John Leyden, The Register, 6/1/2011

Fake security updates and other Windows malware-style trickery

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Upgrades to the development technologies show that Adobe is trying to increase its reach in the mobile space

With upgrades to its Flash Builder, Flex, and AIR application development technologies Monday, Adobe Systems is taking a decidedly mobile bent.

Adobe will introduce preview releases of the next versions of its Flash Builder development environment, the Flex development framework, and Flash Catalyst design tool. Expanding the reach of these products to new form factors, particularly Flex and Flash Builder, is Adobe’s intent. The three tools are used for building applications that run in the Flash Player or Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR). Additionally, version 2.5 of AIR, which backs mobile devices, will be released this week and is considered a lynchpin of Adobe’s multiscreen efforts.

“The point of these releases [of Flex, Flash Builder, and Flash Catalyst] is to be able to build apps for multiple screens, including Web, desktop, mobile, and set-top box TVs,” said Dave Gruber, group product manager for creative and interactive solutions at Adobe.

“We’re going to deliver a common development framework, that’s Flex and a common software development environment, that’s Flash Builder, that allows developers to create apps that run across all these difference environments. The benefit is that it saves developers time and allows them to get applications to market faster,” said Gruber.

Without these tools, developers must write separate applications for the different form factors and learn different languages and use different tools, he said.

For mobile development, Flex will support Google Android, Research in Motion BlackBerry, and Apple iOS, which runs on devices like the iPhone. Although iOS does not support Flash, developers can take the Flash application and, via the Packager tool, compile a native code application to work on iOS.

The Flash Builder preview will add mobile development tooling, including a design view environment for mobile applications. “Not only can you design mobile applications, but you also can debug, preview, and profile applications on connected devices,” said Gruber.

Developers using Flex and Flash can build such applications as self-service systems or applications that work with business-to-business and  business-to-consumer apps.

General releases of the Flash Builder and Flex SDK upgrades are planned for 2011.

Mobile “is a huge focus right now for Adobe,” said analyst Melissa Webster of IDC. With the recent release of Flash Player 10.1, Adobe seeks to get the player on everything except iOS, where it is prohibited, Webster said. Flash Player is presently only available on Android; WebOS is due to add Flash support when it ships in the coming weeks, and Research in Motion says it will support Flash Player on the BlackBerry soon. Windows Phone 7 does not presently support Flash Player, but Microsoft says that support may be added in the future.

“Accelerating Flash Player 10.1 adoption is a big area for them,” Webster said.

Key to Adobe’s efforts is AIR 2.5, which enables the use of a common framework and tooling to run applications across multiple devices. “Without AIR, that wouldn’t be possible,” Gruber said. Enabling Flash applications to run outside of a browser, AIR adds support for smartphones and tablets based on Android, iOS, and BlackBerry Tablet OS. It also works with Windows, Macintosh, and Linux desktops.

Also, Adobe will introduce a pre-release of its Flash Catalyst design tool with bidirectional capabilities for moving items between Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder.

“Previously, you could only move projects from Catalyst to Flash Builder,” Gruber said.

In the LiveCycle space, Adobe will launch LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 2.5. LiveCycle features development tools and servers for building applications that connect back-end systems to Flash and mobile clients. Users can access enterprise systems, such as SAP and Oracle ERP or transaction systems.

Also accommodating multiple screens, version 2.5 expands support for mobile devices, enabling device users to capture data, fill in a form, and append information. Previously, users only could have a task assigned to them.

“Now, you can browse content, you can initiate tasks and requests,” said Sydney Sloan, director of Adobe LiveCycle product and solution marketing. “You can capture data.”

Adobe also is announcing its next generation of “Solution Accelerators” for LiveCycle, featuring repeatable solution templates plus the LiveCycle suite. Previously, these were open source, but now they are productized and fully supported by Adobe.

Solution Accelerators being released include: Correspondence Management, for personalized communications; Interactive Statements, for building communications via secure PDF; and Managed Review & Solution Approval, for content review processes.

LIveCycle solutions typically start in price at $50,000 and above. Version 2.5 is available Monday.

