What it does mean is that if you’re a Flash / ActionScript developer you can develop applications, games etc for the iPhone and iPod Touch without the need to learn Objective-C. Before we get ahead of ourselves this doesn’t mean that the iPhone supports Flash content – that “issue” hasn’t be resolved at this point.

Adobe Labs has a section on developing applications for the iPhone – you can even sign up for a future public beta. Below are links to the current apps built with Flash CS5 prerelease – including a person favourite of mine “Just Letters” by my good Friend Stefan Richter

Who knows, this could be the dawn of even greater games and applications on the App Store now that the Flashers are coming to the party :p

I’m not going to dwell on the fact it says Macromedia as well. I would assume this is an easy fix as all of the BBCs content is served via a CMS so under that assumption if it is changed / updated in one script it should propagate through the entire site – although I have been to quite a few other pages on the BBC site and viewed Flash content so it may not be as simple as one would think.

For those interested here is the actual page on the BBC site: BBC News Magazine – How smart are you?

I’ve mailed a few people I know at the BBC so hopefully those that need to know will get on the case shortly. I’ll update this post as I hear more.

While we looked for a place to eat the bulk of our conversation was about photography as both John and I are pretty keen photographers, so we discussed tripods, lenses, straps; even filters (cue gratuitous camera pr0n). That said once we actually decided on where to eat and were seated, the conversation turned to FotB ‘08 and top of my list was the new hotel. Now I suspect those who have seen the pictures can’t help but notice the slightly stark, some may say, sterile exterior. John put me straight on this. the photos really don’t do it justice and it is a fantastic building and the interior is “very cool” to coin a phrase.

On top of this cool surrounding there is wifi available throughout the hotel (that actually works) and the rumour is that the bar is 24 hour for guests (I’ve yet to find hard evidence though). In the rooms there is an integrated sound system so you can just plug your iPod / iPhone in and it will be piped through out the room. Flat panel TV’s to aid relaxation (read in to that what you will :p) and a mini bar!!! Plus the restaurant is run by Aldo Zilli for you fish lovers out there. The best bit is that it’s literally in spitting distance of the Dome theatre

Now on to the secrets – well there isn’t going to much to tell as they’re secret. However let me just say that it is VERY cool and I’m personally very exited about what John has up his sleeves. My secret, well that’s not as big, but I’m pretty stoked by it and hopefully you will be too when I can talk about it.

To keep up with all the Flash on the Beach news either sign up to the FotB mailing list or if you use Twitter (who doesn’t these days) add FotB to your list

Roll on September!!!!

Radio 1 aren’t the only ones though. Iomega informed me I didn’t have Flash installed at all and flatly refused to let me access the site beyond the country selection page. In fact the page you get sent to if you don’t have the right Flash player installed informs you that the page doesn’t exist – Bravo! That’s so helpful

It does make me laugh, but not in a humorous way. As it just shows a lack of foresight and could cause concern to non-technical users who want to access a site and are barred because of a poorly implemented detection system (I’m not going to get in to the “all flash sites” debate). Again I will caveat this with the fact that Flash Player 10 is in beta and I suspect the relevant companies PR monkey would blether on about the fact that they support the current release player version. That may be the case, but in Iomega’s case bumping you to a confusing and non-helpful page does nothing but show a deeper lack of understanding or concern

So at this point I’ll have to make do with a broken BBC website and Iomega won’t be getting any money out of me any time soon as I have no idea what they actually sell :p

For those who want to have a go themselves here are the relevant links and instructions. Remember though, firmware updates are potential opportunities to ‘brick’ your hardware. So read the steps, re-read them, print out anything you need prior to starting this and make sure that your phone is fully charged and securely connected to the USB data cable. If you ‘brick’ it you have been warned and I accept no responsibility.

First things first, you need to head over to this page and grab a copy of the latest version of Nemesis Service Suite. This will allow you to update the country product code – as some ‘badged’ phones will not update to the latest firmware if you don’t alter the code – this is generally for no real reason. However if you are unsure about doing this STOP RIGHT HERE.

Once you have Nemesis installed head over to the Nokia Blog and follow the step by step procedure to flash your Nokia N95. One thing to note is that the download link for the Nokia Software Updater is invalid. You can download it from the European Nokia site here.

Once you’ve got both bits of software installed you are ready to ‘rock n roll’. The whole process takes about 10 minutes once the firmware update starts, so not too long.

A quick side note for those N95 owners who use a Mac. The Nokia Software Updater is a windows only piece of software so you only have a few options.

