FITC MOBILE NOTES September 21, 2009

Posted by headwinds in Mobile.
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This photo has nothing to do with the FITC Mobile conference that I attended last week. Its just one sick flashlight.

PHONE GAP

Phone Gap is an opensource javascript framework that helps you develop native apps for all major smart phones: Android, iPhone, and Blackberry.

They have also taken the popular jQuerry framework and created their own version XUI; reducing its size from 25K to 2.5K in the process.

Titanium is a similar framework to Phone Gap which also produces native apps using javascript, html, and css so a web developer can continue to work with familiar technologies and not have to dive deep into objective c.

MOTOROLA

Motorala doesn’t just have one phone to worry about; they offer a “portfolio” of phones; well over 40 devices. By 2010, they plan to have 17 handsets that have android OS.

The Motoblur platform is all about the concept of “I broadcast” — users don’t need to surf anymore; anything that they could be interested in comes to them, and they simply flick passively through panels of facebook, myspace, and twitter updates.

Once one has setup the device, it retains its settings even if lost so that you can pick up a new device and it will re-sync.

MOBILE FLASH

Scott Janousek
Mark Doherty

Adobe is committed to bringing out the Flash 10 Player on a android device by 2010. They will also be releasing a new version of Flash lite 4 supporting AS3 for underpowered phones.

Device Central will allow developers to test their apps in any device that support Flash Lite. They can also test new accelerometer functionality on a virtual 3D phone.

In order to promote their openscreen project, Abode and Nokia have joined together to put up a $10 million fund for aspiring mobile flash developers.

According to Mark, Flash lite will most likely be the dominant flash player until 2012.

FLASH LITE

frameworks:
Feather
Shuriken Flash lite 2 components

portals:
thumbplay

Brian Robbins
Riptide Games

Brian discussed iPhone game development. He mentioned that turning on NSZombieEnabled = YES will help you track down memory leaks by creating zombie objects that persist; make sure you turn it off after testing though. He also recommended the Clang Static Analyzer found in the new Snow Leopard

Mobile Analytics:
pinch media
flurry
localytics

You can track not just your own games, but leading games like Paper Toss by Backflip Studios.

RIM

Composer and Themebuilder are two tools that designers can use to completely skin the entire blackberry interface. Designers can sell themes on the Blackberry market.

Flash developers/designers will be interested in the swf import functionality. These tools will convert the swf into an svg so one can build custom animated wallpapers and other animated effects like button states.

ANDROID GUITAR APP

Active Frequency developed an android guitar app which is for sale in the US android market. There is no Canadian app market yet where we can sell apps.

Android tip: Instead of using pixels in your layout, try using dip ( density independent pixels ) instead as described in this blog post.