Adobe has a Flash player for the iPhone. Adobe has been calling on Apple to enable the Flash player on the iPhone for months. Ars Technica’s Apple blog shows their inability to pay attention when they reduce the promise of Flash for mobile as the ability to have “rollerskating dogs and seizure-inducing banner ads” on your mobile. Ars Technica missed the point!
Flash is a threat to the App store. Apple knows that Flash on the iPhone (whether it’s a Safari plugin or a standalone player application) would empower independent developers to break out of the App store model and sidestep Apple’s SDK. In the wrong hands — tongue in cheek here — it could allow people to create their own storefront or content “channels” on the iPhone. That “threat” is much greater than blinking banner ads and animated skip intros.
Finally, if Apple were to allow Flash as a Safari plugin for iPhone, all the Flash player would compete with would be the so-called “web app” category — web browser based sites and online tools. As we’ve observed from the web application landscape, this seems to have little to Apple’s app store.
Read Ars Technica’s piece Adobe Begs Apple to Allow Flash on the iPhone, Again
Read the announcement from Flash Magazine the Flash on the Beach conference in Brighton England.
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// T-Mobile Announces G1 “Dream” Android-Driven Smart phone
With the announcement of T-Mobile’s G1 “Dream”, speculators in the market are saying that Android is expected to capture as much as 4% of the U.S. smart phone market from sales of this device. That’s a pretty large share. Initial reviews of this First Glance at an entire Google Android driven experience have been pretty positive. People are looking to shoot holes in it and are finding it to be quite competent in its offering. Perhaps this is the first of many inspiring Android offerings to come.
http://www.t-mobileg1.com/?WT.mc_t=OnsiteAd&WT.mc_n=G1PreRegProspect_home1
// Adobe’s Newly Announced CS4 Suite Offers expanded tools for Mobile
This week Adobe Announced the new version of its creative suite, CS4, and as far as mobile is concerned, this may be a big leap forward for the suite of tools. Among the new features are a new searchable online library of popular devices from manufacturers, video capture and playback of simulated experiences in Device Central CS4, publishing directly to devices with Bluetooth, and an enhanced set of tools for creating engaging content.
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200809/092308AdobeCS4Mobile.html
// First look: Samsung Omnia
Everything you wish for in your mobile? That’s a big promise… Can the Omnia live up to it? Samsung touts this device as “Bringing a PC environment to Mobile” and “replicating the look and feel of their PC”. This is no doubt something some users are looking for, to be mobile with something smaller than a laptop, but for some that are not using their mobile in a business-centric fashion, it might be overkill. The device runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and uses an optical mouse similar to those on laptop computers, which clams to give better one-handed control of the device. It has features a decent 5 megapixel camera that are similar to the caliber of a Nokia N95 or better, and also boasts GPS, and geo-tagging features among others.
http://www.samsung.com/us/aboutsamsung/news/newsIrRead.do?news_ctgry=irnewsrelease&news_seq=8999
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File under: Ways social media is changing advertising for the better.
In the past I’ve expressed my distaste for FaceBook’s advertising approach. They used to run ads in-line with the “news feed” and it was designed to look in every way like content generated by a friend. Tricking me, if only for a moment, into thinking a friend recommended some product or movie tarnished my trust for FaceBook.
Well, now I feel it’s only right to come out on record and applaud FaceBook for their recent move, which presents ads with better transparency — like ads. But they go a step further into actually being helpful (to themselves and to users) by letting users identify whether the ad aligns with their interests.
This is an instance of how user choice in advertising (or even just perceived user choice) can create affinity for the advertiser and for the property hosting the ads. It’s the win-win-win that all ad people aim for.
It’s pretty clear FaceBook is trying everything with their advertising approach, as they haven’t stopped the ads-in-your-news-feed entirely. I do hope the new model works for them, because if it does it is better for everybody.
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