1. Stick with the current firmware and pretend you have Flash Lite 3.0
2. Find a friend who was a PC and install all of this stuff on it and flash your phone (not ideal)
3. Boot camp your Mac and load up windows (if you don’t already have a boot camp partition this can seem a bit excessive – I don’t)
4. Use a virtual machine like VMWare Fusion* and flash it via a virtual version of Windows (This is what I did)

* I didn’t test it via Parallels as I don’t use it anymore due to the massive CPU and RAM load it has. Plus the last time I tried it the virtual USB interface failed to recognize that the N95 was connected. It may work now, but as I said, I haven’t tested it.

A note for UK Nokia N95 users, I have a T-Mobile N95 (revision 1.0) so I used the EURO 1 – PLUM product code which is 0536062. There is a complete list below the firmware update process on the Nokia Blog, if you’re not sure which one to use I’d suggest a quick google – alternatively have a read of the Nokia Blog. :)

Links

• Nemesis Service Suite.
• The Nokia Blog.
• Nokia Software Updater.

This means that media broadcasters could potentially set the access requirements and expiration flags of content that is being streamed both on request, but more importantly dynamically after the file has been distributed. Obviously this gives Adobe Media Player (AMP) a more level playing field against Quicktime and Windows Media Player as it will now support this rights management

“Adobe Flash technology pioneered the delivery of rich engaging Web video experiences and has enabled millions of users to quickly and easily view high-quality content,” said Jim Guerard, vice president of Dynamic Media at Adobe. “The new capabilities in Flash Media Rights Management Server provide media publishers with the option to help control and protect their unique media assets and hopes to bring even more great content online and to the desktop.”

Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server integrates with Adobe AIR, a revolutionary cross-operating system runtime that brings rich Internet applications to the desktop, and Adobe Media Player, the first broad consumer application from Adobe built to run on Adobe AIR.

You can read the full release here

“We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone,” Narayen said. “We have evaluated ( the software developer tools) and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash player ourselves.”

So one way or another we may soon see a Flash Player on the iPhone – but will it be FlashLite or should they develop something more akin to Adobe Media Player (AMP) for iPhone?

In other words would it be beneficial to have a player like we have for the desktop browser or just the ability to create Flash based applications for iPhone – iAir perhaps LOL.

Only time will tell…

You can read the press releases here:

Adobe Technology Platform for RIAs Propels Innovation on the Web
Leading Companies Deliver RIAs on Adobe AIR

To commemorate this “new era” I’ve collected together, what will hopefully prove to be, really useful links to get you all going with AIR. So without further ado let’s get on to the links and start making fantastic desktop apps!

First up we have the AIR installers themselves, this covers off both the SDKs and the actual runtime.

AIR installers

Next up is the tools section. Now, obviously there will be a fair amount of Adobe kit in here. However the compilers / SDKs are free so I’ve included some additional 3rd party tools that may be worth having a look at if you’re confident in just using a plain old text editor and the commandline.

• Flex Builder 3 (officially released today also – see my previous post)
• Flash CS3*
• Dreamweaver CS3*
• Aptana (A superb eclipse based Ajax editor with AIR support – which works beautifully as part of a Flex Builder integration workflow for AIR)
• TextMate (The text editor of choice on OS X)
• UltraEdit (One of the best text editors on Windows)

* To take advantage of Flash and Dreamweaver as development environments for AIR you’ll need to download and install the extensions for each specific application to add AIR support. These should be linked off of the AIR homepage on Adobe.com.

No developer list would be complete without some “brain food” aka resources and links. So here they are. We have pretty much everything here including links to developer blogs that have cool examples (and source); as well as official links to relevant areas on the Adobe site and of course, links to developers who have AIR based applications for you to download and use.

Resources, Samples, Source and more…
Adobe AIR Marketplace (A good place to download applications and add-ons)
Kevin Hoyt’s HTML / Ajax Air examples (these are the Beta 3 examples, but they should still work until Kevin updates to v1.0)
Lee Brimelow’s experiments in AIR (Some nice examples of NativeWindow among other things)
Apollo and AIR examples from Mike Chambers (nice drag ‘n’ drop example. Note that some of these may need updating for v1.0)
Christian Cantrell’s Apollo / AIR examples (Not only does Christian have some handy tips and tricks, but he also has some nice app samples and quite a few worthwhile AS3 libs to make AIR development easier)
Peter Ent (Like progressive development of Pete’s Atmosphere Music Player)
Sean the Flash (Flex) Guy’s super simple SQLite example (AIR Beta 1, but should work OK with minor tweaks)
Sean also has a series starting about 6 AIR APIs (File System Access, Network Detection, Notifications, Application Update, Drag and Drop, Local Database)
Christophe Coenraets’s very cool SQLite Admin Application (Source included)
And Christophe’s equally cool SalesBuilder (As with the SQLite Admin app, source is included with this too)

