Dec 29, 2007

Thumbs Up to Casual Gaming on Mobiles

A recent report by Park Associates says that consumers still want to see casual games on mobiles.

The report says that gamers don't see mobile phones as platforms for advanced gaming. More than 30% of those interested in mobile gaming want sports, action, and adventure games on portable players. 29% want to play driving or flying games and 27% want to play shooting games on portable devices, the report found.

Less than 10% of mobile Internet gamers are interested in using their mobile phones to play core or console-centric games, while 55% want to use their mobile phones for puzzles and card games. More than 30% want to use them for word games and arcade-style games, the report found.

"New 3-D and multiplayer mobile games look great in demos, but casual games are where the money is and will be for the next few years," Yuanzhe Cai, director of Broadband and Gaming for Parks Associates, said in a statement. "Portable game players will maintain strong growth momentum as they provide an experience yet to be matched by mobile phones. Next-generation players will likely include mobile broadband, which will enhance their value proposition."

This is great news for casual mobile game developers.

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Dec 22, 2007

Launched the Christmas Elf Dance on the Chumby

The Christmas Elf Dance game that was launched last week for Nokia handsets, has now been ported for the Chumby and is now available as a widget under their Games Category



This is a first widget launched and I hope to launch more in the coming months under the banner of IGameStudio.

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Dec 21, 2007

More Flash Lite games on Playyoo - Join Playyoo to play them and rate them well ;)

I've uploaded a couple of casual arcade game on Playyoo...some of them are from my old catalogue and some I developed recently. So you can log on to Playyoo to play them and of course rate them good ;)

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Flash Lite Christmas Game - Christmas Elf Dance


My Flash Lite Christmas game called the Christmas Elf Dance has been up on the Nokia Software Market since a couple of days.

The game is a simple memory arcade game where you have to remember the sequence of the lights as they brighten up and then use the arrow keys to follow the sequence to make the elf dance. You can check out the game on the URL here.

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Dec 20, 2007

BSQUARE to License Adobe Flash Lite to Mobile, Embedded Device OEMs

This news comes via Trading Markets.com -

Bsquare announced that it has purchased NEC Corporation of America's Adobe Flash Technology Consulting and Distribution business for an undisclosed sum. The company noted that as a result of the transaction, it is now a worldwide-authorized distributor of Adobe Flash Lite software, which supports Adobe Flash Player functionality for mobile and embedded devices.

Brian Crowley, president and CEO, BSQUARE said, "This acquisition broadens our product and service offerings in an area of particular interest to OEMs right now, given the increasing popularity of web content such as YouTube on mobile devices. Further, OEMs desire to build compelling user interfaces on devices utilizing Flash authoring tools."

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Dec 18, 2007

Flash Lite on N95 using the Accelerometer API

Debashish Paul sent me a link to one of the apps developed by his friends and himself using Flash Lite and the N95 Accelerometer API. The content interaction is made using sensors.

Watch Flash Lite in action with the N95 Accelerometer API

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Launching IGameStudio.com


Wait to know what IGameStudio is all about because its launching soon...

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Dec 9, 2007

initRIA - A Rich Internet Applications Developer Conference

Bangalore is to witness a first of its kind RIA Developer Conference next weekend with Mrinal Wadhwa along with a couple of other members of the Bangalore Flex User Group, putting up the whole show.

The conference is called initRIA and is scheduled for 16th December 2007. It aims to provide a platform for RIA enthusiasts around the country to interact and learn.

They are currently inviting speakers and are accepting proposals till December 11. The agenda includes all RIA technologies, so be it Flash, Flex, AIR, JavaFx, Ajax, OpenLazzlo or Silverlight, you can pick a topic to cover.

They have also opened up registration for attendees, as they have a accommodation limit of 100. So if you are around the area (or even outside it!) and wish to learn and interact with the experts, make sure to be around.


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Dec 7, 2007

Adobe.com gets a new look

Adobe.com website has donned a new look today with the website looking more sleeker in its gray and white look. The look is also reminiscent of the Developer Connection launched earlier during MAX.

The website seems to be adapted for wider screens, with expanded space for better and clear usage. Navigation looks clean, with content taking center-stage! And not to forget the small search box which rests on the top right corner of the screen.

On my monitor(set at 1280x800), some sections like the Forums or the Exchange look very empty from the right hand side with the entire weight being borne by the left side....or maybe I'd just spoilt myself by getting accustomed to looking at content at the center of the screen, so now with the focus having shifted to the left, the adjustment has not set in....

What I really liked was each product page being designed with its own color and icon. It just makes viewing a lot fresher for the eyes!

Check out the new website and post your comments!






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Tower Of Giza - Flash Lite 1.1 Game

Tower Of Giza is one of my first games that I have submitted for the Playyoo Contest and the 2007 Flash Lite Game Contest. The game is a time based game which requires the player to build a pyramid within a decided set of years or face the wrath of Pharaoh Khufu.

The game is attempted with a 3D look and feel and an emulated "swapDepths" feature (absent in Flash Lite 1.1).

The game is developed in Flash Lite 1.1, as this version of Flash Lite is still available on a large number of handset models and is backward compatible with the newer phones too. The game was compiled using the Playyoo extension (extremely simple to use) and was later tested on Nokia and Sony Ericsson.


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Flash Lite 2.1 Music Client developed by Brainbuxx and Arvato Mobile

A Flash Lite 2.1 Music Client was launched yesterday by developers BrainBuxx and Arvato Mobile. The application offers a shop to download music, and has an integrated music player. The application currently supports 200 mobile phone models.