Adobe also is introducing its Adobe InMarket Service to help developers link up with application stores. Initially, only application stores from Intel, Samsung, and Acer will be supported, rather than more prominent stores from companies like Google and Apple.

“We don’t have agreements with the other app stores yet,” Gruber said. “”We expect to [have] 10 more app stores in place by 2011.”

Adobe is making these announcements at the Adobe Max conference in Los Angeles.

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2. Adobe announces AIR, Flash for smartphones Brad Linder, DownloadSquad, 2/15/2010 Adobe has announced that Flash Player...
3. Adobe scraps work to bring Flash apps to iPhone Stephen Shankland, CNET News, 4/21/2010 What a difference two weeks...

Paul Krill, InfoWorld, 6/29/2010

Licensing charge also is dropped in Rhodes 2.0, but the planned bidirectional streaming capability is delayed

Rhomobile is shipping on Tuesday version 2.0 of its Rhodes framework for developing native smartphone applications, which extends Apple iPhone native mapping capabilities to other devices.

Rhodes 2.0 also offers accommodations for back-end applications via a metadata  framework. Rhomobile also is offering free licensing. But a previously planned capability for bidirectional streaming of multimedia content has been delayed until a future release.

Developers using Rhodes 2.0 can build applications for Apple iPhone and iPad, Google Android, RiM BlackBerry, webOS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian. Native mapping extends iPhone capabilities for linking to external URLs and zooming to such devices as Android and BlackBerry, Rhomobile said. “We’ve taken that whole iPhone native UI and implemented it ourselves,” said Adam Blum, CEO of Rhomobile.

A metadata framework in version 2.0 enables mobile applications to work with back-end server applications regardless of the underlying structure of the enterprise application, such as an SAP application. This clears a hurdle in deploying mobile applications, according to Rhomobile.

“The problem is, no customer has the same schema,” in, for example, an SAP system, he said. Each site has different attributes. The metadata framework accommodates differences, Blum explained.

‘What this says is you don’t actually hard-code the field on your form,” or the prompts or data types, he said. With the metadata-driven application, applications are written so forms working in an application are generated on the fly to accommodate back-end server applications, said Blum.

Rhodes does not clash with Apple’s stricter SDK requirements about not using non-native libraries, Blum said. “We generate a native project,”  for iPhone, said Blum. Applications in the framework are written using HTML, which is then converted to Objective-C in the case of iPhone, he said.

The framework makes it easier to build cross-platform applications, an analyst said.

“The Rhodes framework assists both enterprise and commercial developers in getting mobile applications up and running across multiple mobile platforms, such as the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android, thus reducing the effort that developers have to take to build an application and the re-build it for each successive platform,” said Gerry Purdy, principal analyst at MobileTrax.

The bidirectional streaming capability planned for version 2.0 is not ready, according to a Rhomobile representative. It still is being tested and the company is committed to offering it in a future update, the representative said.

Rhodes 2.0 is licensed via an MIT license and is offered for free,  Blum said. Previously, Rhodes was offered under the GPL license, which meant applications had to be open-sourced. Or, a commercial license was available for $500 as an alternative.

The company generates revenues through its data synchronization service, RhoSync. Data from back-end enterprise applications is synchronized down to devices so the data will be available offline, Blum explained.

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Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch, 6/23/2010

Today, Skype is releasing an open software development kit (SDK) for developers called SkypeKit which will allow Skype calls, instant messaging, video chat and other features to be integrated into consumer electronics and computers. For the past few years, Skype has found its way into a variety of devices from cordless phones and mobile phones to TVs through direct partnerships with device manufacturers. But with SkypeKit, the SDK is now available to all developers.

“The SDK is very similar to what we use internally,” says general manager Jonathan Christensen. It goes much deeper than Skype’s public API, which is more for accessories like headphones. The initial release of SkypeKit is targeted at consumer electronics companies and desktop app developers. SkypeKit supports Linux now and in a few weeks Windows and Mac support will come out as well. As TVs, digital picture frames, and other consumer devices become linked to the Internet and get cameras and screens, they will become good candidates for adding Skype functionality. Anyone creating a desktop app can add in Skype features, but it still cannot be built into Web applications. Like Skype itself, it requires a separate runtime.

