Two very intersting news last week:
Adobe creating the OpenScreen project , aiming to reove some licensing restriction on Flash and Flashlite format, giving access to some Flash porting API…
The spirit is of course to be able to deliver Flash on much more device than today. I am still amazed by the low REAL usage of Flash on mobile device. This could have been the enabler of killer app, but due to many mistake, mainly from Adobe, they missed their window of opportunity. This seems to be one of the latest attempt to reverse the trend.
Is it too late?
The other (probably linked) news is the announce from SonyEricsson of project Capuchin. This project wants to link Java and Flash world. This is one of the most interesting things for Flash since a long time.
One interesting things is that SonyEricsson has been a strong promoter of standards, and it’s interesting to see it for once doing some properietary API, and for a propietary technology.
This is also probably a bad news for SVG, which never reall took off, as an alternativbe technology to Flash for creating vector content on mobile.
For your records, it’s also something that we were doing in “Exen”, at In-Fusio, in the early 2000. The game engine was able to play Flash animations (but Flash 4 only) within Java, and for instance, use Flash clip as a sprite within a game. Seemed to be a good idea, but this has never been widely used in our games: lack of documentation, portability issue, etc…
May 5th, 2008
Interested in creating mobile widgets? Just check our latest tutorial on how to simply create and deploy mobile widgets using Webwga platform using standard and easy to learn technologies, like XML and JavaScript.
Yes, Webwag is since some monthes compliant with JavaScript (in fact a subset of JavaScript), but this make very easy for any Web developer who know a little bit XML/JavaScript to write great mobile widget.
The tutorial describe how to create a translator widget, using a web service and some Ajax techniques. And we’ve just opened the Developers corner on the forum, so support will be given to all our developers.
April 28th, 2008
Congratulation to Vollee, who displayed for the first time some videos of what they are doing secretely since several years: a great technology to easily deploy any desktop game to mobile, using video streaming.
As you can see, it’s not only a direct transcoding of the desktop stream to a mobile screen, as the content would have been totally unuseable ( too small, too many information, etc…) but something much more smarter. And of course, this works for any game, not only SecondLife.
We were doing some experimentation in this area two years ago at MobileScope, bascially using streamed GoogleEarth picture as a background of a game. I’ll do a post some day if I can find some video of these experiments.
But here is the Vollee example:
Now, there are some key question still to be answered: is there a market for this? Does the bandwidth cost worth the value of this?
But anyway, congrat to Vollee team and to Julian for these great achievement.
April 26th, 2008
Discovered this website - devicefragmentation.info through Jason Delport’s Mobile Observation blog
Higly interesting paper on fragmentaitons issues, and on different way to solve them!
And like Jason, I like the way Dimath Rajapkse categorize the various technique used:
I think I’ve experimented all the techniques since I am in mobile industry, from the “old” manual multi, where I you had to do the porting “by hand”, to various multi method.
I personally think that the Derive-Multi are well adapted for one shot products, like Games, while the Single-Adapt are more adapted to long term product that require constant evolution, like Webwag for instance.
It’s also true that most of the developpeur combine some of this techniques .
But at the end of the day, dealing with JavaME is not the most complex issue. We now have to deal with JavaME+Androïd+Flash and now iPhone native and Silverlight! Waow, good time for porting companies….
Identificateurs Technorati : mobile, wireless, javame
March 7th, 2008
Yes, take a look at this post from our corporate blog:
Have you always wanted to work in a company that is at the heart of Mobile and Web 2.0 technologies? Are you a motivated and talented Web developer? Is JavaScript your first language and AJAX definitely not a cleaning product for you? If so, you can send us your resume and motivation email. We have a full time open position to be filled ASAP. Knowing the mobile technologies is of course a big plus.
We also have 3 great training period opportunities, starting in April. They will both touche Mobile and Web aspects.
All positions are based in Bordeaux, France (we may evaluate remote work for proven autonomous people).
