Marco Casario | RIAvolutionize the web

Flash Lite 2.1 for BREW and Flash Lite for BREW public beta

Bill Perry gives us a great news for Flash Lite's ecosystem : Flash Lite 2.1 for BREW.

Flash Lite for BREW™ extends Flash to the growing BREW platform from Qualcomm®, creating an exciting ecosystem for selling and distributing Flash-based content to BREW-enabled handsets. Using the latest Flash development tools, developers can create content and applications that are offered over-the-air to consumers on handsets in North America.

• Download the Flash Lite for BREW Datasheet(PDF, 653k)
• Read the FAQ

Here it is what Bill  wrotes on his blog :
For me this has been and continues to be one of the best mobile Flash implementations I've been involved with over the past several years and I'm very interested in getting feedback from the broader developer community as to what they think.

Over the past month we've worked with a select group of key partners who created some really impressive prototype applications using Flash Lite 2.1 for BREW and the great thing is they also work on Nokia S60 handsets with very minimal changes. That's one advantage of developing applications with Flash Lite.

• Flash Lite for BREW Product Page
• Flash Lite Development Center for BREW Developers
• Flash Lite for BREW Datasheet
• Flash Lite for BREW FAQ

“Oh and one more thing, we’ll be having a Flash Lite for BREW public beta starting on July 3, 2006! If you’re interested in participating please send an email to flashlitebrew@adobe.com with the subject “Flash Lite for BREW public beta”.

Flash Lite 2.1 for Brew feature list:

• Built on Flash 7, supports ActionScript 2.0
• XML data handling
• Persistent data management
• Device, vector fonts
• Device sound for events
• Inline video
• XML sockets
• Net access/HTTP streaming
• Inline text support
• Dynamic multimedia
• Keypad/keyboard support

Adobe hires a Flash Lite Designer for our Mobile and Devices Group

Adobe is seeking a full-time Flash Designer for our Mobile and Devices Group.

You will be designing and developing demos, themes and Flash Lite applications for mobile phones. Background in graphic design, multimedia or interactive media preferred with at least 3+years producing Flash applications.

Please send your on-line portfolio to Amanda at aarnett[AT]adobe[DOT]com (via FlashLite User Group and K10)

Adobe Death Suite: GoLive and Freehand

Andrea Veggiani pointed out this news joking on the Adobe Death Suite :

During the Adobe Live event, Robert Raiola of Adobe Systems France said that Adobe will halt the development of Freehand and GoLive, according to MacGeneration.

Adobe will support these two products for some times. Adobe will concentrate all its efforts on Illustrator 13 and Dreamweaver (which will have a new interface similar to other adobe products). The canning of Freehand and GoLive is no big surprise. Since Adobe purchased Macromedia, the company had two illustration packages (Freehand and Illustrator) and two web design apps (GoLive and Dreamweaver) in its repertoire. As these products were previously competitors, it seemed likely only one in each category would survive.

Read the entire Goodbye to Freehand, GoLive article.

Adobe webinar: Deconstructing the MediaPlayback API in Flash Lite 2

Mike Krisher will present, for next Mobile and Devices eSeminar Series, the following event :

Deconstructing the MediaPlayback API in Flash Lite 2.0

The author of the MediaPlayback API example in the Flash Lite 2.0 SDK will deconstruct the example and explain how developers can use the API to incorporate images, video, and audio into their Flash Lite projects.

Teaching the Developing RIA with Adobe Flex course

These days I'm very busy because my company, Comtaste, is involved in a Flex 2 project with Capgemini Italy and I'm spending this week teaching to experienced J2EE developers the Developing Rich Internet Applications with Macromedia Flex 1.5 official course (see above) !

It's an intesive job but I'm learning a lot from these java developers.

Next week we'll start the real project using Flex 2 to migrate several Oracle Forms.
It's cool  to get involved in one of the first italian Flex 2 project.

