Kuneri bloggy

Ramsey has an interesting post, stating his opinions about Flash Lite development on Windows mobile devices, and why it may be the best platform for web Flash designers and developers to jump into mobile market. I can not comment on that issue due haven’t put my hands on Windows mobile, but if you would like to discuss, check his post out.

Windows Mobile has a lot of things going for it that kind of ease the transition from web to mobile:

• Familiar operating system rules
• Easy to put the Flash player on the device
• Easy to install third-party apps on the device
• Wide range of Windows Mobile devices with fairly powerful processors and decent memory space
• Windows Mobile devices usually have great screen resolution

It’s tough for a (mobile) game developer, both to develop and sell a game. Development and business are two different aspects and both might get way too complicated. You might be a thrilling developer and make an amazing game, but how good it is if you can not sell as it deserves, or not at all?

Lauro started a topic on Forum Nokia about how to make money with mobile games. Many people telling their ideas and experiences on the subject. If you have some words to say, please contribute.

I would also recommend that you read gameProducer, where you can get to know many practical information about game business.

Also we learnt that, refreshmobile has a mobile game contest for their mobizines with £2000 prize.

It is funny how one meets different people at different places. I was sitting in my Spanish class and introducing myself in Spanish:”Soy scientifico…” I told that I had researched agile software development. After the class was over, the man next to me started talking to me. He was an experienced project manager in a leading Finnish company and he was seeking new processes to utilize in his current team. We talked for an hour about processes and how to manage a team in an evolving environment.

One thing I was very curious about was the way he had managed one of his teams throughout his years as a project manager. His team consisted of young competent developers and an experienced developer. The project went on well except one hidden problem: the experienced developer was implicitly running the whole developing process i.e. the other developers got used to the fact that they could ask the experienced one to solve the most complex problems. The result was: other developers had not been evolving and improving their competence on problem solving.

The project manager saw this negative effect, so he arranged a transfer for the experienced one to other assignments. Thus, the development team suffered from a major brain leak. Nonetheless, these developers were very motivated towards their job and assignment and they had a very strong team spirit. Every one was ready to work for common purpose: to achieve project goals and deliver an excellent product. The overall result was that the developers managed to build a very satisfying product. In fact, he said that if you would check Finland’s gross domestic product from those years, you could see an unexpected raise, a peak, compared to the usual level.

Summa summarum: it is quite self-explanatory matter that motivated developers form an effective team. However, people think that as a self-explanatory matter, without really thinking on it, really. One should sometimes stop and think what is important if one wants to really succeed. Of course it is true that the programming itself is an important thing as far as software is concerned, but there are still other matters that affect product quality implicitly.

We, as a team in Kuneri, are motivated because we know our aim and what to work for. The goal is clear in our mind and we are evolving day by day, facing with new challenges on our own. We advise everyone to do the same thing: Keep motivated :)

Veli

Sampo touches this annoying issue, analyzing the process of signing for 3rd edition from a developer point of view.

Although it looks safer to have such a system, signing prevents variation and freedom on mobile devices. Process might be complicated to understand even for experienced developers. It takes long time, is expensive and discouraging. Although Symbian Signed has a nice attempt to sign freeware applications for free, it doesn’t go further than to be a nice intention. His idea to certificate companies seems reasonable. However, I do not think it is a complete solution considering small developers, startup companies and can not guarantee efficiency of the process of certification. I am sure it will change by time, but we will keep on suffering until it has a stable and reasonable system.

It’s been some time that I am trying to decide the most convenient way to present my FlashLite content. There seems to be 2 primary choices: A bare SWF or an installation package.

To present the product as a SWF file only, is not a very preferable way personally. Although it is simple, it is not secure, not formal, and inefficient; if there are other resource files. However, installation package does not seem to be a great solution also. We are always proud that FlashLite content can be made compatible for many devices without much effort. That might be reasonable, considering the meaning of porting for other platforms (i.e Java Mobile and Symbian). However, how about the portability of installers? Most common one is SIS file; however, if we create a SIS file, unless we show some extra effort and money, it will not be S60 3rd edition compatible. Furthermore, it will not be supported by other platforms than Symbian, and even there will be difficulties among Symbian series (S40, S60…).

So, what could be a good solution for that? There is already a problem of FlashLite supported devices in market, penetration is not that high. If we also limit that by our installers, how will it be possible to distribute our content to widest possible devices? Should we start thinking about all FlashLite enabled devices and try to prepare an installation system seperately for each group?

Meantime, I got lazy, and checked if there are some easy solutions to create my SIS package for my FlashLite content. Here I found this tutorial. Enjoy!

This tutorial will demonstrate how to create a nice packaged Symbian application (with personalized icon in smartphone’s menu) that simply starts the .swf of our Flash project, and then exit. On the web, there are many tutorials about packaging all ours files in a Symbian OS installation file (.sis), but no one that tell us how to “launch” a Flash Lite application.

Nokia decides to give names, instead of numbers to their new phone models.

What you will see coming from us in the future is not just a numbering system, you are going to start to see names that carry a meaning and are important to consumers.

No details are given about models or time. However, seems like Nokia is inspired by the success of Motorola’s RAZR and LG’s chocolate. Nokia also admits that they have been late to come up with thin models.

It’s good that Nokia is aware of the situation and trying to come up with new ideas. I am now wondering what kind of names and sequences we will see. Engadget is up for Finnish city names (actually I would be up to have a model called Oulu, however doesn’t seem to be easy to pronounce).

What is your idea? What would be Nokia’s first named model? Let’s be creative!

via Engadget

Anina points out an interesting, however potentially serious problem about the communication between Nokia and Apple devices. Such a problem would be a unfortunate for both Nokia and Apple lovers. Check her post out and contribute.

Tommi from S60 blogs asked some time ago for improvement suggestions for S60 built-in software. He also is suprized to recieve that many ideas and suggestions. That is really amazing to have such a source. Not only because it is a realistic feedback from S60 users, but also it gives great new ideas for new projects, especially Flash Lite!

Exciting white paper (PDF) prepared by Juniper Research on global mobile games market for next 5 years. The market is expected to generate $17.6 billion revenue by 2011, with casual games acting as a market driver.

The casual games sector is going to be the market driver, even though it may not be at the leading edge of mobile games technology. Casual games make most use of the inherent advantages of the mobile platform. People want to fill ‘dead time’ with easy to use, but fun games. This is the same in just about every culture.

I would like to underline some points here. It is mentioned the role of casual games in the market and practical meaning of casual games. Does that ring a bell for FlashLite community? Well, I believe it should. We do not need a research report to tell that FlashLite penetration rate will be higher in 2011 (well I think we already have one). If things progress as they are predicted, it seems like FlashLite has the highest potential to be the major player in mobile game industry in 5 years. Why? Well, is there any better platform to create ‘casual’ mobile games, offering low cost and short development time, with background of that many developers worldwide?

via moconews, wirelessweek

I have had this confusion many times while developing content and writing documents. Do you ‘press’, ‘push’, ‘click’ or ‘move’? Or do you ’start’, ‘play’ or ‘go’? How to call your actions on mobile device, which one is the right one to use?

Steph posts her ideas and observations about mobile interaction terminology and discusses about these on examples.