Please includereferences to your past accomplishments as they are as important (even more) as your educational background.
To apply, please send an email here (and don’t forget to correct the spam protected email address).
March 6th, 2008
Parallel Kingdom is a new (and far from being released) GPS game based on Android platform. Since a long time locaion based games have been explored, but up to now none really succed to capture enough attraction, mostly because they required poeple to move to play the game which requires a lot of commitment to play the game in a cold winter day!
But this one, Parallel World, seems to contains some interesting concept. You can build virtual elements on top of the real world, and then influence other players. The exact mechanism of the game is not yet explained, but I like the concept, presented by this video.
February 24th, 2008
Big week for Webwag! After the yesterday announce that Webwag was finalist of the GlobalMobileAwards, we just announce today our new iPhone version. You saw a video some time ago, but now this version is live: just point your browser to http://iphone.webwag.com (or http://webwag.com with your iPhone) and you’ll have access to your exact same account on your mobile. OF course, this works also on your iPod touch.
We created a user experience close to the default iPhone user experience, but with the full Webwag features:
- You can add/remove new tabs
- Add new widget
- A first preview level with number of unread articles in your feed
- Dynamic icons for some widgets: flickr, weather
Now, webwag covers a wide range of mobile and web device: web browser, mobile version (java me) and iPhone.
Try it, and tell us what you think!
We also launched the first step of our new Webwag V2, with some nice features:
- resizable columns
- variable number of columns
- enhanced discovery
- new themes
Identificateurs Technorati : webwag, iphone, ipod, wireless
January 23rd, 2008
Webwag has been selected as a finalist in the “Best Infotainment portal” at the Global Mobile Awards. The final of this famouse competition will take place during the next 3Gsm, in barcelona, in February…
More on the offical Webwag blog
And the globalmobileawards site
January 23rd, 2008
This iRiver unit presented during the last CES looks great. There is even a touchscreen that serve as a remote controller, but you can display much more info on it: RSS feed, weather, video, etc… Sounds a great widget platform, for your digital life…
Through multiroom (in French)
January 14th, 2008
Finally, we had a chance yesterday to access to Yahoo!Go 3.0 SDK. As a frequent reader of this blog, you should know that Widgets is a favorite topic, so I was curious and excited about achivement of Yahoo!Go 3.0 and his SDK.
The home screen is really good, looks great. Very nice theme, with a background image and a caroussel of “widgets”. Things become bad you start to dig into the content. In fact, what is Yahoo!Go3.0 is very similar to Yahoo!Go 2.0: an enhanced browser to the yahoo content. All pages are similar to wap page, but with some improvment in the navigation. There is however some specific part that have some higher capacitities, like the “map” part which contains a GoogleMap type navigation.What really kills the experience is that the answer to every keypress (and I’ve tested this on an N95, which is usually a very fast phone) takes too much time!
So now , let’s look at the widget part and the SDK: in fact, what is promoted as “widgets” is in fact some enhanced xml/wap pages created with the “BluePrint” language. The good thing is that pages can be easily integrated within the Yahoo!Go content, and can also benefit from the integrated advertising feature.
So Yahoo!Go 3.0 is more or less an enhanced mobile browser without Ajax capacities, and these widget are XML component that can be part of the page. One of the benefit of such basic approach is that these “widgets”, can be deployed even on simple Wap/xHtml pages. The bad thing, is that it’s quite impossible to do “real widget”: very little interaction possible between the application and the user, no local caching, no access to phone features…. Seems like a step back in the times “before ajax”. Does it really make sens to build a download app if you just provides a browsing experience?
Identificateurs Technorati : yahoo, mobile, mobilewidgets
January 10th, 2008
From Techrunch:
January 9th, 2008
A great piece of reading (discovered through AboutMobility weblog): CTO Handbook — How to care for and feed your CTO
He defined three types of CTO:
- The Technical Founder - the person that wrote the code that got the
company off the ground. Has sweated to give the alpha/beta/product life
and as a result any criticisms are effectively received/interpreted as
“Your baby is ugly! Now where’s your Corn Flakes so I can piss in them
too!” Is never far from code.
