I’m Presenting at Forum Nokia Tech Day

I’m porud to announce that I’ve been asked to speak at the Forum Nokia Boston Flash Lite Technology Day on October 10th. My session will focus on Nokia Web Runtime and Flash Lite and will highlight the advantages that both platforms offer in bringing your application/widget to market. Click here to see the full agenda.

This free seminar will be held at Nokia’s Cambridge Research Center and will feature a number of industry experts listed here:

Ganesh Sivaraman, Internet and Web 2.0 Business Development Manager, Forum Nokia
Robert Burdick, Senior Architect for Emerging Technologies, Forum Nokia
Bill Perry, Mobile and Devices Evangelist, Adobe
James Talbot, Adobe
Alessandro Pace, Forum Nokia Champion
Scott Janousek, Forum Nokia Champion
Ira Hochman, Untravel Media

This is a don’t miss seminar or any mobile professional or enthusiast. Please feel free to come out and heckle me. Registration is filling up so signup below.

Register here.

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Who Needs Premium Cable when there’s Justin.tv?

So I’m trying to figure out how to watch my alma-mater the Boston College Eagles take on the University of South Florida (who?) last weekend and to my dismay, it’s only being carried by ESPN on their exclusive ESPN-U channel. Okay, even though my wife will kill me, I’ll just buy it, right? Wrong. Comcast does not offer the channel. Bummer.

Undeterred, I turned to the internet. Video’s easy now right? There has to be something out there. Came up with what I thought was nothing and then 10 pages into a Google search I see a Justin.tv link. Sure enough… seconds later I was watching the game streamed live over the web. While not great quality, it was better than good enough. The best part was the in-game chat, funny and engaging as you can see in the pic.

There’s no question that this is indeed copyright infringement, you can’t legally rebroadcast television programming for your own audience. But if it’s out there and I have no other option, I’ll watch it. This is the power of the web and maybe the cable carrier’s might want to take notice here. The work arounds will always be there unless you can offer the service yourself at a reasonable price. Take a hint from the Napsters, and Hulu’s out there, create something of value that I can buy. Until then, I’ll be watching for free on Justin.tv. BTW… BC won. GO EAGLES!

Google’s Chrome proves Webkit’s Ubiquity

Google’s Chrome is pretty impressive right out of the gate…. lightning fast yet conservative in usability much like all of it’s web apps, staying true to the mantra of functionality over form. So far, my only gripe is no Mac version, but it runs fantastic in my Parallel’s install of Window’s XP.

It’s interesting to point out that the open source browser engine Webkit is the rendering core for the Chrome browser. Webkit has been at the base of many successful browser projects now spanning both desktops and mobile devices. Apple’s Safari (desktop and mobile), the S60 Mobile Browser, and now Chrome as well as Google’s Android platform’s mobile browser. When Nokia went with this for their browser a few years back, it may have been looked at as a bit risky. However history and the industry tells us that this was a good decision and ahead of it’s time.

Hey if it’s not MS Explorer it’s good enough for me 😉

NFL Football Extra offers live Flash Video streaming

I just checked out the NFL’s new Sunday Night Football extra site. The Flash-based web-app includes interactive extras such as alternative camera angles, picture-in-picture technology, in-game highlights, live statistics, and interactivity. The video quality is okay, not great though, and I’m seeing a little bit of performance issues which is not surprising with 5 simultaneous streams. Their ad model is interesting… all the cameras switch off in commercial and a banner-ad pops-up that matched the video. This allows users to take action on what they see as they see it.

This trumps Silverlight’s coverage of the Olympics in most ways. Particularly with the in-game interaction and the fact you can actually hear the commentators, not to mention fullscreen support (Silverlight didn’t offer it, which was ridiculous). Doubt I’d actually watch it though… I use my Miglia TVMiniHD to watch to watch my games in HD on my Mac already, but I’d probably give it a shot if I was traveling.

New York: An Evening with S60

An Evening with S60 lands in New York on Wednesday September 17th from 7:30 PM to 10 PM next week at the Nokia Flagship store. I’ve been to the Chicago store and it’s a pretty amazing setup, only drawback is the lack of handsets from other regions (they didn’t carry my Nokia 5700, EMEA and APAC only), but the staff was friendly and knowledgable.

I’ll be there since I missed the Boston one a few months back, not only for the free food and drinks, but for a chance to meet some new people and geek out. If you’re in the NYC area, don’t miss it and I hope to meet you.