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February 27, 2006
Now they're gluing the SIM cards in!
This has got to be the dummest thing I have seen from a carrier in a long time. Apparently now in the UK, 3 is going to start gluing the SIM cards into their pre-paid phones in an effort to thwart resellers who are buying the discounted phones and selling them overseas for profit. The plan is to pot the SIM cards into the pre-paid phone with epoxy.
Gotta wonder who the rocket scientist who came up with this solution is. Maybe it's time to stop subsidizing phones; At least for pre-paid.
Here is the link on Mobileburn
UPDATE: In addition to our current tools (calipers, magnifying glasses, scales, oscilloscopes, etc.) We have now aquired a cold chisel for our test lab.
Posted by David Adams at 10:49 AM | Comments (2)
Andre the Giant has a Posse ... and a Ringtone
The Fox Mobile team in LA have launched their off-deck mobile content portal, Mobizzo. Pretty standard mobile portal fare in comparison to some of the others that have launched in the last year. The one interesting thing though is that they have some pretty unique content, especially for a mobile portal. Mobizzo is selling mobile ringtones and wallpapers of Fox TV brands such as The Family Guy and American Dad, and they've got Napolean Dynamite, some Anime stuff, Hip-Hop bling-bling and the some of the usual mobile image shovel-ware; but they are also selling original images by Shepard Fairey who is responsible for the long running "Andre the Giant has a Posse" meme, as well as some other original artwork ("Lucha Libre"). I actually know a local comic book artist who met with Fox Mobile to pitch his content and said they are looking for cool original artwork and comics. Looks like this is the start of a mobile content service that is hipper-than-most.
I just can't until we get to the point where every product/service that targets mobile doesnt have "MOB" in the name. It reminds me of 1996, when every .com in the world started with and i or an e. iStartup.com. Next!
Posted by David Adams at 08:53 AM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2006
The State of Flash Lite
At the Seattle Mobile meeting Monday night someone asked one of the speakers what the status and current viability was of Flash Lite for creating games. No one seemed to have much new information about Flash Lite as it currently stands other than we'd all heard a lot about it a while ago but it had not really shown up on the radar yet. There were a couple of announcements from Adobe this week at 3GSM regarding Flash Lite so I thought I would post some notes about the state of Flash Lite as it stands. So here in no particular order are some specifics:
- Macromedia released Flash Lite 2 in early January of this year. Here is a Link to the press release.
- Shipments of mobile devices running Flash have more than tripled from 12 to 45 million units within the last twelve months.
- Adobe announced this week at 3GSM that LG and BenQ have both licensed Flash Lite.
- Nokia is working on embedding Flash Lite into their Series 60 phones. Reportedly they are also going to be embedding it in some series 40 phones as well.
- NTT DoCoMo has had Flash Lite enabled devices for over 3 years. Over 20 Million DoCoMo (over 45%) subscribers have Flash Lite enabled phones
- Currently there are no U.S. carriers that have phones that support Flash Lite (pre-installed).
- In October, Macromedia and Qualcomm announced an agreement that Macromedia would create a Flash Lite extension for BREW. Press release here.
- The Yankee Group put out an excellent white paper about Flash Lite in the Japanese market and where it is going in the U.S. The paper can be found here on the Macromedia site.
For developers interested in developing in Flash Lite, here are some development resources:
- Macromedia Mobile and Devices Developer Center - Start here.
- Macromedia Mobile Developer Program - It's free. Dev kits, specs, etc. .
- Flash Devices - Great resource for information about Flash Lite, run by the manger of developer relations for mobile and devices at Adobe.
- Flash Mobile Forum. A good source of Flash Lite news and discussions about Flash Lite.
So are any of you mobile developers in the European and/or North American markets doing any development in Flash Lite?
Posted by David Adams at 11:03 AM | Comments (3)
February 14, 2006
Carbide.j
Nokia announced it's Carbide.j dev kit at 3GSM today. The Carbide tools so far have just been for Symbian. Carbide.j extends the toolset for Java and replaces the old Nokia Java Dev Suite SDK. The Carbide dev tools are all built around Eclipse and should be a lot more integrated than using the old KToolbar.
Here is the blurb from Nokia:
"Carbide.j (formerly Nokia Developer's Suite for J2ME) is a software development tool for Java™ Platform, Micro Edition (Java™ ME) developers that enhances the development and verification of applications for Nokia devices. It provides tools for creating Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) and Personal Profile (PP) applications and deployment packages, signing applications, and deploying applications to devices. It is also an essential tool for managing, configuring, and running emulators for various Nokia platform and device SDKs."
Looks great. The only downside is that it only works with Windows XP.
Here is a link to the data sheet.
Posted by David Adams at 01:47 PM | Comments (2)
February 13, 2006
Seattle Mobile tonight
So I wasn't able to make it to 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona this week because I felt it was more important that I stay in Seattle for February's Seattle Mobile meeting; which is tonight. This month's topic is "Mobile Gaming", the fastest growing market segment of mobile applications globally. We have presenters from two local Seattle mobile gaming companies; Metaplay and Reaxion. So if you are in Seattle/PNW, come down and do some networking with your peers in the mobile industry before the weather turns bad again.
Posted by David Adams at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)
February 02, 2006
And on to February ... and more Rain
I'm very glad January is over. Seattle has had the wettest January since 1953. We've had over a foot of rain in the last month. It starting to look like February is going to be as wet. It is raining like mad right now and the driving is miserable. The weather here is really starting to get depressing; even for a native Seattleite. I hope the 48 hours in California next week let me see the sun for a little while.
Posted by David Adams at 06:03 PM | Comments (0)