Prometheus intentionally sank

I have been up to my eyeballs in this really amazing prototype I’ve been developing with Adobe Consulting and my company Fidelity Investments so sorry for the lack of posts. But when I saw this picture or the alleged USS Oriskany being sunk, I had to let the world know what really happened.

The Oriskany has eerie similarities with the Prometheus SEMI-SUBMERSIBLE ATTACK AIRCRAFT CARRIER stationed on Macross Island, and later attached to the SDF-1 after the alien incident. The Prometheus was allegedly sunk when the SDF-1 (Super Dimensional Fortress) was destroyed in a suicude mission by the infamous Zentraedi, Kyhron. Obvoiusly the Prometheus had survived but was still in bad condition. My theory is that government thought the decommissioned vessel was too dangerous and sunk it to the ocean bottom out of fears of it getting into the wrong hands.

And for those taking me seriously, I am just reliving memories one of my favorite childhood cartoons Robotech. Some stunning pictures of the Oriskany can be found here. May she rest in peace.

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Nokia at E3

Nokia has really pulled out all the stops this year at E3 expo, probably paying a fortune for advertising and booth gear. While the focus is on the N-Gage game phone, I see other handsets being featured here as well. I gotta hand it to them, it looks great, but surprisingly they have not enticed the gamer population that well, as you can see by Engadget’s coverage of their lack of traffic. They have a lot of competition with the Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3 announcements, but still with all the hype and new games they’re serving up I would have expected more of a splash. While their target market certainly encompasses the gamer industry, they may be a little bit on the fringe for E3. They have two things they’re up against the way I see it.

The games are poor because the phones, specifically the aging N-Gage QD, are slow. Even some of the more modern phones can’t compare to the speed and optimization offered by Nintendo DS Lite, or a PSP. A gamer these days is not going to settle for poor performance just because it’s a phone also. I know as a Flash Lite developer that I am always up against performance issues with the hardware, it can only be harder if you are trying to squeeze in 3-D performance engines to your apps. Of course I’m just competing in terms of functionality with the web, not the performance of other mobile game platforms. From reports I’ve heard, the N-Gage development has been ramped down until the market and demand becomes better.

The other problem with the handsets continues to be price. While the N-Gage is pretty affordable (you can pick a used one up on ebay for $50 or less) the newer and better performing Nokia phones are way expensive. At $500 for a Nokia N91, you could buy a Mac Mini for about the same. There continues to be a big debate on console prices at E3 as well, with the Playstation 3 pricing announced at $499 for the 20GB PS3 and $599 for the 60GB version to much dismay. When you put a cellphone at these same price points for the limited functionality, it’s not exactly an easy sell.

I think that Nokia is pioneering some new territory with mobile gaming and with that they’ll suffer some growing pains. This all points to my mantra for carrying gadgets. I’d rather carry several gadgets that all do their job well rather than one that does a variety of functions poorly.

Flash Lite Flickr App

Xenel, a member of the Flash Lite community has put together a very cool application that allows you to browse your Flickr account photos. The Flickr API has been widely documented and has been integrated with regular Flash, Rails, AJAX, and other RIA’s for a while now. With FL 2.0, it’s become a lot easier to leverage all these free API resources from players such as Google, Yahoo, etc… You can see some screenshots here.

It’s good to see some more real world FL 2.0 apps popping up that may have some broader appeal, hope that Xenel shares this with us soon so I can give it a whirl on the 6620.

iriver e10 shipped with Flash Lite 2.0!

As Scott has pointed out, iriver has announced the iriver e10, and while the specs are mostly in Danish, it’s clear that the device will ship with FL 2.0. As someone who came into Flash Lite Development just at the arrival to FL 2.0, it’s been a challenge for me to see the value in learning the ropes of FL 1.1, but I really don’t have a choice since the installed market base is mostly FL 1.1 compliant. I kind of see this version discrepancy as a problem going forward, since even today you can purchase a perfectly good, brand new phone and it only supports (and hopefully ships with) Flash Lite 1.1, but as of right now you have no upgrade path and are locked out of all the advanced features inside 2.0.

My one gripe with the device is the screen size, 128×128. Aren’t screen sizes supposed to get bigger as we progress? I know, it fits the targeted form factor for the device, but anyone whose designed FLUI (thank you SJ) in the past know that every pixel counts in the mobile world. Anyway, hope they share and that it ships in the US soon.

Helio has arrived… will it live up to the hype?

Helio has arrived after much hype and fanfare it will be interesting to see if they hit this “niche” market they’re shooting at. Like Ampd, as more and more of these small, boutique MVNO’s pop-up, I wonder if people 18-24, their target demographic, are really going to bite on these higher priced content based service plans. I guess watching Naked News on your phone on your way to work is a wiser use of your time than at home or in the office if you’re into that type of thing. But that screen size may be a little small to get the benefit you, ahem, may be looking for.

Anyway, it’s reported the the Helio phones come shipped with Flash Lite which is yet another win for Adobe. They’ve come a long way in getting Flash Lite on to actual handsets in North America from a year ago, let’s hope that the momentum continues.

5/4/2006 The plot thickens…. according to Scott:

IMPORTANT UPDATE: This is not 100% confirmed. I’ve called twice and both tech reps were NOT 100% sure if it had Flash on it. Some were saying it was another kind of flash. I’ve gotten 2 different stories from 2 different tech support people.

I did activate the phone and it is very locked down. There is no way just to check whether it has the Lite player. There is no way to get into OS level specifics, not even really a file explorer.

However, after browsing the content, I can see several areas where it might be Flash. So it *might* have the player. Nothing ending with a .swf to reveal the mystery … yet.

I have a request in to Helio to clearify once and for all. It’s probably someone that speaks Korean that knows the answer … From what I remember … I do believe Pantech does do Flash Lite UI’s … so who knows. Anyway… an important update.