

Read More.

In the PDF below Admob have provided a really quite detailed set of data broken down by country, OEM, operator and device.  They’ve also provided summaries for the top handsets accessing their ad network.

While the data is representative of users surfing the net it must also be orientated toward those countries using their services.  Still its very interesting and you can derive a lot of information pertaining to the types of devices that are now going online.

http://www.admob.com/s/solutions/metrics?_cd=1

Most notable:

• N70 still scoring highly in Spain and Italy
• S40 scoring highly throughout
• Symbian OS accounting for 85% of the UK market
• 196,323,883 requests made in the UK alone

Check out the data..

I’m happy to announce that Device Profile Update #6 for Adobe Device Central CS3 has been published on schedule to Adobe.com.
Find it here.

Update #6 adds 63 new device profiles to Adobe Device Central Cs3 and once again includes important improvements to existing profiles, based on community feedback and data from our partners.

You can do 3 main things with Adobe Device Central CS3:

1. Get information about supported Flash devices
2. Create new projects based on a selected device or group of devices
3. Emulate various types of mobile content, including Flash Lite.

With this update the device library includes now over a 460 device profiles!

Noted updates in this version:

• N95 8GB standalone mode now allocating 4mb heap memory
• Addition of new profiles for S60 Flash Lite 3.0 firmware upgrades

Today Qualcomm and Adobe announced that the BREW Mobile Platform will be integrated with Adobe Flash technology and new platform features. You can read the full press release here. This is fantastic news for both BREW and Flash developers particularly in the large BREW market in the US.

In Europe specifically BREW is available on UIOne based handsets, notably the Skype phone on the 3 network in the UK. So  the platform is largely based in the US and Asia though the use of Flash technology on millions of new devices can only strengthen the adoption across platforms and screens.

For developers this means that there are opportunities to leverage this as a data point when dealing with your customers, and to reach into the US market in the future.  Naturally there will be aggregators and other friendly developers that can help you to deliver content to BREW.

What a challenge, “iPhone has raised the bar, now lets see what the Flash community see what they can do,” said Andrew Gilbert from Qualcomm.”