- The Visionary - sometimes seen as the flake without any “real”
deliverables. Is never far from a whiteboard. Can write code but
shouldn’t.
- The Figure Head - parachuted in, probably did or was associated with
something impressive in a semi-related industry. Doesn’t know most of
the company but is on a first name basis with most flight crew. Is
never far from PowerPoint.
The next game, just like CEO is doing, is then to think which part of these description fit in your profile!
January 9th, 2008
According to Techcrunch, Yahoo is the latest entrant in the mobile widget race. Basically, the “big” part of Yahoo!Go 3.0 is the support of widget, and the availability of an SDK for developpers.
So it will be interesting to see this. Yahoo!Go was already huge and slow, so let’s hope that 3.0 won’t be too big this time.
It’s also interesting to notice that MyYahoo does not seems to allow (unless I’ve missed something) third party widget development, while Yahoo!Go mobile allows it…. 
Let’s wait tommorow, and “a few weeks”, to get an access to the SDK. In the meantime, if you want to experiment mobile widget now, don’t forget to check webwag: http://webwag.com/mobile and http://api.webwag.com
Identificateurs Technorati : mobilewidgets, yahoo, yahoo!go
January 7th, 2008
Last week was “LeWeb3” week, with several interesting announces around widgets.
First, Goojet, the last entrant in that space announced his beta at the event.
Orange also showed an iPhone version of there own portal, BubbleTop, and a preview of their mobile client. Nice UI but not yet available….
Also, some first info about the future iPhone Webwag version. Here is a short video (in French):
This version is in beta test, more to come soon!
December 19th, 2007
Would it make sense for Google to provide an Androïd version for the iPhone? Of course, not the complete stack, but just the development framework. Most of the people and especially developers don’t really care about the full stack, but about the interesting part which is of the development framework, as long as it’s well integrated with the rest of the phone.
I am not an Androïd expert, but it seems possible for me to adapt this on the iPhone.
Why:
- It could be the first Androïd platform
- It could provide an easy way to develop applications for the iPhone
- This would solve one of the fragmentation issue
Why not:
- Because Apple don’t want it?
- Because Google don’t want it?
- The google and Apple gadget are not the same. They both choosen different look and feel for the UI (which is understandable). So which one should we choose for an Androïd on IPhone?
- It might be not possible to reach the same level of integration between the application framework and the core system.
This seems possible to me from the technical point of view. First, google could do it. If it’s not Google, some external developer could do it. Of course, we don’t have detailled spec of Google Dalik VM, but it’s not a big issue: we could use an open source JavaVM, and just run some plain Java Code with the Android Framework? It seems that people already started to work on standard VM porting, with this VM porting on iPhone. A good first step, but Androïd on an iPhone could be the toy of 2008 for developprs…
Identificateurs Technorati : android, iphone, java
December 16th, 2007
Not the announce of the year, but very useful API when you want to draw a graph very quickly: Google Chart API
The only annoying thing: no way to autoscale datas, and no input from a data file……
Through C.Enrique Blog and Google Code Blog
Identificateurs Technorati : google, chart
December 11th, 2007
Might be already old news for some of you, but I’ve forgot to put it on my blog, so here it is: we have released Webwag V1 version. The official news is here: Webwag mobile V1 release, API is open!
Here is a non exhaustive list of new features you will find in this release . And we are heavily working on other improvment on other part (web and…?), that will be out very soon!
- End user space
- Faster: We increased start speed, network accesses, widgets opening by a factor from 5 to 10
- Automagic widgets arrangement: Now widgets can be automatically arranged while you move them with no need for pixel adjustment (the old free mode remains availab
- 140 handset models: We’ve grown the handsets compatibility from around 10 to 150 over many new brands. We’ll showcase some of them on this blog in the coming weeks
- Parlez-vous Français? You’ll be happy to learn that Webwag mobile now detects your language and is available in French. Many other languages will come.