Part of the SDK is Skype’s SILK audio codec, which it is trying to make a standard by making it available royalty-free. “The value of the codec is in the breadth of its adoption,” says Christensen, “we want it to be a common codec.”

The next natural step for SkypeKit is to start supporting tablet and mobile operating systems like Apple’s iOS and Android. “We are looking at the relevant operating systems,” confirms Christensen. There is already an official Skype app on the iPhone and third-party apps on Android, so extending the SDK to those mobile platforms is a no-brainer.

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Sam Churchill, DailyWireless.org, 5/27/2010

MeeGo, the open source, Linux-based operating system that combines Intel’s Moblin project and Nokia’s Maemo smartphone OS, is now available for netbooks and soon the Nokia N900.

The MeeGo group says Version 1.0 of MeeGo supports the N900 in addition to a number of Intel Atom based netbooks.

Nokia said yesterday on its official blog that it will not be offering a full scale commercial upgrade yet.

Don’t start downloading a copy of MeeGo right now though unless you’re a developer. Version 1.0 of MeeGo, as Imad Sousou, director of Intel’s Open Source Technology Center, explained, “provides developers with a stable core foundation for application development and a rich user experience for Netbooks.

The MeeGo Netbook user experience is the first to appear, with the development of the MeeGo Handset user experience moving to the open in June.

According to Lilliputing, the biggest problem with MeeGo at this point is that there simply aren’t a lot of third party apps designed to work with the OS yet, at the MeeGo Garage.

MeeGo hopes to be in handhelds, tablets and nettops, although the Android SDK (software development kit) has first mover advantage & backing from Google.

Proprietary Windows and Apple operating systems aren’t free and can’t run on both ARM and Intel devices. MeeGo can.

Want a platform for the world stage? Linux-based MeeGo and Android are pretty good bets. Nokia devices dominate among the 5 billion mobile phone users.

Open Source Bridge is a new conference for developers working with open source technologies and for people interested in learning the open source way. It runs from Tuesday, June 1 to Friday, June 4, 2010, in Portland, Oregon.

It’s entirely volunteer-run, by developers, for developers, with five tracks connecting people across projects, languages, and backgrounds.

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Email announcement from Jeff Haynie, CEO Appcelerator:

First, and most important: we value each and every one of you. As always, we will do everything within our power to ensure that Appcelerator Titanium remains the best platform to enable each of you to develop mobile and desktop applications on. Should any issue arise that may affect our community, you can expect that we will be as proactive, transparent, and forthcoming as possible.

Now to the issue at hand. As part of its announcement this morning, Apple proposed updating its Terms of Service for iPhone OS 4.0. Since iPhone 4.0 is still in beta, both the APIs and the Terms of Service are covered under NDA, so we cannot speak to specifics or Apple’s intent with its proposed language. However, these terms are subject to clarification and change by Apple up through its official launch, which looks to be mid-summer. Until iPhone 4.0 is actually released, we will work with Apple to ensure that we abide by any updates to its Terms of Service, just as we have done successfully in the past.

We know that you put a lot of trust in Appcelerator and effort into your applications. You have our commitment that we will do everything possible to ensure that Titanium remains the outstanding platform for cross-platform application development for years to come. We will update you with more information as soon as we gain a clearer understanding of today’s announcement. Until that time, iPhone OS 3.2 remains the officially released SDK and 3.2 is still the official Terms of Service. All apps written under 3.2 are in accordance with these terms and all apps written to date for 3.2 have been approved.

Please feel free to reach out to us on our blog, via Twitter, or via email with any questions. Thanks for everyone???s support and well wishes today.

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Prince McLean, Apple Insider, 4/8/2010

Apple has updated its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement in the iPhone 4.0 SDK to specifically prohibit the development of apps using “an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool,” which would include Adobe’s Flash, Sun’s Java, or Microsoft’s Silverlight/Mono.