The news comes in from a German blog.

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Dec 6, 2007

Demo of Adobe’s FlashCast and FlashLite + YouTube Mobile

The Flash Lite market awareness sure seems to be going strong in India with Adobe reaching out to developers and rest of the non technical people via the Kamla Bhatt Show.

Debashish Paul of Adobe, Bangalore shares his YouTube application built with Flash Lite 3 in a series of videos. He talks about the basics of Flash Lite, its penetration in India and its proliferation globally, especially from the developer and market perspective. There is also a video showcasing the Flash Cast channels live on a handset.

Video Demo of Flash Lite Part 1
Video Demo of Flash Lite Part 2
Video Demo of Flash Cast

For those who'd like to know more about the Kamala Bhatt Show, it focuses on connecting the Indian diaspora across the world. There is also a technology-related show on Podtech where Kamla feature entrepreneurs, technologists, investors and many more among today’s generation of “Global Indians.”

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Dec 5, 2007

Technology Innovation Competition by Nokia

Nokia has announced a Technology Innovation Competition for start ups and midsize companies. By seeking out technology inventions in four design and HW focus areas, the aim is to further drive the aspects of miniaturization, enhanced performance and green technologies in the area of consumer devices. The four focus areas consist of:

1. Mobile Multimedia Experience: specifically driven by audio reproduction, camera and display technologies for exciting and professional performance.

2. Future Device Architecture: as enabler of enhanced device capabilities, faster processing and lower energy consumption for increased possibilities in customer usability .

3. User Interface: interest areas are very much in simplicity and human intuitiveness together with naturally required haptics.

4. Future Touch and Feel: is seeking after novel look & feel, form factor, durability and movement solutions which provide unique design possibilities and may even enable the capability for individual personalization with no compromises on the usability.

In order to submit proposals, you can visit http://www.mobilerules.org/technology/.

The winning companies will get an opportunity to negotiate solution development and resulting product creation with Nokia or the involved industry players. There will be four winners for each of the Technology Innovation Competition categories. Further more, there will be three finalists nominated in each of the categories.

These finalists will be invited to an Innovation Exhibition within the Nokia Head Quarter in Espoo, Finland to demonstrate the developments and may get discussion with Nokia decision makers. For the advantage of the finalists Nokia will also make a public announcement, naming the 12 finalists as the short listed companies of this competition.

The competition started on 29th November 2007, with a deadline of 25th January 2008.

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The Open C Challenge has a Flash Lite winner!

Nokia announced the winners of the Open C Challenge during the Nokia World 2007 in Amsterdam yesterday. Open C allows development of applications and services for the S60 platform in a faster and more cost-efficient way. The Open C Challenge was a contest sponsored by Forum Nokia, along with Orange and the Symbian Developer Network

The winner of the contest is an application called MobiTubia developed by Sittiphol Phanvilai from Bangkok, Thailand. It is interesting to know that the application is a Flash Lite video player and YouTube portal application with real-time decoding for the S60 platform.

This is what they have to say about the application -

"MobiTubia is a Flash Lite video player and YouTube portal application with real-time decoding for the S60 platform, developed by Sittiphol Phanvilai of Bangkok, Thailand, a graduate student in the Master of Engineering program in Computers at Chulalongkorn University. MobiTubia enables mobile users to access flv clips using several different methods. Additionally, the application allows users to browse and search for specific content on YouTube. The developer ported 25,000 lines of code to the Open C environment to make the application compatible with S60 on Symbian OS."

You can follow these link to read about the Open C contest and its winners and view the MobiTubia video

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Dec 4, 2007

The coming flood of Flash Phones

Flash phones don’t always mean Flash Lite enabled phones…and there are companies out to prove that!

Flash phones are actually a service offered, to make calls directly from the browser using VOIP. Unlike the earlier installable applications like Skype or Gizmo who provided the same services of making calls, Flash phones don’t require any installation as they run directly off a browser….and they are completely free.

Just last month I read about a Russian company starting a flashphone service, and now I there is India’s TringMe providing a Flash-based SIP phone which you can configure to use with any VOIP provider. TringMe is also working on a mobile VOIP service that will let you make SIP calls from your phone’s browser over a 3G data network, however it will be interesting to see if they do it in Flash Lite or not.

Another interesting read related to Flash phones is about Ribbit who are also soon to introduce an entire development platform for building Flash phones. Ribbit’s development platform is already in private beta and allows programmers to build Web phones that can make, receive, and record calls, send voice messages, and manage contacts. Ribbit runs the back-end VOIP service, and it supports applications built on both Adobe Flex and AIR.

A developer has already used Adobe AIR and Ribbit to create an Adobe AIR iPhone that looks just like a regular iPhone and can actually make calls from your desktop.

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Dec 1, 2007

Flash Lite 3 Developer Edition available on Adobe Labs

December couldn't have started on a better note than this....the Flash Lite 3 Developer Edition is now available for download via the Adobe Labs! This news comes via Bill Perry and is seen as a starting point for some great content being developed with this new version of Flash Lite.

I installed it on a Nokia N95 and N73 as soon as the news got out because the installer did not require me to submit an IMEI number and could be directly downloaded in sis format for the supported handsets. If you refer to website you will see that the player is supported on almost all the latest models of the Nokia S60, although Adobe mentions they have certified it only on the Nokia N95 (non-US 3G version).

There is also a dedicated Developer Forum for Flash Lite 3 which should gain momentum in some time.

Happy Development to All :)

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