- Link to original article in Blog posts: You can now view a mobile adapted version of the web site’s article page for any information (RSS) feed.
- More room for Widgets. The bottom bar has been replaced by two elegant soft keys, giving even more room to widgets.
- New widgets including eBay, French Traffic conditions (very useful these days), a new discovery from mobile…
- Many many bug fixes…
- Developers: A new shiny Javascript API is available at api.webwag.com that makes it easier than ever for any web and mobile developer to create widgets using a standard subset of Javascript, XML and other standard oriented tools.
- Brands and content owners: Webwag mobile is a very addictive and simple way to create a positive relationship with end users by giving them a useful service linked to a brand or a specific content. You can contact us at partnerships@webwag.com for more information on how to mobilize and monetize your brand and content in the Webwag mobile ecosystem
So let’s talk a little bit about the developer part: yes, now the scripting languge is a subset of JavaScript. So need to learn a new language. So new, you can have an object orientation for the script, this will simplyfy some form, especially for callback, as function can be associated to objects:
var myObj=new Object();
myObj.showMe=function(){
alert("Hello World:");
}
myObj.showMe();
is now a valid code. So check the api.webwag.com for more info (and do not forget to register to have access).
We also added a lot of functionalities for developer, like the ability to create “form” for better input parameter.
We will prepare some tutorial and samples in the coming weeks….
Update: The http://api.webwag.com does not require anymore you to register…
December 10th, 2007
Just played with these two great apps, showing the potential of the iPhone and especially the multitouch screen and the accelerators.
The first one is in fact a multi touch demo, quite simple, from cedsoft: it allows to play with a satellite picture and zoom it, move it and rotate it. You could say that GoogleMap is already doing it on the iPhone, but the rotation add a lot of novelty. It pave the way to more complex application, like photo editing tools, or productivity tools with a different UI.
To install it, use the http://prog.cedsoft.free.fr/ repository
The second one is iPhysics (a port of CrayonPhysics). It’s a very simple idea, but hard to describe. The objective is to push a ball to a certain place, but based on physics interaction. You can not move the ball directly, but you can create object by just drawing them on screen, and then these object interacts with the world. Very addictive and innovative
.
To add it, just add this repository in the installer: http://iphone.r4m0n.net/repos
Some remarks:
- Hopefully the iPhone has been unlocked, and will be soon officially. Without this, I think that such app would have been really hard to exist
- Sometime, it’s good to exit from the “Ajax” reign. It would have been if not impossible quite difficult to create these app with a browser only.
- The development chain for iPhone is -in my view- way too complicated! So I give full respect to these early pionner, but I would like to see an easy way to develop complex app for iPHone. I think that Java would have been the best candidate for this. I am dreaming of an Androïd port for iPhone…
There is a lot of potential for iPhone games, thanks to the combination of nice things:
- multi touch screen
- portable device
- High surface screen
- Connectivity
- Sensor
- Camera
For instance, I am dreaming (or hoping that people will port it) some of this games:
- Catapult , a game originally created for the Gizmondo, a cool augmented reality game
- Some nice billard game
- A marble madness port with acclerometer
Identificateurs Technorati : ipho, e, augmented reality, games
December 8th, 2007
Yes, I’ve got two of them. Less than one month old, fully unlocked, 1.1.1 software…
See it on eBay: iPhone 8GB unlocked
December 3rd, 2007
Congrat to FredBrunnel, who just released one of the first app for Android: TwitterDroid
As Fred said, not very usefull while there is no real handset yet, but interesting anyway. Fred, one suggestion: share with us (developers) your though on developping on Androïd…
Identificateurs Technorati : androïd, java
December 3rd, 2007
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