aka 3GSM, why they changed the name I'll never know, 3GSM rolls off the tongue much better!

Anyway, I'll be speaking at the Adobe Booth on some of the exciting Flash Lite work we have been producing recently. Cant say more than that right now, but if you are there, come over and say hi. If you're not there, Im sure the news will be on biskero the moment it leaves my mouth. (No offence Alessandro, you are just so quick to post new stories :)

2007 was a very busy year for me both personally and in business. But Ive been posting only personal stuff so far, so lets take a look at Flash Lite for a change.

3GSM in Barcelona in February seems to be the first milestone of every year in the mobile world and last year was no exception. Flash Lite was really picking up speed by this point, and announcements from Adobe and Nokia confirmed that this was going to speed up even more. More and more Flash Lite 2.x phones started to appear, not only on S60 but also on Series 40, which I see as a must for mass market penetration.

Our Games catalogue was also growing strongly, 12 titles in early 2007. As well as our Wallpaper/Screensaver catalogue, growing to some 30+.

In June, Chris and I spoke at Adobe Live in London, a free exhibition of Adobe products. Here we showed off the fantastic Adobe CS3 suite and how it was possible to integrate Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and Device Central to coordinate your mobile work flow. I really like Flash CS3 and Device Central, but have found it to be very buggy, with intermittent crashes and freezes. Lets hope these get fixed soon.

2007 also saw me working on a very large project, from a very large mobile company, more news coming soon on that one. It was 6 months solid graft though, and a lot of hurdles to jump over.

In September, our Wallpaper/Screensaver catalogue was released on Sony Ericsson's 'Fun & Downloads' web site via the Smashing Content sales channel. This was a major coup for us and at last allowed us to get some real figures from real people downloading our content.

October was Adobe MAX, my yearly chance to meet all the guys from Adobe and the community and generally have a good time. I developed a simple Flash Lite 1.1 event guide for the conference, not sure how many people used it, but it helped me if nothing else :) It was also the first Adobe MAX in Europe, in Barcelona. I personally thought it was a great event, with a good number of people. The party and mid-session drinks could have been better, but that was the only real negatives.

Flash Lite 3 was the real talking point of the conference from a mobile perspective, the addition of .flv support is a massive step forward, as well as the hugh increase in processing speed, which really helps in game development. Obviously we wait in anticipation for the FL3 phones to start appearing, but as we all know by now, these things take time.

December has to have been the best month of the year for BlueskyNorth. Our Games catalogue and Wallpaper/Screensaver catalogue, was released on Verizon Wireless in North America, through the Smashing Content sales channels. Smashing Games and Smashing Screens is really going to make an impact in 2008, providing a sales outlet for all the professional and independent Flash Lite developers out there, to one of the largest sales channels of Flash Lite outside of Japan.

2008, what happens next?

A shit load more Flash Lite enabled phones hopefully!
More support for Flash Lite distribution on non-S60 devices, such as Series40 and Sony Ericsson.
Some exciting announcement's from BlueskyNorth. Stay tuned.
Phone UI, a very, very interesting format for Flash Lite.
Flash Cast, hopefully we'll start to see launches in Europe and North America very soon.

Let me know your thoughts on what you would like to see for Flash Lite in 2008?

The British Airways Saga on our way to Italy...

Sunday 23rd December 2007
06:00 - Wake up excited about the trip ahead. Get a taxi to Newcastle airport for our 08:00 flight to Heathrow.
09:30 - Delayed 1 hour 30 mins on our flight from Newcastle to Heathrow.
11:00 - Land at Heathrow, flight to Rome scheduled for 14:30, but because of freezing fog, no departure time is displayed.
14:30 - Still no departure time, but we found a free cocktail bar in the departure lounge, so things were ok.
16:00 - We board the plane, but theres no flight crew.
17:30 - The pilot arrives, but theres no co-pilot.
18:30 - The flight is cancelled due to the missing co-pilot, we are informed we need to wait to be escorted off the plane.
19:00 - We disembark the plane and head to the baggage reclaim fiasco, where 100s of luggage bags are 'thrown' around from ours and several other cancelled flights.
20:00 - After finding our luggage and phoning the British Airways hotline, we manage to scrape onto a flight from Gatwick to Naples at 15:00 the following day.
21:15 - We arrive at Gatwick Airport after an hour bus journey and manage to get booked into the Gatwick Hilton for the night with free evening meal and breakfast. Thank God!
23:00 - After a buffet style evening meal and a well deserved drink, we go to bed looking forward to heading off the next day.