Apple has always prohibited the use of outside frameworks, runtimes or plugins in iPhone apps, a measure that has prevented Adobe or others from delivering an app with the ability to run content such as Flash or Java or Silverlight.

This restriction prompted Adobe to attempt to salvage its developers’ existing Flash content by adding a feature to the upcoming Creative Suite 5 that would allow the Flash Professional application to export existing Flash content into a native iPhone application package that could be legitimately sold in the iTunes App Store because it was no longer Flash, and therefore no longer needed any sort of external runtime to play.

However, in iPhone 4, a clause in the developer license that until now only prohibited the use of private APIs (that is, development features that Apple has not completed, documented, and disclosed as being available for public use) has now been expanded to include prohibitions on developing iPhone apps in other languages or in other development environments that are then translated or cross-compiled into native iPhone apps. The clause, section 3.3.3, now reads:

“Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).”

This measure means Flash Professionals won’t be able to develop content using Flash’s ActiveScript and then port this code to iPhone. It also means that developers won’t be able to directly port code written in Microsoft’s C# language to its .NET framework into a translated iPhone app.

The prohibition may also be a roadblock for Appcelerator and its Titanium SDK or the similar PhoneGap, both of which are designed to build native mobile apps using web technologies such as HTML and JavaScript. The clause specifically limits JavaScript for use in web apps, and does not allow it to link against the native Cocoa Touch APIs.

The news should come as a crushing blow to Adobe, which has been working furiously to develop its Flash to iPhone cross compiler as the key new feature for Flash Professional in CS5. It also erases Adobe’s strategy to push mobile and web development toward Flash while still leveraging compatibility with the iPhone OS.

By insisting that all iPhone apps begin as native development using its own Xcode tools, Apple can prevent third party middleware platforms from muscling into the market it created. This will effectively reserve the value and sales volumes of the App Store to benefit Apple’s own development tools, ensuring that all the apps sold in the App Store are being built using the company’s own native tools and not just cross-compiled from another source.

Apple’s move apparently comes in a defense strike against Flash app shovelware, which threatens to water down the original content in the App Store with lots of existing, poor quality Flash games originally designed for the web or other mobile platforms and rebaked to work on the iPhone.

The new rule also rubs out any hope for Java or Silverlight/Mono as a common denominator for building mobile apps, preventing developers from coding apps using Java or C#/.NET and then just cross-compiling them into iPhone apps using a “translation or compatibility layer.”

This is BIG!

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Erica Sadun, TUAW, 4/8/2010

The 4.0 SDK for the iPhone OS is now available to developers. Head on over to Apple’s iPhone Developer site (login credentials needed) to download the SDK disk image and get started.

As with previous beta releases, the new firmware and SDK remains behind an NDA. This NDA will likely remain in place until the 4.0 goes live, which is expected to happen sometime in late spring.

The new SDK will support features announced earlier today at the iPhone OS 4.0 roadmap media event.

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Mobile Tech News, 3/24/2010

Sprint and HTC Corporation today announced summer availability of the world’s first 3G/4G Android handset, HTC EVO 4G exclusively from Sprint. HTC EVO 4G delivers a multimedia experience at 4G speeds that is second to none, making it possible to download music, pictures, files, or videos in seconds – not minutes – and watch streaming video on the go with one of the largest pinch-to-zoom displays, at 4.3 inches, in the wireless industry.

Sprint 4G offers a faster wireless experience than any other U.S. national wireless carrier, and Sprint is the only national carrier offering wireless 4G service today in 27 markets. Sprint 4G delivers download speeds up to 10 times faster than 3G1, giving HTC EVO 4G the fastest data speeds of any U.S. wireless device available today.

“Sprint continues to lead the 4G revolution as we introduce HTC EVO 4G to give our customers an experience that is unlike anything available in wireless to date,” said Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO. “Not only is this feature-rich device incredible on our Sprint 3G network, but Sprint 4G speeds will take mobile multimedia, including live video streaming, gaming and picture downloads, to a whole new level.”