Developing Rich Internet Applications with Macromedia Flex 1.5 provides object-oriented Java or C++ developers with hands-on, practical experience using Flex. This three day course introduces developers to all the primary features of Flex they'll need to know in order to build a fully functional, well architected Rich Internet Application (RIA).

This course is similar to the Macromedia Flex 1.5 for Web Application Developers course but has:

• Fewer hands-on exercises over one less day of class.
• The server-side application functionality written in Java (instead of ColdFusion).
• Content on exchanging data between ActionScript and Java (instead of ColdFusion).

XML feeds into your mobile with Flash Lite 2

Wow it's the day of Flash Lite 2 tutorial ;) Another good catch : DMXZone has published an article titled :

Consuming the Adobe developer news with Flash Lite 2.0

Unfortunately the article is not free but you can download the resources for this tutorial from the blue Properties box that contains the article PDF. There's a heading titled Code Download and you can click the Details link next to it to get the zip file.

Garbage Collection and memory managemet in Flash Lite

Some good tips on how to manage memory with Flash Lite publihsed on Cellphoneclub.com :

As we know from Flash Lite reference, threre is a mechanism of automatic clearing of memory , named “Garbage Collection“. Garbage collector clears from memory any objects that your application no longer references, but in difference from other programming languages, in the ActionScript is not available opportunities to call garbage collector from code - this process is executed automatically every minute or whenever memory usage of your application increases by 20% or more … practically it not so good as macromedia promise.

Read the entire Managing Flash Lite applications memory article.

Flash Lite links of the week: Flash Lite Friday Digest #9

This Flash Lite Friday Digest is the Luciano's turn ! And he did a wonderful job !
Don' miss the Flash Lite Friday Digest #9.

  Flash Lite Friday Digest is a condensed and organized set of links that help users to get a weekly overview on the Flash Lite mobile world.

You can find all Flash Lite Friday Digest post on my blog.

Amazon FishBowl first episode with Flash video and Stephen King

Amazon published the entire pilot episode of Amazon Fishbowl with Bill Maher, an original program coming to Amazon.com this June.
The first episode has an exclusive Interview with Stephen King where he talks to Bill Maher about his new speculative novel, Cell, in which technology brings civilization to its darkest age

Every week throughout the summer, the show will feature live musical performances; interviews with authors, directors, and actors; and a UPS Special Delivery to an Amazon customer.

Beginning June 1, the show will be streamed every Thursday at Amazon.com at 8 p.m. Pacific / 11 p.m. Eastern. Until then, you're invited to enjoy the pilot episode in the video player below.

And the stream will be powered by Flash Video !

NoteTag, the first public release from the Flex Kiwi project

Today the Kiwi Project was officially released with the NoteTag Flex 2 application.

NoteTag is a proof-of-concept by a new project at Adobe currently code-named Kiwi. The Kiwi Project is an exploration of Read/Write RSS and Web 2.0 components for Adobe Flex and the Adobe Engagement Platform.

NoteTag is a sample Flex 2 application that allows users to capture notes during meetings and assign tasks within those notes to individuals. Underneath the hood, NoteTag stores notes as blog entries, formats tasks using a microformat, and uses tags to link tasks (from notes) to people. NoteTag uses a preliminary set of Kiwi Project component libraries, including an AtomProtocol library, a simple TagServerProtocol library, and an extended RSSRW library that supports setting data in an RSS feed.

NoteTag is a proof-of-concept release. As such, the NoteTag source and the Kiwi Project component libraries (described below) are of experimental quality; we have released them as-is under the Adobe Labs license. NoteTag also includes the Cairngorm Framework from Adobe Consulting as a compiled SWC compatible with Flex 2 Beta 3. Cairngorm has its own license which is included in the Cairngorm folder inside the NoteTag ZIP file. We want to share our direction and listen to your feedback so that we can continue to incorporate it into our Read/Write RSS and web 2.0 Flex development strategy and planning.

Watch a screencast of NoteTag. Subscribe to The Kiwi Project blog to track our progress!
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