Monday 24th December 2007
10:00 - Wake up to enjoy the very nice free breakfast.
12:00 - Head to the airport to check in for the flight to Naples, scheduled for 15:00.
13:00 - After an hour of confusion checking in, due to our being transferred onto the flight, we arrive in the departure lounge, lunch and beer is enjoyed by all.
14:00 - Yay, the flight is delayed! SHIT...
15:00 - "Please wait in the departure lounge." We're getting annoyed.
16:00 - "Please wait in the departure lounge." We're really getting annoyed.
17:00 - "Please wait in the departure lounge." I'm going to kill someone.
18:00 - We get some drinks vouchers, lots of drinks vouchers, so we buy a bottle of champagne and a bottle of red wine, thinking we might be spending Christmas at Gatwick Airport.
18:05 - "Please go to Gate n" (I cant remember the gate number.) Luckily we didnt open the champagne or the wine, so we can enjoy that in Naples.
19:00 - We have lift off...! But not on British Airways, they had to call in some dodgy airline to cover the flight, 'Flystar Astreaus.'
22:00 (Italy time) - We finally land in Naples, 39 hours after setting off from my front door. Total flight time should have been 3 hours 30 minutes from Newcastle to London, London to Rome. It took British Airways 39 hours!

Thank you British Airways, may I never have the displeasure of flying with you again.

Returned from Italy on Thursday night after a fantastic adventure. It all started badly, being delayed in Heathrow airport for 48hours, so we didnt get to Naples until 11pm on Christmas Eve! (The Heathrow saga requires a separate post.)



Naples is an amazing and extremely unique city. You can see, smell and taste the angst and vitriol of the place, its Italy on hypercharge. The days are quite sedate compared to the evenings, when the whole place erupts (pardon the pun.) Pizza was eaten, Limoncello was drunk and scooters were dodged.





From Naples we moved north to the much more sedate Cecina and Castiglioncello (top) in the Tuscany region (bottom.) We just chilled out here for a day to refresh after the manic Naples adventure. Tuscany must have some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen.



Next was a night time trip to Florence. I was overawed by the history of the city, the birth place of the Renaissance and the largest concentration of classical architecture and sculpture I have ever seen. It was so much better visiting it at night, we walked for about 2 hours from 12am to 2am in almost complete solitude, recommended if you want to miss the stampede of tourists wrestling for the perfect photo location!



And on to the best New Year celebration I have ever had. We drove for about an hour and a half north of Pisa into the mountains to stay in the remote 'Refugio La Quiete' about 1000m above sea level. We did indeed have to walk for 90 minutes from the road to get to the Refugio, uphill...! I and several others nearly died from heart attacks. I thought I was fairly fit and healthy, but after 30 minutes of climbing with a 10Kg backpack my heart was racing to its limit and my vision started to blur. I was worried! :) But we got there OK and it was well worth it.



There was 18 of us in total, most could only speak a little English, so conversations were limited, but I think they got their moneys worth of English tutoring. Obviously, the Italians took care of the cooking, which was amazing. And obviously, I took care of the drinks, which flowed freely, (we took 50 Litres of red wine!) I could talk for pages about how beautiful the place was, and about all the adventures we had, but lets just say, it was one of the best times of my life!



January 2nd and we arrive in Pisa for the last days of the trip. To be honest, The 'Leaning Tower' was really impressive, but after the mountains it was very hard to compete. If you havent seen the tower though, it really does lean that much, I mean really.



The final day of the tour. We got the train up to Bergamo to fly back to Newcastle. I wasn't expecting much from Bergamo, but the 'Citi Alta,' the medeval area overlooking the city was fascinating and very picturesque. Lots of tiny shops, boutiques, cafes and cake shops, but the pizza shop (pictured above) was fantastic and the taste was even better!

It was a pleasure to meet all my new friends in Italy and to see all the great places. If you haven't been before, I highly recommend it, and I will certainly be going back.

Flickr Photoset