Customers will be able to purchase HTC EVO 4G through all Sprint channels and through national retail partners, RadioShack, Best Buy and Walmart, this summer. Pricing will be announced at a later date. Pre-registration begins today at www.sprint.com/evo.

A device beyond compare

HTC EVO 4G delivers a robust list of features, including a 1GHz Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ processor ensuring a smooth and quick user experience. With dual cameras – an 8.0 megapixel auto-focus camera with HD-capable video camcorder and a forward-facing 1.3 megapixel camera – HTC EVO 4G unleashes the ability to create, stream and watch video that far surpasses expectations of what is possible on a phone today.

With built-in mobile hotspot functionality, HTC EVO 4G allows up to eight Wi-Fi enabled devices to share the 4G experience. Users can easily share an Internet connection on the go with a laptop, camera, music player, game unit, video player, or any other Wi-Fi enabled device.

With integrated HD video capture and 4G speeds, HTC EVO 4G makes slow uploads and grainy video a thing of the past. Now, it is possible to post high-quality video to YouTube™ or Facebook, or share moments in real time over the Internet live, via Qik. After these videos have been captured, it is easy to share them on an HDTV via an HDMI cable (sold separately).

The custom Web browser is optimized for HTC EVO 4G’s large display and Sprint 4G speeds to deliver a full, no-compromise Internet experience. Adobe Flash technology ensures that rich Internet content, such as embedded video and animation, are displayed the way they are meant to be seen. Pinch-to-zoom and automatic text reflowing provide easy Web page views.

HTC EVO 4G features the newest version of the highly acclaimed HTC Sense user experience. Along with all of the HTC Sense features first introduced on HTC Hero, HTC EVO 4G adds a number of new features, including Friend Stream, which aggregates multiple social communication channels including Facebook and Twitter™ into one organized flow of updates; a “Leap” thumbnail view to easily switch between home screen “panels”; the ability to download new, interactive widgets; and a “polite” ringer, which quiets the ringing phone once lifted up.

“HTC and Sprint have a strong history of working together to bring consumers technologies and advancements that make their lives easier,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC. “We believe that the HTC EVO 4G represents the best of Sprint and the best of HTC working together to bring an unmatched device to the U.S. This combination of HTC and Sprint innovation will allow people to do even more while on the go, faster than ever on the Sprint 4G network.”

Experience Android at 4G

HTC EVO 4G, the world’s first 3G/4G Android handset, features the latest iteration of the increasingly popular Android platform. Leveraging the Android 2.1 platform, HTC EVO 4G can deliver a wide array of useful new features:

* Android 2.1 enables a new way to search with pictures instead of words. Google Goggles™ works with everything from books, DVDs and barcodes to landmarks, logos, artwork and even wine labels. A picture taken of the Golden Gate Bridge returns all of the information anyone would need to know about the structure. By just taking a picture of several restaurant options, HTC EVO 4G will provide restaurant reviews to ensure the best choice.

* Text messaging and email composition feature built-in voice-to-text technology. By simply pressing a microphone button on the screen, messages can be composed by just speaking, making keeping in touch faster and easier than ever.

* Through Android Market™, HTC EVO 4G users have access to thousands of useful applications, widgets and games to download and install on their phone, with many more to come.

In addition to today’s Android apps, the performance of which will be enhanced by 4G speed, application developers will be introducing new apps that take advantage of 4G power in new ways – games and communications tools and other apps that bring together video, presence and location simultaneously, and capabilities that haven’t yet been imagined. For example, an application developer might create an app that allows a customer to simultaneously watch a streaming sporting event while pulling down stats and conducting a video chat with a friend.

A Sprint 4G developer guide is available today from the Sprint ADP Web site http://developer.sprint.com. The Sprint 4G developer guide explains how to develop on an Android 2.1 handset and how to take advantage of 4G and unique hardware/software capabilities, including how to use a forward-facing camera in an app; how to use HDMI output; and how to build in network detection (3G, 4G or Wi-Fi) to optimize quality of data in an app. The Sprint 4G developer also will include sample apps and source code that highlight these features. It will supplement the Android 2.1 SDK. As a charter member of the Open Handset Alliance™, Sprint is actively engaged with the Android community. Sprint has employed an open Internet approach, and the Sprint Application Developer Program has been providing tools for third-party developers since Sprint first launched the Wireless Web on its phones in 2001.

