The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain is one of the biggest events in the mobile world.  Anyone related to the field of wireless, be it mobile developers, technology leaders, OEMS, carriers, aggregators, mobile tools providers etc, all descend on to this little world in Fira Barcelona to discuss the next BIG thing in Wireless.

I had the opportunity to be there this year, and it was memorable for several reasons. I got to meet and talk to some really bright people, discuss business opportunities, witness quite a few new platforms and devices, do a presentation at the Symbian Foundation booth and participate (and be selected as the best contributor in the Mak'n Money discussion) in discussions on the last day of the event with WIP JAM.

As far as the announcements are concerned, there were many, but those Adobe and Nokia related were probably of the most relevent to me.

Adobe today, is living upto it's commitment of last year in focusing on the Mobiles area. This time in MWC, Adobe made several announcements which developers may find extremely exciting and motivating to take it forward as a platform to look forward to in 2009.

So what were the key points announced during this event? The answer is several of them and they are all listed below -

• Flash shipped on 1 Billion devices (cummulative): Flash Lite shipped on 40% of all new handsets in 2008

• Public beta of the Distributable Player Solution - the ability to distribute mobile apps with the latest Flash Lite 3.1 runtime. The regions include US, Spain, Italy, UK and yes India too (reason to celebrate because devs can now monetize from their apps)

• Launch of Featured Applications from leading content providers at m.adobe.com (live now)

• The Flash Lite Developer Challenge - a contest with cash prizes totaling $100,000

• The Open Screen Project Fund - a $10 Million market development fund open to developers worldwide. You are invited to submit your ideas, which will then be taken up by the OSP commitee

• Palm joining the Open Screen Project and intends to ship with Flash 10 devices

Nokia too announced their OVI Store, allowing developers to publish and sell their content through Nokia's global application market.

I hope to write about the announcements and my experience a little more in detail in the coming posts...but for now there is already a lot to look forward to :) 

Mariam 

I thought of writing today about an exciting new plug-in that I’ve been playing with for creating, testing, debugging and deploying mobile widgets, to be precise - The Web Runtime Widgets.

Forum Nokia recently went public with their WRT Widget Plug-in for Aptana Studio and Aptana Studio Pro. Of course the plug-in is still in Beta, but the coolest thing about this plug-in is the ease with which it allows widgets to be created and tested. It not only cuts down the development time but also saves us the trouble of continuously packaging our files for testing within the S60 Emulator and for debugging within Firefox.

What’s even cooler is that it supports Flash Lite widgets, unlike the S60 emulator. You can test plain animations or interactive Flash content packaged as a widget.

Two of the features I like from the testing and deploying perspective are -

1. The ability to mark and unmark files that need to be packaged in the widget before the plug-in actually creates the complete widget for you.
2. The ability to deploy your widget directly to your phone via Bluetooth or to the S60 Emulator for testing.

Another feature that I would like to mention is the ability to pull down a panel and select a phone from a list of widget supported devices and test the content as per the screen resolution and orientation.

Although this widget testing environment is not yet exactly similar to the S60 emulator or a real device in performance, and it is always advisable to test content in a real environment, this plug-in really helps to cut the initial debugging time. It is something like how the Flash Lite emulator was during its previous versions.

There are a number of resources currently available for using the WRT plug-in with Aptana –

1. Information on the WRT widget plug-in for Aptana Studio (Contains all the important links)
2. WRT Plug-in for Aptana Studio QuickStart Guide
3. WRT Plug-in for Aptana Studio on Forum Nokia Discussion Board
4. WRT Plug-in Basics on the Wiki (An excellent walk through on installation, and creating your first project)
5. Packaging Flash Lite content in a Widget

Note:
I’m sure most of us would know about WRT widget development and packaging, but for those who would like to know more, widgets are small applications that can be installed and run in the same way as other S60 applications (jar & sis files). WRT widgets are generally suited for websites or web services that need to be optimized for use on devices. They consist of a basic .html, .plist and an icon file. The additional .css, .js and image files are optional. Flash Lite files too can be packaged and deployed as a widget.

Mariam 

Announced yesterday were the nominees for the 5th IMGAwards, and I am happy to say that my Flash Lite game - Gear Wager makes it amongst the top 5 in the Best Casual Game Category.

Gear Wager is a fun casual arcade game woven around a story on the Flash Lite platform. The game is unique in various ways (you have to wait for it to launch ), but I’d like to say that with this game, I’ve tried pushing the boundaries of the technology and platform. Gear Wager is expected to launch early next year, but before that I hope it emerges a winner in this award show.

IMGAwards are prestigious and being a part of their nomination is definitely an honor for any mobile game development company, including mine. This year IMGA received hundreds of entries out of which 26 are selected in 5 different categories. The nominations are extremely competitive this year with the best in the industry being chosen by a jury from the wireless industry. This year's official sponsors are Nokia and Movida (Japan). Co-sponsors are Euromediterranee, AMD and ARM.

Coming up next week is an online webinar on Flash Lite Development using Adobe CS4 and Nokia Platform Services. This one hour webinar will cover various topics for development on the Nokia platform such as devices supported, addressable market, Flash Lite version and it's implementation on handsets.

The speakers will present a walkthrough of CS4 and the new application development workflow and will also cover Nokia’s new S60 5th Edition Platform Services and it's importance. Concrete code examples and walkthroughs will be provided during the webinar.

Topic: Flash Lite Development Adobe CS4/Nokia Platform Services

Date: Tuesday, 4 November 2008

Time: 2:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Duration: 1 hour

Speakers: Adobe and Nokia technical experts

Link: You can register for the webinar on this link  

Mariam 

A hello to all at Forum Nokia. This happens to be my first blog post, so I hope to share a little about myself and my work.

To introduce myself, my name is Mariam Dholkawala, a games developer based out of Mumbai, India. Professionally I am a Founder and Technical Head of a gaming startup called IGameStudio.com. Personally I manage my own blog which talks about all the happenings in the mobile world.

I may not have always been involved with the mobile platform for game development, but it was the launch of the Adobe Flash Lite player for mobiles that got me interested. Since then, I have contributed to various community activities for both Adobe and Forum Nokia. To sum up some of my contributions -

• Adobe India Community Champion
• Adobe Community Expert - Mobiles and Devices
• Advisory Board of the Adobe Mobiles and Devices Learning Resources Program
• IndiMaD User Group Manager - India Adobe Mobiles and Devices User Group
• Award Winner at 3 Flash Lite Game Contests
• Contributor to Technical Articles on the Adobe Mobiles and Devices Devnet
• Speaker at various conferences
• Contributor on the Forum Nokia Discussion Boards and Wiki 

Now after 4 years and loads of games on the mobile platform, I would say it has been a fairly exciting journey and hope it just gets better as Adobe powers the Flash Lite player and Nokia comes out with even more powerful handsets with better Flash Lite interaction.

To sum up this post, I would say it is great to see Flash Lite rocking on Nokia phones making Forum Nokia a hub to interact with co-developers/peers on Flash Lite and various other technologies :) I hope to keep posting about my experiences of Flash Lite with the S60 and S40 platforms over the weeks.

Mariam