German firm Mobivention has been making interesting Flash Lite content for a while now, including animated wallpapers, and ones that change image according to the time of the day. However, it’s new thing is called Shaking Wallpaper, and is a set of wallpapers that you change by shaking your mobile.
Okay, it’s not the “revolution for users to individualise their mobile phone on the go” that Mobivention claims - it’s more a novel use for your phone’s accelerometer function that you’ll probably tire off after a few minutes. The Shaking Wallpaper currently works on Sony Ericsson phones, and they’re on sale through the handset maker’s new PlayNow Arena portal.
However, Mobivention says it’ll be launching new Flash Lite stuff in the coming months. Personally, I’m less interested in shaking my wallpapers, and more interested in making them more interactive - for example pulling in news headlines from the web, or friend’s Twitter posts. Fingers crossed that Mobivention (and other companies) go down this road with Flash Lite.
If you are bored with the S60 interface of your Nokia there is a simple solution - get an iPhone! No, not really (although this can work) what you could do instead is swap it out in favour of RealVista Desktop Mobile.
For all the carping and pained grimaces usually associated with using Windows Vista, one thing that most users agree on is that the interface is rather pretty - slick, shiny and impressive to watch. While RealVista
can’t offer 3D task switching and transparent windows it does make a reasonable fist of an ‘Aero-like’ set of icons.
Applications and phone functions are split into categories and displayed with four large icons per ‘page. The developer is aware of some Nokia N95 and N81 devices that can’t manage to run all apps via these icons, but reckons this is a firmware issue that should be fixable via an upgrade.
RealVista requires Flash Lite 2.1 and is available for free here.
Sony Ericsson has announced that it is planing to release a first of its kind software solution that will bridge the Abobe Flash Lite and Java ME development platforms. Billed as Project Capuchin, the new tech will make it possible for developers to make use of each platform’s unique strengths when coding ‘content-rich’ mobile applications.
Although this might not mean much unless you are really interested in how the guts of your mobile phone functions, what is interesting is that Project Capuchin will basically allow for Flash Lite content to be lodged in Java ME applications, effectively making content created by Adobe Flash technology appear as Java ME applications. That means lots of apps that make of use of flashy (excuse the unintended pun) graphical flourishes running on the ubiquitous Java platform that almost every mobile phone supports.
Sony Ericsson is hoping to make the technology available later this year which means it will probably be 2009 before we are actually able to buy applications that benefit from Project Capuchin. We’re guessing the platform will be given a snappier name before then; hmmm, Flash, Java - how about Flava? Actually, maybe not.
