This is now an archive RobToole.com fans

After building and hosting my blog on my own server for many years, I decided to move things over to this WordPress.com space as an archive rather than have a dead and seemingly abandoned blog out there in the webspace.

I’ve since moved my online identity to Tubmblr which is more suitable to my blogging habits I’m working on going forward (which is nothing against wordpress which frankly is an incredible blogging platform that gets better every year). You can follow this at:

http://robtoole.tumblr.com/

Or by just hitting my old domain:

http://www.robtoole.com

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Halloween Screensaver/Wallpaper for Flash Lite Enabled Handsets

Just in time for Halloween, I’m happy to present my first Screensaver/Wallpaper Flash Lite project.

This interactive piece is Flash Lite 2.x compatible and includes the following states:

– The light inside the pumpkin represents your handsets battery level. The pumpkin will be luminant when you have a full charge, it will diminish as your battery drains.

– The background represents your handsets time of day. When you are past 6am, the daylight scene is displayed. When you are past 6pm, the night-time scene is displayed (keep an eye out for the creepy owl).

Special thanks goes to my beautiful and talented wife Sarah for the artwork, and to Scott Janousek for leading by example.

Hint: We also are working on an X-mas deliverable we hope to launch by late November!

Happy Halloween!

Get the file here: (Currently tested for the Nokia N95, 5700, and 5300 at 240×320 resolution);

pumpkin_ss_240x320.swf.zip

Book: Flash Applications for Mobile Devices

My friend Scott has just sent out the link to the Boston Flash Mobile Users Group about his new book. While I haven’t read it yet, this book is a going to be a “must read” for anyone serious about getting into Flash Lite development.

I’ve pre-ordered mine, now go get yours.

Flex for Mac on Labs

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The apple faithful can rejoice for FLEX 2.0 beta for Mac was released a few days ago. Just like the post implies Fex for Macintosh enables developers on the Macintosh platform to productively build and test Flex applications. Now I don’t have to drag my Tablet PC around with me.

Flash Lite: Persistent data article

Mariam Dohlkawala from India Games has written this great article for Adobe on shared objects. When Flash Lite 2 came out it was really a giant leap forward, adding a lot of much needed new feature sets. One great one is shared objects allowing for data storage locally on the device. With this you can easily save data such as high score, user preferences, you name it. India Games continues to ride the bleeding edge on Flash Lite content and games, so check it out.

Luckyee Sells the Clix up the iRiver

I saw this browsing around on Engadget today. Let’s face it, all PMP’s are in essence similair and I’m open to interpertation of what qualities all portable media player’s should have. Small in size, light in weight, and intuitive in design are some. But this little guy is such an obvious rip, you really have to wonder, did they even try do any industrial design of their own? Sure they managed to eek out some better video performance, 25fps is definitely preferable to 15fps. Maybe iRiver can just buy these hacks and pool their resources. The sad thing is that since the company is in China, they are off the radar in terms of legal action. If they offer the product in the US, well that’s another issue.

The one interesting interesting thing is the UI, which looks kind of cool. The initial question? Is that UI Flash Lite based or is it a F.L.E.D. (thanks Scott) at all? Something tells me no. Adobe seemed to have their handds in the development of Clix, even helping to create a custom Flash Lite implementation. I doubt they would of helped these rip-off artists. Though I have to admit, at $62 for a 1gb, I am tempted to try and get my hands on one of these for, er, research.

Flash Lite for Brew out on Adobe labs

So Adobe labs has finally put out an update that will allow you to export your Flash Lite content to the Brew Simulator environment and test it. The interface is similair to the one that is included in Flash 8 when you publish content for Flash lite 1.1 and 2.0. Note that at this time, the update is Windows only, no Mac support yet.

In order for this to work you need to download not only the Flash update, but the Brew SDK, and also become an authenticated BREW Developer. It was a little tricky to get the publishing settings right as the Brew environment has to be just right in order for it to work, but I found Adobe’s SDK to be pretty clear and easy to follow and I was able to publish out content from Flash to the emulator within a half hour. So far so good though I haven’t really been able to test performance and fps. It’ll be interesting to see how these phones compare to their Symbian counterparts. In order to test on a real supported handset you need to download and install the Flash Lite 2.1 for BREW Extension to your phone. This is what I assume takes the place of the Flash Player application that you have to purchase from Adobe for Symbian.

One thing that has me a little suprised is the lack of handsets this will work on so far. Adobe specifies only two handsets in this beta release, the LG VX9800 and the Samsung SCH-a950. Right, I know it’s in beta. But when I saw this list when the whole Brew thing was announced, that’s what really blew my mind. Look at all those phones! Obviously, the number of phones will NEED to grow as I think that Adobe really needs to focus on more saturation in the market through the support of a larger ammount of handsets. One good thing to note is that even these two handsets tend to be more typical and less espensive than the latest Nokia offerings. But no rush to conclusions here. I think this is a great step in the right direction and look forward to seeing where this goes.

iRiver Clix – the new Ipod killer

So I’m trolling around ebay looking for stuff that I don’t need and I come across a whole bunch of brand new 512mb iRiver U10’s going for cheap. Like $60 cheap. So I figure, what the heck, I could always justify it as a Flash Lite research item… right? Wouldn’t you know it, three days later, iRiver puts out the Clix which is basically a 2gb U10 on steroids at $199. AND it has Flash Lite 2.0! The same thing happened to me when I bought my original first generation iPod. Grrrrr.

Frustation aside, I am blown away by the U10. The form factor, the features, everything. When you consider the fact that a 512mb iPod Shuffle costs $69 and has no screen, no video playback, no FM tuner, no voice recorder, no Flash Lite games, it’s pretty much a no brainer. In a nutshell, the U10 is awesome, and has opened my eyes to how portable media can really be in this iPod world we live in.

It seems that iRiver has learned their lessons on the original U10 release, especially in terms of price. The U10 was way too expensive for what you got, the same one I have had an original msrp of $199. The newer Clix also seems to have much better integration in terms of getting movies, music, and pictures on to the device now. The u10 uses Windows Media Player 10 for music, another standalone app for pictures, and yet another 3rd party app to convert video. They should really take a cue from iTunes as it has a big hand in the iPod’s success.

As for my Ipod, is it retired? Not really, just used a lot less. Since the U10 is limited as far as space, I tend to put a lot of my recently purchased music (yes I still buy actual CD’s, I am old school as far as that goes) on the U10 while the 20gb Ipod is like my library.

So watch out Apple, if iRiver continues to offer (and market correctly) devices like this, it’s going to take a significant bite out of your market share.

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.