Cool AIR Apps
Next up we have AIR applications that are worth having a look at to give you inspiration and, perhaps provide some insight in to what you could achieve.
The official Adobe AIR Showcase ebay Desktop (Originally called Project San Dimas this is one of the most impressive AIR application so far)
Google Analytics (Vim, Nico and the guys over at Boulevart have done a superb job with this application – one of my personal favourites!)
AOL Music 100 Video Widget (This one is pretty cool – although the mini state looks a bit awkward on a Mac, but would look fine on Windows).
Agile Agenda (Very nice project planning tool – Winner of the Adobe AIR Derby)
Snippage (nice concept)

And finally…
6 AIR Applications you must see (This is a bit old now but still worth a quick review)
Allurent Labs Desktop Connect (no downloadable app, but a video overview worth a quick look.)
Acesis Point-of-Care (Innovative take on patient detail / data capture. Nice looking UI too

Well that should do for starters, as I find more interesting articles and samples I’ll add them to the list.

The whole thing kicks off at 12:30 with coffee and registration, then the keynote with Andrew Shorten (fingers crossed he’ll do it in his “Holmes” costume). I have the luxury of going on quite early (14:45 – 15:45) after Andrew. I’ve decided to present an overview of Flex Builder, the Flex framework and provide some productivity and development tips on bending Flex Builder to your will. Below is a synopsis of my talk.

The Flex framework can appear slightly at odds for those approaching it from a more creative background. While it shares the same lineage as Flash the process by which you create and develop within Flex may initially appear difficult to grasp. In this session Mike will gently ease you into what the Flex framework actually is as well as giving an overview of the Flex Builder IDE, warts and all.

If you want to know what’s happening when here is the whole schedule

Away back to F0tB ‘07. Well it started of well, the weather was on our side this year – for those who weren’t there last year it was a tad wet :p. It was great to meet up with friends I hadn’t seen in person since last year, and to make new ones this year. The great thing about Flash on the Beach this year was that it was even better than last – I know that must be a hard thing to believe, but John excelled himself this year and I personally think he deserves the title of best European Flash conference for Flash on the Beach.

So what did I do while I was there (for those who didn’t attend my session was on the last day right at the end (only Jared was after me).

As it happens I didn’t get as much time to attend session as I had wished. What with making sure that my presentation was bang on timing wise (I like to rehearse until it is almost second nature), and meeting up with colleagues I only got to attend a few during the day.

In the evenings there were the Inspire sessions ,Brendan Dawes and Eric Natzke’s were awesome, each doing a different evening. And what a great idea the Inspired session format is. The idea was to get everyone back to the conference center for a one off session in the early evening before that evenings main festivities started (and there was free beer too :p).

Session I wished I caught were: Jared Tarbell’s, Dave Williamson’s, John Grden’s (so if you have a video of these sessions or know where they are on YouTube let me know :p). Marcos Weskamp’s session was very interesting. I love it when data is visualized in more creative formats. Ted’s session was OK – it was nothing new to me, and I had a bit of a hangover from the night before (actually it was from a few hours before – once I got into bed).

The keynote was a blast, not because there was much more than what had been shown at Max in Chicago / Barcelona, but due to the fact that Ted Patrick and Andrew Shorten did a Sherlock Holmes routine which was just spot on. It was like Laurel and Hardy do Basil Rathbone :p (With Robin Charney as the “mysterious caller”). All I can say is that Andrew enjoyed it so much that he’s itching for someone to ask him to wear the costume at another conference. (He’s a real Holmes fan – but I didn’t tell you that).

The conference schwag was top draw this year (I didn’t think it could possible beat last year, but again John was got it spot on). Free bags, flip flops, towels, a free copy of Moock’s Essential ActionScript 3.0 for EVERYONE that attended. And as a speaker one of the coolest laptop bags ever (John will attest to my fixation with bags and that none fit my 17″ Macbook Pro), as this puppy fits my Macbook perfectly :D.

Now I have to sort out the session notes out and the tutorial that Leopard kindly destroyed on Monday :’( so I can upload them.

Oh and before I forget Flash on the Beach ‘08 is September 27th to October 1st so put it in your diaries now and I’ll see you there (unless I’m on my honeymoon ;-P)