“Sprint and HTC have come together to propel the Android platform into the 4G world with the introduction of HTC EVO 4G,” said Andy Rubin, vice president, mobile platforms at Google. “The Android platform was developed to give people unmatched mobile connectivity to the Internet. By combining this vision with the promise of Sprint’s first-to-market 4G technology, HTC EVO 4G makes accessing thousands of applications from Android Market, using Google™ services like Google Goggles, Google Earth™ and the all-new Gesture Search, or simply browsing the Web faster, easier and more enjoyable than ever before.”

Blazing trails with Sprint 4G

As the first national wireless carrier to test, launch and market 4G technology, Sprint made history by launching 4G in Baltimore in September 2008. Today, Sprint 4G covers more than 30 million people and expects to have up to 120 million people covered by the end of 2010.

Sprint currently offers 4G service in 27 markets, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Portland, Ore., San Antonio and Seattle. Following is a comprehensive list of markets by state where Sprint 4G is currently offered: Georgia – Atlanta, Milledgeville; Hawaii – Honolulu, Maui; Idaho – Boise; Illinois – Chicago; Maryland – Baltimore; Nevada – Las Vegas; North Carolina – Charlotte, Greensboro, (along with High Point and Winston-Salem), Raleigh (along with Cary, Chapel Hill and Durham); Oregon – Portland, Salem; Pennsylvania – Philadelphia; Texas – Abilene, Amarillo, Austin, Corpus Christi, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Killeen/Temple, Lubbock, Midland/Odessa, San Antonio, Waco, Wichita Falls; Washington – Bellingham, Seattle. For more information, visit www.sprint.com/4G.

In 2010, Sprint expects to launch service in multiple markets, including but not limited to, Boston, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New York City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Sprint is harnessing the power of 4G as the majority shareholder of Clearwire, the independent company that is building the WiMAX network. Sprint is the only national wireless carrier to offer 4G services on the Clearwire WiMAX network.

More…

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Peter Bright, Ars Technica, 3/23/2010

With the confirmation that Windows Phone 7 Series will not support native code development—only C# with Silverlight or XNA—the first major casualty has emerged: Firefox for Windows Mobile. Citing the inability to migrate the existing development effort to the new platform, Fennec (the mobile version of Firefox currently in development for Android and Maemo) for Windows Mobile is now on hold permanently.

Though this is not surprising, it does show the risk of Microsoft’s strategy. Rewriting large, native code applications to meet the requirements of the new platform will be an undesirable task for many developers. Both Google and Palm eventually relented, and permitted native development for Android and webOS. Microsoft, for its part, says that the lack of native code is a technology issue rather than an immutable design philosophy—the inability to safely sandbox native code is the problem. This certainly leaves the door open to a future native code SDK. There are even claims that Microsoft will make an exception and allow Adobe to develop a (native) Flash for Windows Phone.

Third-party browsers are an important part of the Windows Mobile software ecosystem. In particular, Opera Mobile is excellent in all the ways that Pocket Internet Explorer is terrible; it is fast, accurate, finger-friendly, and standards compliant. Though Windows Phone 7 Series will include an improved Internet Explorer (one that should at least be finger-friendly), the browser experience is still set to lag behind its desktop counterpart for the forseeable future. The lack of native code is likely to be as unpalatable for Opera as it was for Mozilla, and if this turns out to be the case, it will mean that Windows Phone has no third-party browsers.

In turn, this puts even greater pressure on Microsoft to ensure that Internet Explorer in Windows Phone 7 Series delivers an acceptable browsing experience. While the current (old) platform could depend on third parties to provide browsing salvation, this will not be an option for the new platform. With a high quality Web browser as an essential feature of competing smartphone platforms, this could leave Windows Phone at quite a disadvantage.

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