Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that Adobe said in an earnings conference yesterday that it has developed a Flash Player for the iPhone that has been running under emulation. No official word has come out from Adobe or Apple regarding this, but Apple has previously publicly criticized Flash saying that Flash Lite did not have enough features to justify having it on the iPhone and that the PC version of the Flash Player was too resource intensive for it, and even though Apple has opened the doors for developers to create application for the iPhone by releasing its SDK long time ago, the SDK license prohibits developers from creating any sort of runtime such Flash or Java that is capable of running additional code on top of it. So the only way for Adobe to have Flash on the iPhone is by having a special agreement with Apple. This new info about a player being in the works does not necessary mean that there is any sort of agreement with Apple regarding it, but we are keeping our fingers crossed.

[via CrunchGear]

Adobe announced today a new project called “Open Screen Project” that aims to make Flash an ubiquitous platform for creating and running the content across a variety mediums, namely: TVs, computers, and mobile devices. The Open Screen Project is supported at launch by ARM, Cisco, Intel, Marvell, Motorola, MTV, NBC, Nokia, NTT Do Co Mo, Qualcomm, Sony Ericsson, and others. In order to accomplish this project, Adobe is removing all licensing fees that manufacturers had to pay to install the Flash Lite Player on their mobile handsets, opening the Flash Player API to let anyone to port the Flash Player onto any device, removing restrictions on the use of SWF and FLV formats so that any one can create custom players to run the format. Adobe is also publishing its Flash Cast protocol and the AMF protocol to allow new usages of data transfer services.

The Flash platform has been ever expanding the past two years as Flash developers can already now make desktop applications using AIR, web based applications using Flex, and mobile applications using Flash Lite. The expansion of these platforms onto new devices and set up boxes will make it easier for developers to create an application once only and then deploy it across a variety of mediums easily. Learn more about the Open Screen Project from Adobe website.

We have been keeping a little secret here at Oman3D about a new project that we launched at the start of April during the annual eGames conference held at the Knowledge Oasis Muscat. This secret is about Chemical Orange, a portal for playing free mobile phone created using Flash Lite.

The idea behind Chemical Orange is to make games which are representative of our local Omani culture and  yet simple and fun to play. We think that we were successful in doing that. We got linked to by one of the two mobile phone operators in the country and our games were downloaded more than 50,000 times within a period that did not exceed three weeks. This is counting only downloads made over-the-air and not downloads made from the actual website. We also do not DRM our games, so users can save them and share them with their friends as they please.

We currently have two games in our catalog, both of which are made using Flash Lite 1.1 to ensure the highest number of compatible devices. We created the games using Flash CS3 and tested using Device Central CS3, two tools that proved the excellence of Adobe’s tools in the field of mobile content production.

We provided users with two methods for downloading the games, the first is by visiting our regular Flash website, select the phone model to download the appropriate game version and then leave the user to transfer the game to his phone as he sees fit, the second method is by downloading the game directly over the air by visiting the mobile portal of Chemical Orange, select the game and phone model and then just play.

Our games also feature a highscore  board feature that lets users submit their score and have their name shown if they get a score within the top five.

You can check out Chemical Orange by visiting our full website or alternatively by visiting m.chemicalorange.com from your mobile phone browser. All our games are free of charge, so you have no excuse not to try them out!

Forum Nokia released a couple of days ago a new Flash Lite Developer’s Library with information for PC Flash developers coming to the mobile platform and mobile developers coming to the Flash Lite platform. The library explains the Flash Lite development process and explains several advanced topics such as packaging and signing a Flash Lite application. It can be viewed online or downloaded for offline viewing both free of charge. Check it out here.

Flash Lite is finally going to be available on Windows Mobile devices as announced in a recent press release by Adobe. Flash Lite was previously available only on Symbian OS and BREW mobile phones. Windows Mobile phones will have Flash Lite 3.0, the latest edition of the player that is capable for playing the popular FLV video format used by YouTube and other video websites. The license agreement is for a browser plug-in only meaning that Flash Lite content will be playable only through Pocket Internet Explorer and not through a standalone player - so no Flash wallpapers or screensavers for Windows Mobile.

This announcement has come as a sort of a surprise to many as Microsoft has its own new direct Flash competitor - SilverLight and which is expected to have a mobile version of it sometime in the future. Regardless, the availability of Flash on Windows Mobile is good news for Flash developers as it expands available opportunities to wise Flash content on more devices, especially after the recent disappointment of Apple’s rejection of using Flash technology in the iPhone.

New details are emerging about the upcoming eGames 2008 conference to be held next month in Muscat. Profiles of key speakers can now be seen on the eGames Oman Blog, such key speakers include David Wortley - Director of the Serious Games Institute at Coventry University; Professor Lizbeth Goodman - Founder and Director of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute and the MAGIC Multimedia & Games Innovation Center, Gamelab and PLAYroom; Dr Sara de Freitas - Director of Research at the Serious Games Institute at the University of Coventry; Mike Gogan - Blitz Games; Dick Davies - Executive Producer of Ambient Performance; and many other experts who will share their experience in the fields of gaming for education purposes (serious gaming), using virtual reality games for the promotion of tourism, and mobile phone gaming.

You can learn more about of these speakers and the eGames conference on the eGames Oman Blog.

Playyoo, the social network for playing and creating mobile phone games using the Flash Lite platform, has recently finally bypassed its private testing phase and can now be accessed as a beta launch by anyone. The easiest way to think of Playyoo is as a YouTube for Flash Lite games: anybody can upload their own Flash Lite games or even build one using the online game creator available on the website. All the games are then available for the public to download for free on their mobile phones. We did not try uploading a Flash Lite game to Playyoo, but playing games from its mobile portal was a breeze. Flash Lite developers looking for inspiration or a place to publish their games on should seriously check it out.

[via TechCrunch]

Knowledge Oasis Muscat (KOM) has announced that its annual gaming conference eGames will be held on the 31st of March and the 1st of April 2008 at KOM HQ in Rusail. (See our coverage of the last eGames here.) The conference will focus as usual on gaming for education purposes, gaming for the promotion of tourism, and mobile gaming - all of which are fields that the Sultanate of Oman and local business could make use of.

The sessions of the conference will be delivered by a number of academics, virtual reality game developers, and telecom industry professionals. A workshop on Second Life on the second day of the conference will be conducted by David Wortley of the Serious Games Institute of Coventry University.

Conference entry fees, if any would be charged, have not been announced yet. Conference updates will be posted on the Public Establishment for Industrial Estates (PEIE) Blog.

Adobe released yesterday the developer edition of the latest version of the Flash Lite player. Developers from all around the world can now download and try the Flash Lite 3 player on any Nokia S60 3rd edition mobile phone. This latest update brings Flash video playback support to mobile devices and enhances the performance of the player up to 30%, but it does not however bring ActionScript 3.0 support yet and uses ActionScript 2.0 instead. Authoring Flash Lite 3 content requires the latest updates to both Flash CS3 authoring tool and Device Central CS3 for managing the creation of mobile content and the emulation of mobile devices. You can download the player from Adobe Labs here.

Adobe released yesterday the latest issue of Adobe Magazine, its free quarterly online publication on visual communication. The latest issue that could be downloaded in PDF format explores the expansion multimedia onto cellular screens, the merger of technology and biology through photography, adding interactivity to print, and creating high quality videos on a limited budget. You can download this issue of the Adobe Magazine and check out previous issues as well from the Adobe Magazine website.