Author Archives: Manu S Anand

BlackBerry PlayBook in the flesh at Adobe MAX!

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We are sitting back and reflecting on all the great news that came out of the Day 1 keynote at Adobe MAX 2010 today. Flash content developers can literally pick any screen or device and go build amazing apps and experiences for it.

The one that I know a lot of us here at MAX are really excited about is the BlackBerry PlayBook. We’ve all read blogs and press releases about how the device has a gorgeous screen, a real multitasking Tablet OS and support for Flash Player and AIR built down into the silicon – but no one had ever seen it working live before. Well that changed today at Adobe MAX.

If you were not here or missed the Live broadcast on MAX Online here is the video from the keynote with Kevin Lynch, Adobe’s CTO and Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of RIM walking through a broad variety of AIR apps and Flash content live on a BlackBerry PlayBook. Kevin kicked things off by talking about eUnity, a rich and interactive healthcare application built in Flex and already deployed in hospitals. Check out the highlights here:

Want to start building apps in AIR for the PlayBook? Download the new PlayBook SDK for Adobe AIR from http://www.blackberry.com/developers/tabletos

It comes with a simulator to test out your apps before submitting them to Blackberry App World. And if your app gets approved for launch on the device, RIM will be sending you a free PlayBook! Now that’s just sweet!

Great times for building great stuff with the Flash Platform…just Great times!

Samsung sponsoring Adobe MAX

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Samsung is a Gold Sponsor at Adobe MAX and is hosting two sessions to give developers the tools and information about this great new pathway for their interactive content and applications:

Free the TV – The New Opportunity in TV Applications
Presenter: Olivier Manuel, Director of Content
Date: Tuesday, 1:30pm in room 512

Samsung is freeing the TV, with its Samsung Apps line of televisions and Blu-ray players, which can download, install, and run apps. Samsung Apps is built into all Samsung 2010 Blu-ray players, Blu-ray Home Theaters, and most TVs 40’’ and larger. Now distributing content to the $150 billion TV market is as easy as creating an app! And, Samsung is offering $500,000 in cash and prizes for the best looking, most brilliantly conceived, and most functional apps. At this session you’ll learn more about this app contest, the new market for TV applications, and what makes a great TV app.

[Register for Olivier's Session at: http://bit.ly/d0L6j8]

Learn about Samsung SDK to distribute your AIR apps to Samsung Smart TVs
Presenter: Jason Han, Product and Service Planning, Samsung Electronics America
Date: Wednesday, 1:30, Room 511C

Distributing and monetizing your AIR applications to millions of Samsung Smart TVs and Internet connected devices is easy with the Samsung SDK. Explore the Samsung SDK, the Samsung Apps, integration with Adobe AIR 2.5 and the app submittal process. Also learn about valuable resources such as test centers which are available to help ensure your success.

[Register for Jason's Session at: http://bit.ly/d9ifIO]

With less than six days to go and all the great content that Adobe and it’s partners are bringing to the show, all I can say is it’s going to be one awesome MAX! See you there!

BlackBerry @ Adobe MAX: Lets get started with the BlackBerry PlayBook!

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With the ever expanding breadth of devices supporting the Flash Platform times were never more exciting for Flash and Web developers. One such game changing device is the BlackBerry PlayBook which was recently unveiled at the BlackBerry Developer Conference here in San Francisco.

With it’s industry-leading hardware, reliable and secure BlackBerry Tablet OS and it’s out of the box support for Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR, the PlayBook provides brand new possibilities for rich internet applications both inside and outside the browser.  It’s unlikely that you missed the announcement but here is a sneak peak at the PlayBook:

Research in Motion (RIM) is one of the Platinum Sponsors at Adobe MAX this year and will be hosting a set of in-depth sessions on how to start developing AIR applications and web content for the PlayBook. RIM will also host a session about AppWorld and the application monetization opportunities it opens up for both Flash and Web developers. Hope to see you at MAX and specifically at some (or all!) of these sessions:

Developing Adobe AIR apps for the BlackBerry® Tablet OS
Speaker: Julian Dolce, QNX
Time: Monday Oct 25 2pm, Wednesday Oct 27 3.30pm

Join Julian as he takes you through the process for creating Adobe® AIR applications for the BlackBerry Tablet OS. During the session Julian will show off some of the key features of the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK, as well as how to publish apps for it. This session will give you all the information you need to know to start creating AIR applications for the platform.

[Register for Julian’s Session http://bit.ly/aB7CCV ]

How to monetize your apps on the BlackBerry® PlayBook
Speaker: Mike Kirkup, Director of Developer Relations – RIM
Time: Tuesday Oct 26 1.30pm
Learn how BlackBerry® App World can be used to deliver your applications to users and make you money. During the sessions you will learn the how to leverage BlackBerry App World as a channel to reach BlackBerry PlayBook users. For once you have acquired customers for your applications, learn how you can make additional revenue with the BlackBerry Payment SDK.

[Register for Mike’s Session http://bit.ly/9pHg0f ]

The Power of BlackBerry® WebWorks
Speaker: Prosanta Bhattacherjee, Application Development Consultant – RIM
Time: Wednesday Oct 27 9.30 am
BlackBerry WebWorks open the doors of BlackBerry Development to web developers enabling them create standalone applications on BlackBerry devices. Join Prosanta Bhattacharjee in discovering what the BlackBerry WebWorks framework is, what a BlackBerry WebWorks application is capable of, and how you can leverage the framework to create a deployable web app to distribute to your users.

[Register for Prosanta’s Session http://bit.ly/9s9fDL ]

See you at Adobe MAX!

Open Screen Project @ MAX

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Hi!

At MAX this year we will have a bunch of session specially devoted to the Open Screen Project. We’ve been working on OSP for quite some time now with new partners, the OSP Fund and of course on the product side on delivering a consistent runtime that works across multiple platforms and devices. While you will hear a lot about the product related updates in the Keynote and other sessions, we’ve designed the OSP sessions to provide you with a chance to see how other developers, agencies and brands are already working on delivering applications across multiple devices. We really hope you find these sessions helpful!

Now to your Menu of OSP related sessions:

Title: Open Screen Project: What It Is and Why You Should Care

Learn what the Open Screen Project is and how it furthers Adobe’s
vision of a consistent runtime environment across desktops, mobile
phones, televisions and other consumer electronic devices. See demos
of content and applications spanning multiple devices and find out how
you can tap into the US$10 million Open Screen Project Fund.

Twitter Hash: #adobemax313
Date/Time: October 7 at 02:00PM
Room: 503

Title: Paramount’s “Circle of 8″: Business Case for a Multidevice
Strategy

Paramount Digital Entertainment is working on a new movie format that
plays out on multiple devices. The first movie to come out on with
this new movie production model is the ‘Circle of 8′, due for public
release late October. Keith Quinn and Sean Naughton have both worked
on the actual production of this movie and its digital delivery
through the Flash Platform. They will be talking about how they
essentially re thought the movie making process and seamlessly brought
in delivery to multiple devices. This incidentally is a project partially funded by the Open Screen Project Fund.

Twitter Hash: #adobemax78
Date/Time: October 6 at 09:00AM
Room:505

Title: Cross-device Campaigns for Deeper Brand Engagement

Richard Lent, CEO of AgencyNet and an acclaimed speaker will take us
through the multi-screen paradigm showcasing how each device delivers
against a unique user context and requires a unique value proposition.
He will explain, through real examples, how the high-level strategy
was turned into cool applications and campaigns for world-renowned
brands such as Oxygen, Pepsi, Fox, Atlantic Records and Bacardi. From
strategy, to pitch, to deployment, he will break down how AgencyNet
accomplished and often exceeded their clients’ objectives.

Twitter Hash: #adobemax207
Date/Time: October 6 at 03:00PM
Room: 505

Title: Netflix on TVs Using Flash

Learn what it took to implement the Netflix browsing and movie-
streaming experience for TVs in Flash. Matt McCarty from Netflix
along with Michael Hoch from Sodascope explore user experience
constraints for the TV, engineering and user experience challenges for
network data-driven user interfaces, architecture, and special
performance issues for embedded devices.

Twitter Hash: #adobemax395
Date/Time: October 5 at 05:00PM
Room: 505

Title: Open Screen Project Fund: Fueling the Future of Flash Experiences

Come to this session to hear more about the OSP Fund and the progress
we’ve made with the initiative in the past nine months. There will be
four demos of apps funded and now ready to hit market. Also we are
super stoked to annouce that David Blaine will be present himself to
showcase a Flash Lite based app developed for taking his brand of
tricks to Nokia devices. David will be available after the session in
the OSP Fund Circle in the Main Pavilion to talk more about the
application and maybe show the audience a trick or two!
Date/Time: October 5 at 05:00PM
Room: 503

Thank you and hope to see you at MAX!!

Manu @Adobe

Open Screen Project Fund: Over 20 apps funded already!

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We are excited about the progress we are making along with Nokia with the Open Screen Project Fund (OSP Fund). The Fund as you may know is a 2 year long, $10M market development channel to fuel development of a wide variety of multi screen applications using Adobe Flash.

Since the Fund launched in February, Adobe and Nokia have funded over 20 projects that make an interesting mix of multi screen apps and some really cool mobile apps.

Some of the apps we’ve funded are:
1. LiveTalkBack: This is a real-time audience voting system to collect feedback from mobile devices, web based widgets and the desktop – all using the Flash Platform. The application is soon going to be tested at large Media and Broadcast conferences in Europe and North America and we are excited about the progress the developer is making.
2. uvLayer: Think of this as a minority report-”ish” interface to manage all your favorite online media and share it with friends and contacts across different IM and social networks. Unknown Vector, the company behind uvLayer, had already built the AIR based desktop version of their web based service (www.uvlayer.com). The OSP Fund came in to fund the mobile version of the product to extend the experience to devices on the go.
3. GolfBox: This is a mobile app that allows golfers to book tee times, invite friends to play, read golf related news. It is being built by a team from Little Big Ideas, an interactive agency out of Denmark that has done many pioneering mobile projects in the past with Flash.
4. Mileblaster.com: A great utility application for frequent travelers that tracks frequent flyer miles and award goals, finds mile offers, and sends alerts when miles are about to expire. From the get go this application was built as a Flash widget for the web and has been funded to complete production of not just the web version but also a mobile and desktop version of the very same experience. This will allow users of the service to stay on top of their miles and awards from any Flash supporting device.

These are just some of the apps and information about them and others in now available here. We continue to seek more such interesting utility and media based experiences and are also specifically on the lookout for multi-device games built in Flash. There are already thousands of awesome Flash based online games. We are looking to developers to extend those experiences to more devices to let gamers take game play with them no matter where they go.

If you would like to apply for funding or simply learn more about the OSP Fund I would encourage you to Click here.